The last century was the era of monarchs. The people had not yet formed a visible object. They were the counters at the table of the great gamesters of the day. In England, which had since the Reformation always advanced before the age, the people had started into substantial existence. It was impossible totally to overlook a power which had subverted one Constitution, and erected another—which had dethroned one dynasty, and enthroned another—which had begun its existence under theories of divine right, and signalised the maturity of its generation by establishing the most perfect national freedom which man had ever seen.

But, in continental Europe, the people formed no more an object, in the general polity of nations, than a submarine mountain takes its place in a map of the ocean. It had an existence, but no recognition; it had a place, but the ship of the State passed over it without casting the lead or shifting a sail. The government of all foreign nations existed only in the Council Chamber. The king was at once the author and the agent of all measures; the decrees of the administration were as mysterious, as inscrutable, and as unexpected, as Oracles. Men saw nothing in the political world but kingdoms—masses of power—revolving before the eye of the politician and the philosopher, as the planets revolved, with irresistible force, with vast and various splendour, but by laws as much beyond human dispute as the Laws of Nature.

The maxim which in our day is felt to contain the consummation of despotism, L'Etat—c'est moi, was once the motto of every throne, the essential character of dominion, the crown jewel, the substance of the sceptre. Whether that maxim is to be revived—whether the struggle between popular power and the throne is once more to be tried—whether the monarchies of Europe, unwarned by the rents already made in their ramparts by the comparatively slight incursions of the popular surge, are prepared to defy the ocean in its strength, must be left to the future.

But there can be no doubt in the prediction, that whenever the ultimate conflict arrives, it will be tremendous; it will shake all the old barriers of power, and either cover society with ruin, or sweep away the ruin itself, for a total renovation.

It is difficult to touch upon this subject without some reference to that country which, for the last fifty years, has gone the whole round of revolution—has lived in an atmosphere of fiery vapours—has been acclimated to epidemics of overthrow—and reckons her years by the flight of monarchs, the fabrication of hollow governments, and the crush of constitutions.

France seems resolved on making the dreadful experiment of Despotism. It failed before, and its failure consigned the Imperial experimentalist to a fate so singular and so condign, as to seem a direct punishment from Providence for daring to counteract its purposes in the progress of man. With his successor to his principles, the experiment is but beginning. How will it end? He has invoked a spirit that had been laid these thirty years. Whether, like the magicians of old, he must find employment for the demon, under the penalty of being in his grasp, or he is finally to evade the bond, no man within memory has placed himself and his country in a more trying and threatening dilemma. If he attempts to make war his policy, he will be guilty of every drop of blood shed in the field. If he attempts to re-establish despotism, he has the warning of St Helena before his eyes.

But, without conjecturing the personal fate of this man of power, nothing can be clearer than the fact that he has placed himself in a position to mould the fate of Europe for a century to come. If he shall succeed in concentrating all national power in himself, the example is sure not to be lost upon kings. The insults which characterised the triumphs of the mob in the late Continental tumults—the remembrances which must rankle in the hearts of all Continental governments—the revenge, which is the natural passion of arbitrary power—and even the rational alarm at the possible return of the popular excesses, must make all foreign princes partial to the revival of Despotism.

This hour is a Crisis. Principles are on their trial; the antagonists are in the field; and the first shock may decide, for a long period, the victory of bold measures over impassioned men, and of unlimited might over confused, but daring, and defeated, but obstinate, right—a contest which will never wholly cease henceforth, and which, in its continuance, may shatter the whole frame of society.

How far this great political change in the most influential of kingdoms may be but the indication of a new course of Providence—how far it may be connected with those new and singular means and powers of nature and of mechanism which, in our time, have been assigned to man—how far it may be, in politics, a corresponding phase to the railroad, the electric telegraph, and the discoveries of gold in the ends of the earth—can be only a matter of conjecture; but while we are convinced that Providence does nothing without system, and does nothing in vain, we cannot altogether suppress the feeling, that an Era of Revelations in government, science, and society, has begun.

But it must be acknowledged that the monarchs of the last century bore their honours well. They were all bold, brave, and intelligent. Whether in the right or the wrong, they showed decision—the first qualification for the government of kingdoms. Some were of remarkable intellectual power, and none, with slight exceptions, were inferior to the weight of the diadem. The age which reckoned among its sovereigns, Frederic II. of Prussia, Maria Theresa of Germany, the Emperor Joseph, the Czarina Catherine, and, in its earlier portion, Louis XIV. and William III., could not be regarded as destitute of minds equal to the conduct of affairs in perhaps the most complicated, struggling, and difficult period of Europe before the French Revolution.

The reign of George II. formed a strong contrast to those of the Continental sovereigns: their difficulties arose from war—his from peace; their combats in the field were scarcely less anxious than his in the cabinet. The conclusion was different; the successes and failure of the foreign monarch equally wasted the blood and treasure of Europe; the struggles of the British king issued in larger accessions to liberty, and to the power of that body which is politically called the people.

George II. was a stern and stubborn man, possessed of considerable ability, but unpopular in its application; unimpassioned, but ambitious of fame; longing to figure in war, but compelled by the nation to peace; uneasy in England, and never happy but in Hanover, from which he imported his prejudices and his favourites, his politics and his household; fond of power, but capable of complying with the public will; and retaining all the feelings of a German Elector, yet respectful to the laws of a limited monarchy. Whatever were the morals of the court, he never sought to make them the fashion in England; and whatever might be his own sense of decorum, he governed his people with dignity, dying at the age of seventy-seven; and, after a reign of thirty-four years, he was, if not loved, regretted by the empire.

The volumes which have recalled us to this subject consist of the correspondence of George Grenville, Lord Temple, and their chief contemporaries—among the rest, the celebrated Earl of Chatham. It extends from 1742 to the tenth year of George III., and is peculiarly important in its references to the last seventeen years of that period.

It has long been the custom of the leading English families in public life to preserve the documents connected with their career. This habit exists, perhaps, to a greater extent in England than in any other country, from the superior nature of public character, from the frequency of public investigation, from the severity of public judgment, and, as the general result, from the importance of having a ready defence of the statesman's reputation against the casual charge as well as the studied libel.

