To read a memoir of the late Lord Sidmouth, is like taking a walk through Westminster Abbey. All the literature, is inscriptions; all the figures are monumental; and all the names are those of men whose characters and distinctions have been echoing in our ears since we had the power to understand national renown. The period between 1798, when the subject of this memoir made his first step in parliamentary life as Speaker, and 1815, when the close of the war so triumphantly finished the long struggle between liberty and jacobinism, was beyond all comparison the most memorable portion of British history.

In this estimate, we fully acknowledge the imperishable fame of Marlborough in the field, and the high ability of Bolingbroke in the senate. The gallantry of Wolfe still throws its lustre over the concluding years of the second George; and the brilliant declamation of Chatham will exact the tribute due to daring thought, and classic language, so long as oratory is honoured among men. But the age which followed was an age of realities, stern, stirring, and fearful. There was scarcely a trial of national fortitude, or national Vigour, through which the sinews of England were not then forced to give proof of their highest power of endurance. All was a struggle of the elements; in which every shroud and tackle of the royal ship of England was strained; and the tempest lasted through nearly a quarter of a century. England, the defender of all, was the sufferer for all. Every principle of her financial prosperity, every material of her military prowess, every branch of her constitutional system, every capacity of her political existence, her Church, her State, and her Legislature, were successively compelled into the most perilous yet most powerful display; and the close of the most furious hostility which Europe had ever seen, only exhibited in a loftier point of view the victorious strength which principle confers upon a people.

Compared with this tremendous scene, the political conflicts of the preceding age were a battle on the stage, compared with the terrors of the field. The spectators came to enjoy a Spectacle, and sit tranquilly admiring the brilliancy of the caparisons and the dexterity of the charge; but perfectly convinced that all would end without harm to the champions, and that the fall of the curtain would extinguish the war. But, in the trials of the later time, there were moments when we seemed to be throwing our last stake; when the trumpets of Europe, leagued against us, seemed to be less challenging us to the field, than preceding us to the tomb; and when the last hope of the wise and good might be, to give the last manifestation of a life of patriotic virtue.

In language like this, we are not abasing the national courage. We are paying the fullest homage to the substantial claims of the English heart. It is only by the severest national struggles that the superiority of national powers can be developed; and without doubting the qualities of the Marlboroughs and Chathams—or even without doubting, that if thrown into the battle of the last fifty years, they would have exhibited the same intellectual stature and powerful adroitness which distinguished their actual displays—yet they wanted the strong necessities of a time like ours, to place them on a similar height of renown. Still their time continues in admirable study. But it is like the story of the Volscian and Samnite combats, read in the day when the consul, flying through the streets of Rome, brought the news of CannÆ.

The wars and politics of the eighteenth century were the manoeuvres of a garde du corps, and the intrigues of a boudoir. Our fathers saw no nation of thirty millions rushing to the field; frantic with the passion for overthrow, no Napoleon thundering at the head of vassal Europe against England; no conspiracy of peoples against thrones; no train of crouching sovereignties, half in terror and half in servility, ready to do the wildest will of the wildest despot of the world; no army of five hundred thousand men ready to spring upon our shores, and turning off only to the overthrow of empires. All was on a smaller scale; the passions feebler, the means narrower, the objects more trivial, the triumphs more temporary, the catastrophe more powerless, and the glory more vanishing.

All has since subsided; and the mind of man is turned to efforts in directions totally new. All now is the rigid struggle with the physical difficulties of society. The grand problems are, how to level the mountain, and to drain the sea: or, if we must leave the Alps to be still the throne of the thunder, and suffer even the Zuyder-zee to roll its sullen waves over its incorrigible shallows; yet to tunnel the mountain and pass the sea with a rapidity, which makes us regardless of the interposition of obstacles that once stopped the march of armies, and made the impregnable fortresses of kingdoms. But the still severer trials of human intelligence are, how to clothe, feed, educate, and discipline the millions which every passing year pours into the world. The mind may well be bewildered with a prospect so vast, so vivid, and yet so perplexing. Every man sees that old things are done away, that physical force is resuming its primitive power over the world, and that we are approaching a time when Mechanism will have the control of nature, and Multitude the command of society.

