64 very ground that the Parliament had long uncompromising of the young patriots out of been a grossly corrupt body. The security Parliament. When he found that the change against corruption was to be, that the mem- of administration had produced no change of bers, instead of having a portion of the public system, he gave vent to his indignation in the plunder doled out to them by a minister, were Epistle to Curio," the best poem that he ever to help themselves. wrote; a poem, indeed, which seems to indicate, that, if he had left lyric composition to Gray and Collins, and had employed his pow ers in grave and elevated satire, he might have disputed the pre-eminence of Dryden. But whatever be the literary merits of the epistle, we can say nothing in praise of the political doctrines which it inculcates. The of the Great Men of Antiquity, tells us what "See private life by wisest arts reclaimed, It was Pulteney's business, it seems, to abolish faro and masquerades, to stint the young Duke of Marlborough to a bottle of brandy a day, and to prevail on Lady Vane to be content with three lovers at a time. The other schemes, of which the public mind was full, were less dangerous than this. Some of them were in themselves harmless. But none of them would have done much good, and most of them were extravagantly absurd. What they were we may learn from the instructions which many constituent bodies, immediately after the change of administra-poet, in a rapturous apostrophe to the Spirits tion, sent up to their representatives. A more deplorable collection of follies can hardly be imagined. There is, in the first place, a general cry for Walpole's head. Then there are bitter complaints of the decay of trade-decay which, in the judgment of those enlightened politicians, was all brought about by Walpole and corruption. They would have been nearer to the truth, if they had attributed their sufferings to the war into which they had driven Walpole against his better judgment. He had foretold the effects of his unwilling concession. On the day when hostilities against Spain were proclaimed, when the heralds were Whatever the people wanted, they certainly attended into the city by the chiefs of the op- got nothing. Walpole retired in safety, and position, when the Prince of Wales himself the multitude were defrauded of the expected stopped at Temple-Bar to drink succes to the show on Tower Hill. The Septennial Act was English arms, the minister heard all the stee- not repealed. The placemen were not turned ples of the city jingling with a merry pea!, and out of the House of Commons. Wool, we muttered: "They may ring the bells now: believe, was still exported. "Private life" they will be wringing their hands before long." afforded as much scandal as if the reign of Another grievance, for which of cours Walpole and corruption had continued; and Walpole and corruption were answerable, was" ardent youth" fought with watchmen, and the great exportation of English wool. In the judgment of the sagacious electors of several The colleagues of Walpole had, after his relarge towns, the remedying of this evil was a treat, admitted some of the chiefs of the oppomatter second only in importance to the hang-sition into the government. They soon found ing of Sir Robert. There are also earnest themselves compelled to submit to the ascendinjunctions on the members to veto against ency of one of their new allies. This was standing armies in time of peace; injunctions Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville. No which were, to say the least, ridiculously un-public man of that age had greater courage, reasonable in the midst of a war which was greater ambition, greater activity, greater likely to last, and which did actually last, as long talents for debate or for declamation. Νο as the Parliament. The repeal of the Septen- public man had such profound and extensive nial Act, as was to be expected, was strongly learning. He was familiar with the ancient "ressed. Nothing was more natural than that writers. His knowledge of modern languages the voters should wish for a triennial recur- was prodigious. The Privy Council, when he rence of their bribes and their ale. We feel was present, needed no interpreter. He spoke firmly convinced that the repeal of the Sep- and wrote French, Italian, Spanish, Portutennial Act, unaccompanied by a complete guese, German, even Swedish. He had pushed reform of the constitution of the elective body, his researches into the most obscure nooks of would have been an unmixed curse to the literature. He was as familiar with canonists country. The only rational recommendation and schoolmen as with orators and poets. He which we can find in all these instructions is, had read all that the universities of Saxony that the number of placemen in Parliament and Holland had produced on the most intri should be limited, and that pensioners should cate questions of public law. Harte, in the not be allowed to sit there. It is plain, how-preface to the second edition of the "History ever, that this reform was far from going to the of Gustavus Adolphus," bears a remarkable root of the evil; and that, if it had been adopt-testimony to the extent and accuracy of Lord