ideal habits of his period and his order.1 And yet, when his regiment was told off for America, he threw up his commission, and, though far from a rich man, renounced the prospect of sure and quick advancement. In May 1775 he made his explanation in Parliament. His highest ambition, (so he told the House of Lords,) ever since he had any ambition at all, was to serve his country in a military capacity. If there was on earth an event which he dreaded, it was to see that country so situated as to make his profession imcompatible with his obligations as a citizen; and such an event had now arrived. "When the duties," he said, "of a soldier and a citizen become inconsistent, I shall always think myself obliged to sink the character of the soldier in that of the citizen, till such time as those duties shall again, by the malice of our real enemies, become united." Effingham sate down as soon as he had made this remarkable confession; but none of his brother peers, who were present, took exception to his speech; nor was he ever subsequently taunted with it in debate, although he was a frequent, a fiery, and a most provocative assailant of the Government. Outside Parliament, not in any way by his own seeking, he at once became celebrated, and vastly popular. Mason, the poet, inquired if ever there was anything, ancient or modern, either in sentiment or language, better than Lord Effingham's speech.2 Public thanks were voted to him by the Corporations of London and Dublin. The Free Citizens of the Irish metropolis, many of them gentlemen of wealth and standing, and Protestants all, dined together and drank toasts to the Glorious and Immortal memory of the great King William; to Lord Chatham; to the brave General Carleton, the Man of too much Humanity for the purpose of a Cruel and Cowardly Minister; and to

He himself liked

1 His lady hunted, and rode over five-barred gates. his wine; and a summer-house on the estate had been christened Boston Castle, - not as a tribute to the American cause, but because no tea was ever drunk there.

2 Mason to Walpole; June 17, 1775.

the Earl of Effingham, who did not forget the Citizen in the Soldier.

Lord Frederic Cavendish, (a name which is the synonym of loyalty,) had been a soldier from his youth onwards. At the outbreak of the Seven Years' War he had made a compact with three other promising officers, Wolfe, Monckton, and Keppel, not to marry until France was defeated, and finally brought to terms.1 He was an aide-de-camp to the Duke of Cumberland in Germany, and during several campaigns he rode at the head of a brigade of infantry in the army of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Already a Lieutenant General of repute when the American disturbances broke out, he still, at the age of five-and-forty, had the best of his career before him; but he allowed it to be known that he would not apply for a command against the colonists. Lord Frederic, however, continued in his profession; and in subsequent years he was made a full General by the Whigs, and a Field-Marshal by the Tories. Before it was ascertained that he declined to take part in the war, something disagreeable was written about him by a Mr. Falconer of Chester, who cannot be ranked as a very noteworthy critic. 'The times assist the Americans. They are united by our divisions. Lord Frederic Cavendish is going to this service. If he acts consistently, he should turn to their side; for that family has been the best friends to Faction of every kind, and the most furious enemies to civil order." 2 Burke, on the other hand, described the Cavendishes as men who were among the ornaments of the country in peace, and to whom the King owed some of the greatest glories of his own, and his predecessor's reign, "in all the

1 This account of Lord Frederic Cavendish is largely taken from the Dictionary of National Biography. The article allotted to Lord Frederic in that work recounts an anecdote about him and the Duc d'Aiguillon, which very pleasantly recalls the chivalrous relations existing, in time of war, between the nobles and gentlemen of France and of England.

2 Letter by Mr. Thomas Falconer, among the family papers of James Round, Esq., M.P.: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fourteenth Report; Appendix, Part IX.

various services of the late French war." Great integrity; great tenderness and sensibility of heart, with friendships few but unalterable; perfect disinterestedness; the ancient English reserve and simplicity of manner, those, according to Edmund Burke, were the marks of a true Cavendish. Such was the opinion held about the Devonshire family by one who assuredly knew them more intimately than ever did Mr. Falconer; and the one judgement may be weighed against the other. Public attention had recently been strongly and favourably drawn to a man who was the forerunner of a class which, from that time to ours, has played an unostentatious and unrecompensed, but a most commanding, part in the history of moral and social progress. Effingham and Chatham, Conway and Cavendish, were peers and members of Parliament; but Granville Sharp, though not himself a senator, had the originality, the native strength, and the indefatigable enthusiasm of one whose behests, in the long run, senators are irresistibly compelled to obey. He had recently been invited to enter Holy Orders with the promise of a valuable living; but he put aside the offer on the ground that he could not satisfy himself concerning his qualifications for the function of a spiritual teacher.2 Granville Sharp was one of the founders of the Bible Society; he learned Hebrew in hopes of converting a Jew, and Greek in order to refute a Socinian; and his criticisms upon the sacred texts were recommended to the attention of theological students by a Bishop. If he was not fit to be a clergyman, it is hard to see how the Church of England could have been manned. Nevertheless when Granville Sharp advanced, as an additional reason for declining to take orders, his belief that he could serve the cause of religion more effectually as a layman, there was