There are many families in England which, without any change of circumstances, without any increase of fortune, or any discoverable vicissitudes, have existed for centuries, in possession of the same property, generally a small one, and handed down from father to son as if by a law of nature. The family of Lord Sidmouth is found to have held the proprietorship of the small estate of Fringford, in Oxfordshire, from the year 1600, and to have had a residence in Bannebury about a century and a half before;—the first descendant of this quiet race who became known beyond the churchyard where "his village fathers sleep," being Dr Addington, who died in 1799. Genealogies like those give a striking view of the general security of landed possession, which the habits of national integrity, and the influence of law, must alone have effected, during the turbulent times which so often changed the succession to the throne of England.

Dr Addington, who had been educated at Winchester school, and Trinity College, Oxford, having adopted medicine as his profession, commenced his practice at Reading, where he married the daughter of the Rev. Dr Niley, head-master of the grammar-school. The well-known trial of the wretched parricide, Miss Blandy, for poisoning, in which he was a principal witness, brought him into considerable notice; and probably on the strength of this notice, he removed to London, and took a house in Bedford Row, where the late Lord Sidmouth, his fourth child, but eldest son, was born. He next removed to Clifford Street, a more fashionable quarter, which brought him into intercourse with many persons of distinction. Among these were Louth, Bishop of London, the Duke of Montagu, Earl Rivers, and, first of the first, the great Earl of Chatham. With this distinguished man, Dr Addington seems to have been on terms of familiar friendship, as the following extracts show:—Chatham writes from Burton Pynsent, in 1771.

"All your friends here, the flock of your care, are truly sensible of the kind attentions of the good shepherd. My last fit of the gout left me as it had visited me, very kindly. I am many hours every day in the field, and, as I live like a farmer abroad, I return home and eat like one. * *

"Ale goes on admirably, and agrees perfectly. My reverence for it, too, is increased, having just read in the manners of our remotest Celtic ancestors much of its antiquity and invigorating qualities. The boys all long for ale, seeing papa drink it, but we do not try such an experiment. Such is the force of example, that I find I must watch myself in all I do, for fear of misleading. If your friend William saw me smoke, he would certainly call for a pipe."

Lord Chatham died May 11th, 1788, which event was thus notified by Dr Addington to his son Henry.

"You will be grieved to hear that Lord Chatham is no more. It pleased Providence to take him away this morning, as if it were in mercy that he might not be a spectator of the total ruin of a country which he was not permitted to save."

The doctor was a croaker, as was the fashion of the time, with all who pretended to peculiar political sagacity. Of course the family physician of the ex-minister was in duty bound to echo the ex-minister's discontent. It is clear that, whatever professional gifts the doctor inherited from Apollo, he did not share the gift of prophecy. The doctor, after realising enough by his profession to purchase an estate in Devonshire, retired to Reading, where, in 1790, he died, having had, in the year before, the enviable gratification of seeing his son elected to the Speakership of the House of Commons.

Henry Viscount Sidmouth was born in 1757, on the 30th of May. At the age of five years, he was placed under the care of the Rev. William Gilpin, author of the Essays on the Picturesque, who for many years kept a school at Cheam, in Surrey.

Lord Sidmouth had but one brother, Hiley, who subsequently figured so often in the caustic rhymes of Canning, and who, under his brother's auspices, was successively secretary of the treasury, paymaster of the forces, and under-secretary of state. In his twelfth year, Henry, followed by Hiley, was sent to Winchester, then under the government of the well-known Dr Joseph Wharton, with George Isaac Huntingford as one of the assistants.

The author of the biography gives Huntingford credit for the singular degree of attachment exhibited in his occasional letters to his pupil. It certainly seems singular; when we know the slenderness, if not sternness of the connexion generally subsisting between the teachers at a great English seminary, and the pupils. In one of those epistles Huntingford says to this boy of fifteen.

"For my own part, to you I lay open my whole heart without reserve. I divest myself of the little superiority which age may have given me. With you I can enter into conversation with all the familiarity of an intimate companion. The few hours of intercourse which we thus enjoy with each other give more relief to my wearied body and mind than any other amusement on earth. What I am to do when you leave school, a melancholy thought, I cannot foresee. May the evil hour be postponed as late as possible. Yet let me add, whenever it shall be most for your advantage to leave me, I will not doubt to sacrifice my own peace and comfort for your interest. I love myself, but you better."

We hope that this style is not much in fashion in our public schools. Dean Pellew tells us that numerous letters of this kind were written by this tutor to his pupil in after life, and adds with a ludicrous solemnity, "It will readily be imagined how efficacious they must have proved, in forming the character of the future statesman, and erecting Spartan and Roman virtues on the noble foundation of Christianity."