The history of the present deposit may be briefly told. Earl Temple's papers were always kept at Stowe, the well-known and superb mansion of the Buckingham family. A considerable portion of Mr Grenville's correspondence, preserved at Wotton, was brought to Stowe, and arranged with that of Earl Temple, and the remainder was discovered by the editor, in a large chest at Buckingham House, which had remained unopened since it was brought there. The whole of these papers were rearranged by the late Duke, with the assistance of the editor, (then librarian at Stowe,) but with the ducal wish that they should not be published before the death of his uncle, the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville. The latter, however, surviving the Duke seven years, the publication was retarded till, by the present Duke, it was committed to the hands of the editor, in conformity with the intention of his father.

In England in the last century there were castes as marked as in India: there was a military caste, a class of society in which the generality of the military commissions, and all the leading employments of the court, went; there was also a political caste, a class in which all the great offices of administration went, as regularly as the night succeeded the day, and in which any deviation from the routine, any appointment of any individual not in the muster-roll of the aristocracy, would probably have been considered as a deviation from the law of nature. In this condition of things, men of other classes had no imaginable chance of prominent office on their own account. Their only hope must be in attaching themselves to some of those "Dii majorum gentium"—those sons of fortune, those hereditary possessors of high positions, those natural rulers of the powers and the privileges of political high life. The government, in consequence, was an Oligarchy under the name of a monarchy, and the authority of the Crown was merged in the actual authority of the political connection.

The monarch had, undoubtedly, the right to choose, but it was the right to choose between submitting to the captain of the ship and going over the side. He might appoint his cabinet, but he must appoint it from the men whom the political class offered; he could not stray into the world for a better selection; he could not follow the man of talents, or the man of integrity, into the less nobly born and less dexterously combined orders of society: there stood the aristocratic recruits for his government, and unless he took them as they were, he was a general without an army. The advantages and disadvantages of this system were equally conspicuous. On the one view, ministers were not the creatures of place; they had personal characters to lose, their principles were publicly known, they were not dependent on the emoluments of office, nor thus had grown up through a succession of minor employments into places of distinction, the most ill-omened education for public men; they were not adventurers, they brought with them an accession of family influence, which raised them beyond the great temptation of new men—that of courting the populace; and as the natural result of their birth, connections, and intercourse with men of a high class of society, they acted under a higher sense of dignity, and their public acts were more generally marked with a fearless, open, and generous stamp.

On the other hand, the evils were of some moment in the monopoly of power in turning the State into a corporation, in the restriction on the rising ability of the humbler conditions of life, to the loss of doubtless much vigorous and original aid to the public councils, in the jealousy which that restriction naturally created in men who felt their talents, and in the consequent difficulties produced by the direction of those talents to party, as the only means of claiming justice for themselves. This was continually felt in the political tumults of England for the last fifty years of the century, and it was eminently experienced in Ireland, where every rising barrister instantly took the side of Opposition, and where even his attainment of office was felt as a stimulant and a bribe for new assaults on the Government: like buying off an invasion, the purchase was only a proclamation for a new march against the cabinet.

The Grenvilles were of the political caste, and for two-thirds of a century there was no political good fortune in which a Grenville was not sure to share, if on the ministerial side—nor measure of opposition in which a Grenville was not sure to be busy, until the change came round, and the bustling patriot was transformed into the complacent placeman.

The public origin of this family was derived from Richard Temple of Wotton, by his marriage with the sister of Lord Cobham of Stowe, whom she succeeded, by the title of Countess Temple, in 1759. The eldest son of this marriage was Richard, Earl Temple, born in 1711. The second son was George Grenville, the minister, born in 1712. The next brother was James Grenville, a Lord of Trade, Deputy-paymaster of the Forces, and Cofferer of the Household. The third was Henry Grenville, successively governor of Barbadoes, ambassador to Constantinople, and a Commissioner of Customs. The fourth was Thomas Grenville, a captain in the navy, who was unfortunately killed in action.

George Grenville, the minister, had three sons, equally heirs of official fortune;—George, who succeeded to the earldom of Temple, and afterwards obtained the marquisate of Buckingham; Thomas Grenville, who, after filling several lucrative offices, died lately, and honourably left his fine library to the nation. The youngest son was the late Lord Grenville, the coadjutor of William Pitt. The connection with that illustrious statesmen was formed through the marriage of Lady Hester Grenville, the sister of the first Earl Temple, with Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, and the father of William Pitt. The present Duke of Buckingham is the great-grandson of George Grenville.

As George Grenville forms the principal personage of these volumes, a sketch of his progress to power may be given. Educated at Eton and Christ-Church, he was intended for the bar, but, at the suggestion of his relative, Lord Cobham, he soon determined on a political career. The borough of Buckingham was at his disposal, and he was its representative for thirty years. His rise through office was rapid. He was first made a Lord of the Admiralty, then a Lord of the Treasury, then Treasurer of the Navy, then Secretary of State, then First Lord of the Admiralty, until finally, in April 1763, he rose to be Premier, or First Lord of the Treasury, and Chancellor of the Exchequer. This consummation, however, was short-lived. Within two years he was deprived of the premiership, held office no more, and retired from public life for ever, leaving, as the principal memorial of his political career, the unlucky Stamp Act, so well known as the pretext for the revolt of America, the watchword of party in Parliament, and of faction in the streets, and yet a measure which no man could fairly charge with injustice, and whose consequences no man could charge upon the minister.

That Parliament had as valid a right to tax a British colony as it had to tax a British county, is beyond all doubt; and, remote as the question now is with respect to the American contest, we have other colonies which may be the wiser for stating its true grounds.

