proved himself ripe for military command. lishmen were sent only to get rich by any This is a rare if not a singular distinction. It is true that Alexander, Condé, and Charles the Twelfth won great battles at a still earlier age; but those princes were surrounded by veteran generals of distinguished skill, to whose suggestions must be attributed the victories of the Granicus, of Rocroi, and of Narva. Clive, an inexperienced youth, had yet more experience than any of those who served under him. He had to form himself, to form his officers, and to form his army. The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an equally early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war, was Napoleon Bonaparte. From Clive's second visit to India dates the political ascendency of the English in that country. His dexterity and resolution realized, in the course of a few months, more than all the gorgeous visions which had floated before the imagination of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated territory, such an amount of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was never added to the dominion of Rome by the most successful proconsul. Nor were such wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triumph, down the Sacred Way, and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The fame of those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes grows dim when compared with the splendour of the exploits which the young English adventurer achieved at the head of an army not equal in numbers to one-half of a Roman legion. From Clive's third visit to India dates the parity of the administration of our Eastern empire. When he landed at Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which Eng means, in the shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gi gantic system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbade us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days, compels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company and of its servants has been taken awayif in India the yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter than that of any native dynasty—if to that gang of public robbers which once spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal, has succeeded a body of functionaries not more highly distinguished by ability and diligence than by integrity, disinterestedness, and public spirit-if we now see men like Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious armies, after making and deposing kings, return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a land which once held out to every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth-the praise is in no small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of conquerors. But it is found in a better list-in the list of those who have done and suffered much for the happiness of mankind. To the warrior, history will assign a place in the same rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she deny to the reformer, a share of that veneration with which France cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with which the latest generation of Hindoos will contemplate the statue of Lord WiXam Bentinck. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW FOR OCTOBER, 1838.] MR. COURTENAY has long been well known | only are these passages out of place, but some to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, on some questions, been so Whigish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast to through all changes of fortune and fashion; and he has at last retired from public life, leaving behind him, to the best of our belief, no personal enemy, and carrying with him the respect and good-will of many who strongly dissent from his opinions. This book, the fruit of Mr. Courtenay's leisure, is introduced by a preface, in which he informs us, that the assistance furnished to him from various quarters "has taught him the superiority of literature to politics for developing the kindlier feelings, and conducing to an agreeable life." We are truly glad that Mr. Courtenay is so well satisfied with his new employment, and we heartily congratulate him on having been driven by events to make an exchange which, advantageous as it is, few people make while they can avoid it. He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit, from which, at most, they can only expect that, by relinquishing liberal studies and social pleasures, by passing nights without sleep, and summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature, they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is mocked with the name of Power. of them are intrinsically such that they woula become the editor of a third-rate party newspaper better than a gentleman of Mr. Courtenay's talents and knowledge. For example, we are told that "it is a remarkable circum stance, familiar to those who are acquainted with history, but suppressed by the new Whigs, that the liberal politician of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, never extended their liberality to the native Irish or the professors of the ancient religion." What schoolboy of fourteen is ignorant of this remarkable