will not this perpetuation of the prize increase the emulation? Is there nothing to enhance our honour in the consideration that it is to be transmitted to the children of your affection, and that you are the ennobler of many? Is ambition fully gratified, or desert half rewarded by a distinction perishable as yourself, to be laid down ere it is well won, and to crumble into dust with your remains? Is the reward of merit to be intrusted to the ungrateful memory of mankind? Shall its reward be late and its enjoyment short? That deviation from strict justice is not very severe, and is certainly very politic, which indulges the manes of the father with the honours of the son, and forbids man, in the contemplation of his mortality, to look upon his inducements as insufficient, and his rewards as incomplete. The wreath of fame would not be worth the wear if it was not evergreen; and the laurel is its emblem because it does not wither. In these considerations I discover a probable and a wise origin of hereditary dignities, as far as their institution regards the person upon whom they were first conferred; in regard to him the reward of merit was enlarged; in regard to others the encouragement to exertion was increased. But the wisdom of hereditary dignities does not rest here. There is a principle in the heart of man which any wise government will encourage, because it is the auxiliary of virtue,I mean the principle of honour which, in those moments of weakness when conscience slumbers, watches over the deserted charge, and engages friends in the defence of integrity. It is a sanction of conduct which the imagination lends to virtue, is itself the reward, and inflicts shame as the punishment. The audacity of vice may despise fear; the sense of reason may be steeled; art may elude temporal, and impiety defy eternal, vengeance; but honour holds the scourge of shame, and he is hard indeed who trembles not under its lash. Even if the publicity of shame be

pro

avoided, its sanction is not destroyed. Every one suffers when ashamed of himself, and the blushes of the heart are agony. The dread of shame is the last good quality which forsakes the breast, and the principle of honour frequently retains it when every other instance of good conduct has abandoned the heart. This sentiment must ever be in proportion to a man's opinions of what is expected from him; and in portion as he is taught that much is expected from him, will it swell in his bosom and sharpen his sensibility. I cannot therefore discover a mere 'diminutive childishness' in the institution of hereditary dignities, if they cherish this sentiment, and if this sentiment cherishes virtue; and France has 'breeched herself'† into manhood to little purpose of good government in putting down the delusion, if delusion it is. An establishment is something more than 'puerile,' which gives encouragement to virtue, dignity to worth, adds the idea of great to good, and makes that splendid which was useful. Society was made for man; and, as man is various, and frail, and vain, it does not disdain to promote his happiness by playing on his foibles; its strength is armed against his fears; his hopes are fed by its rewards; and its blandishments are directed to his vanities. Virtue, coldly entertained in any other corner of the heart, will take a strong hold in the pride of man. She has often erected her temple on the coronets of a glorious ancestry, and the world has been indebted to the manes of the dead for the merits of the living."

The reader of these fine passages is at once reminded of Mr. Burke, and the best of his writings on the French Revolution and the frame of society. It is impossible to doubt that Mr. Bushe had deeply studied that great performance, and that he unavoidably, in treating the same subject, fell into a similarity of style, while he

felt a common sentiment with that illustrious author. But there is nothing servile in the imitation, if imitation it be; and of the thousands who have endeavoured to tread the same path, no one but he has been successful. Indeed, it may well be affirmed that, successfully to imitate Mr. Burke, asks Mr. Burke's own genius; and woe betide the wight who, without his strength, ventures to put on his armour. Among the various anecdotes* that have been preserved of the Chief Justice, there is no record of Mr. Burke having been made acquainted with the masterly performance of his fellow-labourer. He who eagerly opened his arms to the able and brilliant, but very inferior coadjutor, whom he found in Professor Wylde, must have received with delight such an ally as the author of this admirable book. It clearly contains not merely the germ and rudiments of the extraordinary, and in some sort peculiar, eloquence for which its author was afterwards so remarkable, but, with a few occasional exceptions in point of severity, a few deviations from simplicity, pardonable on such a subject, it exhibits that very diction itself which distinguished him-chaste and pure, addressed continually to the subject in hand, instinct with epigram, sufficiently but soberly sprinkled with flowers, often sharp with sarcasm, always akin to serious and wise reflection. When we reflect that this was the work of a very young man, the maturity and gravity of the style, as well as of the reasoning, be

In various periodical publications there have been accounts of Mr. Bushe at all times of his life. Some of these take him up as early as 1822, on his elevation to the bench; others come down to his retirement; and some have appeared since his death. I have, of course, consulted them all, as well as resorted to private sources of information. That upon some of them, at least, no reliance can safely be placed, is clear from the random way in which facts and dates are dealt with. What shall be said of the careful attention to this subject, of writers who make Lord Grenville's government be dismissed in 1803, and Mr. Bushe have been thirteen years at the bar when that dismissal happened; and who represent Mr. Sheridan as taking a part against the Coercion Bill in 1817, when he died in 1816, and had not been in Parliament since 1812?

comes exceedingly striking: and it is interesting to observe the impression which a perusal of it left on the author's mind after an interval of many years. He possibly felt some of that mortification which Sir Joshua Reynolds and other great artists are known to have expressed upon remarking the excellence of their earlier efforts, and being sensible how little their pencil had afterwards improved. Be that as it may, the following note lies before me in the Chief Justice's hand, dated August, 1831, and it may appropriately close these commentaries.

"I have read over," says his Lordship, "a pamphlet which I wrote in 1791, when a very young man, in my twenty-fifth year; and although my better, at least older, judgment and taste condemn some instances of hasty and erroneous opinions rashly hazarded, much superficial and inaccurate reasoning, and several puerilities and affectations of style, yet at the end of forty years, I abide by most of the principles which I then maintained, and consider the execution of the work, taken altogether, as better than anything of which I am now capable."

207

MARQUESS WELLESLEY.

Ir any one were desired to name the family in modern times which, like the Gracchi at Rome, peculiarly excelled all others in the virtues and in the renown of its members, there could hardly be any hesitation in pitching upon the illustrious house of which Lord Mornington, afterwards Marquess Wellesley, was the head. But I had the happiness of a long and uninterrupted friendship with that great man, and enjoyed more particularly his unreserved confidence during the last ten or twelve years of his life. It is fit, therefore, that I distrust my own feelings towards his memory; and in order to preserve impartiality, the first duty of an historian, but the most difficult in writing contemporary history, I shall confine myself in treating of him to the facts which are beyond all controversy, and which, indeed, are the best heralds of his fame.

The family of the Wellesleys originally came from Somersetshire, and by intermarriage with the Cowleys or Colleys, and by a devise from the Poles,* obtained large property in Ireland, where they were, in 1756, raised to the Peerage. About sixty years ago they took the name of Wellesley, which, I believe, was

• Lord Maryborough, on his brother's decease, Lord Mornington, was the person to whom this valuable gift was made by a gentleman distantly related to the family. His lordship was then a young midshipman, and was offered the fortune upon condition that he quitted the navy and came to reside with his kinsman. But this he refused, as the war still continued, and he thought leaving the service before the peace would be dishonourable. He supposed, as did his family, that there was an end of the benefaction; but the old gentleman declared by his will that such conduct only increased his esteem for the young man, and left him the Pole estate.