ed, the consequence would probably have Carteret's knowledge. "It was my good for been, that secret bribery would have been nore practised than ever. We will give one more instance of the absard expectations which the declamations of the opposition had raised in the country. Akensid? was one of the fiercest and most betted with blacklegs as much as ever. tune or prudence to keep the main body of my army (or in other words my matters of fact) safe and entire. The late Earl of Granville was pleased to declare himself of this opinion; especially when he found that I had made Chemnitius one of my principal guides; or his lordship was apprehensive I might not have seen that valuable and authentic book, which is extremely scarce. I thought myself happy to have contented his lordship even in the lowest degree: for he understood the German and Swedish histories to the highest perfection." With all this learning, Carteret was far from being a pedant. He was not one of those cold spirits, of which the fire is put out by the fuel. In council, in debate, in society, he was all life and energy. His measures were strong, prompt, and daring; his oratory animated and glowing. His spirits were constantly high. No misfortune, public or private, could depress him. He was at once the most unlucky and the happiest public man of his time. He had been Secretary of State in Walpole's administration, and had acquired considerabie influence over the mind of George the First. The other ministers could speak no German. The king could speak no English. All the communication that Walpole held with his master was in very bad Latin. Carteret dismayed his colleagues by the volubility with which he addressed his majesty in German. They listened with envy and terror to the mysterious gutturals, which might possibly convey suggestions very little in unison with their wishes. they were at the head of a decided majority in That a rash and impetuous man of genius like Carteret should not have been able to maintain his ground in Parliament against the crafty and selfish Pelhams, is not strange. But it is less easy to understand why he should have been generally unpopular throughout the country. His brilliant talents, his bold and open temper, ought, it should seem, to have made him a favourite with the public. But the people had been bitterly disappointed; and he had to face the first burst of their rage His close connection with Pulteney, now the most detested man in the nation, was an unfortunate circumstance. He had, indeed, only three partisans, Pulteney, the King, and the Prince of Wales-a most singular assem blage. He was driven from his office. He shortly after made a bold, indeed a desperate attempt to recover power. The attempt failed. From that time he relinquished all ambitious hopes: and retired laughing to his books and his bot. tle. No statesman ever enjoyed success with so exquisite a zest, or submitted to a defeat with so genuine and unforced a cheerfulness. Ill as he had been used, he did not seem, says Horace Walpole, to have any resentment, or indeed any feeling except thirst. Walpole was not a man to endure such a colleague as Carteret. The king was induced to give up his favourite. Carteret joined the opposition, and signalized himself at the head of that party, till, after the retirement of his old rival, he again became Secretary of State. During some months he was chief minister, indeed sole minister. He gained the confidence and regard of George the Second. He was at the same time in high favour with the Prince of Wales. As a debater in the House of Lords, he had no equal among his colleagues. Among his opponents, Chesterfield alone could be considered as his match. Confident in his talents and in the royal favour, he neglected all those means by which the power of Walpole had been created and maintained. His head was full of treaties and expeditions, of schemes for supporting the Queen of Hun- These letters contain many good stories, gary, and humbling the house of Bourbon. some of them no doubt grossly exaggerated, He contemptuously abandoned to others all the about Lord Carteret; how, in the height of his drudgery, and with the drudgery, all the fruits greatness, he fell in love at first sight on a of corruption. The patronage of the church birth-day with Lady Sophia Fermor, the handand the bar he left to the Pelhams as a trifle some daughter of Lord Pomfret; how he unworthy of his care. One of the judges, plagued the cabinet every day with reading to Chief Justice Willis, if we remember rightly, them her ladyship's letters; how strangely he went to him to beg some ecclesiastical prefer- brought home his bride; what fine jewels he ment for a friend. Carteret said, that he was gave her; how he fondled her at Ranelagh; too much occupied with continental politics and what queen-like state she kept in Arling to think about the disposal of places and bene- ton street. Horace Walpole has spoken less fices. "You may rely on it, then," said the bitterly of Carteret than of any public man of Chief Justice, “that people who want places that time, Fox, perhaps, excepted; and this is and benefices will go to those who have more the more remarkable, because Carteret was leisure." The