of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the princ pes of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality; for it is perfectly allowable, says Lord Suffolk, to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands.' I am astonished, I am shocked, to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this house or in this country. My lords. I did not intend to encroach so much on your attention; but I cannot repress my indignation-I feel myself impelled to speak. My lords, we are called upon as members of this house, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity! That God and nature have put into our hands! What ideas of God and nature that noble lord may entertain, I know not; but I know that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife! to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims! Such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honour. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend, and this most learned bench, to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour of your lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the Genius of the Constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty and establish the religion of Britain against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are endured among us. To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood! against whom? your Protestant brethren! to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hell-hounds of war! Spain can no longer boast pre-eminence in barbarity. She armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico; we, more ruthless, loose these dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that can sanctify humanity. I solemnly call upon your lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly I call upon the holy prelates of our religion to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration, to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin. My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles.

The last public appearance and death of Lord Chatham are thus described by WILLIAM BELSHAM (1753-1827), essayist and historian, in his 'History of Great Britain:'

The mind feels interested in the minutest circumstances relating to the last day of the public life of this renowned statesman and patriot. He was dressed in a rich suit of black velvet, with a full wig, and covered up to the knees in flannel. On his arrival in the house, he refreshed himself in the lord chancellor's room, where he stayed till prayers were over, and till he was informed that business was going to begin. He was then led into the house by his son and son-in-law, Mr. William Pitt and Lord Viscount Mahon, all the lords standing up out of respect, and making a lane for him to pass to the earl's bench, he bowing very gracefully to them as he proceeded. He looked pale and much emaciated, but his eye retained all its native fire; which, joined to his general deportment, and the attention of the house, forined a spectacle very striking and impressive.

When the Duke of Richmond had sat down, Lord Chatham rose, and began by lamenting that his bodily infirmities had so long and at so important a crisis prevented his attendance on the duties of parliament. He declared that he had made an

effort almost beyond the powers of his constitution to come down to the house on this day, perhaps the last time he should ever be able to enter its walls, to express the indignation he felt at the idea which he understood was gone forth of yielding up the sovereignty of America. My lords," continued he, "I rejoice that the grave has not closed upon me, that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and noble monarchy. Pressed down as I am by the load of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most perilous conjuncture; but, my lords, while I have sense and memory, I never will consent to tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions. Shall a people so lately the terror of the world, now fall prostrate before the house of Bourbon ? It is impossible! In God's name, if it is absolutely necessary to declare either for peace or war, and if peace cannot be preserved with honour, why is not war commenced without hesitation? I am not, I confess, well informed of the resources of this kingdom, but I trust it has still sufficient to maintain its just rights, though I know them not. Any state, my lords, is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort, and if we must fall, let us fall like men.' 999

The Duke of Richmond, in reply, declared himself to be 'totally ignorant of the means by which we were to resist with success the combination of America with the house of Bourbon. He urged the noble lord to point out any possible mode, if he were able to do it, of making the Americans renounce that independence of which they were in possession. His Grace added, that if he could not, no man could; and that it was not in his power to change his opinion on the noble lord's authority, unsupported by any reasons but a recital of the calamitis arising from a state of things not in the power of this country now to alter.'

Lord Chatham, who had appeared greatly moved during the reply, made an eager effort to rise at the conclusion of it, as if labouring with some great idea, and impatient to give full scope to his feelings; but before he could utter a word, pressing his hand on his bosom, he fell down suddenly in a convulsive fit. The Duke of Cumberland. Lord Temple, and other lords near him, caught him in their arms. The house was immediately cleared; and his lordship being carried into an adjoining apartment, the debate was adjourned. Medical assistance being obtained, his lordship in some degree recovered, and was conveyed to his favourite villa.of Hayes, in Kent, where, after lingering some few weeks, he expired, May 11, 1778, in the seventieth year of his age.

Grattan, the Irish orator (1750-1820) has drawn the character of Lord Chatham with felicity and vigour of style. The glittering point and antithesis of the sketch are united to great originality and force:

Character of Lord Chatham by Grattan.

The secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relicv. d from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great; but, overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished; always seasonable, always adequate, the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardour and enlightened by prophecy.

The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness. reached him; but aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system to counsel and to decide.

A character so exalted. so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the name of Pitt through all the classes of

venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her. Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtlety of argumentation; nor was he, like Townsend, for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, aud to rule the wilderness of frec minds with unbounded authority, something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe.

EDMUND BURKE.

As an orator, politician, and author, the name of EDMUND BURKE stood high with his contemporaries, and time has abated little of its lustre. He is still by far the most eloquent and imaginative of all our writers on public affairs, and the most philosophical of English statesmen. Burke was born in Dublin, January 12, 1728-9, the son of a respectable solicitor, a Protestant. His mother's name was Nagie, of a Roman Catholic family. He was educated first at a popular school at Ballitore in Kildare, kept by Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker, and afterwards at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1750 he removed to London, where he entered himself as a student of the Middle Temple, but he seems soon to have abandoned his intention of prosecuting the law as a profession. In 1756 he published anonymously a parody on the style and manner of Bolingbroke, a Vindication of Natural Society,' in which the paradoxical reasoning of the noble sceptic is pushed to a ridiculous extreme, and its absurdity very happily exposed. In 1757, he published A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,' and an Account of European Settlements in America.' He obtained an introduction to the society of Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, and the other eminent men of the day. Burke, however, was still struggling with difficulties, and compiling for booksellers. He suggested to Dodsley the plan of an Annual Register, which that spirited publisher adopted, Burke furnishing the whole of the original matter for 1758 and 1759. He continued for several years to write the historical portion of this valuable compilation.