The British subject emigrating to a colony, however distant, is still a British subject; and the child of that emigrant born in the British colony is still a British subject. Allegiance cannot be extinguished by distance. If he takes arms against England, he is liable to be punished as a rebel. The support of the law, the support of the government, the support of the fleet and army, all which protect the empire, and with it the colony, must require contributions, and the colony, sharing in the protection, must be bound to assist that contribution—it must pay taxes. The outcry of the time, that the colonies were taxed without representation, was utterly unfounded. The colonies were represented in the British Parliament; they were represented by the whole Parliament legislating for the whole Empire. The wisdom of adding to the numbers of a parliament, already perhaps numerous enough for every purpose of deliberation, was a question exclusively for the Government, and the British colony in America had no want of advocates; the whole Opposition were its virtual representatives.

The question of right was thus decided. The question of policy was another consideration; and there can be no doubt that, by admitting American members into the House, the United States might have remained British for a few years longer. But distance and difficulty, population and power, would soon have solved the problem, and the great colony would have now been a great kingdom. The war made it a great republic. The bitterness of hostilities envenomed the colonies against the only form of government congenial to the British mind; and for a limited monarchy, the most fortunate and rational of all governments, they adopted a limited democracy, which nothing but the extent of their territories could have prevented, long since, from being an anarchy. But stubbornness on the one side, and faction on the other, prevailed. The Stamp Act was felt to be so legitimate, in the first instance, that it scarcely raised a debate in Parliament. The resistance revived the spirit of opposition in the legislature. It was too favourable an opportunity for metaphorical indignation and verbal virtue to be thrown away; and by the help of parliamentary intrigue, backed by popular outcry, this natural, obvious, and easy act of legislature was stigmatised as the foulest oppression. Time has rectified the opinion; and while we rejoice in the prosperity of all nations, we may calmly respect the principles of social law.

To George Grenville we owe the "Act for securing purity of Election," which was once regarded as a model of legislative wisdom, adequate to preserve the hustings from contamination and the House from influence for ever. But the dexterities of modern corruption have proved too subtle for the provisions of our ancestors. How many hundred elections have been driven through the Grenville Act, is not for us to say, and it would perhaps be difficult to calculate. But the constant lowering of the franchise has shown the weakness of all defences against a bribe; and as the expedient of every new candidate for popularity is to put the elections into hands lower still, we may safely predict the growing inefficiency of all laws against the temptation to corrupting of the populace.

The celebrated Burke, in his speech on American Taxation, a masterpiece of eloquence, and a masterpiece of that sophistry in which Party involved his illustrious spirit for the time, relieved the House from the dryness of statistics, by a striking sketch of Grenville, almost ten years after his retirement from public life, and nearly five years after he was in his tomb.

"Mr Grenville undoubtedly was a first-rate figure in the country. With a masculine understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business, not as a duty he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy, and he seemed to have no delight out of the House, except in such things as in some way related to the business that was to be done within it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low politics of a court, but to win his way to power through the laborious gradations of public service, and to secure himself a well-earned rank in Parliament, by a thorough knowledge of its constitution, and a perfect practice in all its business."

But this panegyric was rather lowered by its peroration. Burke was fond of looking at every subject in a variety of lights, and it became the habit of even his vigorous mind to fill up the background of his portraits with picturesque shade. He then closed his character of the deceased statesman by observing that his having been a barrister "narrowed the extent and freedom of his political views."

"He was bred to the law, a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all the other kinds of learning put together. But it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and liberalise the mind exactly in the same proportion." Having flung this passing sarcasm at the profession, he let fall a drop of contempt on the system of public employment.

"From that study, he did not go very largely into the world, but plunged into the business of office, and the limited and fixed forms established there. These forms are adapted to ordinary occasions, and therefore persons who are nurtured in office do admirably well so long as things go on in their common order; but when the highroads are broken up, and the waters are out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of things, is requisite than ever office gave, or than office ever can give. Mr Grenville thought better of the wisdom and power of human legislation than, in truth, it deserves."

The fact evidently is, that the fiery and soaring spirit of Burke despised the heavy uniformity and dull routine of the whole tribe of which Grenville was the representative; that he disdained the substitution of heavy regularity for brilliant enterprise, of precedent for principle, and of taking shelter under obsolete forms, instead of adopting those lofty innovations which alone can guide a government through new perils, deserve the name of statesmanship, and elevate politics into the dignity of a science.

But this attempt to qualify his panegyric, by laying the weight of Grenville's failure on his profession, was keenly retorted by Wedderburn, (then Solicitor-General, and afterwards Chancellor and Earl of Rosslyn,) declaring that he had no intention of taking a part in the debate, but that he had been called up by Burke's character of Grenville. He observed, "that the gentleman had neither done him that justice with which posterity might treat his memory, nor had he spoken of him as the general voice of a grateful people would even at that moment express itself of his person, his conduct, and his acts." After alluding to the remark, that his mind was narrowed by the bar, and that he had plunged into office before he mingled in the world, Wedderburn (who might have observed that he came into Parliament and politics at twenty-nine, consequently had practised but little in his profession, and that at thirty-three he held the office of a Lord of the Admiralty) said cleverly—

"Going into the world is a term too large for my narrow comprehension. If it means that he neither played, nor dressed, nor was a member of any of the fashionable clubs, I believe it may be true. But his birth and his talents introduced him to an early intimacy with the first men of the age. He passed, by regular gradations, from one office to another. Whatever related to the Marine of this country, he had learned during his attendance at the Admiralty. The Finance he had studied under a very able master at the Treasury. The Foreign Department was for a time intrusted to him. The proper business of the House was for several years his particular study. In almost every various office of the state he had acquired a practical knowledge, improved by theory; and, from the general course of his observation and researches, he had adopted principles and habits which the firm temper of his mind would not stoop to abandon or unlearn, in complaisance to the opinions of any man. Such were the disqualifications under which Mr Grenville was called forth to the first situation of administration, at a time when ancient prejudices were still respected, and before it was understood that parts were spoiled by application, that ignorance was preferable to knowledge, and that any lively man of imagination, without practice in office, and without experience, might start up at once, a self-taught minister, and undertake the management of a great country in difficult times."

We have given these extracts, as displaying both sides of the character, and by comparison enabling the student of history to form an estimate of a man who for twenty-one years had been exercised in the various administrations of the empire, and who finally rose to the highest official rank in the country.

