Charles James Fox, one of the most brilliant personalities, if not, indeed, the most brilliant personality, that flourished in the last decades of the eighteenth century, was the third son of Henry Fox, afterwards Baron Holland of Foxley, and Lady Georgiana Lennox, daughter of Charles, second Duke of Richmond, a grandson of Charles II. The future statesman was born on 24th January 1749, and as he grew up it was thought that a resemblance to his royal ancestor could be traced in his dark, harsh and saturnine features, that “derived a sort of majesty from the addition of two black and shaggy eyebrows, which sometimes concealed, but more frequently developed, the workings of his mind.” He was a bright, lively and original child, but subject to violent excesses of temper. “Charles is dreadfully passionate,” said his mother. “What shall we do with him?” “Oh, never mind. He is a very sensible little fellow, and he will learn to cure himself,” replied his father, who perceived and was proud of the lad’s unusual ability. “Let nothing be done to break his spirit; the world will effect that business soon enough.”

At a private school at Wandsworth, and subsequently at Eton, where Dr Philip Francis was his private tutor, the lad showed himself both intelligent and diligent. His education was interrupted in 1763, when his father took him to Paris and Spa, and at that early age initiated him into the mysteries of gaming, the passion for which was subsequently to exercise a most adverse influence on him. On his return to Eton his newly acquired knowledge of the world demoralised his companions, and he gave himself airs and thought himself a man until the headmaster birched him, and so brought him down to earth. In 1764 he went to Hertford College, Oxford, preceded by a reputation for Latin verse, a considerable knowledge of French, and a power of oratory unusual in one so young, but which he attributed to the fact that at home he had always been encouraged to think freely, and as freely to express his opinions. At the University he read deeply in classics and history, and the taste then developed endured through life, for, while he indulged in many frivolities, he would in the midst of them steal a few hours to devote to the books of which he never wearied. Towards the end of his days he put his learning into harness, and wrote a history of the reign of James II. and an account of the Revolution of 1688 that do not deserve to be relegated to obscurity.

Much has been written about the faults of Fox, but some of them, at least, should not be held greatly to his discredit, since they were the faults of the age. Wine, women and cards were the occupations of his companions, and not of the unintelligent only. Everybody drank and drank deeply, drank in pursuit of pleasure, drank to drown sorrow.

“I dined at Holland House” (wrote the Right Honourable Charles Rigby upon one occasion to George Selwyn), “where, though I drank claret with the master of it from dinner till two in the morning, I could not wash away the sorrow he is in at the shocking condition his eldest boy is in.”

Fox, Sheridan, Pitt and, notably, Professor Porson were three-bottle men, and it was not unusual for politicians to go to Westminster Hall in a state of insobriety.

“Fox drinks what I should call a great deal, though he is not reckoned to do so by his companions; Sheridan, excessively, and Grey more than any of them; while Pitt, I am told, drinks as much as anybody, generally more than any of his company, and is a pleasant, convivial man at table,”

Sir Gilbert Elliot has recorded; and Lord Bulkeley wrote to the Marquis of Buckingham À propos of Pitt bringing in the Declaratory Bill of the powers of the Board of Control:

“It was an awkward day for him (owing to the defection of some friends), and he felt it the more because he himself was low-spirited, and overcome by the heat of the House, in consequence of having got drunk the night before at your house in Pall Mall, with Mr Dundas and the Duchess of Gordon! They must have had a hard bout of it, for even Dundas, who is well used to the bottle, was affected by it, and spoke remarkably ill, dull and tedious.”

One reads with amazement of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, a Lord Chancellor and a Treasurer of the Navy—Pitt, Thurlow and Dundas—excited by wine galloping through a turnpike gate without paying the toll, and the man, mistaking them for highwaymen, discharging his blunderbuss. This exploit was duly noted in “The Rolliad.”

A great drinker, too, was Jack Talbot of the Coldstream Guards, and it was of him, when the doctor said: “My lord, he is in a bad way, for I was obliged to make use of the lancet this morning,” that the witty Alvanley remarked: “You should have tapped him, Doctor, for I am sure he has more claret than blood in his veins.” Another was the eccentric Twistleton Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, a famous epicure, who drank large quantities of absinthe and curaÇoa. Gronow recommended him a servant, who, arriving as Fiennes was going to dinner, asked his new master if he had any orders, only to receive these instructions: “Place two bottles of sherry by my bedside, and call me the day after to-morrow!”

