towards the Treasury bench, where sat his son. I have rarely witnessed a moment when the passions were touched in a more masterly manner within the walls of the House. The impression made by it on Pitt is said to have been of the deepest kind." GEORGE TIERNEY. (1761-1830.) The Fox and the Goose.-Mr. Tierney was one of those Whigs who, partly through hostility to Mr. Pitt, and partly from a sincere gratitude for the peace abroad, and the mild and constitutional government at home, obtained for the country by Mr. Addington, first supported and afterwards formally joined that minister, upon his rupture with his patron and predecessor. When alluding to the difficulties the Foxites and Pittites had of passing over to join each other in attacking the Addington ministry, Mr. Tierney (forgetting for the moment how easily he had himself overcome a like difficulty in joining that ministry) alluded to the puzzle of "the Fox and the Goose,” and did not clearly expound his idea. Whereupon Mr. Dudley North said, "It is himself he means-who left the Fox to go over to the Goose, and put the bag of oats in his pocket."Brougham's "Sketches." A Saying about Office.-Earl Russell remarks that Mr. Tierney used to say, as the fruit of his experience, that it was very difficult for a member of the House of Commons to attain high office, but that it was still more difficult to leave high office with credit on sufficient grounds. His lordship endorsed this by adding, "The latter is, in fact, the more difficult operation of the two.” The Duel between Pitt and Tierney.-Pitt brought in a bill for the more effectual manning of the navy, on the 25th of May, 1798, and urged that it pass through all its stages in one day. Tierney opposed this "precipitous course." In reply Pitt asked how the honourable gentleman's opposition to the measure was to be accounted for, but from a desire to obstruct the defence of the country. Refusing to retract or explain, Pitt received a challenge the next day from Tierney. Lord Sidmouth gives the following account of the preliminaries: "I was dining with Lord Grosvenor when a note was brought me from Mr. Pitt stating that he had received a hostile message from Mr. Tierney, and wished me to go to him, which I did as soon as the party at Lord Grosvenor's broke up. Mr. Pitt had just made his will when I arrived. He had sent, in the first instance, to Mr. Steele to be his second; but, finding he was absent, he sent next to Mr. Ryder. On the following day I went with Pitt and Ryder down the Birdcage Walk, up the steps into Queen Street, where their chaise waited to take them to Wimbledon Common." On Sunday, the 27th, at three o'clock in the afternoon (says Earl Stanhope), the two parties met on Putney Heath. Mr. Pitt was attended by Mr. Dudley Ryder, afterwards Lord Harrowby, and Mr. Tierney by Mr. George Walpole. The seconds had some conversation, and endeavoured to prevent further proceedings, but they did not prevail. The principals took their ground at the distance of twelve paces, and fired at the same moment, each without effect. A second case of pistols was produced, and fired in the same manner, Mr. Pitt on this last occasion firing his pistol in the air. The seconds interfered, and thus ended the affair. His Style in Debate.-Lord Lytton, in "St. Stephen's," gives the following graphic sketch of Tierney's manner: "There is an eloquence which aims at talk A muse, though wingèd, that prefers to walk; Chats at your table some huge proser down, He bids you wonder why you are so vile; One hand politely pointing out your crime, The other-in his pocket all the time." WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. (1759-1833.) Slave Trade Motions.-"In 1787," said Wilberforce, "I was staying with Pitt at Holwood-one has often a local recollection of particular incidents-and I distinctly remember the very knoll upon which I was sitting, near Pitt and Grenville, when the former said to me, 'Wilberforce, why don't you give notice of a motion on the subject of the slave trade? You have already taken great pains to collect evidence, and are therefore fully entitled to the credit which doing so will insure you. Do not lose time, or the ground may be occupied by another.' I did so, and upon that occasion Fox said he had himself seriously entertained the idea of bringing the subject before Parliament; but he was pleased to add that, it having got into so much better hands, he should not interfere. In 1789 I opened the question to the House. Burke, I remember, complimented me on my speech, and thanked me for the information he had received from it." As an instance of the ridiculous stories told in consequence to the speaker's disadvantage, Clarkson was travelling in a stage-coach, when, the conversation turning on the abolition question, one of the passengers gravely said, “Mr. Wilberforce is doubtless a great philanthropist in public, but I happen to know a little of his private history, and can assure you that he is a cruel husband, and even beats his wife." At this time Mr. Wilberforce was a bachelor.