judgment in coarser language. "Since Granville was turned out, there has been no minister in this nation worth the meal that whitened his periwig."

ally fearless, Pelham constitutionally timid Walpole had to face a strong opposition; bu no man in the government durst wag a finget against him. Almost all the opposition which He fell; and the reign of the Pelhams com- Pelham had, was from members of the govern menced. It was Carteret's misfortune to be ment of which he was the head. His own raised to power when the public mind was paymaster spoke against his estimates. His still smarting from recent disappointment. own secretary at war spoke against his ReThe nation had been duped, and was eager gency Bill. In one day Walpole turned Lord for revenge. A victim was necessary; and Chesterfield, Lord Burlington, and Lord Clinon such occasions, the victims of popular ton out of the royal household, dismissed the rage are selected like the victim of Jephthah. [ highest dignitaries of Scotland from their posts, The first person who comes in the way is and took away the regiments of the Duke of made the sacrifice. The wrath of the people Bolton and Lord Cobham, because he sushad now spent itself, and the unnatural excite-pected them of having encouraged the resistment was succeeded by an unnatural calm. ance to his Excise Bill. He would far rather To an irrational eagerness for something new, have contended with a strong minority, under succeeded an equally irrational disposition to able leaders, than have tolerated mutiny in his acquiesce in every thing established. A few own party. It would have gone hard with any months back the people had been disposed to of his colleagues who had ventured to divide impute every crime to men in power, and to the House of Commons against him. Pelham, lend a ready ear to the high professions of on the other hand, was disposed to bear any men in opposition; they were now disposed to thing rather than to drive from office any man surrender themselves implicitly to the manage- round whom a new opposition could form. ment of ministers, and to look with suspicion He therefore endured with fretful patience the and contempt on all who pretended to public insubordination of Pitt and Fox. He thought spirit. The name of patriot had become a it far better to connive at their occasional inbyword of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely fractions of discipline, than to hear them, night exaggerated, when he said, that in those times, after night, thundering against corruption and the most popular declaration which a candi- wicked ministers from the other side of the date could make on the hustings, was, that he House. had never been and never would be a patriot. At this juncture took place the rebellion of the Highland clans. The alarm produced by that event quieted the strife of internal factions. The suppression of the insurrection crushed forever the spirit of the Jacobite party. Room was made in the government for a few Tories. Peace was patched up with France and Spain. Death removed the Prince of Wales, who had contrived to keep together a small portion of that formidable opposition, of which he had been the leader in the time of Sir Robert Wal-coln's Inn Fields, or by Grub street writers pole. Almost every man of weight in the House of Commons was officially connected with the government. The even tenor of the session of Parliament was ruffled only by an occasional harangue from Lord Egmont on the army estimates. For the first time since the accession of the Stuarts there was no opposition. This singular good fortune, denied to the ablest statesmen-to Salisbury, to Strafford, to Clarendon, to Walpole-had been reserved for the Pelhams.

Henry Pelham, it is true, was by no means a contemptible person. His understanding was that of Walpole on a somewhat smaller scale. Though not a brilliant orator, he was, like his master, a good debater, a good parliamentary tactician, a good man of business. Like his master, he distinguished himself by the neatness and clearness of his financial expositions. Here the resemblance ceased. Their characters were altogether dissimilar. Walpole was good-humoured, but would have his way; his spirits were high, and his manners frank even to coarseness. The temper of Pelham was yielding, but peevish; his habits were regular, and his deportment strictly decorous. Walpole was constitution