Gambling vied with drinking as an amusement of the aristocracy, and the one was as ruinous to their purses as the other to their health. Everyone played cards in those days, and even ladies gambled with as much zest as their husbands and brothers. There was much card-playing in private houses, but more in the clubs, especially at White’s, Brooks’s and Almack’s.

“As the gambling and extravagance of the young men of fashion has arrived now at a pitch never heard of, it is worth while to give some account of it” (Walpole wrote in 1772). “They have a club at Almack’s in Pall Mall, where they played only for rouleaus of fifty pounds each rouleau; and generally there was ten thousand pounds in specie on the table. Lord Holland had paid about twenty thousand pounds for his two sons. Nor were the manners of the gamesters, or even their dresses for play, undeserving notice. They began by pulling off their embroidered clothes, and put on frieze great-coats, or turned their coats inside outwards for luck. They put on pieces of leather (such as is worn by footmen when they clean knives) to save their lace ruffles; and to guard their eyes from the light and prevent tumbling their hair, wore high-crowned straw hats with broad brims, and adorned with flowers and ribbons; masks to conceal their emotions when they played at quinze. Each gamester had a small, neat stand by him, with a large rim, to hold their tea, or a wooden bowl with an edge of ormolu to hold their rouleaus. They borrowed great sums of the Jews at exorbitant premiums. Charles Fox called his outward room, where those Jews waited till he rose, the Jerusalem Chamber. His brother Stephen was enormously fat; George Selwyn said he was in the right to deal with Shylocks, as he could give them ‘pounds of flesh.’”

It is not exaggeration to say that during the long sittings at macao, hazard, and faro many tens of thousands exchanged hands.

Fox was a magnificent player of piquet and whist, but in the evenings, when he had dined well and wined well, he would play only games of chance, at which he was always unlucky.

Once, before delivering a speech in defence of the Church, he played for twenty-two hours, and lost five hundred pounds an hour; and then declared that the greatest pleasure in life, after winning, was losing! His bad luck was notorious, but again and again his intimates came to his assistance, and Walpole wondered what he would do when he had sold the estates of all his friends! It was noticed that he did not do himself justice in a debate on the Thirty-Nine Articles (6th February 1772), and Walpole thought it was not to be wondered at.

“He had sat up playing at hazard at Almack’s from Tuesday evening, the 4th, till five in the afternoon of Wednesday, 5th. An hour before, he had recovered twelve thousand pounds that he had lost, and by dinner, which was at five o’clock, he had ended losing eleven thousand pounds. On the Thursday he spoke in the above debate, went to dinner at half-past eleven at night, from there to White’s, where he drank till seven the next morning, thence to Almack’s, where he won six thousand pounds, and between three and four in the afternoon he set out for Newmarket. His brother Stephen lost ten thousand pounds two nights after, and Charles eleven thousand pounds more on the 13th, so that in three nights the two brothers, the eldest not twenty-four, lost thirty-two thousand pounds.”

The wonder is, not that Fox spoke ill, but that he spoke at all.

They were good losers in those days, and stoicism was a very necessary quality to be possessed by the majority, since all played and few won. One night, when Fox had been terribly unfortunate at the faro-table, Topham Beauclerk followed him to his rooms to offer consolation, expecting to find him perhaps stretched on the floor bewailing his losses, perhaps plunged in moody despair. He was surprised to see him reading Herodotus. “What would you have me do?” Fox asked the astonished visitor. “I have lost my last shilling.” “Charles tells me he has not now, nor has had for some time, one guinea,” Lord Carlisle told George Selwyn, “and is happier on that account.”

The money-lenders were most obliging to Fox at the time when he was heir-apparent to the barony of Holland, but the holder of the title had an heir, which destroyed his prospects; whereupon Fox, unperturbed, made it the subject of a joke against his creditors: “My brother Ste’s son is a second Messiah, born for the destruction of the Jews.” He lived on credit for some time, and so notorious was this fact that when he gave a supper-party at his rooms in St James’s Street, close by Brooks’s Club, Tickell addressed verses thereon to Sheridan:

Lord Holland had already paid his son’s debts on several occasions, and apparently some remonstrance was addressed to the latter.