-Harford's "Recollections." His Parliamentary Dinners.-Mr. Wilberforce (says Harford) resided in Palace Yard for some time with his friend, Mr. Henry Thornton, as bachelors, where they kept an almost open house for members of Parliament. About three o'clock daily their friends began to drop in on their way to the House, and partook of a light dinner, the number of them amounting to seventeen or twenty. Lord Eldon was not unfrequently one of the party. "It delighted us," said Mr. Wilberforce, "to see our friends in this way, especially as it gave us the opportunity of talking upon any important points of public business, without any great sacrifice of time. Those who came in late put up with a mutton chop or beefsteak. The Duke of Montrose called in one day as we were thus employed, but declined taking anything. Seeing, however, so many around him busy with the knife and fork, he said, 'I cannot resist any longer,' and down he sat to a mutton chop. 'Ah! duke,' said I, if your French cook could see you now, he would be quite affronted.'" Power and Forbearance.-The singular kindness, the extreme gentleness of his disposition, wholly free from gall, from vanity, or other selfish feeling, kept him from indulging in any of the vituperative branches of rhetoric; but a memorable instance showed that it was anything rather than the want of power which held him off from the use of the weapons so often in almost all other men's hands. When a well-known and popular member thought fit to designate him repeatedly, and very irregularly, as the "honourable and religious gentleman," not because he was ashamed of the Cross he gloried in, but because he felt indignant at any one in the British Senate deeming piety a matter of imputation, he poured out a strain of sarcasm which none who heard it can ever forget. A common friend of the parties having remarked to Sir Samuel Romilly, beside whom he sat, that this greatly outmatched Pitt himself, the master of sarcasm, the reply of that great man and just observer was worthy to be remarked: "Yes," said he, "it is the most striking thing I almost ever heard; but I look upon it as a more singular proof of Wilberforce's virtue than of his genius, for who but he ever was possessed of such a formidable weapon, and never used it?"-Brougham's "Statesmen." A Simile." Few passages can be cited," says Brougham," in the oratory of modern times of a more electrical effect than Wilberforce's singularly felicitous and striking allusion to Mr. Pitt's resisting the torrent of Jacobin principles: He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed.'" Repenting of his Vote.-Lord Sidmouth told us that one morning at a Cabinet meeting, after an important debate in the House of Commons (the subject of which he had forgotten), some one said, "I wonder how Wilberforce voted last night." On which Lord Liverpool observed, “I do not know how he voted; but this I am pretty sure of, that in whatever way he voted, he repents of his vote this morning." Lord Sidmouth added, "It was odd enough that I had no sooner returned to my office thau Wilberforce was announced, who said, 'Lord Sidmouth, you will be surprised at the vote I gave last night, and, indeed, I am not myself altogether satisfied with it!' To which I replied, My dear Wilberforce, I shall never be surprised at any vote you may give.' Pursuing the conversation, I soon convinced him that he had really voted wrong, when he said, 'Dear me, I wish I had seen you last night before the debate."". Life of Lord Sidmouth. SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY. (1757-1818.) An Advanced Liberal.-Romilly, who was identified with all the liberal measures, and the political activity in a liberal direction, of the early part of the nineteenth century, entered Parliament in 1806, when close upon fifty years of age; and he was appointed Solicitor-General in the administration of which Fox was a leading member. Having sat for one pocket borough after another, in 1818 he was elected for Westminster; but the death of his wife in the same year had such an effect upon his mind that he destroyed himself. He was to the last one of the foremost spirits of the philanthropical party. Barbarians.-Earl Russell writes, in his "Recollections:" Sir Samuel Romilly tried to amend our criminal law; Lord Castlereagh successfully obstructed his progress. The same great and liberal man proposed to make freehold property subject to the payment of simple contract debts; the law officers of the Crown would not hear of so dangerous an innovation. One of the Crown lawyers said that it was a mistake to say the law dated from the reign of Henry VIII.; that its origin was as far back as the time of Edward I. "What care I," retorted Romilly, "whether this law was made by one set of barbarians or another ?" The Reform of the Criminal Code.