circumstance? What Whig, new or old, was ever such an idiot as to think that it could be suppressed! Really, we might as well say that it is a remarkable circumstance, familiar to people well read in history, but carefully suppressed by the clergy of the Established Church, that in the fifteenth century England was Catholic. We are tempted to make some remarks on another passage, which seems to be the peroration of a speech intended to be spoken against the Reform bill: but we forbear. We doubt whether it will be found that the memory of Sir William Temple owes much to Mr. Courtenay's researches. Temple is one of those men whom the world has agreed to praise highly without knowing much about them, and who are therefore more likely to lose than to gain by a close examination. Yet he is not without fair pretensions to the most honourable place among the statesmen of his time. A few of them equalled or surpassed him in talents; but they were men of no good repute for honesty. A few may be named whose patriotism was purer, nobler, and more disinterested than his; but they were men of no eminent ability. Morally, he was above Shaftesbury; intellectually, he was above Russell. The volumes before us are fairly entitled to the praise of diligence, care, good sense, and impartiality; and these qualities are sufficient to make a book valuable, but not quite suffi- To say of a man that he occupied a high cient to make it readable. Mr. Courtenay has position in times of misgovernment, cf cornot sufficiently studied the arts of selection and ruption, of civil and religious faction, and that, compression. The information with which he nevertheless, he contracted no great stain and furnishes us must still, we apprehend, be con- bore no part in any crime;-that he won the sidered as so much raw material. To manu-esteem of a profligate court and of a turbulent facture it will be highly useful, but it is not yet in such a form that it can be enjoyed by the idle consumer. To drop metaphor, we are afraid that this work will be less acceptable to those who read for the sake of reading, than to those who read in order to write. We cannot help adding, though we are extremely unwilling to quarrel with Mr. Courtenay about politics, that the book would not be at all the worse if it contained fewer snarls against the Whigs of the present day. Not * Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William Temple. By the Right Hon. THOMAS PERE GRINE COURTENAY. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1836. people, without being guilty of any great subserviency to either, seems to be very high praise; and all this may with truth be said of Temple. A Yet Temple is not a man to our taste. temper not naturally good, but under strict command,-a constant regard to decorum,--a rare caution in playing that mixed game of skill and hazard, human life,-a disposition to be content with small and certain winnings rather than go on doubling the stake,-these seem to us to be the most remarkable features of his character. This sort of moderation, when united, as in him it was, with very con | o▾ siderable abilities, is, under ordinary circum- kind. He could not bear discomfort, bodily o stances, scarcely to be distinguished from the mental. His lamentations when, in the course highest and purest integrity; and yet may be of his diplomatic journeys, he was put a little perfectly compatible with laxity of principle, out his way, and forced, in the vulgar phrase, with coldness of heart, and with the most in- to rough it, are quite amusing. He talks of tense selfishness. Temple, we fear, had not riding a day or two on a bad Westphalian road, sufficient warmth and elevation of sentiment of sleeping on straw for one night, of travelling to deserve the name of a virtuous man. He in winter when the snow lay on the ground, as did not betray or oppress his country: nay, he if he had gone on an expedition to the North rendered considerable service to her; but he Pole or to the source of the Nile. This kind risked nothing for her. No temptation which of valetudinarian effeminacy, this habit of codeither the King or the Opposition could hold | dling himself, appears in all parts of his conout ever induced him to come forward as the duct. He loved fame, but not with the love of supporter either of arbitrary or of factious an exalted and generous mind. He loved it as measures. But he was most careful not to give an end, not at all as a means;-as a personal offence by strenuously opposing such measures. luxury, not at all as an instrument of advantage He never put himself prominently before the to others. He scraped it together and treasured public eye, except at conjunctures when be it up with a timid and niggardly thrift; and was almost certain to gain, and could not pos- never employed the hoard in any enterprise, sibly lose ;-at conjunctures when the interest however virtuous and honourable, in which of the state, the views of the court, and the there was hazard of losing one particle. No passions of the multitude all appeared for an wonder if such a person did little or nothing instant to coincide. By judiciously availing which deserves positive blame. But much himself of several