For our part, we know not what to make of such communications: they seem to us intolerably silly, and we think ought not to have been published. In later life, their writer was made Bishop of Hereford and Warden of Winchester. He seems to have been a fellow of foresight!

In 1773, Henry and Hiley were both removed from Winchester, and put under the tuition of Dr Goodenough, who took private pupils at Ealing, and who was afterwards Bishop of Carlisle. In the next year, Henry entered as commoner in Brazen-Nose College under the tuition of Radcliffe, then a tutor of some celebrity. In this college he became acquainted with Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester, and William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell. He took his degree in 1778, and in this year had the misfortune to lose his mother, who seems to have been an amiable and sensible person. In the next year, he obtained the Chancellor's prize for an English essay on "the affinity between painting and writing in point of composition;" and at the recital of this essay in the theatre he first became acquainted with Lord Mornington, afterwards Marquis Wellesley, an intimacy which lasted for sixty-two years. He now adopted law as his profession, took chambers in Paper Buildings, and kept his terms regularly at Lincoln's Inn. In 1781, he married Ursula Mary, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Leonard Hammond, Esq. of Cheam, in Surrey, and took a house in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, where he determined to follow the profession of the law. But this determination was speedily over-ruled by the success of the celebrated son of Chatham. On the 26th of February, 1781, William Pitt, then only in his twenty-second year, made his first speech in the House of Commons, in support of Burke's bill for the regulation of the civil list. This epoch in parliamentary annals is noticed in a brief letter from Dr Goodenough to Pitt's early tutor, Wilson, who sent it to Mr Addington, among whose papers it was found:—

"Dear Sir,—I cannot resist the natural impulse of giving pleasure, by telling you that the famous William Pitt, who made so capital a figure in the last reign, is happily restored to his country. He made his first public re-appearance in the senate last night. All the old members recognised him instantly, and most of the young ones said he appeared the very man they had so often heard described: the language, the manner, the gesture, the action were the same; and there wanted only a few wrinkles in the face, and some marks of age, to identify the absolute person of the late Earl of Chatham."

Addington, at this period, had a good deal of intercourse with Pitt, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of twenty-three, and whose brilliant success in parliament evidently stimulated his friend to political pursuits. But the infamous coalition broke in, and Pitt was dismissed from the ministry. Its existence, however, was brief: it not merely fell, but was crushed amidst a universal uproar of national scorn; and Pitt, not yet twenty-five, was appointed prime minister. In the course of the month, an interview took place between Pitt and Addington, which gave his friends strong hopes of seeing him in immediate office. His friend Bragge thus writes to him:

"I give you joy of the effects of the interview of last Sunday, of which I am impatient to hear the particulars. Secretary, either official or confidential, I should wish you, and indeed all the boards are already filled."

Still, he remained unappointed, though his intimacy with the minister grew more confidential from day to day. Pitt was at this time engaged in a desperate struggle with the Opposition, who, ruined as they were in character, yet retained an overwhelming majority in parliament. On this occasion, the young statesman gave perhaps the most triumphant evidence of his remarkable sagacity. Every one was astonished, that he had not at once dissolved a parliament which it seemed impossible for him either to convince or conquer. But, with the House of Lords strongly disposed towards him, and the King for his firm friend, Pitt fought the House night after night, until he found the national feeling wholly on his side. Then, on the 25th of March, 1784, he dissolved the parliament, and by that act extinguished the whole power of Whiggism for twenty years. There never was a defeat more ruinous; more than a hundred and sixty members, who had generally been of the Foxite party, were driven ignominiously from their seats, and the party was thenceforth condemned to linger in an opposition equally bitter, fruitless, and unpopular. In the new parliament, Addington was returned for the borough of Devizes in place of Sutton, his brother-in-law, who, being advanced in life, made over his interest to his young relative. On this occasion, he received a letter from his old master, Joseph Wharton:—

"I cannot possibly forbear expressing to you the sincere pleasure I feel, in giving you joy of being elected into a parliament that I hope and trust will save this country from destruction, by crushing the most shameful and the most pernicious coalition that I think ever disgraced the annals of any kingdom, ancient or modern. I am, dear sir, with true regard, yours, &c.—Joseph Wharton."