We wonder that Sir Walter Scott never tried his hand on the Duke of Newcastle. An interview between his Grace and Jeanie Deans would have been delightful, and by no means unnatural. There is scarcely any public man in our history of whose manners and conver sation so many particulars have been preserved. Single stories may be unfounded or exaggerated. But all the stories, whether told by people who were perpetually seeing him in Parliament and attending his levee in Lin

who never had more than a glimpse of his star through the windows of his gilded coach, are of the same character. Horace Walpole and Smollett differed in their tastes and opinions as much as two human beings could differ. They kept quite different society. The one played at cards with countesses and corresponded with ambassadors. The other passed his life surrounded by a knot of famished scribblers. Yet Walpole's Duke and Smollett's Duke are as like as if they were both from one hand. Smollett's Newcastle runs out of his dressing-room with his face covered with soap suds to embrace the Moorish envoy. Walpole's Newcastle pushes his way into the Duke of Grafton's sick-room to kiss the old nobleman's plasters. No man was ever so unmercifully satirized. But in truth he was himself a satire ready made. All that the art of the satirist does for other ridiculous men nature had done for him. Whatever was absurd about him stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest of the character. He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a shuffling trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he was always in a hurry; he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in hys

is, he will make an ass of you." It was as dangerous to have any political connection with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a greediness all his own. He was jealous of all his colleagues, and even of his own brother. Under the disguise of levity he was false be

the able men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child who never knew his own mind for an hour together, and he overreached them all round.

terical tears. Ilis oratory resembles that of Justice Shallow. It was nonsense effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. Of his ignorance many anecdotes remain, some well authenticated, some probably invented at cof fee-houses, but all exquisitely characteristic. “Oh—yes—yes—to be sure-Annapolis must be defended-troops must be sent to Annapo-yond all example of political falsehood. All lis-Pray, where is Annapolis ?”- "Cape Breton an island! wonderful-show it me in the map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the king that Cape Breton is an island." And this man was during nearly thirty years secretary of state, and during nearly ten years first lord of the treasury! His large fortune, his strong hereditary connection, his great parliamentary interest, will not alone explain this extraordinary fact. His success is a signal instance of what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the "Fortunes of Nigel." It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have no money dealings with my father," says Martha to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard as he

If the country had remained at peace, it is not impossible that this man would have continued at the head of affairs, without admitting any other person to a share of his authority, until the throne was filled by a new prince, who brought with him new maxims of government, new favourites, and a strong will. But the inauspicious commencement of the Seven Years' War brought on a crisis to which Newcastle was altogether unequal. After a calm of fifteen years the spirit of the nation was again stirred to its inmost depths. In a few days the whole aspect of the political world was changed.

But that change is too remarkable an event to be discussed at the end of an article already too long. It is probable that we may, at no re mote time, resume the subject.

THACKERAY'S HISTORY OF THE EARL OF
CHATHAM.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1834.1

THOUGH several years have elapsed since | ral excellence-the just man made perfect the publication of this work, it is still, we be- He was in the right when he attempted to esta lieve, a new publication to most of our read-blish an inquisition, and to give bounties for ers. Nor are we surprised at this. The book perjury, in order to get Walpole's head. He is large and the style heavy. The information was in the right when he declared Walpole to which Mr. Thackeray has obtained from the have been an excellent minister. He was in State Paper Office is new, but much of it is to the right when, being in opposition, he mainus very uninteresting. The rest of his narra-tained that no peace ought to be made with tive is very little better than Gifford's or Tomline's Life of the Second Pitt, and tells us little or nothing that may not be found quite as well told in the "Parliamentary History," the "Annual Register," and other works equally com-right of search. When he left the Duke of

mon.

Spain, till she should formally renounce the right of search. He was in the right when, being in office, he silently acquiesced in a treaty by which Spain did not renounce the

Newcastle, when he coalesced with the Duke of Newcastle; when he thundered against subsidies, when he lavished subsidies with unexampled profusion; when he execrated the Hanoverian connection; when he declared that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire; he was still invariably speaking the language of a virtuous and enlightened statesman.