of these rare moments, he more than this may justly be demanded of a succeeded in establishing a high character for man possessed of such abilities and placed in wisdom and patriotism. When the favourable such a situation. Had Temple been brought crisis was passed, he never risked the reputa- before Dante's infernal tribunal, he would not tion which he had won. He avoided the great have been condemned to the deeper recesses offices of state which a caution almost pusilla- of the abyss. He would not have been boiled nimous, and confined himself to quiet and se- with Dundee in the crimson pool of Bulicame, cluded departments of public business, in or hurled with Danby into the seething pitch which he could enjoy moderate but certain ad- of Malebolge, or congealed with Churchill in vantage without incurring envy. If the cir- the eternal ice of Giudecca; but he would per cumstances of the country became such that haps have been placed in a dark vestibule next it was impossible to take; any part in politics to the shade of that inglorious pontiffwithout some danger, he retired to his Library and his Orchard; and, while the nation groaned under oppression, or resounded with tumult and with the din of civil arms, amused himself by writing Memoirs and tying up Apricots. His political career bore some resemblance to the military career of Louis XIV. Louis, lest his royal dignity should be compromised by failure, never repaired to a siege, till it had been reported to him by the most skilful officers in his service that nothing could prevent the fall of the place. When this was ascertained, the monarch, in his helmet and cuirass, appeared among the tents, held councils of war, dictated the capitulation, received the keys, and then returne Versailles to hear his flatterers repeat that Turenne had been beaten at Mariendal, at Condé had been forced to raise the siege of Arras, and that the only warrior whose glory had never been obscured by a single check was Louis the Great! Yet Condé and Turenne will always be considered captains of a very different order from the invincible Louis; and we must own that many statesmen who have committed very great faults, appear to us to be deserving of more esteem than the faultless Temple. For in truth his faultlessness is chiefly to be ascribed to his extreme dread of all responsibility--to his determination rather to leave his country in a scrape than to run any chance of being in a scrape himself. He seems to have been averse from danger; and it must be admitted that the dangers to which a public man was exposed, in those days of conflicting tyranny and sedition, were of the most serious "Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto." Of course a man is not bound to be a politician any more than he is bound to be a soldier and there are perfectly honourable ways of quitting both politics and the military profession. But neither in the one way of life, nor in the other, is any man entitled to take all the sweet and leave all the sour. A man who belongs to the army only in time of peace,who appears at reviews in Hyde Park, escorts the sovereign with the utmost valour and fidelity to and from the House of Lords, and retires as soon as he thinks it likely that he may be ordered on an expedition-is justly thought to have disgraced himself. Some portion of the censure due to such a holiday-soldier may justly fall on the mere holiday-politician, who flinches from his duties as soon as those du ties become difficult and disagreeable;-that is to say, as soon as it becomes peculiarly important that he should resolutely perform them. But though we are far indeed from considering Temple as a perfect statesmen, though we place him below many statesmen who have committed very great errors, we cannot deny that, when compared with his contemporaries, he makes a highly respectable appearance. The reaction which followed the victory of the popular party over Charles the First, had produced a hurtful effect on the national charac ter; and this effect was most discernible in the classes and in the places which had been most strongly excited by the recent Revolution. The deterioration was greater in London than in the country, and was greatest of all in the courtly and official circles. Almost all that remained of what feelings; yet they had not acquired a strong had been good and noble in the Cavaliers and passion for innovation. Accustomed to see old Roundheads of 1642, was now to be found in establishments shaking, falling, lying in ruins the middling orders. The principles and feel- all around them,--to live under a succession gs which prompted the "Grand Remon- of constitutions, of which the average durastrance" were still strong among the sturdy tion was about a twelvemonth,-they had no yeomen, and the decent God-fearing merchants. religious reverence for prescription;-nothing The spirit of Derby and Capel still glowed in of that frame of mind which naturally springs many sequestered manor-houses; but among from the habitual contemplatior. of immemorial those political leaders who, at the time of the antiquity and immovable stabilty. AccustomRestoration, were still young, or in the vigoured, on the other hand, to see