“In regard to what you say of my father’s feelings, I am sure if you could have known how very miserable you have made me you would not have said it” (Fox wrote in 1773 to Lady Holland, in a letter in which there is the true note of sincerity). “To be loved by you and him has always been (indeed, I am no hypocrite, whatever I may be) the first desire of my life. The reflection that I have behaved ill to you is almost the only painful one I have ever experienced. That my extreme imprudence and dissipation has given both of you uneasiness is what I have long known, and I am sure I may call those who really know me to witness how much that thought has embittered my life. I own I lately began to flatter myself that, particularly with you, and in a great measure with my father, I had regained that sort of confidence which was once the greatest pride of my life; and I am sure I don’t exaggerate when I say that, since I formed those flattering hopes, I have been the happiest being in the universe. I hate to make professions, and yet I think I may venture to say that my conduct in the future shall be such as to satisfy you more than my past. Indeed, indeed, my dear mother, no son ever loved a father and mother as I do. Pray, my dear mother, consider how very miserable you have made me, and pity me. I do not know what to write, so have to leave off writing, but you may be assured that no son ever felt more duty, respect, gratitude, or love than I do for both of you, and that it is in your power, by restoring me to your usual confidence and affection, or depriving me of it, to make me the most unhappy or contented of men.”

Once again Lord Holland took upon himself the settlement of Charles’s debt, and just before his death, in 1774, satisfied his son’s creditors—at a cost of £140,000! Even this was not a sufficient lesson to the young man, who incurred fresh liabilities, to pay which he sold a sinecure place of £2000 a year for life—the Clerkship of the Peels in Ireland, and the superbly decorated mansion and estate at Kingsgate in the Isle of Thanet, both of which had been left him by his father.

Fox in his twentieth year entered Parliament as member for the pocket borough of Midhurst in Sussex, and, at his father’s request, supported the Duke of Grafton’s administration. He took his seat in May 1768, and distinguished himself in the following year by a speech opposing the claim of Wilkes to take his seat as member for Middlesex. “It was all off-hand, all argumentative, in reply to Mr Burke and Mr Wedderburn, and excessively well indeed,” Lord Holland said proudly. “I hear it spoken of as an extraordinary thing, and I am, as you see, not a little pleased with it.” This was the age of young men, for Fox’s lifelong antagonist, Pitt, entered the House when he was twenty-two, accepted the Chancellorship of the Exchequer twelve months later, and became Prime Minister in his twenty-fifth year! The careers of these statesmen must have delighted another precocious genius, Benjamin Disraeli, who reverenced youth. “The only tolerable thing in life is action, and action is feeble without youth,” he wrote. “What if you do not obtain your immediate object? You always think you will, and the detail of the adventure is full of rapture.” The blunders of youth, that great man thought, are preferable to the triumph of manhood or the successes of old age.

In February 1770 Fox took office under Lord North as Lord of the Admiralty, when, owing to his attitude in the debates on the Press laws, he became so unpopular with a section of the public as actually to be attacked in the streets, and rolled in the mud. It has already been mentioned how, in February 1772, he spoke against the clerical petition for relief from subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles; and later, in the same month, he resigned his office so as to be free to oppose the Royal Marriage Bill, which was introduced by the King’s command after the announcement of the Duke of Cumberland’s marriage with Mrs Horton. The King was determined, so far as it lay in his power, to prevent the occurrence in his family of another mÉsalliance, and the principal clauses of the Royal Marriage Act forbade the marriage of a member of the royal family under the age of twenty-five without the consent of the monarch, and above that age, if the King refused consent, without the permission of both Houses of Parliament. The Bill was fiercely contested in both Houses of Parliament; Fox, Burke, and Wedderburn were its most strenuous opponents in the Commons; Lord Folkestone, in person, and Lord Chatham, by letter, in the Lords. It was denounced by its opponents as “un-English, arbitrary, and contrary to the law of God”; and the objection raised was that it would set the royal family as a caste apart. So unpopular was it that, in spite of the King’s influence being exerted in its favour, an amendment limiting it to the reign of George III. and three years longer was negatived only by a majority of eighteen. The Bill became law in March 1772.