But it is still more to the advantage of his character, and it may have constituted the chief secret of his success, that he was a man of integrity; that the corruptions universally charged upon Walpole were never fixed on him; that, in an age when the highest rank in the realm often startled the nation, by following foreign fashions of morality, he was a good father, a faithful husband, and a firm friend.

One of the observations which these volumes force upon us, is the agreeable evidence of the improvement in the public health. Every man in high station seems to have been the victim of a perpetual tendency to disease. Ministers seem universally to have been tortured by gout, or some painful disorder, which drove them to the country, the Continent, or the Bath waters. The women of rank had some unaccountable and indescribable malady of their own, which they called the Vapours; every judge had some excruciating disorder, which he could alleviate only by opium; every man of letters had some ailment of the same kind. The common people, living in the unventilated and obscure haunts of cities, had, of course, all the diseases which we are now so slowly striving to prevent; and the ploughman appeared to enjoy the only health in the land. How far the improvement in this all-important matter may be owing to improved medical science, to the drainage of the soil, to more extended agriculture, or to some fortunate change in the atmosphere, or even to the adoption of more temperate habits, and the substitution of lighter food, we cannot precisely say; but there can be scarcely a doubt of the change in the general state of health, in the duration of life, in the proportion of those who grow up to maturity to those who die in infancy, and even in the continued vigour of the frame and faculties to a more advanced age.

The first letter in the correspondence is from Lord Cornbury, recommending Mr Grenville to travel for his recovery from a sickness which apparently enfeebled all his earlier years. His lordship suggests the south of France as a supplement to Bath, where he had gone to drink the waters, then a panacea for the distempers of high life, and where his residence is mentioned in a lively epistle from Lyttleton to Pope. "George Grenville is in a fair way of recovery; the waters agree with him. Cheyne (the physician) says he is a giant, a son of Anak, made like Gilbert, the Lord Bishop of Sarum, and may, therefore, if he pleases, live for ever; his present sickness being nothing but a fillip given for his good, to make him temperate, and put him under the care of Dr Cheyne."

Lord Cornbury was an amiable young man, given to hospitality and letter-writing, and panegyrised by Pope in such tributes as his pretended scorn for nobility did not prevent him from paying to his entertainers:—

Such are the honours and the advice of poetry; but it may be suggested that a British peer has little temptation to low joys or low gains, and that it is not difficult to bear the trials of life in possession of every advantage which life can give. The pungent pen of Lady Wortley Montague gives an easier account of this dilettante lord on his death. "He had certainly a very good heart: I have often thought it a great pity it was not under the direction of a better head. His desire of fixing his name to a certain quantity of wall, is one instance, among thousands, of the passion men have for perpetuating their memory"—(possibly an allusion, sufficiently contemptuous, to his having built at Cornbury Park in Oxfordshire.)

We next have a letter from the first Lord Lyttleton, on the subject of a tour which the minister was still making, recommending that he should not risk his final recovery by coming to the House of Commons,—"Not that, if you were present, either you or I could do any good."

Lord Hervey, in his Memoirs of the Reign of George II., gives a sketch of Lyttleton, such as a modern fop might give of a successful rival, closing with—"He had a great flow of words, that were always uttered in a lulling monotony; and the little meaning they had to boast of was generally borrowed from the commonplace maxims and sentiments of moralists, philosophers, patriots, and poets, crudely imbibed, half-digested, ill put together, and confusedly refunded."

Such was the caricature of the Lyttleton with whose poems all the ladies of England were enamoured, and who won all the plaudits of the clergy by his "Tract on the Conversion of St Paul;" certainly a very clever performance, and an extraordinary one, as coming from a man living in the fashionable circles of the last century.

Then follows a letter from the celebrated Lord Mansfield on the same subject:—

"I am very impatient for your recovery, and I rejoice in the favourable accounts I hear. I rambled about, as usual, during the leisure hours I had; and, among other places I was at, I spent three days most agreeably at Hagley with our friends Lyttleton and Pitt; where, you may believe, you was—[sic, in orig.]—not forgot.... Pope is at Bath, perched upon his hill, making epigrams, and stifling them in their birth; and Lord H., [Hervey]—would you believe it!—is writing libels on the king and his ministers."

Lord Hervey was the son of the first Earl of Bristol—was the most inveterate courtier of his time, and in remarkable confidence with the whole of the royal family. Unfortunately, he knew too much, and has bequeathed his knowledge to posterity in a Memoir, fatal to the moral character of his age, yet lively, epigrammatic, and anecdotical. The whole family, even to the close of the century, were eccentric. The keen and witty Lady Wortley Montague defined them as a third class of the human race—"men, women, and Herveys."

Those were curious times. The letter ends with the news that Lord Bradford's mistress, to whom he had left his estate, had bequeathed it to Pulteney, Earl of Bath. Thus that most parsimonious of all peers got £12,000 a-year!

A letter from Richard Grenville (Lord Temple) to his brother, when abroad, thus gives him the political news of the day:—

"Lord Cobham and Lord Gower have refused going into the cabinet, and we have had very warm work in the House of Commons, the first day, upon the Address. Pitt (Earl of Chatham) spoke like ten thousand angels! and your humble servant was so inflamed at their indecency, that he could not contain, but talked a good while with his usual modesty.... We divided 150 against 259; we reckon ourselves, however, 200. And it is inconceivable how colloquing and flattering all the ministers are to all of us, notwithstanding our impertinence.... Who but young Bathurst to answer me, in the most ridiculous, indecent, stupid speech that ever was made. It was melancholy, but entertaining enough, to see them skulk in, with their tails betwixt their legs, like so many spaniels.... We shall have a glorious day about the sixteen thousand. We shall then see, also, who are Hanoverians and who Englishmen."

The day of the sixteen thousand was the debate on fixing the subsidy for the payment of that number of Hanoverian troops. On this point Opposition made a great and popular stand, contending, truly enough, that nothing could be more derogatory to the honour of a great country than the employment of mercenaries; but George II. had all the prejudices of a German Elector on the subject, and the motion was urged and carried.