In 1761, Burke accompanied Mr. W. G. Hamilton (best known as Single-speech Hamilton') to Ireland, partly in the capacity of private secretary to Hamilton (who had been appointed chief-secretary to the Earl of Halifax, lord-lieutenant of Ireland), and partly as a personal friend. This connection did not last long, Burke being too independent to serve as a mere tool of party. In 1765, he became secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, and was returned to the House of Commons as member for Wendover. He soon distinguished v. iv.-13

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himself in parliament, but the Rockingham administration was dissolved in 1766, and Burke joined the opposition. In 1769, he wrote an able reply to a pamphlet, by Mr. Grenville, on the State of the Nation; and in the following year, another political disquisition, "Thoughts on the Present Discontents.' This is a powerful argumentative treatise. We shall not attempt to follow Burke's parlia mentary career. His speeches on American affairs were among his most vigorous and felicitous appearances; his most important public duty was the part he took in the prosecution of Warren Hastings, and his opposition to the Regency Bill of Pitt. Stormier times, however, were at hand: the French Revolution was then 'blackening the horizon' to use one of his own metaphors-and he early predicted the course it would take. He strenuously warned his countrymen against the dangerous influence of French principles, and published his memorable treatise, Reflections on the French Revolution,' 1790. A rupture now took place between him and his Whig friends, Mr. Fox in particular; but with characteristic ardour Burke went on denouncing the doctrines of the Revolution, and published his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,' his 'Letters to a Noble Lord,' and his 'Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France. The splendour of these compositions, the various knowledge which they display, the rich imagery with which they abound, and the spirit of philosophical reflection which pervades them all, stamp them among the first literary productions of their time. Such a flood of rich illustration had never before been poured on questions of state policy and government. At the same time, Burke was eminently practical in his views. His greatest efforts will be found directed to the redress of some existing wrong, or the preservation of some existing good-to hatred of actual oppression, to the removal of useless restrictions, and to the calm and sober improvement of the laws and government which he venerated, without coining to himself Whig principles from a French die, unknown to the impress of our fathers in the constitution.' Where inconsistencies are found in his writings between his early and later opinions, they will be seen to consist chiefly in matters of detail or in expression. The leading principles of his public life were always the same. He wished, as he says, to preserve consistency, but only by varying his means to secure the unity of his end: when the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails may be endangered by overloading it upon one side, he is desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise.'

When the revolution broke out, his sagacity enabled him to foresee the dreadful consequences which it would entail upon France and the world, and his enthusiastic temperament led him to state his impressions in language sometimes overcharged and almost bombastic, and sometimes full of prophetic fire. In one of the debates on the Revolution, after mentioning that he understood that three

thousand daggers had been ordered from Birmingham, Burke drew one from under his coat, and throwing it on the floor, exclaimed: This is what you are to gain by an alliance with France-this is your fraternisation!' Such a melodramatic exhibition was wholly unworthy of Burke, and naturally provoked ridicule. He stood aloof from most of his old associates, when, like a venerable tower, he was sinking into ruin and decay. Posterity, however, has done ample justice to his genius and character, and has confirmed the opinion of one of his contemporaries, that if-as he did not attempt to conceal-Cicero was the model on which he laboured to form his own character in eloquence, in policy, in ethics, and philosophy, he infinitely surpassed the original. Burke retired from parliament in 1794. The friendship of the Marquis of Rockingham had enabled him to purchase an estate near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, and there the orator spent exclusively his few remaining years. 1795, he was rewarded with a handsome pension from the civil_list. It was in contemplation to elevate him to the peerage, but the death of his only son-who was his colleague in the representation of Malton-rendered him indifferent, if not averse, to such a distinction. The force and energy of his mind, and the creative richness of his imagination, continued with him to the last. His 'Letter to a Noble Lord on his Pension' (1796), his Letters on a Regicide Peace' (1796 and 1797), and his 'Observations on the Conduct of the Minority' (1797), bear no trace of decaying vigour, though written after the age of sixty.

In

The keen and lively interest with which he regarded passing events, particularly the great political drama then in action in France, is still manifest in these works, with general observations and reflections that strike from their profundity and their universal application. 'He possessed,' says Coleridge, and had sedulously sharpened that eye which sees all things, actions, and events, in relation to the laws which determine their existence and circumscribe their possibility. He referred habitually to principles-he was a scientific statesman.' His imagination, it is admitted, was not always guided by correct taste; some of his images are low, and even border on disgust.* His language and his conceptions are often hyperboli

* One of the happiest of his homely similes is contained in his reply to Pitt, on the subject of the commercial treaty with France in 1757. Pitt he contended, had contemplated the subject with a narrowness peculiar to limited minds-as an affair of two little cnnting-houses, and not of two great nations He seems to consider it as a contention between the sign of the Fleur-de-lis and the sign of the old Red Lion, for which should obtain the best custom. In replying to the argument, that the Americans were our children, and should not have revolted against their parent, he said: They are our children, it is true, but when children ask for bread, we are not to give them a stone. When those children of ours wish to assimilate with their parent, and to respect the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? Are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off. to serve them for their freedom?' His account of the ill-assorted administration of Lord Chatham is no less ludicrous than correct. He made an administration so checkered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented. and whimsically dove