Fox began to be recognised as a power in the House, and Lord North soon made overtures to his erstwhile colleague to rejoin the ministry as a Lord of the Treasury. This Fox did within a year of his resignation, but his independence soon brought about another rupture; and when, on a question of procedure, he caused the defeat of the ministry by pressing a motion to a division, the King wrote to Lord North: “Indeed, that young man has so thoroughly cast off every principle of common honour and honesty that he must become as contemptible as he is odious, and I hope you will let him know you are not insensible of his conduct towards you.” The Prime Minister took the hint, and dismissed Fox in a delightfully laconic note: “Sir, His Majesty has thought proper to order a new Commission of the Treasury, in which I do not see your name.”

In opposition Fox was a vigorous opponent of Lord North’s policy in connection with the American colonies. In April 1774 he voted for the repeal of the tea duty, declaring that the tax was the mere assertion of a right that would force the colonists into open rebellion; and he attacked the subsequent proceedings of the English government on account of their manifest injustice. Against the war that ensued he protested with might and main, and to the utmost of his power tried to force the ministry into a pacific path.

“The war of the Americans is a war of passion” (he declared on 26th November 1778); “it is of such a nature as to be supported by the most powerful virtues, love of liberty and of country, and at the same time by those passions in the human heart which give courage, strength and perseverance to man; the spirit of revenge for the injury you have done them, of retaliation for the hardships inflicted on them, and of opposition to the unjust powers you would have exercised over them; everything combines to animate them to this war, and such a war is without end; for whatever obstinacy enthusiasm ever inspired man with, you will now have to contend with in America; no matter what gives birth to that enthusiasm, whether the name of religion or of liberty, the effects are the same; it inspires a spirit that is unconquerable and solicitous to undergo difficulties and dangers; and as long as there is a man in America, so long will you have him against you in the field.”

And in the following year he compared George III. with Henry VI.—“both owed the Crown to revolutions, both were pious princes, and both lost the acquisitions of their predecessors”—and so earned the enmity of the King, who could not differentiate between doctrine and action; and because Fox supported the rights of the Americans looked upon him henceforth as a rebel. Later, when of all the colonies only Boston remained in the hands of the English, and Wedderburn with foolhardy audacity ventured in the House of Commons to compare North as a War Minister with Chatham, Fox created a sensation by declaring that “not Lord Chatham, nor Alexander the Great, nor CÆsar ever conquered so much territory in the course of all their wars as Lord North had lost in one campaign!” In January 1781 he made a further effort, in which he was supported by Pitt, to compel Lord North to abandon the war and make peace with the colonies.

“The only objection made to my motion” (he declared) “is that it must lead to American independence. But I venture to assert that within six months of the present day, Ministers themselves will come forward to Parliament with some proposition of a similar nature. I know that such is their intention; I announce it to the House.”

Of course his resolution was defeated, and the colonies were for ever lost to the Crown. “I that am born a gentleman,” said George III. to Lord Thurlow and the Duke of Leeds, “shall never lay my head on my last pillow in peace and quiet as long as I remember the loss of my American colonies.” Not the less, the King never forgave Fox for that attitude which might have averted the disaster.

Fox, who had declined office in 1780, was two years later appointed Foreign Secretary when Lord Rockingham became Prime Minister, and in this position he won golden opinions.

“Mr Fox already shines as greatly in place as he did in opposition, though infinitely more difficult a task” (Walpole wrote to Mr Horace Mann). “He is now as indefatigable as he was idle. He has perfect temper, and not only good humour and good nature, but, which is the first quality of a Prime Minister in a free country, has more common sense than any man, with amazing parts that are neither ostentatious nor affected.”

Lord Rockingham died a few months later, when Lord Shelburne was appointed in his place, and soon after Fox, with some of his colleagues, withdrew from the Ministry. The cause of his secession was said to be that Fox wished to grant independence to the American colonies as a boon, and Lord Shelburne would regard it only as a bargain; but the underlying reasons were Fox’s hatred of the man and jealousy aroused by the exclusion from office of the Duke of Portland. It was to Lord Shelburne, who was most unpopular and suspected of insincerity, that Goldsmith made his singularly mal À propos remark: “Do you know, I could never conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of man!”