The first two Georges seemed actually to think that the English throne depended on the Hanoverian, and that the security of England itself was imperfect without a few German brigades. The third George, however, was of a different opinion; he boasted of his "being born a Briton;" and in that manly and rational feeling, he found England able to defend herself.

The Bathurst mentioned in the letter was the son of the lively and pleasant old Lord Bathurst, the associate of Pope and the wits of his day, alluded to in Burke's fine Episode of American Progress. This son became Lord Chancellor. There is an allusion to Bubb Dodington in the letter referring to his marriage. He led a loose life; and in this instance Horace Walpole gave him but little credit for reformation:—"Mr Dodington has at last owned his match with his old mistress. I suppose he wants a new one."

Dodington (Lord Melcombe) deserves some recollection for the mere sake of his political flexibility. He entered Parliament young, and was shortly after sent Envoy to Spain. Inheriting a considerable fortune from his father, whose name was Bubb, he acquired a large estate by the death of his maternal uncle, Dodington, whose name he took in consequence. Still the pursuit of place was the business of his life, and he became proverbial for the eagerness of his avarice, and the slipperiness of his principles. Some talent, some plausibility, great perseverance, and unblushing impudence, gained him a succession of employments under all the successive parties. Beginning his political life under Walpole, by whom he was appointed a Lord of the Treasury, he secured for himself the lucrative sinecure of the Clerkship of the Pells in Ireland. When Walpole began to totter, Dodington ratted; and when the minister finally fell, he was made a sharer in the spoil, obtaining the Treasurership of the Navy. When Frederick, Prince of Wales, started in opposition, Dodington hastened to worship the rising sun, and became head of the "Prince's party." When Frederick died, Dodington returned to his old quarters, and figured again as Treasurer of the Navy, under the Newcastle administration.

On the death of George II., Lord Bute was the new dispenser of places, and Dodington joined him accordingly. His reward was the peerage in the same year. This was the summit of his busy, arrogant, aspiring, and humiliating career. Whether he contemplated further experiments on fortune is not now to be known, for he enjoyed his honours but a twelvemonth, dying in 1762. All this labour of servility was for himself alone, for he had no offspring. His Diary is familiar to the readers of political biography, and it is uniformly quoted as the most singular instance, in public life, of fearless exposure to contempt, of sinister caution, and conscious tergiversation.

A bon mot of Chesterfield was long remembered. Dodington, on going abroad on some mission, observed to Chesterfield the vexation of having such a name as Bubb appended to his better-sounding appellation. "Poh!" said Chesterfield, "enlarge it—call yourself Silly-bubb."

In this correspondence, it is surprising that we meet so few references to the invasion of the Pretender in 1745, unless we are to account for it by the letters having been destroyed. The event itself was the most memorable since the Civil War; and if the nation had been less Protestant, it might have changed the dynasty. But the bigotry of James II. had raised a spirit of determined resistance to his line, which nothing but actual overthrow in the field could extinguish. The enterprise was gallantly conceived, and as gallantly executed by the Highlanders; but there was a want of force. The Clans fought boldly, but their blood was shed in vain; and the invasion actually gave additional strength to the Protestant throne.

One of George Grenville's letters adverts to the progress of events briefly in these words:—

"The last accounts from the North say that the Highlanders have begun plundering part of the country between Edinburgh and Berwick. This manner of proceeding may be an unfortunate one with respect to those on whom it falls; but cannot be more so to them than to the party which suffers it, whose hopes, I think, it must entirely destroy, if carried to any length. It is now said that the Castle of Edinburgh is in great want of provisions; that the governor of the Castle ordered the inhabitants of the city to supply him, and threatened, in case of refusal, to burn the town, and beat it down about their ears. They obeyed for two or three days; but then the Highlanders threatened them with military execution if they continued it any longer; upon which they desisted immediately: and the magistrates have applied to the King, stating their miserable situation, and beseeching him to give orders to the governor not to execute his threats. The answer to the application I do not know; but I imagine it is a favourable one."

An amusing feature of these volumes is the style in which public men, in the last age, spoke of each other. It was contemptuous in the extreme—every character was a caricature. Pitt, in a letter to George Grenville, had alluded to Sir William Yonge, a veteran placeman, as telling him of Grenville's "being very well; and I most sincerely hope he tells me truth. I could more easily pardon any of the fictions in which he sometimes deals, than one on this occasion."

Lord Hervey, in his Memoirs, thus sketches Yonge:—

"Without having done anything that I know of remarkably profligate, anything out of the common track of a ductile courtier and a parliamentary tool, his name was proverbially used to express everything pitiful, corrupt, and contemptible. It is true, he was a great liar, but rather a mean than a vicious one. He had been always constant to the same party, he was good-natured and good-humoured, never offensive in company, nobody's friend, nobody's enemy.... He had a great command of what is called parliamentary language, and a talent of talking eloquently without a meaning, and expatiating agreeably upon nothing, beyond any man, I believe, that ever had the gift of speech."

After all, this description leaves Yonge, as regards talents, a very considerable man. His lying, however, blackens the whole character. Yet it throve with him; for he was, in succession, Commissioner of the Admiralty, and of the Treasury, Secretary-at-War, finishing all by the opulent sinecure of joint-Treasurer of Ireland.

All the Memoirs of the time remind us of the adage of Solomon, "There is nothing new under the sun." Who will not recognise, in the character of Admiral Vernon, (which has had the honour to be delineated by Lord John Russell,) something of a celebrated living Admiral?

"Vernon was a man of undoubted talent, but ill qualified, by his character, to govern those under him, or to obey those above him. Vernon was raised to the rank of Admiral of the White, in April 1745. He was immediately appointed to the command of the fleet, for the defence of the Channel and north coast, and in this situation his vigilance has been greatly commended. The Board of Admiralty, however, having found fault with some of his dispositions of the force, he complained bitterly, and, after an angry correspondence, desired leave to strike his flag. The Admiralty, finding it useless to give orders, which were always cavilled at, complied with his request. Hereupon, the Admiral, who seems to have thought that the public would support him against the Government, published two pamphlets, in which he revealed the orders he had received, and published, without leave, his official correspondence. The Admiralty visited this offence in the most severe manner. Admiral Vernon was called on to attend the Board. When he appeared, the Duke of Bedford asked him, if he was the publisher of the two pamphlets. He declined to answer the question. The Duke of Bedford then informed him that the Board, after such a refusal, could not but consider him as the publisher. He stated his surprise that he should have been asked such a question, and withdrew. The next day, the Duke of Bedford saw the King, and signified to the Board the King's pleasure that Vice-Admiral Vernon should be struck out of the list of flag-officers."

