of encouraging rebels, and partaking as an accomplice in their treasons.

It was upon this memorable occasion that he made the famous reply to Lord Suffolk, who had said, in reference to employing the Indians, that "We were justified in using all the means which God and nature had put into our hands." The circumstance of Lord Chatham having himself revised this speech, is an inducement to insert it here at length.

"I am astonished," exclaimed Lord Chatham, as he rose, shocked, to hear such principles confessed, to hear them avowed, in this House or in this country; principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian.

"My Lords, I did not intend to have trespassed again on your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled by every duty. My Lords, we are called upon, as members of this House, as men, as Christian men, to protest against such notions, standing near the throne, polluting the ear of majesty. That God and nature put into our hands!—I know not what idea that Lord may entertain of God and nature, but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife, to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating; literally, my Lords, eating the mangled victims of his barbarous battles! Such horrible notions shock every precept of religion, divine and natural, and every generous feeling of humanity; and, my Lords, they shock every sentiment of honour; they shock me as a lover of honourable war, and a detester of murderous barbarity.

"These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand most decisive indignation. I call upon that Right Reverend Bench, those holy ministers of the Gospel, and pious pastors of the Church: I conjure them to join in the holy work, and to vindicate the religion of their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this Learned Bench, to defend and support the justice of their country. I call upon the Bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn, upon the learned Judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour of your Lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble Lord frowns with indignation at THE DISGRACE OF HIS COUNTRY! In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honour, the liberties, the religion, the Protestant religion of his country, against the arbitrary cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition, if these more than Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose amongst us, to turn forth into our settlements, amongst our ancient connexions, friends, and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child-to send forth the infidel savage-against whom? Against your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war-hell-hounds, I say, of savage war. Spain armed herself with bloodhounds to extirpate the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman example of even Spanish cruelty: we turn loose these savage hell-hounds

against our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity. My Lords, this awful subject, so important to our honour, our constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry; and I again call upon your Lordships, and the united powers of the state, to examine it thoroughly and decisively, and to stamp upon it an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. And I again implore those holy prelates of our religion to do away those iniquities from among us; let them perform a lustration-let them purify this House and this country from this sin.

"My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and my indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, or have reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles."

*

There are other celebrated passages of his speeches in all men's mouths. His indignant and contemptuous answer to the Minister's boast of driving the Americans before the army-"I might as well think of driving them before me with this crutch!"-is well known. Perhaps the finest of them all is his allusion to the maxim of English law, that every man's house is his castle. "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail-its roof may shake-the wind may blow through it—the storm may enter the rain may enter-but the King of England cannot enter!-all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!"

These examples may serve to convey a pretty accurate idea of the peculiar vein of eloquence which distinguished this great man's speeches. It was of the very highest order; vehement, fiery, close to the subject, concise, sometimes eminently, even boldly figurative it was original and surprising, yet quite natural. To call it argumentative would be an abuse of terms; but it had always a sufficient foundation of reason to avoid any appearance of inconsistency, or error, or wandering from the point. So the greatest passages in the Greek orations were very far from being such as could stand the test of close examination in regard to their argument. Yet would it be hypercritical indeed to object that Demosthenes, in the most celebrated burst of all ancient eloquence, argues for his policy being rewarded although it led to defeat, by citing the example of public honours having been bestowed upon those who fell in gaining five great victories.

Some have compared Mr. Fox's eloquence to that of Demosthenes; but it resembled Lord Chatham's just as much, if not more. It was

* There hangs so much doubt upon the charge brought against Lord Chatham, of having himself employed the Indians in the former war, that the subject is reserved for the Appendix.

incomparably more argumentative than either the Greek or the English orator's; neither of whom carried on chains of close reasoning as he did, though both kept close to their subject. It was, however, exceedingly the reverse of the Attic orator's in method, in diction, in conciseness. It had nothing like arrangement of any kind. Except in the more vehement passages, its diction was perhaps as slovenly, certainly as careless as possible, betokening indeed a contempt of all accurate composition. It was diffuse in the highest degree, and abounded in repetitions. While the Greek was concise, almost to being jejune, the Englishman was diffuse, almost to being prolix. How the notion of comparing the two together ever could have prevailed, seems unaccountable, unless it be that men have supposed them alike because they were both vehement, and both kept subject in view rather than run after ornament. But that the most elaborate and artificial compositions in the world should have been likened to the most careless, and natural, and unprepared, that were ever delivered in public, would seem wholly incredible if it were not true. The bursts of Mr. Fox, however, though less tersely and concisely composed, certainly have some resemblance to Lord Chatham's, only that they betray far less fancy, and, however vehement and fiery, are incomparably less bold. Mr. Pitt's oratory, though admirably suited to its purpose, and as perfect a business kind of speaking as ever was heard, certainly resembled none of the three others who have been named. In point of genius, unless perhaps for sarcasm, he was greatly their inferior; although from the unbroken fluency of his appropriate language, and the power of an eminently sonorous voice, he produced the most prodigious effect.