Fox allied himself with Lord North, and as they had a large majority in the House of Commons, Lord Shelburne resigned in February 1784. The King was furious, but being powerless, was compelled to appoint as First Minister of the Crown the Duke of Portland, under whom Pitt and Lord North held office as Secretaries of State.

In the previous year the Prince of Wales had come of age, and had at once attached himself to the Opposition, who naturally welcomed so powerful an ally.

“The Prince of Wales has thrown himself into the arms of Charles, and this in the most indecent and undisguised manner” (Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann). “Fox lodged in St James’s Street, and as soon as he rose, which was very late, held a levÉe of his followers, and of the members of the Gambling Club at Brooks’s, all his disciples. His bristly, black person, and shagged breast quite open, and rarely purified by any ablutions, was wrapped in a foul linen night-gown, and his bushy hair dishevelled. In these cynic weeds, and with epicurean good humour, did he dictate his politics, and in this school did the heir to the Crown attend his lessons and imbibe them.”

Fox told his new adherent that a Prince of Wales should have no party, but, his advice being disregarded, when the opinion was expressed that the Prince should not attend the debates in the House of Commons, he intervened in defence of his friend.

“Is the mind, which may at any hour, by the common changes of mortality, be summoned to the highest duties allotted to man, to be left to learn them by accident?” (he asked). “For my part I rejoice to see this distinguished person disdaining to use the privileges of his rank and keep aloof from the debates of this House. I rejoice to see him manfully coming among us, to imbibe a knowledge of the Constitution within the walls of the Commons of England. I, for my part, see nothing in the circumstance which has called down so much voluntary eloquence.”

There were many, however, who disapproved of this alliance, and many attacks were made upon Fox, who was the subject of many lampoons.

The principal act of the Administration was the introduction of Fox’s India Bill, by which powers were sought to take away the control of the great dominion that Warren Hastings had built up from the Honourable East India Company and transfer it to a board of seven Commissioners, who should hold office for five years and be removable only on an Address to the Crown from either House of Parliament. This was bitterly opposed by the merchant class, who saw in it a precedent for the revocation of other charters; but the clause that aroused the greatest bitterness was that in which it was laid down that the appointment of the first seven Commissioners should be vested in Parliament, and afterwards in the Crown. This was, of course, equivalent to vesting the appointments and the enormous patronage attaching thereto in the Ministry, and “it was an attempt,” said Lord Thurlow, “to take the diadem from the King’s head and to put it on that of Mr Fox.” The Bill was fought with every weapon, but it passed the Commons, only, however, to be defeated by the Lords, upon whom the King had brought his personal influence to bear. Thereupon, in December 1783, the King contemptuously dismissed the Ministry.

In the following May there was a General Election, the chief interest of which centred round the City of Westminster, for which Fox and Sir Cecil Wray had sat in the dissolved Parliament. The King, who had plotted the downfall of the Ministry, had determined to do his utmost to prevent Fox from sitting in the new Parliament, but the latter, who had, however, already been elected for Kirkwall, audaciously carried the war into the enemy’s camp by having himself nominated for his old constituency.

“It may fairly be questioned” (Mr Sidney said) “whether any of the electoral contests of the eighteenth century equalled that of Westminster in point of the prevalence of corrupt practices, drunkenness, tumult and disorder. The polling lasted forty days, and, during the long period over which it extended, the entire western quarter of the Metropolis and Covent Garden, the immediate vicinity of the hustings, presented a scene of uproar and disorder which it is difficult to describe. The latter locality might have been styled ‘Bear Garden’ for the time being, so flagrant were the outrages against decency, and so riotous was the violence of which it was the scene.”

At first the two Ministerial candidates, Admiral Hood and Sir Cecil Wray, forged ahead, and left Fox so far behind that the prospect of his return appeared hopeless. Then the influence of the many ladies of rank and fashion who canvassed for the latter made itself felt. The Duchess of Portland, Countess Carlisle, Countess of Derby, Lady Beauchamp, and Lady Duncannon were among Fox’s assistants, but the greatest service was rendered by the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, whose charms have been chronicled by every contemporary memorist.