change after change of manhood, there was neither a Southampton welcomed with eager hope and ending in disnor a Vane, neither a Falkland nor a Hamp- appointment,--to see shame and confusion of den. That pure, fervent, and constant loyalty which, in the preceding reign, had remained unshaken on fields of disastrous battle, in foreign garrets and cellars, and at the bar of the High Court of Justice, was scarcely to be found among the rising courtiers. As little, or still less, could the new chiefs of parties lay claim to the great qualities of the statesmen who had stood at the head of the Long Parliament. Hampden, Pym, Vane, Cromwell, are discriminated from the ablest politicians of the succeeding generation, by all the strong lineaments which distinguish the men who produce revolutions from the men whom revolutions produce. The leader in a great change, the man who stirs up a reposing community, and overthrows a deeply-rooted system, may be a very depraved man; but he can scarcely be destitute of some moral qualities which extort even from enemies a reluctant admiration-fixedness of purpose, intensity of will, enthusiasm which is not the less fierce or persevering, because it is sometimes disguised under the semblance of composure, and which bears down before it the force of circumstances and the opposition of reluctant minds. These qualities, variously combined with all sorts of virtues and vices, may be found, we think, in most of the authors of great civil and religious movements,--in Cæsar, in Mohammed, in Hildebrand, in Dominic, in Luther, in Robespierre; and these qualities were found, in no scanty measure, among the chiefs of the party which opposed Charles the First. The character of the men whose minds are formed in the midst of the confusion which follows a great revolution is generally very different. Heat, the natural philosophers tell us, produces rarefaction of the air, and rarefaction of the air produces cold. So zeal makes revolutions, and revolutions make men zealous for nothing. The politicians of whom we speak, whatever may be their natural capacity or courage, are almost always characterized by a peculiar levity, a peculiar inconstancy, an easy, apathetic way of looking at the most solemn questions, a willingness to leave the direction of their course to fortune and popular opinion, a notion that one public cause is pretty nearly as good as another, and a firm conviction that it is much better to be the hireling of the worst rause than to be a martyr to the best. This was most strikingly the case with the English statesmen of the generation which followed the Restoration. They had neither the enthusiasm of the Cavalier, nor the enthusiasm of the Republican. They had been early emancipated from the dominion of old usages and face follow the extravagant hopes and predic tions of rash and fanatical innovators-they had learned to look on professions of public spirit, and on schemes of reform, with distrust and contempt. They had sometimes talked the language of devoted subjects--sometimes that of ardent lovers of their country. But their secret creed seems to have been, that loyalty was one great delusion, and patriotism another. If they really entertained any predilection for the monarchical or for the popular part of the constitution.--for Episcopacy or for Presbyterianism,--that predilection was feeble and languid; and instead of overcoming, as in the times of their fathers, the dread of exile, confiscation, and death, was rarely of proof to resist the slightest impulse of selfish ambition or of selfish fear. Such was the texture of the Pres byterianism of Lauderdale, and of the specula tive republicanism of Halifax. The sense of political honour seemed to be extinct. With the great mass of mankind, the test of integrity in a public man is consistency. This test, though very defective, is perhaps the best that any, except very acute or very near observers, are capable of applying; and does undoubtedly enable the people to form an estimate of the characters of the great, which, on the whole, approximates to correctness. But during the latter part of the seventeenth century, inconsistency had necessarily ceased to be a disgrace; and a man was no more taunted with it, than he is taunted with being black at Timbuctoo. Nobody was ashamed of avowing what was common to him with the whole nation. In the short space of about seven years, the supreme power had been held by the Long Parliament, by a Council of Officers, by Barebone's Parliament, by a Council of Officers again, by a Protector according to the Instrument of Government, by a Protector according to the humble petition and advice, by the Long Parliament again, by a third Council of Officers, by the Long Parliament a third time, by the Convention, and by the king. In such times, consistency is so inconvenient to a man who affects it, and to all who are connected with him, that it ceases to be regarded as a virtue, and is considered as impracticable obstinacy and idle scrupulosity. Indeed, in such times, a good citizen may be bound in duty to serve a succession of governments. Blake did so in one profession, and Hale in another; and the conduct of both has been approved by pos