prediction was accomplished. one of the most inveterate enemies of Sir Ro It would have been a busy time indeed in bert. In the "Memoirs," Horace Walpole, which the Pelhams had wanted leisure for job- after passing in review all the great men bing; and to the Pelhams the whole cry of whom England had produced within his me place-hunters and pension-hunters resorted. mory, concludes by saying, that in genius none The parliamentary influence of the two bro- of them equalled Lord Granville. Smollet, n thers becare stronger every day, till at length | “Humphry Clinker," pronounces a similar judgment in coarser language. "Since Granville was turned out, there has been no minister in this nation worth the meal that whitened his periwig." ally fearless, Pelham constitutionally tim Walpole had to face a strong opposition; bu no man in the government durst wag a finge! against him. Almost all the opposition which He fell; and the reign of the Pelhams com- Pelham had, was from members of the govern menced. It was Carteret's misfortune to be ment of which he was the head. His own raised to power when the public mind was paymaster spoke against his estimates. His still smarting from recent disappointment. own secretary at war spoke against his Re The nation had been duped, and was eager gency Bill. In one day Walpole turned Lord for revenge. A victim was necessary; and Chesterfield, Lord Burlington, and Lord Clinon such occasions, the victims of popular ton out of the royal household, dismissed the rage are selected like the victim of Jephthah. highest dignitaries of Scotland from their posts, The first person who comes in the way is and took away the regiments of the Duke of made the sacrifice. The wrath of the people Bolton and Lord Cobham, because he sushad now spent itself, and the unnatural excite- pected them of having encouraged the resist ment was succeeded by an unnatural calm. ance to his Excise Bill. He would far rather To an irrational eagerness for something new, have contended with a strong minority, under succeeded an equally irrational disposition to able leaders, than have tolerated mutiny in his acquiesce in every thing established. A few own party. It would have gone hard with any months back the people had been disposed to of his colleagues who had ventured to divide impute every crime to men in power, and to the House of Commons against him. Pelham, lend a ready ear to the high professions of on the other hand, was disposed to bear any men in opposition; they were now disposed to thing rather than to drive from office any man surrender themselves implicitly to the manage-round whom a new opposition could form. ment of ministers, and to look with suspicion He therefore endured with fretful patience the and contempt on all who pretended to public insubordination of Pitt and Fox. He thought spirit. The name of patriot had become a it far better to connive at their occasional inbyword of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely fractions of discipline, than to hear them, night exaggerated, when he said, that in those times, after night, thundering against corruption and the most popular declaration which a candi- wicked ministers from the other side of the date could make on the hustings, was, that he House. had never been and never would be a patriot. At this juncture took place the rebellion of the Highland clans. The alarm produced by that event quieted the strife of internal factions. The suppression of the insurrection crushed forever the spirit of the Jacobite party. Room was made in the government for a few Tories. Peace was patched up with France and Spain. Death removed the Prince of Wales, who had contrived to keep together a small portion of that formidable opposition, of which he had been the leader in the time of Sir Robert Wal-coln's Inn Fields, or by Grub street writers pole. Almost every man of weight in the House of Commons was officially connected with the government. The even tenor of the session of Parliament was ruffled only by an occasional harangue from Lord Egmont on the army estimates. For the first time since the accession of the Stuarts there was no opposition. This singular good fortune, denied to the ablest statesmen-to Salisbury, to Strafford, to Clarendon, to Walpole-had been reserved for the Pelhams. We wonder that Sir Walter Scott never tried his hand on the Duke of Newcastle. An interview between his Grace and Jeanie Deans would have been delightful, and by no means unnatural. There is scarcely any public man in our history of whose manners and conver sation so many particulars have been preserved. Single stories may be unfounded or exaggerated. But all the stories, whether told by people who were perpetually seeing him in Parliament and attending his levee in Lin who never had more than a glimpse of his star through the windows of his gilded coach, are of the same character. Horace Walpole and Smollett differed in their tastes and opinions as much as two human beings could differ. They kept quite different scciety. The one played at cards with countesses and corresponded with ambassadors. The other passed his life surrounded by a knot of famished scribblers. Yet Walpole's Duke and Smollett's