A reaction in favour of Fox set in, and when, at three o’clock on 17th May, the poll closed, the High Bailiff of Westminster declared the results:

Great were the rejoicings when it became known that “the man of the people” had snatched the victory from the Court candidate. The Prince of Wales, who had thrown his influence into the scale, went the same evening to a supper-party given by Mrs Crewe, where all present were arrayed in buff and blue, the victor’s colours. The Prince proposed the health of the hostess with felicitous brevity, “True Blue and Mrs Crewe,” to which the lady wittily replied, “True Blue, and all of you”; and the hero of the hour returned thanks to all and sundry.

It was to Mr Fox and Mrs Armitstead (with whom Fox was then living and whom he married in 1795), at the latter’s house at St Anne’s, Chertsey, that the Prince repaired to pour out his woes when, to evade his compromising attentions, Mrs Fitzherbert went abroad.

“Mrs Armitstead has repeatedly assured me” (Lord Holland relates in his “Memoirs of the Whig Party”) “that he came thither more than once to converse with her and Mr Fox on the subject, that he cried by the hour, that he testified to the sincerity and violence of his passion and his despair by the most extravagant expressions and actions, rolling on the floor, striking his forehead, tearing his hair, falling into hysterics, and swearing he would abandon the country, forego the Crown, sell his jewels and plate, and scrape together a competence to fly with the object of his affections to America.”

When Mrs Fitzherbert returned to England, Fox implored the Prince not to marry her, and received from him a reply, “Make yourself easy, my dear friend! Believe me, the world will soon be convinced that not only is there not, but never was, any grounds for these reports, which have been so malevolently circulated.” On the strength of this letter, when the question was raised in the House of Commons in a debate on the Prince’s debts, Fox denied the marriage, only to be told by a relative of the lady at Brooks’s Club, within an hour of his speech, that the marriage had taken place! It is said that the statesman was furious at the deception that had been practised upon him; but doubtless his sense of humour came to his rescue: one can imagine him shrugging his shoulders with his almost imperturbable good humour, as he reflected that while his position as a dupe was distressing, what must be the feeling of him who had duped him. It was, indeed, a case of the biter bit! Perhaps, too, he was amused at having saved the Prince malgrÉ lui; and certainly it is to his credit that “when urged by his friends to undeceive Parliament, and thus vindicate himself in the opinion of the country, he refused to do so at the expense of the heir to the monarchy.” But there was on his part a coldness towards the Prince for some time, and he never again trusted that royal personage.

It is impossible within the limits of this paper to discuss Fox’s subsequent political career, or to make more than an allusion to the attacks on Warren Hastings during the famous impeachment, to his advocacy of the Prince as the rightful Regent during the King’s illness, and his opposition to many of Pitt’s measures. His remark on hearing of the taking of the Bastille has become historic: “How much is this the greatest event that ever happened in the world, and how much the best”; but he never approved of the excesses that followed, and he was opposed to all absolute forms of government, and not more averse to an absolute monarchy or an absolute aristocracy than to an absolute democracy. From 1792 for five years he seldom attended Parliament, but devoted himself chiefly to the composition of his “History of the Revolution of 1688.” In 1798 his name was erased from the list of Privy Councillors because at a dinner he proposed the toast of “Our Sovereign, the people.” Later he went abroad, had an interview with Napoleon, and on his return, in 1803, in a magnificent speech advocated a peace with France. On Lord Addington’s resignation in the following year it was proposed that Fox should be a member of the new Cabinet, but the King intervened to make Pitt promise, firstly, never to support Catholic Emancipation, and, secondly, to exclude Fox from office. However, two years later, Fox accepted the portfolio of the Foreign Office under Grenville, in the “Ministry of all the Talents.” He made his last appearance in the House of Commons on 10th June 1806, to move a resolution preparatory to introducing a Bill for the suppression of the slave trade.

“So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this night” (he concluded his farewell speech) “that if, during the almost forty years that I have had the honour of a seat in Parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort and the conscious satisfaction that I had done my duty.”