terity. But it is clear that when inconsistency with respect to the most important public questions has ceased to be a reproach, incon sistency with respect to questions of minor mportance is not likely to be regarded as ishonourable. In a country in which many very honest people had, within the space of a few months, supported the government of the Protector, that of the Rump, and that of the King, a man was not likely to be ashamed of abandoning his party for a place, or of voting for a bill which he had opposed. The public men of the times which followed the Restoration were by no means deficient in courage or ability; and some kinds of talent appear to have been developed amongst them to a remarkable-we might almost say, to a morbid and unnatural degree. Neither Theramenes in ancient, nor Talleyrand in modern times, had a finer perception of all the peculiarities of character, and of all the indications of coming change, than some of our countrymen of those days. Their power of reading things of high import, in signs which to others were invisible or unintelligible, resembled magic. But the curse of Reuben was upon them all: "Unstable as water, thou shall not excel." ancient and honourable, had, before his time, So splendid have been the fortunes of the main stock of the Temple family, continued by female succession. William Temple, the first of the line who attained to any great historical eminence, was of a younger branch. His father, Sir John Temple, was Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and distinguished himself among the Privy Councillors of that kingdom by the struggle between the crown and the Long Parliament, he supported the popular cause. He was arrested by order of the Duke of Or mond, but regained his liberty by an exchange, repaired to England, and there sat in the House of Commons as burgess for Chichester. He attached himself to the Presbyterian party, and was one of those moderate members who, at the close of the year 1648, voted for treating with Charles on the basis to which that prince had himself agreed, and who were, in consequence, turned out of the House, with small ceremony, by Colonel Pride. Sir John seems, however, to have made his peace with the victorious Independents; for, in 1653, he resumed his office in Ireland. This character is susceptible of innumerable modifications, according to the innumerable varieties of intellect and temper in which it may be found. Men of unquiet minds and violent ambition followed a fearfully eccentric course-darted wildly from one extreme to another-served and betrayed all parties in turn-showed their unblushing foreheads alternately in the van of the most corrupt admi-zeal with which, at the commencement of the nistrations and the most factious oppositions were privy to the most guilty mysteries, first of the Cabal, and then of the Rye-House Plot -abjured their religion to win their sovereign's favour, while they were secretly planning his overthrow--shrived themselves to Jesuits with letters in cipher from the Prince of Orange in their pockets-corresponded with the Hague whilst in office under James-began to correspond with St. Germains as soon as they had kissed hands for office under William. But Temple was not one of these. He was not destitute of ambition. But his was not one of those souls within which unsatisfied ambition anticipates the tortures of hell, gnaws like the worm which dieth not, and burns like the fire which is not quenched. His principle was to make sure of safety and comfort, and to let greatness come if it would. It came: he enjoyed it: and in the very first moment in which it could no longer be enjoyed without danger and vexation, he contentedly let it go. He was not exempt, we think, from the prevailing political immorality. His mind took the contagion, but took it ad modum recipientis;—in a form so mild that an undiscerning judge might doubt whether it were indeed the same fierce pestilence that was raging all around. The malady partook of the constitutional languor of the patient. The general corruption, mitigated by his calm and unadventurous temperament, showed itself in omissions and desertions, not in positive crimes; and his inactivity, though sometimes timorous and selfish, becomes respectable when compared with the malevolent and perfidious restlessness of Shaftesbury and Sunderland. Temple sprang from a family which, though Sir John Temple was married to a sister of the celebrated Henry Hammond, a learned and pious divine, who took the side of the king with very conspicuous zeal during the Civil War, and was deprived of his preferment in the church after the victory of the Parliament. On account of the loss which Hammond sustained on this occasion, he has the honour of being designated, in the cant of that new brood of Oxonian sectaries who unite the worst parts of the Jesuit to the worst parts of the Orangeman, as Hammond, Presbyter, Doctor, and Confessor. William Temple, Sir John's eldest son, was born in London, in the year 1628. He received his early education under his maternal ur cle, was subsequently sent to school at BishopStortford, and, at seventeen, began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling. |