There are few more remarkable instances of contrasted character and circumstance than Addington's ultimate rise to power. The anecdote is mentioned, that on one occasion, when they were riding together to Holl Wood, then Mr Pitt's seat near Bromley in Kent, that on Pitt's urging him to follow up politics with vigour, and the latter alleging in excuse the distaste and disqualification for public life created by early habits and natural disposition, Pitt burst forth in the following quotation from Waller:—

With these words, he set spurs to his horse, and left his companion to ponder on the moral of the poetry.

But neither poetry nor prose could inspire Addington's mind with the ardour of his glowing friend. Parliament was indeed open to him, but the true gate to parliamentary distinction would never have been opened by his own hand. There are two kinds of speaking, and but two, which ever make distinguished way in the House. The first is, that superior order which alone deserves the name of eloquence, and which must carry distinction with it wherever men are gathered together. The next is, that adroit and practical style of speaking by which the details of public business are carried forward; a style which requires briskness of capacity, united to extent of information, and in which the briskness must not be suffered to become flippant, and the detail to become dull. We are perfectly confident, that, beyond those two classes, no speaker can ever expect to retain the ear of the House. Our theory, however, is not the favourite one with that crowd, whose diatribes nightly fill the columns of the newspapers; where bitterness is perpetually mistaken for pungency, and petulance for power, dryness for business and commonplace for conviction. But failure is the inevitable consequence; the archer showers his shafts in vain; they are pointed with lead, and they always fall blunt on the ground. Some of the noisiest haranguers of our time utterly "waste their sweetness on the desert air," their hearers drop away with fatal rapidity, and the orator is reminded of his triumph only by the general flight of his auditory. Then comes some favourite of the House: the coffee-room is thinned in its turn; the benches are crowded once more; and some statesmanlike display consoles the House for its lost time. Addington's habits were those of a student, and he brought them with him into parliament. In the House of Commons, there are nearly as many classes of character, as there are in life outside the walls. There are the men made for the operations of public life, bold, active, and with an original sense of superiority. Another class is made for under-secretaries and subordinates, sharp, and ingenious men, the real business-men of the House. Another class, perfectly distinct, is that of the matter-of-fact men, largely recruited from among opulent merchants, bankers sent from country constituencies, and others of that calibre, who are formidable on every question of figures, are terrible on tariffs, and evidently think, that there is no book of wisdom on earth but a ledger. Then come the country gentlemen, generally an excellent and honest race, but to whom a life in London, in the majority of instances, has a strong resemblance to a life in the Millbank Penitentiary; driven into parliament, by what is called a "sense of their position in the country," which generally means the commands of their wives, &c., &c., their sojourn within the circuit of the metropolis is a purgatory. They sicken of the life of lounging through London, where they are nothing, and long to get back to the country where they are "magistrates;" generally too old to dance, the fashionable season has no charms for them: even the clubs seem to them a sort of condemned cell, where the crowd, guilty of unpardonable idleness, cluster together with no earthly resource but gazing into the street, or poring over a newspaper. If this service is severe enough to shake their philosophy during the sleety showers of February, and the withering blasts of March; the first break of sunshine, and the first streak of blue sky, makes their impatience amount to agony. The rest of the season only renders their suffering more inveterate; until at last the discharge of cannon from the Park, and the sound of trumpets at the doors of the House of Lords, a gracious speech from the throne, and a still more gracious smile from the sitter on it, let them loose from their task, and they are free, facetious, and foxhunters once more. There are still half-a-dozen other classes, "fine by degrees, and beautifully less," which may be left to the imagination of the reader, and the experience of the well-bred world.

Addington soon made himself useful on committees. The strong necessities of the case, much more than the Reform Bill, have remarkably shortened the longevity of election committees. The committee, in general, was fortunate, which could accomplish its business within three months. Some took twice the number, some even crossed over from session to session. The first committee on which Addington was engaged had this unfortunate duration, and he was re-appointed to it in the second session of the parliament of 1785.

At this period, whether from a sense of disappointment, or from the silent dulness of this drudgery, his health appears to have been in a feeble state. In a letter to his father, he apologises for listlessness and stupidity by illness, and says, "that he does not come up to the definition of man as a risible animal." Yet the man who could live to eighty-seven, and retain his health in a retirement of nearly a quarter of a century, could not complain of his constitution.