1 Letter drafted by Burke in 1771. Burke's Character of Lord John Cavendish.

2 Letter to the Rev. Granville Wheler, Esq. : Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Esq., by Prince Hoare; Part I., chapter i. The singular address which the envelope bore is explained in a note at the bottom of the page.

much good sense in his decision. He was already deeply committed to a laborious, a rude, and a hazardous undertaking which, though it was inspired by Christianity, could only be forced to a successful conclusion by a free use of carnal weapons. Between 1765 and 1772 he carried on a seven years' war of his own for the establishment and vindication of the doctrine that a slave is liberated by the act of setting his foot upon English ground. He had Lord Mansfield against him; until, by his undaunted pertinacity, he brought to his own opinion jury after jury, and at length the Bench itself. London then, and especially the lower districts on the Thames river, can hardly be said, in the modern sense of the word, to have been policed at all; and Granville Sharp stood in constant peril from the ruffians who were employed to re-capture runaways, or to kidnap negroes and negresses at the instigation of people who had not a tittle of claim to the ownership of their victims. His small patrimony was soon eaten up by law-costs, and by the expense of harbouring, clothing, and feeding the poor wretches whom he endeavoured to protect; but he contrived to support existence on his salary as a clerk in the Ordnance Department.

That slender resource failed him of a sudden. On the twenty-eighth of July, 1775, there occurs the following clumsily worded, though not ungrammatical, entry in Granville Sharp's diary: "Board at Westminster. Account in Gazette of the Battle at Charlestown, near Boston, and letters with large demands for ordnance. stores, being received, which were ordered to be got with all expedition, I thought it right to declare my objections to the being any way concerned in that unnatural business." The chiefs of the department, both military and civil, behaved in a manner that did them. honour; and their treatment of him, (as his biographer remarks,) was a specimen of the respectful kindness which the probity of Mr. Sharp's character attracted even from those who differed from him in opinion.1

1 Prince Hoare's Memoirs of Granville Sharp; Part I., chapter vi.

That difference was not very deeply marked in the case of the most conspicuous among Mr. Sharp's official superiors. Sir Jeffrey Amherst, who was at the head of the Ordnance, must have felt it a doubtful point whether he himself was justified in shipping gunpowder to America, when he could not find it with his conscience to go thither for the purpose of firing it off against the colonists. The Commissioners of Ordnance declined to accept Mr. Sharp's resignation. They gave him continuous leave of absence for nearly two years, by instalments of two months, and three months, and six months, at a time; and they would not accede to his urgent request that his salary should meanwhile be apportioned to the payment of the substitutes who did his work, so that the office might incur no additional expense upon his account. But in the end he had his own way; as sooner or later he always had his way about everything. In 1777 his place was declared vacant; and at an age well past forty he was thrown penniless on a world where people, even less unworldly than Granville Sharp, find it difficult to make an income by new and untried methods after once they have turned the corner of life.

By the year 1775 something had been heard of a man who, in the course of a very long and honoured career, did as much in defence of our political freedom as Granville Sharp accomplished for the cause of humanity. John Cartwright, the younger son of a Nottinghamshire squire, entered the Royal Navy in 1758 at a late age for a midshipman. He soon made up for lost time, and attracted such notice by activity and intelligence, joined to a singularly amiable and chivalrous character, that Lord Howe took him on to his ship, the Magnanime, which then was reputed the best school for a rising officer. Cartwright became a prime favourite with his captain, if such a word can fairly be applied in the case of a chief the degree of whose favour was invariably determined by merit. Howe, who knew every man in his crew and every corner of his vessel, contrived