the plan in those circumstances. An objection exists, too, of a more radical nature, and applicable to such a plan even in time of peace, at least where the sums yearly raised to support the fund are considerable. The capital accumulates at compound interest only, when in the hands of the Government, doubling in fourteen years. But if left in the hands of private persons, its accumulation would be far more rapid; and, by increasing the income of the community, would enable a skilful government to augment the revenue, or pay off the debt more expeditiously, and with less burthen to the people. It can hardly be questioned, then, that the renown anticipated by Mr. Pitt from this achievement, will be of a very doubtful character in after ages, if indeed the structure which records it should have any considerable duration. The other great measure for saving the country and securing its credit, the Stoppage of the Bank and Depreciation of our Currency, has already been the fruitful source of incalculable misfortunes, and, followed by the restoration of that currency in a moment of general delusion, promises to prove at all events as lasting a monument as any statesman ever raised to perpetuate his name.

Educated as Mr. Pitt was in the doctrine of the most improved economical systems, and possessed of enlarged and liberal views upon all subjects, it was impossible that he should fall into the gross errors of his narrowminded predecessors, in matters of commercial policy; and where his financial operations ran counter to the true interests of trade, we must not impute the error to ignorance. He knew better than he could venture to act,-placed as he was in the necessity of obtaining money at all hazards, and averse to alarm those domestic powers on whose support he chose far too implicitly to rest his official existence.

But if a lavish expenditure, ever driving him to shifts, was the vice of his internal administration, the cause of his extravagance lay in those errors in his foreign policy, about which there can hardly be two opinions. As a leading statesman in the close of the eighteenth century, he must be judged by his conduct with respect to the French Revolution, and the wars which it occasioned. His capital mistake in relation to both, was the never forming a clear and decided plan of operations, consistent in itself, and pointing to some definite and attainable object. He met the Revolution at first with an indifferent, if not a friendly disposition; and when, as his adherents say, from its aspect being changed, or, as his adversaries assert, from the temptation of dividing them, and securing the favour of the court, he became hostile to France and her revolutionary government, he carried on his operations so as to ensure their failure,-because he never attacked the new order of things with the force derived from an alliance with the old, and because he made war upon her by a multitude of detailed and insignificant operations, in which success was unavailing and defeat fatal, instead of attempting to strike some one great and decisive blow. He thus reaped all the disadvantages of every plan in combating the Revolution-opposed by the energies of the country, as if he had been fighting under the White flag and the Lilies; distrusted by the royalists, as if he had borne the tricoloured cockade; exhausting the resources of Europe, as if he had embodied all her powers at once in general array; and sacrificing her by piecemeal to the undivided strength and rapacious ambition of the enemy, as if each had fought single-handed, and the want of unity could not be supplied by concert.

Equally inconsistent and devoid of all intelligible principle, was the

course of his negotiations. He went to war without any conceivable justification, except distrust of the revolutionary government, and alarm lest its neighbourhood should prove fatal to our internal tranquillity; and yet he thrice treated for peace with that same revolutionary government, at a time when its form was so fluctuating, that it changed during one of the negotiations. After passing through various stages, an alteration took place which promised a degree of stability unknown since the destruction of the old dynasty; but with the chief who had been placed at the head of the new system, he indignantly refused to hold communion, upon objections of a personal nature; as if the relations of peace could be safely formed with the five Directors who happened at the moment to bear sway, and of whom little or nothing was known, while all intercourse was impossible with a single person in firm possession of the supreme civil and military authority in the State. The past conduct of this extraordinary man was the principal ground of rejecting his proposals. Yet in about one year afterwards, Mr. Pitt supported the policy of those who willingly treated with the same individual; though he had certainly not changed his nature in the interval, but only made himself more formidable and less easy to deal with, by extending his power at home, and humbling his enemies abroad. In a year after this treaty was concluded, the ministers began to be afraid of what they had done; and Mr. Pitt, once more discovering that there was no safety but in war, hurried them on to break the peace, and to sacrifice whatever remained of independence in Europe.

If Mr. Burke had conducted the affairs of England in those days, at least there would have been an intelligible course pursued in negotiation and in war; he would only have treated with the ancient government of France. He would have opposed the new system as such, backed by the Royalist party, or rather aiding them in attacking the revolutionary order of things, and not seizing the opportunity of taking a few ships and sugar islands. He would alike have refused to negotiate with the Committee of Public Safety, the Directory, and the Consuls; and, far from deeming the extension of the enemy's power a reason for seeking peace at his hands, would have shown greater aversion to his advances when covered with laurels, than when only polluted with crimes. If Mr. Fox had swayed the councils of the country, he might perhaps have taken the same course as Mr. Burke; but it is far more likely that he would have abstained from all interference with the internal affairs of France-shown a friendly disposition towards the people-and cautiously, but inoffensively kept aloof from their rulers, neither courting their friendship nor provoking their enmity, though ready at all times to check the least encroachment upon our rights, and to resent any invasion of the territory of our allies. Mr. Pitt, however, followed neither of these courses; but resorted to half measures, as if he had never looked the subject full in the face, and were undecided how to view it. He could neither remain quietly at peace, nor vigorously and strenuously urge the war; he seemed by turns to partake of all the opinions held by conflicting politicians, to take a little out of each system, and to pursue one line until he received a check which threw him upon the opposite

course.