In 1786 Pitt availed himself of the opening of the session to induce his friend to break ground. He proposed that he should second the address; and almost condescended to coax him into further exertion of his abilities.—"I will not disguise," says his letter, "that, in asking this favour of you, (the speech,) I look beyond the immediate object of the first day's debate; from a persuasion that whatever induces you to take a part in public, will equally contribute to your personal credit, and that of the system to which I have the pleasure of thinking you are so warmly attached. Believe me to be, with great truth and regard, my dear sir, faithfully and sincerely yours,—W. Pitt." Addington complied with a part of the proposal, seconded the Address, and was considered to have performed his task with effect. But the effort went no farther. His ability lay in another direction; and though a clear, well-informed, and influential debater in his more public days, and when the urgency of office compelled the exertion, he left for four years the honours of debate to the multitude of his competitors.

In the course of the memoir, there is a letter of Addington's, speaking of Sheridan's famous speech on the Begum question. Addington voted in the majority against Hastings; but, though he does not exactly say that Sheridan's famous speech was the cause of his vote, he yet joins in the general acclamation.

It has been the habit of late critics to decry the merits of this famous oration, and even to charge it with being frivolous, outrageous, and bombastic, an immense accumulation of calumny and clap-trap, which the craft of Sheridan would not submit to the public ordeal, and which he has therefore left to its chance of a fantastic and visionary fame. But this we find it impossible to believe. That in a speech of five hours and a half, there may have been—nay, there must have been, passages of extravagance, and even errors of taste, is perfectly probable; but they must have been overcome by countless passages of lustre and beauty,—by powerful conceptions and brilliant examples of language; at once resistless and refined,—by living descriptions, and thoughts of daring and dazzling energy, sufficient to have made it one of the most memorable triumphs of senatorial eloquence in the world. How, on any other supposition, is it possible to account for the effects which we know it to have produced?

Addington's letter, alluding to this subject, says "The papers will convey but a faint idea of a speech, which I heard Fox declare to be the most wonderful effort of the human mind that perhaps had ever been made. Mr Pitt, and indeed the whole House, spoke of it in terms of admiration and astonishment, scarcely inferior to those of Mr Fox."

The papers, indeed, convey a worse than inadequate idea of this wonderful oration, for they give merely a few fragments, in which they have contrived either to select their examples with the most curious infelicity, or to blunder them into bombast. But nothing can be more childish than to suppose, that Pitt would have given his praise to tawdry metaphor, that Burke would have done honour to feeble truisms, that Fox should have been unable to distinguish between logic and looseness of reasoning, or that the whole assembly, who had been in the habit of hearing those pre-eminent orators, should have been tricked by theatric dexterity or charlatan rhetoric into homage. The oration must have been a most magnificent performance, and we have only to deplore the loss of a great work of genius.

Another young phenomenon shot across the parliamentary horizon within the same month. It was the late Earl Grey. A letter of Addington to his father thus describes the debut of this young Liberal.

"Feb. 22, 1787.—We had a glorious debate last night, upon the motion for an address of thanks to the King, for having negotiated the commercial treaty. A new speaker presented himself to the House, and went through his first performance with an Éclat that has not been equalled within my recollection. His name is Grey; he is not more than twenty-two years of age, and he took his seat, which is for Northumberland, only in the present session. I do not go too far in declaring, that in the advantages of figure, elocution, voice, and manner, he is not surpassed by any one member of the House; and I grieve to say, that he was last night in the ranks of Opposition, from which there is no prospect of his being detached."

It is curious to see, how easily the exigencies of party mould men, and how readily under that pressure they unsay their maxims, and retract their principles. The object of the commercial treaty was, to put our commerce in some degree on a fair footing with that of France. The object of Mr Grey's rhetoric was, to show that the commercial treaty was altogether a blunder, which, as being a Tory and ministerial performance, it must be in the eyes of a Whig and an oppositionist. But the maxim on which he chiefly relied, was the wisdom of that established system of our policy, in which France had always been regarded with the most suspicious jealousy at least—if not as our natural foe. Of course this Whig maxim lasted just so long as the Whigs were out of office, and could use it as a weapon against the Minister. But, from the moment when France became actually dangerous, when her councils became demoniac, and her factions frenzied, Whiggism, despairing of turning out the Minister by argument, resolved to make the attempt by menace. Hopeless in the House, it appealed to the rabble, and France was extolled to the skies. We then heard nothing of the "natural enmity," but a vast deal of the instinctive friendship. England and France were no longer to be two hostile powers sitting on their respective shores, with flashing eyes and levelled spears, but like a pair of citizen's wives loaded with presents and provisions for each other, and performing their awkward courtesies across the Channel.