A few days after, he was taken ill at the house of the Duke of Devonshire at Chiswick, and it was soon apparent that his last hours were near. He was no believer in religion, but, to please his wife, he consented to have prayers read, though he “paid little attention to the ceremony, remaining quiescent merely, not liking to refuse any wish of hers, nor to pretend any sentiments he did not entertain.” “I die happy,” he said to his wife, “but I pity you.” He died on 13th September, and was interred in Westminster Abbey, immediately adjoining the monument of Lord Chatham, and close by the grave of William Pitt, his great rival, who had predeceased him by a few months.

As a constructive statesman, Charles James Fox had but little opportunity to shine.

“Charles is unquestionably a man of first rate talents, but so deficient in judgment as never to have succeeded in any object during his whole life” (said his “candid friend,” Boothby). “He loved only three things, women, play, and politics. Yet at no period did he ever form a creditable connection with a woman. He lost his whole fortune at the gaming table; and, with the exception of about eleven months of his life, he has remained always in opposition.”

This is a severe pronouncement upon a great man, who was a great orator and a splendid debater.

“Fox delivered his speeches without previous preparation, and their power lay not in rhetorical adornments, but in the vigour of the speaker’s thoughts, the extent of his knowledge, the quickness with which he grasped the significance of each point in debate, the clearness of his conceptions, and the remarkable plainness with which he laid them before his audience” (says Professor Harrison). “Even in the longest speeches he never strayed from the matter in hand; he never rose above the level of his hearers’ understanding, was never obscure, and never bored the House. Every position that he took up he defended by a large number of shrewd arguments, plainly stated and well ordered.”

His voice was poor, his actions ungainly, and he did not become fluent until he warmed with his subject; but in attack generally, and especially in connection with the American War, Grattan thought him the best speaker he had ever heard. Burke said he was “the most brilliant and accomplished debater that the world ever saw”; Rogers declared he “never heard anything equal to Fox’s speeches in reply”; while, when someone abused one of Fox’s speeches to Pitt, the latter remarked, “Don’t disparage it; nobody could have made it but himself.”

Fox, however, did not lay undue stress on eloquence, and in a well-known speech declared that one sometimes paid too dearly for oratory.

“I remember” (he said) “a time when the whole of the Privy Council came away, throwing up their caps, and exulting in an extraordinary manner at a speech made by the present Lord Rosslyn (Alexander Wedderburn), and an examination of Dr Franklin (before the Privy Council on the letters of Hutchinson and Oliver, the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts), in which that respectable man was most uncommonly badgered. But we paid very dear for that splendid specimen of eloquence, and all its attendant tropes, figures, metaphors, and hyperbole; for then came the Bill, and in the end we lost all our American colonies, a hundred millions of money, and a hundred thousand of our brave fellow subjects.”

Fox made mistakes occasionally, as when he asserted the right of the Prince of Wales to the Regency; but he was distinguished in the House of Commons for his “hopeful sympathy with all good and great causes.” In a day when politicians were not especially enlightened, he was a supporter of Parliamentary reform, a champion of Catholic Emancipation, and an opponent of the slave trade; and, indeed, it was by his advocacy of these measures that he earned the enmity of the King, and thus was prevented from carrying out these beneficial schemes.

It has already been admitted that he was a spendthrift, and had a passion for gaming which, when taxed with it by Lord Hillsborough in the House of Commons, he designated as “a vice countenanced by the fashion of the times, a vice to which some of the greatest characters had given way in the early part of their lives, and a vice which carried with it its own punishment.” His weaknesses, however, were more than balanced by his many splendid qualities. He was a noble antagonist, and when Pitt made his first speech, and someone remarked he would be one of the first in Parliament, “He is so already,” said Fox. Which recalls the story of the Prince of Wales’ remark, on hearing of the death of the Duchess of Devonshire: “Then we have lost the best-bred woman in England.” “Then,” said the more generous Fox, “we have lost the kindest heart in England.”

Fox was a great-hearted man, with a beautiful disposition, high spirits, unbounded good-humour, delightful conversation, a great affection for his friends, an undeniable loyalty to those who trusted him; and these qualities, combined with his great natural abilities and an indisputable charm, made him a great, commanding and fascinating figure. Gibbon, a political opponent, said he possessed “the powers of a superior man, as they are blended in his attractive character, with the softness and simplicity of a child,” adding that “perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity or falsehood”; but the greatest tribute came from Burke, who described him simply and, perhaps, sufficiently as “a man made to be loved.”