His adherents indeed contend, that, after all, his policy was successful ; and would fain ascribe to it the unexpected turn of Continental affairs after the Moscow campaign. If asked, however, what they mean by his policy, the only answer is, that he kept up the spirit of resistance to France which

in the end led to her discomfiture, and opposed the Revolutionary government which has now been overthrown. But the facts unfortunately preclude all such assumptions in Mr. Pitt's favour; and entirely disconnect him with the changes which have recently taken place. He thrice treated with the remains of the Jacobins, and once with Bonaparte; whose insane ambition it was that hurried on the ruin of his dynasty, and created the counterrevolution. The inferior race of politicians who succeeded to Mr. Pitt, really carried on the war upon far sounder principles, and, for the first time, made the attack in the right place, and with the requisite force; they were led on by degrees to do so; and even they, superior as their policy was to his, through the accidents of the times, would in vain have expended the blood and treasure of the country, had not those unlooked-for events come to their aid, to which every man of common discernment traces the issue of the war. But for those chances, their extravagance would have been as entirely fruitless (to compare great things with small) as the cost of the Caledonian Canal was before the lucky invention of the steam-boat.

Let it not be imagined that they who hold this opinion of Mr. Pitt's policy, foreign and financial, during the Wars of the Revolution, neces-sarily deny his talents as a statesman in ordinary times. The difficulties of his situation were of a nature wholly unparalleled in history: a person of great steadiness might well have faltered in his course through such a sea of troubles; and the resources of a very fertile mind might have easily been exhausted by the strange and novel exigencies of the crisis. Nor have we a right severely to blame him who met this demand, rather by extraordinary devices than happy ones. A minister may well be deemed able, whom we must allow to have been unequal to such novel emergencies; and much of greatness may be attached to the name of Mr. Pitt, while we are compelled wholly to reject the extravagant praises which his followers have lavished upon him. In the policy which he pursued during the more ordinary times which preceded the Revolution, far less appears to censure; and, with the exception of the Russian armainent and negotiation, his conduct in relation to foreign powers was firm, consistent, and prosperous. The able and successful measures adopted in the affairs of Holland gained the unqualified approbation of all parties, and the French Commercial Treaty was never impeached with any effect.

Hitherto, we have almost wholly confined our attention to the talents and wisdom of this distinguished person; his claim to the higher praise of political Integrity will be the subject of far more disputation. All men will readily admit, that there was nothing petty or sordid in his character, at least in the worst sense of the terms; but it can hardly be denied, that the flights of a generous ambition are considerably lowered when it stoops to take or to keep mere office with crippled power, by the surrender of opinions upon important points. We pass over Mr. Pitt's change of sentiments upon Parliamentary Reform, and shall admit it to have been sincere when the Revolutionary alarm had begun to spread. But how many years did he continue in power before 1791, without exerting himself in favour of a measure which he still deemed essential to the public safety, half so vigorously as he constantly did for the most paltry Government measures? A speech or two, indeed, he delivered during that period, re-asserting the doctrines which he had maintained while in opposition; but he appears in no one instance to have exerted the influence of Government for the purpose of giving effect to his opinions. In short, he may have been sincere,

-but he was not zealous; and to hold opinions such as his on so great a question, with indifference, seems hardly consistent with our ideas of perfect purity, more especially when it is borne in mind that the courtiers were against him, and a loss of place might have been the effect of indiscreet ardour. The same remark applies to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which it clearly appears he might have carried many years before his death, with perfect ease, had he chosen to make it a Cabinet Question. To no speaker is that important subject more indebted; to no minister so little : And then, with his feelings on the detested traffic, so loudly expressed during ten years, to double its amount at once for the sake of capturing some pestilent territory, where a word from the Executive could have excluded it without any interposition of Parliament, truly strikes the calm observer of these times with astonishment and dismay. In one respect, indeed, he was a far kinder friend to the Abolition than to Reform; for he never joined in persecuting the disciples of the former doctrine; whereas he had no sooner received a new light upon the latter, than he was found leagued with the men who proscribed Reformers, and endeavoured to treat them as rebels.