It must be acknowledged, however, that the Whig maxim, though a watchword of faction, was no blunder of fact. A commercial treaty with the French in that day, or in any other day before or since, was a dream. To bring the Frenchman to any rational agreement on the subject of trade, or to keep him steady to any agreement whatever, has been a problem, which no British statesman has been able to solve. No commercial treaty, even with all the genius of Pitt, has ever produced to England the value of the paper on which it is written. Whether, if they were two Englands in the world, they might not establish commercial treaties with each other, may be a question. But we regard it as an absolute waste of time, to think of trading on fair terms with any of the slippery tariffs of foreign countries. In fact, this is now so perfectly understood, that England has nearly given up the notion of commercial treaties. She trades now, where the necessities of the foreigner demand her trade. The foreigner hates John Bull, Just as the Athenian peasant hated Aristides, and for the same reason. He hates him for being honest, manly, and sincere; he hates him for the integrity of his principles, for the purity of his faith, and for the reality of his freedom; he hates him for his prosperity, for his progress, and for his power. And while the Frenchman capers in his fetters, and takes his promenade under the shadow of the fortifications of Paris; while the German talks of constitutions in the moon; and while the Holy Alliance amuses itself with remodelling kingdoms, John Bull may be well content to remain as he is, and leave them to such enjoyment as they can find in sulkiness and sneering.

Grey's brilliant debut appears not to have been sustained: he spoke little during the session, but talked much—a fatal distinction to a parliamentary aspirant. Ambitious of figuring, he attempted to figure on all occasions; and, once or twice, unluckily daring the great champion of the treasury bench to the field, he was driven from it with wounds which, if they did not teach him a sense of his weakness, at least taught him a sense of his danger. Mr Grey's credit, says Addington in a letter, "as a man of discretion and temper, remains to be established. His reputation for abilities has not increased within the last two months, while he has in all respects enhanced that of the person (Pitt) to whom he ventured to oppose himself."

In alluding to the intercourse of Addington with Wilberforce, the biographer, we think very justly, complains of the sillinesses which have transpired in the latter's diary. Addington took higher views on ecclesiastical subjects; and was less rapid in his movements for the abolition of the slave-trade; being of opinion that precipitate measures would only increase the traffic to an enormous extent, deprive England of all power of restraining the frightful atrocities of the middle passage; and, by throwing the whole trade into the hands of foreigners, leave it open to all the reckless abominations of mankind.

The result was, unfortunately, all that rational men anticipated. The trade carried on by the foreigner has been tripled, or even quadrupled; the horrors of the middle passage are without restraint; and the sufferings of the victims, on their march to the coast, by fatigue, want of food, and the cruelty of their treatment, are estimated to destroy nearly twice the number of those who ever cross the Atlantic. The very powers with whom we have already made treaties for the purpose of extinguishing this infernal traffic, are deepest in its commerce; and its extinction now seems hopeless, except through some of those tremendous visitations, by which Providence scourges crimes which have grown too large for the jurisdiction of man.

Lord Sidmouth, then far advanced in life, when he saw those remarks in the diary, naturally felt offended, but he bore the offence with dignity, merely saying, as he closed the volume, "Well, Wilberforce does not speak of me as he spoke to me, I am sorry to say." Of Wilberforce, no one can desire to doubt the general honesty; but that he was singularly trifling and inconstant, was evidently the opinion of his contemporaries in the House. The following anecdote is given from the author's notes on this point. "Lord Sidmouth told us, that one morning, at a cabinet meeting, after an important debate in the House of Commons, some one said, 'I wonder how Wilberforce voted last night:' on which Lord Liverpool observed, 'I do not know how he voted, but of this I am pretty sure, 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, than 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 give.'"

During this session the abolition of Negro slavery first seriously attracted the notice of parliament. The conduct of it, in the House of Commons, was intrusted to Wilberforce; but, in his absence, in consequence of indisposition, Pitt, on the 9th of May 1798, moved the resolution, "that the House would, early in the next session, proceed to take into consideration the circumstances of the slave trade." In a cause like this, the humane and magnanimous mind of Burke naturally enlisted at once. But he was by no means of that school of humanity which gains the race, only by riding over every thing in its way. Red-hot humanity had no charms for the great philosopher; and, philanthropist as he was, he could discover no wisdom in measures which changed only one violence for another, pauperised the whites without liberating the blacks; and, while it cost twenty millions sterling to repair about third of the injury, left the unhappy African at the mercy of avarice round the circumference of the globe.