A letter from Pitt speaks of his election, and the unlucky battle of Lauffeldt, in the same breath.

"My dear Grenville,—I am this moment arrived from Sussex, victorious as yourself, (Grenville had just been elected for Bridport,) after being opposed by Mr Gage and the Earl of Middlesex. It is certain my own success does not give me more pleasure than yours does.... Would to God our victories were not confined to our own little world. A full detail of the late action I have not yet seen. The clearest and best makes it evident that the British and Electoral troops did all that can be expected from men overpowered by numbers, the whole weight being upon them. The Duke (of Cumberland) has done himself great honour, by the efforts he made in person during the action," &c. &c.

William Duke of Cumberland was always unfortunate on the Continent, and, we believe, never succeeded but at Culloden. In the battle of Lauffeldt, Walpole says, "he was very near taken, having, through his short sight, mistaken a body of French for his own people. He behaved as bravely as usual; but (he adds sarcastically) his prowess is so well established, that it grows time for him to exert other qualities of a general."

In this action, considerable loss seems to have taken place among the officers of rank. Walpole says of Conway—"Harry Conway, whom nature always designed for a hero of romance, and who is deplace life, did wonders, but was overpowered and flung down, when one French hussar held him by the hair, while another was going to stab him. At the instant, an English sergeant, with a soldier, came up and killed the latter, but was instantly killed himself. The soldier attacked the other, and Mr Conway escaped, but was afterwards taken prisoner, and is since released on parole."

The description of the Lord Middlesex, mentioned in the letter, has all the keenness of Walpole's style. (He was the eldest son of the Duke of Dorset, and Master of the Horse to the Prince of Wales.) "His figure was handsome, had all the reserve of his family, and all the dignity of his ancestors. His passion was the direction of operas, in which he had not only wasted immense sums, but had stood lawsuits in Westminster Hall with some of those poor devils for their salaries. The Duke of Dorset had often paid his debts, but never could work upon his affections; and he had at last carried his disobedience so far, in complaisance to, and in imitation of the Prince, as to oppose his father in his own boroughs."

The death of Pelham, in 1754, awoke the bustle of parties in a singular degree. The activity of Fox (Lord Holland) was remarked by every one. Pelham had died about six in the morning; Fox was at Lord Hartington's door before eight, called on Pitt at an "early hour;" and a letter from Lord Hardwicke says—"A certain person (Fox) within a few hours after Mr Pelham's death, had made strong advances to the Duke of Newcastle and myself." Pitt's letter, addressed to Lyttleton and the Grenvilles, containing the proposal for a new cabinet, thus speaks of Fox:—"As to the nomination of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Fox, in point of party, seniority in the corps, and, I think, of ability for Treasury and House of Commons business, stands, upon the whole, first of any. Dr Lee, if his health permits, would be very desirable. You, my dear Grenville, would be my nomination. A fourth idea, which, if practicable, might have great strength and efficiency for Government in it—I mean to secularise, if I may use the expression, the Solicitor-General (Murray,) and make him Chancellor of the Exchequer."

This fabric of the ministerial brain vanished, and Pitt remained in the subordinate position of Paymaster of the Forces. The ostensible cause was, the King's disinclination to have any intercourse with Pitt. That disinclination, however, ceased to be a pretext when Pitt became necessary to the Crown.

The fluctuations of memorable minds are the most interesting part of their history. Pitt's political disappointments always brought on a fit of his philosophy. When fortune smiled again, he forgot the philosophy, and grasped at the political prize. After the failure of his plan for the cabinet, he flew to Bath, and there, between disgust and distemper, he became romantic.

He thus writes to Earl Temple:—

"I am still the same indolent, inactive thing your lordship saw me; insomuch that I can hear unmoved of Parliament's assembling, and Speakers choosing, and all other great earthly things. I live the vernal day on verdant hills or sequestered valleys, where, to be poetical, for me health gushes from a thousand springs; and I enjoy the return of her, and the absence of that thing called Ambition, with no small philosophic delight. In a word, I envy not the favourites of Heaven, the few, the very few, 'quos Æquus amavit Jupiter;' the dust of Kensington causey, or the verdure of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields." (The King resided at Kensington, and the Duke of Newcastle in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields.) "I shall despatch my necessary business as fast as I can, and pursue you to Stowe, where the charms, so seldom found, of true taste, and the more rare joys and comforts of true friendship, have fixed their happy residence. There it is that I most impatiently long to enjoy you and your works."

Wilkes now comes on the tapis. A letter from Earl Temple congratulates him on having returned from the "expensive delights of Berwick." "I hope this will find you in good health, spirits as usual, and with an excellent cause. It is very gracious and kind in the pious Æneas, after his conversion after the love-feast, to keep up that kind of friendship with one who has so slender a claim to be admitted to the table of the saints."

The letter is written in a strain fitter for Wilkes than for a man in a public rank, and with a public character. The "expensive delights of Berwick" was an allusion to Wilkes's contest for the borough, which cost him between three and four thousand pounds, and in which he was defeated after all by the Delaval interest. Fox's description of the debate on the petition is pungent. "Mr Wilkes, a friend, it seems, of Pitt, (so little was he publicly known at this period,) petitioned against the younger Delaval, chose (chosen) at Berwick, on the ground of bribery only. Delaval made a speech, on his being thus attacked, full of wit, humour, and buffoonery, which kept the House in a continued roar of laughter."