His resignation in 1801, upon the ground that the Catholic Question could not be carried, reflects great honour upon his memory; but this is materially tarnished by his consenting, three years after, to resume his place without any stipulation in its favour: although few men can now doubt that, had he remained firm with Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox, the intolerant faction which had possession of the Court must needs have yielded; and fewer can deny, that the paramount importance of such a question demanded from Mr. Pitt's consistency, as well as his patriotism, the sacrifice of all party and personal views. The course which he preferred proved, in the result, as unfortunate for his own interest as for that of his country. He formed an administration so weak in all its parts, that he transacted the whole business of Government himself; and to give it numerical strength in Parliament, he was forced to unite with the fragments of those whom he had displaced, in a manner sufficiently indicative of his contempt. His ill-fated schemes of a fourth coalition, far exceeding all the rest in crudeness and in costliness, produced results proportionably more ruinous to England and to Europe; and he died at a time when, having failed in all his plans, and deserved his failures in most of them, his partial admirers could, with confidence, point to the Irish Union, alone of all his various projects, as equally entitled to the applause of his own age and the gratitude of posterity.

It is a very common thing, in discussing the merits of statesmen, to make a distinction between their public and private character; but, in an enlarged sense, no real difference of this kind can be admitted. He who can do an unworthy act for the sake of power, would do the same for pelf,-if he happened to feel the want of it, or to place as high a value upon it; and that he reserves the practice of base arts for the gratification of his ambition alone, proves his estimate of the object to vary rather than his scrupulousness about the means. Subject to this remark, we must allow Mr. Pitt's private character to have been unimpeachable, in the ordinary sense of the term. The correctness of his demeanour, no doubt, proceeded in a good degree from physical temperament. Convivial pleasures were the only ones he indulged in; and this is certainly the foundation of his reputation for strict moral conduct. It is true that he fulfilled all the private relations of life in

a manner the most exemplary, and that no man was ever more beloved in the circle of his friends. But this may, with perfectly equal truth, be affirmed of his illustrious antagonist, whom, nevertheless, it has always been the practice to contrast with him in respect of strict morality; while the only difference appears pretty clearly to have arisen from natural coldness, aided by the early and confirmed habits of an official life.*

DR. LAURENCE AND EDMUND BURKE. †

Dr. Laurence was one of the most singularly endowed men, in some respects, that ever appeared in public life. He united in himself the indefatigable labour of a Dutch Commentator, with the alternate playfulness and sharpness of a Parisian Wit, His general information was boundless; his powers of mastering a given subject, were not to be resisted by any degree of dryness or complication in its details; and his fancy was lively enough to shed light upon the darkest, and to strew flowers round the most barren tracks of inquiry, had it been suffered to play easily and vent itself freely. But, unfortunately, he had only the conception of the Wit, with the execution of the Commentator; it was not Scarron or Voltaire speaking in society, or Mirabeau in public, from the stores of Erasmus or of Bayle; but it was Hemsterhuysius emerging into polished life, with the dust of many libraries upon him, to make the circle gay; it was Grævius entering the Senate with somewhere from one-half to two thirds of his forthcoming folio at his fingers' ends, to awaken the flagging attention, and strike animation into the lazy debate. He might have spoken with the wit of Voltaire and the humour of Scarron united; none of it could pierce through the lumber of his solid matter; and any spark that by chance found its way, was stifled by the still more uncouth manner. As an author, he had no such defects; his profuse stores of knowledge, his business-like habit of applying them to the point; his taste, generally speaking correct, because originally formed on the models of antiquity, and only relaxed by his admiration of Mr. Burke's less severe beauties; all gave him a facility of writing, both copiously and nervously, upon serious subjects; while his wit could display itself upon lighter ones unincumbered by pedantry, and unobstructed by the very worst delivery ever witnessed,-a delivery calculated to alienate the mind of the hearer, to beguile him of his attention, but by stealing it away from the speaker, and almost to prevent him from comprehending what was so spoken. It was in reference to this unvarying effect of Doctor Laurence's delivery, that Mr. Fox once said, a man should attend, if possible, to a speech of his, and then speak it over again himself; it must, he conceived, succeed infallibly, for it was sure to be admirable in itself, and as certain of being new to the audience. But in this saying there was con

Those who wish to peruse one of the most plausible and eloquent defences ever published of Mr. Pitt's character as a Statesman and an Orator, should consult the 4th Vol. of the Quarterly Review, page 207. The Article in which the sketch appears is written with uncommon force and ability, though, as may be inferred from the political principles of that Journal, the writer professes to see nothing reprehensible in the public measures of the distinguished object of his impressive panegyric.

+ Epistolary Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke and Dr. French Lau ence.-Vol. xlvi. page 269. October, 1827.