It remains to speak of Lord Chatham as a private man, and he appears to have been in all respects exemplary and amiable. His disposition was exceedingly affectionate. The pride, bordering upon insolence, in which he showed himself encased to the world, fell naturally from him, and without any effort to put it off, as he crossed the threshold of his own door. To all his family he was simple, kindly, and gentle. His pursuits were of a nature that showed how much he loved to unbend himself. He delighted in poetry and other light reading; was fond of music; loved the country; took peculiar pleasure in gardening; and had even an extremely happy taste in laying out grounds. His early education appears to have been further prosecuted afterwards; and he was familiar with the Latin classics, although there is no reason to believe that he had much acquaintance with the Greek. In all our own classical writers he was well versed; and his time was much given to reading them. A correspondence with his nephew, which Lord Grenville published about five and thirty years ago, showed how simple and classical his tastes were, how affectionate his feelings, and how strong his sense

of both moral and religious duty. These letters are reprinted in a work now in the course of publication by the family of Lord Chatham, because the answers have since been recovered; and it contains a great body of other letters both to and from him. Amongst the latter, are to be found constant tokens of his amiable disposition.

The most severe judge of human actions, the critic whose searching eye looks for defects in every portrait, and regards it as a fiction, not a likeness, when he fails to find any, will naturally ask if such a character as Lord Chatham's could be without reproach; if feelings so strong never boiled over in those passions which are dangerous to virtue; if fervour of soul such as his could be at all times kept within the bounds which separate the adjoining provinces of vehemence and intemperance? Nor will he find reason to doubt the reality of the picture which he is scrutinising when we have added the traits that undeniably disfigured it. Some we have already thrown in; but they rather are shades that give effect and relief to the rest, than deformities or defects. It must now be further recorded, that not only was he impracticable, difficult beyond all men to act with, overbearing, impetuously insisting upon his own views being adopted by all as infallible, utterly regardless of other men's opinions when he had formed his own, as little disposed to profit by the lights of their wisdom as to avail himself of their co-operative efforts in action-all this is merely the excess of his great qualities running loose uncontrolled-but he appears to have been very far from sustaining the exalted pitch of magnanimous independence and utter disregard of sublunary interests which we should expect him to have reached and kept as a matter of course, from a more cursory glance at the mould in which his lofty character was cast. Without allowing considerable admixture of the clay which forms earthly mortals to have entered into his composition, how can we account for the violence of his feelings, when George III. showed him some small signs of kindness in the closet, upon his giving up the seals of office. "I confess, Sir, I had but too much reason to expect your Majesty's displeasure. I had not come prepared for this exceeding goodness.-Pardon me, Sir," he passionately exclaimed—“it overpowers-it oppresses me!" and he burst into tears in the presence of one who, as a moment's reflection must have convinced him, was playing a part to undermine his character, destroy his influence, and counteract all his great designs for his country's good. some misplaced sentiments of loyalty may have produced this strange paroxysm of devotion. The colour assumed by his gratitude for favours conferred upon his family and himself was of a more vulgar hue, and still less harmonised with the Great Commoner's exalted nature. On learning the King's intention to grant him a pension

But

(in order effectually to undo him), he writes to Lord Bute a letter full of the most humiliating effusions of extravagant thankfulnessspeaks of "being confounded with the King's condescension in deigning to bestow one thought on the mode of extending to him his royal beneficence"-considers" any mark of approbation flowing from such a spontaneous source of clemency as his comfort and his glory" and prostrates himself in the very dust for daring to refuse the kind of provision tendered" by the King in a manner so infinitely gracious"-and proposing, instead of it, a pension for his family. When this prayer was granted, the effusions of gratitude "for these unbounded effects of beneficence and grace which the most benign of Sovereigns has condescended to bestow," are still more extravagant; and "he dares to hope that the same royal benevolence which showers on the unmeritorious such unlimited benefits may deign to accept the genuine tribute of the truly feeling heart with equal condescension and goodness." It is painful to add what truth extorts, that this is really not the sentiment and the language with which a patriot leaves his Sovereign's councils upon a broad difference of honest opinion, and after being personally ill used by that monarch's favourites, but the tone of feeling, and even the style of diction, in which a condemned felon, having sued for mercy, returns thanks when his life has been spared. The pain of defacing any portion of so noble a portrait as Lord Chatham's must not prevent us from marking the traits of a somewhat vulgar, if not a sordid, kind, which are to be found on a closer inspection of the original.

Such was the man whom George III. most feared, most hated, and most exerted his kingcraft to disarm; and such, unhappily, was his momentary success in this long-headed enterprise against the liberties of his people and their champions; for Lord Chatham's popularity, struck down by his pension, was afterwards annihilated by his peerage.

LORD NORTH.

THE minister whom George III. most loved was, as has been already said, Lord North, and this extraordinary favour lasted until the period of the Coalition. It is no doubt a commonly-received notion, and was at one time an article of belief among the popular party, that Lord Bute continued his secret adviser after the termination of his short administration; but this is wholly without foundation. The King never had any kind of communication with him,