From this period, for forty years, Wilkes flourished before the public. The man will do a striking service to the history of the constitution, of popular passion, and of political character, who shall write a "History of Wilkes." There have been memoirs of his life, publications of his letters, and registers of his political victories; but these are still but MÉmoires pour Servir. The history of the partisan is yet to be written; and it will still be the more curious, since it will be the history of a political age, which could have existed in no other country. Wilkes was embodied Demagogism. Athens might have her Cleon, Naples her Massaniello, and modern Rome her Rienzi; but England alone could produce a Wilkes, tolerate him, triumph in him, struggle for him, and finally pay to his indolent, helpless, and exhausted old age, almost the same popular veneration which the multitude had paid when his intrigues convulsed the whole fabric of the state. A temperament daring, crafty, and unscrupulous, a fluent pen, and a sarcastic wit, were the instruments of an ambition as remorseless, worldly, and grasping, as dwelt in the bosom of a CÆsar Borgia or a Catiline.

An outline of this singular man's bustling career will best show the pertinacity, the trials, and the troubles which belonged to the candidate for the Tribuneship of Great Britain.

John Wilkes, born in 1727, the son of a rich distiller, began his public life in the canvass for Berwick—alluded to by Lord Temple's letter. Having lost that election, he obtained a seat for Aylesbury, which involved him in heavy expenses. Parliament now became his resource and his profession; and he connected himself with Lord Temple, who gave him the colonelcy of the Buckingham militia.

In 1762, on the retirement of Lord Temple and Pitt from the ministry, he became an Opposition pamphleteer. Lord Bute, though a man of ability, was unpopular, as the royal favourite, and Wilkes attacked him in the North Briton. In 1763, Lord Bute resigned, and Wilkes, in the memorable No. 45 of the North Briton, libelled the King's speech. The sarcasm stung so deep that a prosecution was ordered against him. The prosecution finally became a triumph. The Home Secretary having issued a "General Warrant" for the apprehension of the author, printers, and publishers of the libel, Wilkes, on his arrest, denied its legality, and, as a member of Parliament, was committed to the Tower. The attention of the country was now fixed on the question. He was brought up before Chief Baron Pratt, who decided on the illegality of general warrants, and he was discharged amid the popular acclamations. Wilkes, in his turn, brought actions against the Home Secretary, the under secretaries, the messengers, &c., and gained them all, with damages—the Crown paying the damages. He was now the declared champion of the populace.

He republished the libel—fought a duel on the subject—was severely wounded—and fled to France. A second prosecution was commenced, and, on his non-appearance, he was expelled from the House of Commons. A third prosecution was commenced against him for language in a publication which was pronounced flagitious; and not returning to meet it, he was outlawed.

On the change of ministry he returned to England, and was imprisoned; and yet, during his imprisonment, was elected for Middlesex. He was tried, and condemned to remain in jail twenty-two months, or be fined £1000.

In 1769, in consequence of a pamphlet censuring the ministry for the employment of troops to suppress the riots at his election, he was again expelled, and again elected.

He was now declared incapable of sitting in Parliament, and Colonel Luttrel was returned as the sitting member, though with but a fourth of the votes. This act roused the popular indignation once more.

Wilkes, driven from Parliament, now turned to the city, and was elected alderman; and on some printers being brought before him, apprehended by a Royal proclamation, he discharged them all, on the ground of maintaining the privileges of the city. The Lord Mayor, Oliver, and Crosby, an alderman, followed Wilkes's example, and being members of the House, were sent to the Tower. Wilkes, on being ordered to attend at the bar, claimed his seat. Ministers now dreading further involvement, adjourned the House over the day appointed for his attendance, and, in 1774, he took his seat in triumph as member for Middlesex!

But his fortune was now decayed; old age was coming on, and he was glad to be chosen Chamberlain for London, (with a salary of nearly £4000 a-year.) On the fall of the North Cabinet, 1782, he moved that the resolution against him on the Journals should be expunged. The motion was carried; his victory was complete, and the remainder of his life was opulent and calm. That remainder, however, was brief, for he died in 1797, at the age of seventy.

Wilkes was a man of education, a man of wit, and a man of intrepidity. But his education had begun under an English sectary, and was finished in a foreign college—the first accounting for his republicanism, the next for his dissoluteness. But, though the man himself was worthless, his struggles were not unprofitable to the country. They fixed the popular attention on the principles of national liberty; they brought all the great constitutional questions into perpetual study. They rendered the public mind so sensitive to the possible encroachments of the Crown, or even of the Commons, that the future tyranny of any branch of the Legislature would be next to impossible. Let the merit of Wilkes be, that he drew a fence round the Constitution.

But Wilkes had a support unknown to the public of his time, yet amply divulged in these volumes. He appears to have kept up a constant correspondence with Earl Temple, the head of the Grenville interest; to have been anxious for his opinion on his publications, and to have depended on him, even for pecuniary resources, which probably were applied to those publications. The connection of Wilkes in public sentiment with the Grenvilles, was, of course, well known; but we doubt if the evidence of an intimate agency was understood before. In these letters, Wilkes twice draws on Lord Temple for £500; and as his lordship was opulent, and his client quite the reverse, it is likely that those calls were not the only instances of craving. But this connection largely accounts for the otherwise marvellous daring of Wilkes. He had the Grenvilles, Pitt, and their whole connection, then a most powerful party, to fall back upon. The Cabinet which sent him to prison one day, might be succeeded by the Cabinet which would open his gates the next; his patrons might be the possessors of all power, and in the mean time, however he might be persecuted, he was sure not to be crushed.

We have a letter from Lord Temple on this subject, which shows, by its wish to mislead suspicion, the nature of this intimacy. The letter is from a corrected and much obliterated draught, in Lord Temple's handwriting; and as the editor says, "The very guarded manner in which the letter is expressed, renders it probable that Lord Temple expected that it would be read in the Post Office before it reached its destination; for it cannot be supposed that he was ignorant of the connection between the North Briton and Wilkes. Almon (the printer) says, "Lord Temple was not ignorant of his friend's design, and certainly approved of it."