Almost every mechanical employment, it is said, has a tendency to injure some one or other of the bodily organs of the artisan. Grinders of cutlery die of consumption; weavers are stunted in their growth; and smiths become blear-eyed. In the same manner almost every intellectual employment has a tendency to produce some intellectual malady. Biographers, translators, editors-all, in short, who employ The truth is, that there scarcely ever lived a themselves in illustrating the lives or the person who had so little claim to this sort of writings of others, are peculiarly exposed to praise as Pitt. He was undoubtedly a great the Lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration. man. But his was not a complete and wellBut we scarcely remember ever to have seen proportioned greatness. The public life of a patient so far gone, in this distemper as Mr. Hampden, or of Somers, resembles a regular Thackeray. He is not satisfied with forcing | drama, which can be criticised as a whole, and us to confess that Pitt was a great orator, a every scene of which is to be viewed in convigorous minister, an honourable and high-nection with the main action. The public life spirited gentleman. He will have it that all virtues and all accomplishments met in his hero. In spite of gods, men, and columns, Pitt must be a poet-a poet capable of producing a heroic poem of the first order; and we are assured that we ought to find many charms in such lines as these:

"Midst all the tumults of the warring sphere,

My light-charged bark may haply glide;

of Pitt, on the other hand, is a rude though striking piece-a piece abounding in incongruities-a piece without any unity of pian, but redeemed by some noble passages, the effect of which is increased by the tameness or extravagance of what precedes and of what follows. His opinions were unfixed. His conduct at some of the most important conjunctures of his life was evidently determined by

Some gale may waft, some conscious thought shall pride and resentment. He had one fault, which

cheer,

And the small freight unanxious glide."

Pitt was in the army for a few months in time of peace. Mr. Thackeray accordingly insists on our confessing that, if the young cornet had remained in the service, he would have been one of the ablest commanders that ever lived. But this is not all. Pitt, it seems, was not merely a great poet in esse, and a great general in posse, but a finished example of mo

A History of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, containing his Speeches in Parliament, a considerable portion of his Correspondence when Secretary of State, upon French, Spanish, and American Affairs, never before published; and an account of the principal Events and Persons of his Time, connected with his Life, Sentiments, and Administration. By the Rev. FRANCIS THACKERAY, A.M. 2 vols. 4to, London. 1827.

of all human faults is most rarely found in company with true greatness. He was extremely affected. He was an almost solitary instance of a man of real genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding spirit, without simplicity of character. He was an actor in the closet, an actor at Council, an actor in Parliament; and even in private society he could not lay aside his theatrical tones and attitudes. We know that one of the most distinguished of his partisans often complained that he could never obtain admittance to Lord Chatham's room till every thing was ready for the representation, till the dresses and properties were all correctly disposed, till the light was thrown with Rembrandt-like effect on the head of the illustrious performer, till the flannels had been

arranged with the air of a Grecian drapery, and the crutch placed as gracefully as that of Belisarius or Lear.

Yet, with all his faults and affectations, Pitt
had, in a very extraordinary degree, many of
the elements of greatness. He had splendid
talents, strong passions, quick sensibility, and
vehement enthusiasm for the grand and the
beautiful. There was something about him
which ennobled tergiversation itself. He often
went wrong, very wrong.
But to quote the
language of Wordsworth,

"He still retained,
'Mid such abasement, what he had received
From nature, an intense and glowing mind.”

In an age of low and dirty prostitution-in the age of Doddington and Sandys-it was something to have a man who might, perhaps, under some strong excitement, have been | tempted to ruin his country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer from her ;-a man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire of gain, but from a fierce thirst for power, for glory, and for vengeance. History owes to him this attestation-that, at a time when any thing short of direct embezzlement of the public money was considered as quite fair in public men, he showed the most scrupulous disinterestedness; that, at a time when it seemed to be generally taken for granted that government could be upheld only by the basest and most immoral arts, he appealed to the better and nobler parts of human nature; that he made a brave and splendid attempt to do, by means of public opinion, what no other statesman of his day thought it possible to do, except by means of corruption; that he looked for support, not like the Pelhams, to a strong aristocratical connection, not, like Bute, to the personal favour of the sovereign, but to the middle class of Englishmen; that he inspired that class with a firm confidence in his integrity and ability; that, backed by them, he forced an unwilling court and an unwilling oligarchy to admit him to an ample share of power; and that he used his power in such a manner as clearly proved that he had sought it, not for the sake of profit or patronage, but from a wish to establish for himself a great and durable reputation by means of eminent ser

vices rendered to the state.