A letter from Huntingford says:—"Dr Lawrence, our Winchester acquaintance, called on me lately. He talked much on Mr Burke's ideas respecting the slave-trade. I found by him that Mr Burke foresaw the total ruin of the West-India colonies, if the trade were at once prohibited. He is for a better regulation of the ships which carry on that infamous commerce: he would lay the captains under restrictions, and punish them with rigour for wanton severity or brutal inhumanity to the slaves; and, when the poor creatures are purchased at the West-India islands, he would have them instructed in religion; and be permitted to purchase their own freedom, when by industry they should acquire a sufficient sum for that purpose. For their religious instruction he would erect more churches; and, to enable them in time to accumulate the price of their ransom, he would enact that the property of a slave should be as sacred as that of a freeman." Burke went further than opinions, for he embodied his sentiments in a paper entitled, "Sketch of a Negro Code," all outline of a bill in parliament, which is to be found in the collection of his works.

In August of this year, Addington mentioned that Lord Grenville passed a month with him at Lyme, and that one day visiting Lord Rolle, a party were speculating on the probable successor to the Speaker (Cornwall)—Grenville and Addington giving it as their opinion, that neither of them had any chance. He adds, "within twelve months, we were both Speakers ourselves."

An important and melancholy event, however, threw the cabinet and the country alike into confusion. Early in November, it was ascertained that the King was taken dangerously ill. Three successive notes from Grenville represented the illness as most alarming, and giving room for apprehening of incurable disorder. As Dr Addington was known to have paid particular attention to cases of insanity, Pitt proposed his being summoned to visit the royal patient. In consequence, he visited his Majesty for several days, and on examination with the other physicians before the Privy Council, expressed a strong expectation of the royal recovery, founded on the circumstance that this illness had not, for its forerunner, any of the symptoms which usually precede a serious attack of this nature. The debates on the Regency Bill now brought out all the vigour of the House. The Whigs thundered at the gate of the cabinet; but there was a strong hand within, and it was still kept shut. The Prince of Wales, then under all the captivations of Whig balls and banquets, and worshiping at the feet of Fox, was no sooner to be master of the state by an unlimited Regency Bill, than Fox was to be master of every thing. Pitt still fought the battle with all the cool determination of one determined never to capitulate. Fox became in succession fierce, factious, and half frantic; still his great adversary stood on the vantage ground of law, and was imperturbable. But the contest now began to spread beyond the walls of parliament. The spirit of the nation, always siding with the brave defence, daily felt an increasing interest in the gallantry with which Pitt almost alone fought the ablest Opposition that had ever been ranged within the walls of Westminster, and inflamed by the sight of power almost within their grasp.

But the announcement of a sudden change in his Majesty's indisposition abated the contest at once. From the 8th to the 20th of February, the progress to health was palpable. On the 19th, the discussions on the Regency Bill were suspended in the House of Lords; and on the 6th of March, the Speaker and several members of the administration were admitted to present their congratulations to the King, at Kew, on his recovery.

We cannot resist the temptation of exhibiting Lord Sidmouth in the unsuspected character of a poet. As several millions of verses were poured out as the offerings of the Muse on the joyful occasion, as Parnassus was rifled by the Universities, and as every village school in the kingdom hung a pen-and-ink garland on the altar of Æsculapius or Hygeia; it was felt to be the bounden duty of every candidate for cabinet honours, to put his desk "in order," and rhyme, to the best of his power. Addington, in consequence, produced the following—

ON THE KINGS RECOVERY.

We cannot indulge ourselves with any more of this loyal lucubration—we think that the slur at the Regency was not quite fair; we were by no means aware that the moon was so mischievous; and, as our general conclusion, we must admit that, if his lordship did not gain the Laureateship, he amply deserved it. However, better times were at hand. Pitt, like all other eminent men, had a keen insight into character, and he had long known the especial qualities of Addington. This solves the difficulty of accounting at once for his continued personal intercourse, and yet his apparent official neglect. He knew him to be well-informed, intelligent, and honest; although his retiring habits had already given full evidence of his indisposition to face the storms of party.