The letter thus begins—"As to public events, I am sorry to see that the paper hostilities are renewed with so high a degree of acrimony as now appears on all sides; and although I make it a rule not to agitate any matter of a political nature by the Post—this Argus, with, at least, a hundred eyes—yet, while my thoughts agree with Government, I may venture to hazard them, subject even to that inspection. I am quite at loss to guess through what channel the North Briton flows." The remainder is a critique on the paper, concluding, "as the N. B. will, I suppose, endeavour by every means to lie concealed, it will be impossible to ferret him out, and give him good advice, otherwise I am sure I could convince him."

The caution of this note shows at once the confidential nature of the connection, and the consciousness of the responsibility. But the subsequent letters of Lord Temple to Wilkes prove the continued and increased interest taken by his lordship in Wilkes's political productions. A paper, called the Monitor, whether edited by Wilkes or not, but evidently conceived by Lord Temple to be under his direction, having expressed strong opinions relative to the royal personages, his lordship writes as follows:—

"As all the sins of the Monitor against the ruling powers are principally charged upon our friend B., [Bradmore, his attorney,] and then, by way of rebound, upon two other persons, to whom the Monitor has been so kindly partial, it is of the more moment to avoid that sort of personality which regards any of the R. F., [royal family.] I am glad, therefore, my hint came, at least, time enough to prevent the publication of what would have filled up the whole measure of offence.... As to other matters, sportsmen, I suppose, are at liberty to pursue lawful game. I am only solicitous to have them not trespassers within the bounds of royal manors.... I hope I may be allowed to defray the loss and the expense of laying aside the paper you sent me."

This evidently implies that the paper was submitted to his lordship before publication.

The intercourse of a man like Wilkes, a notorious profligate, and impeached in public for his excess of profligacy, could not have been suffered by a man alive to character, but for some motive beyond the public eye; it was, of course, political, the common pursuit of an object, which is presumed to salve all sins.

A strong instance of their intimacy occurs in what Wilkes might have considered as his last act in this world. Lord Talbot, having been attacked in the North Briton, demanded an apology from Wilkes, who denied his lordship's right to question him. A challenge ensued, which produced a meeting, which produced an exchange of shots, without injury on either side. But Wilkes had given to his second, Colonel Berkeley, a note to be delivered, in case of his fall, to Earl Temple. This note Berkeley desired to return to Wilkes on the close of the affair; but it was forwarded to Temple, "as a proof of the regard and affection he bore your lordship, at a minute which might have been his last."

Wilkes's letter is dated

"Bagshot, Nov. 5—Seven at night.

"My Lord,—I am here, just going to decide a point of honour with Lord Talbot. I have only to thank your lordship for all your favours to me; and to entreat you to desire Lady Temple to superintend the education of a daughter, whom I love beyond all the world. I am, my Lord, your obliged and affectionate humble servant,

John Wilkes."

The second volume contains the Correspondence of Ministers, actual and expectant, down to 1764. Among those letters is one which exhibits a curious coincidence with the late transactions of the Foreign Office, though the relative positions of the persons were changed.

"The Earl of Egremont to Mr Grenville.

February 12, 1763.

"Dear Sir,—Perhaps the Duc de Nivernois has sent you word that the Treaty was to be signed yesterday. If not, I would not leave you a moment ignorant of the news after I had had it. Ever yours most faithfully,

Egremont."

"What think you of the Duke of B., [Bedford, then ambassador in Paris,] who lets the King's Ministers be informed by the French ambassador of the appointment to sign the Treaty!"

The volume abounds in references to high names. Among the rest we have a "Note" from the great Samuel Johnson, which, though only a receipt for his pension, has the value of a national remembrancer:—"To Mr Grenville. Sir,—Be pleased to pay to the bearer seventy-five pounds, being the quarterly payment of a pension granted by his Majesty, and due on the 29th of June last to, Sir, your humble servant, Sam. Johnson." The merit of this pension, so worthily bestowed, was due to Wedderburn, afterwards Earl of Rosslyn, and Chancellor.

A letter from the Countess Temple contains some lively Court gossip.

"Mrs Ryde was here yesterday. She is acquainted with a brother of one of the yeomen of the guard. He tells her, that the King cannot live without my Lord Bute. If he goes out anywhere, he stops, when he comes back, to ask if my Lord Bute is come yet. And that his lords, or people that are about him, look as mad as can be at it."

"The mob have a good story of the Duke of Devonshire, (Lord Chamberlain.) That he went first, to light the King; and the King followed him, leaning on Lord Bute's shoulder; upon which the Duke of Devonshire turned about, and desired to know 'whom he was waiting upon?'"

The name of the Chevalier D'Eon occurs in the Correspondence as demanding some wine detained in the Customs. The Chevalier was a personage who excited great public curiosity, even almost within our own time. He had been a captain of French dragoons, and was brought to England as the secretary to the Duc de Nivernois, who conducted the negotiations for the peace of 1763. On the Duke's departure, he left D'Eon minister-plenipotentiary. The Count de Guerchy, the new ambassador, desired him to resume the post of secretary; this hurt his pride, and he quarrelled with the ambassador and with the English Court, but was pensioned by France. A report at length was spread that D'Eon was actually a female; this the Chevalier fiercely denied, and we believe threatened to shoot the authors of the report. However, in a short time after, he adopted the dress of a female, and retained it till he died. As all matters in England then turned to gambling, wagers were laid on the subject; until, at length, it was proved that the assumption of the female dress was either an eccentricity or a wilful imposture. His pension having been cut off by the Revolution, this singular person was reduced to great difficulties; so much so, that, to raise money, he appeared as a fencer on the stage, but still appeared in woman's costume.

We must now close our observations on this collection, which is indispensable to the historian of the time. Not referring to any of those great transactions which make the characteristics, or the catastrophes, of nations, these letters exhibit the interior of public life with remarkable minuteness, and must have a peculiar interest for public men. But, with the honours of the statesman, they lay before us so vivid an example of the troubles, the vexations, and the disappointments of political life, and the struggles of men possessing the highest abilities and the highest character, that we doubt whether a more stringent moral against political ambition ever came before the eyes of England.