venteen he was entered at Trinity College, Oxford. During the second year of his resi dence at the University, George the First died and the event was, after the fashion of that ge neration, celebrated by the Oxcnians in many very middling copies of verses. On this occasion Pitt published some Latin lines, which Mr. Thackeray has preserved. They prove that he had but a very limited knowledge even of the mechanical part of his art. All true Etonians will hear with concern, that their illustrious school-fellow is guilty of making the first syllable in labenti short. The matter of the poem is as worthless as that of any college exercise that was ever written before or since. There is, of course, much about Mars, Themis, Neptune, and Cocytus. The Muses are earnestly entreated to weep for Cæsar; for Cæsar, says the poet, loved the Muses ;-Cæsar, who could not read a line of Pope, and who loved nothing but punch and fat women.

Pitt had been, from his schooldays, cruelly tormented by the gout; and was at last advised to travel for his health. He accordingly left Oxford without taking a degree, and visited France and Italy. He returned, however, without having received much benefit from his excursion, and continued, till the close of his life, to suffer most severely from his constitu tional malady.

His father was now dead, and had left very little to the younger children. It was necessary that William should choose a profession. He decided for the army, and a cornet's commission was procured for him in the Blues.

But, small as his fortune was, his family had both the power and the inclination to serve him. At the general election of 1734, his elder brother Thomas was chosen both for Old Sarum and for Oakhampton. When Parliament met in 1735, Thomas made his election to serve for Oakhampton, and William was returned for Old Sarum.

Walpole had now been, during fourteen years, at the head of affairs. He had risen to power under the most favourable circumstances. The whole of the Whig party-of that party which professed peculiar attachment to the principles of the Revolution, and which exclusively enjoyed the confidence of the reigning house-had been united in support The family of Pitt was wealthy and respect of his administration. Happily for him, he able. His grandfather was Governor of Madras; had been out of office when the South Sea Act and brought back from India that celebrated was passed; and, though he does not appear diamond which the Regent Orleans, by the ad- to have foreseen all the consequences of that vice of Saint Simon, purchased for upwards measure, he had strenuously opposed it, as he of three millions of livres, and which is still opposed almost all the measures, good or bad, considered as the most precious of the crown of Sunderland's administration. When the jewels of France. Governor Pitt bought estates South Sea Company were voting dividends of and rotten boroughs, and sat in the House of fifty per cent.—when a hundred pounds of their Commons for Old Sarum. His son Robert was stock were selling for eleven hundred pounds at one time member for Old Sarum, and at an--when Threadneedle street was daily crowdother for Oakhampton. Robert had two sons. Thomas, the elder, inherited the estates and the parliamentary interest of his father. The second was the celebrated William Pitt.

He was born in November, 1708. About the early part of his life little more is known than that he was educated at Eton, and that at se

ed with the coaches of dukes and prelates when divines and philosophers turned gamblers

when a thousand kindred bubbles were daily blown into existence-the periwig company, and the Spanish-jackass company, and the quicksilver-fixation company-Walpole's calm good sense preserved him from the general in

Of all the members of the cabinet, Carteret was the most eloquent and accomplished. His talents for debate were of the first order; his knowledge of foreign affairs superior to that of any living statesman; his attachment to the Protestant succession was undoubted. But there was not room in one government for him and Walpole. Carteret retired, and was, from that time forward, one of the most persevering and formidable enemies of his old colleague.