On Mr Grenville's promotion to the Home department, in 1789, Addington was proposed for the Speaker's chair, and was elected by two hundred and fifteen to one hundred and forty-two, who voted for the Opposition candidate, Sir Gilbert Elliot. In the private correspondence which was so frequent between him and the minister, various suggestions had been thrown out by Pitt of the Irish secretaryship, a seat at the treasury, &c. But the man and the place were now found together, incomparably adapted to each other. The place implies an honourable neutrality, and Addington was true to the trust. It requires the favourable opinion of the House to the man as well as the officer; and Sheridan's first address to him, as the spokesman of the Opposition, was, "we were all very sorry to have voted against you." It required considerable knowledge of general and parliamentary law, and the new Speaker had devoted years to their acquisition. Even the minor merits of a grave and commanding presence were there; for Addington, in his early years, was of as striking a countenance and figure as in old age he was gentle and amiable.

Characteristic anecdotes are scattered through the volumes: these we think their most attractive portion; and of such Addington's memory was full in his later years. One night, on his crying out, in the usual form, to hush some chattering in the House, "Order, order, or I shall name names!" Charles Fox, then standing beside the chair, told him that Wilkes once asked the Speaker, Onslow, what would be the consequence of his naming names? "Heaven above only knows," was the solemn reply.

One night Fox himself put the same question to Sir Fletcher Norton (the Speaker,) who nonchalantly answered, "Happen! hang me, if I know or care!"

A substantial proof of the general approval was given to the new official, in the addition of £1000 a-year to his salary; thus giving him £6000 a-year—which, besides a house, with some other emoluments on public and private bills, and the sale of certain clerkships connected with the business of the Commons, is generally calculated as equivalent to about £10,000 yearly. For this, however, the Speaker is expected to keep up considerable state, to give occasional banquets during the session to successive parties of the members; to have evening receptions and levÉes; and, in general, to lead a rather laborious life; the least part of whose labour is in the Speaker's chair. He has also the appointment of a chaplain to the House, which is equivalent to the disposal of valuable church patronage, the chaplain being always provided for, after a few years' attendance, by a request of the House to the crown. To complete this accumulation of good things, the Speaker who exhibits intelligence, is frequently promoted to the higher offices of the cabinet, and generally receives a peerage.

But those were the "piping times of peace;" times of trouble and terror were at hand. The French democracy had already burst on Europe; and every throne was heaving on the surge which it had raised. Pitt alone, of all the great ministers of Europe, seemed to disregard its hazards. Customary as it is for the pamphleteers of later times to assail his memory, as the promoter of hostilities, the chief outcry against Pitt in the year 1790, was his tardiness in thinking that those hostilities could ever force England to take a share in the struggles of the Continent. The whole aristocracy, the whole property, the whole mercantile interest, and even the whole moral feeling of the empire, had become from hour to hour more convinced that a war was inevitable. Even the Opposition, whose office it was to screen the atrocities of every national enemy, and who, for a time, had looked to Jacobinism as an auxiliary in the march to power, had at last shrunk from this horrible alliance—had felt the natural disgust of Englishmen for an association with the undisguised vice and vileness of the Republic, and had at last sunk into silence, if not into shame. Burke had published his immortal "Reflections," and their sound had gone forth like the tolling of a vast funeral bell for the obsequies of European monarchy. Still, nothing could move Pitt. By nature, a financier, and by genius the most magnificent of all financiers, he calculated the force of nations by the depths of their treasuries; and seeing France bankrupt, conceived that she was on the verge of conviction, and waited only to see her sending her humbled Assembly to beg for a general loan, and for a general peace at the same moment.

But those were days made to show the shortsightedness of human sagacity. The lesson was rapidly given; it was proved in European havoc, that utter powerlessness for good was not merely compatible with tremendous power for evil, but was actually the means of accumulating that power; that the more wretched, famishing, and haggard a nation might become at home, the more irresistible it might prove abroad: that, like the madman, it might be fevered and tortured by mental disease, into preternatural strength of frame, and might spring out of the bed where it had lain down to die, with a force which drove before it all the ordinary resistance of man. Pitt had still to learn, that this was a war of Opinion; and had to learn also, that Opinion was a new material of explosion, against whose agency all former calculation was wholly unprovided, and whose force was made to fling all the old buttresses and battlements of European institutions like dust and embers into the air.

It is not worth the trouble now to inquire, whether Pitt's sagacity equally failed him in estimating the probable effect of the French Revolution on England. His expression at a dinner party, where Addington, Grenville, and Burke formed the guests, "Never mind, Mr Burke, we shall go on as we are until the day of judgment;" shows his feeling of the stability of the constitution. As we have no love for discovering the

"Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise,"