-The name of reform in the criminal law had not been heard in the House of Commons for fiftyeight years, when, in 1808, Romilly carried his bill for the abolition of the punishment of death for privately stealing from the person to the value of five shillings; in other words, for picking pockets. Romilly approached the subject of this reform with a caution which now looks almost like weakness. His object was originally to raise the value according to which a theft was rendered capital. In January, 1808, he gave up the intention of bringing forward even this limited measure-he was sure the judges would not approve of it. To another distinguished lawyer belongs the credit of having urged Romilly to a bolder policy. His friend Scarlett, he says, " had advised me not to content myself with merely raising the amount of the value of property, the stealing of which is to subject the offender to capital punishment, but to attempt at once to repeal all the statutes which punish with death mere thefts unaccompanied by any act of violence, or other circumstance of aggravation. This suggestion was very agreeable to me. But, as it appeared to me that I had no chance of being able to carry through the House a bill which was to expunge at once all these laws from the statute-book, I determined to attempt the repeal of them one by one, and to begin with the most odious of them, the Act of Queen Elizabeth which makes it a capital offence to steal privately from the person of another." Upon this prudential principle Romilly carried his first reform in 1808.-Martineau's History of the Peace. Modern Philosophy v. "Experience."-The constant argument employed against the alterations proposed by Romilly in the criminal laws was this-that of late years the offences which they undertook to repress were greatly increased. Justly did Romilly say, "A better reason than this for altering the law could hardly be given." On the 24th of May, 1811, when three of Romilly's bills were rejected in the House of Lords, Lord Ellenborough declared, "They went to alter those laws which a century had proved to be necessary, and which were now to be overturned by speculation and modern philosophy." Lord Chancellor Eldon, on the same occasion, stated that he had himself early in life felt a disposition to examine the principles on which our criminal code was framed, "before observation and experience had matured his judgment. Since, however, he had learned to listen to these great teachers in this important science, his ideas had greatly changed, and he saw the wisdom of the principles and practice by which our criminal code was regulated." Although Eldon frequently gave effectual opposition to Romilly's measures, the old Lord Chancellor, we are told, was unusually affected by his death. As he took his seat in court the following morning, "he was struck by the sight of the vacant place which Romilly was accustomed to occupy, and his eyes filled with tears. I cannot stay here,' he exclaimed, and, rising in great agitation, broke up his court." SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. (1765-1832.) A Philosopher's Peculiarities.-Unparliamentary Style. -Mackintosh entered the House of Commons in 1813 with a high reputation from his forensic oratory, but he failed to sustain it in Parliament. A contemporary in Colburn's New Monthly for 1832 (edited by Bulwer Lytton) gives a picture of the philosophic orator, then just deceased: "We ourselves heard Sir James Mackintosh's great, almost wonderful, speech upon Reform. We shall never forget the extensive range of ideas, the energetic grasp of thought, the sublime and soaring strain of legislative philosophy with which he charmed and transported us; but it was not so with the House in general. His Scotch accent, his unceasing and laboured vehemence of voice and gesture; the refined and speculative elevation of his views, and the vast heaps of hoarded knowledge he somewhat prolixly produced, displeased the taste and wearied the attention of men who were far more anxious to be amused and excited than instructed or convinced. We see him now, his bald and singularly formed head working to and fro, as if to collect and then shake out his ideas; his arm violently vibrating, and his body thrown forward by sudden quirks and starts, which, ungraceful as they were, seemed rather premeditated than inspired." Mackintosh's eloquence, remarks the same writer, like that of Burke and Brougham, appeared "addressed to another audience than that to which it was actually delivered. Intended for the House of Commons only, the style would have been absurdly faulty; intended for the public, it was august and correct." Macaulay thus alludes to Mackintosh's deficiency in Parliament: "His talents were not those which enable a speaker to produce with rapidity a series of striking but transi |