fatuation. He condemned the prevailing mad- | an offer. He indignantly refused to accept r ness in public, and turned a considerable sum For sume time he continued to brood over his by taking advantage of it in private. When wrongs, and to watch for an opportunity of the crash came-when ten thousand families revenge. As soon as a favourable conjunc were reduced to beggary in a day--when the ture arrived, he joined the minority, and be people, in the frenzy of their rage and despair, came the greatest leader of Opposition that the clamoured not only against the lower agents House of Commons had ever seen. in the juggle, but against the Hanoverian favourites, against the English ministers, against the king himself--when Parliament met, eager for confiscation and blood-when members of the House of Commons proposed that the directors should be treated like parricides in ancient Rome, tied up in sacks, and thrown into the Thames, Walpole was the man on whom all parties turned their eyes. Four years before he had been driven from power by the intrigues of Sunderland and Stanhope, and the If there was any man with whom Walpole lead in the House of Commons had been in- could have consented to make a partition of trusted to Craggs and Aislabie. Stanhope was power, that man was Lord Townshend. They no more. Aislabie was expelled from Parlia- were distant kinsmen by birth, near kinsmen ment, on account of his disgraceful conduct by marriage. They had been friends from regarding the South Sea scheme. Craggs was childhood. They had been schoolfellows at saved by a timely death from a similar mark | Eton. They were country-neighbours in Norof infamy. A large minority in the House of folk. They had been in office together under Commons voted for a severe censure on Sun- Godolphin. They had gone into opposition derland, who, finding it impossible to withstand together when Harley rose to power. They the force of the prevailing sentiment, retired had been persecuted by the same House of from office, and outlived his retirement but a Commons. They had, after the death of Anne, very short time. The schism which had di- been recailed together to office. They had vided the Whig party was now completely again been driven out by Sunderland, and had healed. Walpole had no opposition to en-again come back together when the influence counter except that of the Tories, and the of Sunderland had declined. Their opinions Tories were naturally regarded by the king on public affairs almost always coincided with the strongest suspicion and dislike. They were both men of frank, generous, and For a time business went on with a smooth-compassionate natures; their intercourse had ness and a despatch such as had not been been for many years most affectionate and corknown since the days of the Tudors. During dial. But the ties of blood, of marriage, and the session of 1724, for example, there was of friendship, the memory of mutual services only a single division. It was not impossible and common persecutions, were insufficient to that, by taking the course which Pelham after-restrain that ambition which domineered over wards took-by admitting into the government all the virtues and vices of Walpole. He was all the rising talents and ambition of the Whig resolved, to use his own metaphor, that the firm party, and by making room here and there for of the house should be, not "Townshend and a Tory not unfriendly to the House of Bruns- Walpole," but "Walpole and Townshend." wick-Walpole might have averted the tre- At length the rivals proceeded to personal mendous conflict in which he passed the lat- abuse before witnesses, seized each other by ter years of his administration, and in which the collar, and grasped their swords. The he was at length vanquished. The Opposition women squalled. The men parted the combatwhich overthrew him was an opposition cre- ants. By friendly intervention the scandal ated by his own policy, by his own insatiable of a duel between cousins, brothers-in-law, old love of power. friends, and old colleagues, was prevented. In the very act of forming his ministry, he But the disputants could not long continue to turned one of the ablest and most attached of act together. Townshend retired, and with his supporters into a deadly enemy. Pulteney rare moderation and public spirit, refused to had strong public and private claims to a high take any part in politics. He could not, he situation in the new arrangement. His fortune said, trust his temper. He feared that the rewas immense. His private character was collection of his private wrongs might impel respectable. He was already a distinguished him to follow the example of Pulteney, and to speaker. He had acquired official experience oppose measures which he thought generally in an important post. He had been, through beneficial to the country. He, therefore, never all changes of fortune, a consistent Whig. visited London after his resignation; but passWhen the Whig party was split into two sec-ed the closing years of his life in dignity and tions, Pulteney had resigned a valuable place, repose among his trees and pictures at Rainand had followed the fortunes of Walpole. Yet ham. when Walpole returned to power, Pulteney was not invited to take office. An angry discussion took place between the friends. The minister offered a peerage. It was impossible for Pulteney not to discern the motive of such

|

Next went Chesterfield. He too was a Whig

*The scene of this extraordinary quarrel was we believe, a house in Cleveland Square, now occupied by Mr. Ellice, the Secretary at War. It was then the residence of Colonel Selwyn.