Duke are as like as if they were both from one Henry Pelham, it is true, was by no means hand. Smollett's Newcastle runs out of his a contemptible person. His understanding dressing-room with his face covered with soap was that of Walpole on a somewhat smaller suds to embrace the Moorish envoy. Walpole's scale. Though not a brilliant orator, he was, Newcastle pushes his way into the Duke of like his master, a good debater, a good parlia- Grafton's sick-room to kiss the old nobleman's mentary tactician, a good man of business. plasters. No man was ever so unmercifully Like his master, he distinguished himself by satirized. But in truth he was himself a satirs the neatness and clearness of his financial ready made. All that the art of the satirist expositions. Here the resemblance ceased. does for other ridiculous men nature had done Their characters were altogether dissimilar. for him. Whatever was absurd about him Walpole was good-humoured, but would have stood out with grotesque prominence from the his way; his spirits were high, and his man- rest of the character. He was a living, movners frank even to coarseness. The tempering, talking caricature. His gait was a shufof Pelham was yielding, but peevish; his fling trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he habits were regular, and his deportment was always in a hurry; he was never in time; Brietly decorous. Walpole was constitution-he abounded in fulsome caresses and ia hys terical tears. His oratory resembles that of is, he will make an ass of you." It was as Justice Shallow. It was nonsense effervescent dangerous to have any political connection with animal spirits and impertinence. Of his with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old ignorance many anecdotes remain, some well Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a authenticated, some probably invented at cof-greediness all his own. He was jealous of all fee-houses, but all exquisitely characteristic. his colleagues, and even of his own brother. "Oh-yes-yes-to be sure-Annapolis must Under the disguise of levity he was false bebe defended-troops must be sent to Annapo-yond all example of political falsehood. All lis-Pray, where is Annapolis?"-"Cape Bre- the able men of his time ridiculed him as a ton an island! wonderful-show it me in the dunce, a driveller, a child who never knew his map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you own mind for an hour together, and he overalways bring us good news. I must go and reached them all round. tell the king that Cape Breton is an island." If the country had remained at peace, it is not impossible that this man would have continued at the head of affairs, without admitting any other person to a share of his authority, until the throne was filled by a new prince, who brought with him new maxims of govern And this man was during nearly thirty years secretary of state, and during nearly ten years first lord of the treasury! His large fortune, his strong hereditary connection, his great parliamentary interest, will not alone explain this extraordinary fact. His success is a sig-ment, new favourites, and a strong will. But nal instance of what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the "Fortunes of Nigel." It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have no money dealings with my father," says Martha to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard as he the inauspicious commencement of the Seven Years' War brought on a crisis to which Newcastle was altogether unequal. After a calm of fifteen years the spirit of the nation was again stirred to its inmost depths. In a few days the whole aspect of the political world was changed. But that change is too remarkable an event to be discussed at the end of an article already too long. It is probable that we may, at no re mote time, resume the subject. THACKERAY'S HISTORY OF THE EARL OF [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1834.1 THOUGH several years have elapsed since | ral excellence-the just man made perfect. the publication of this work, it is still, we be- He was in the right when he attempted to esta lieve, a new publication to most of our read-blish an inquisition, and to give bounties for ers. Nor are we surprised at this. The book perjury, in order to get Walpole's head. He is large and the style heavy. The information was in the right when he declared Walpole to which Mr. Thackeray has obtained from the have been an excellent minister. He was in State Paper Office is new, but much of it is to the right when, being in opposition, he mainus very uninteresting. The rest of his narra- tained that no peace ought to be made with tive is very little better than Gifford's or Tom- Spain, till she should formally renounce the line's Life of the Second Pitt, and tells us little right of search. He was in the right when, or nothing that may not be found quite as well being in office, he silently acquiesced in a told in the "Parliamentary History," the "An- treaty by which Spain did not renounce the nual Register," and other works equally com- right of search. When he left the Duke of Newcastle, when he coalesced with the Duke of Newcastle; when he thundered against subsidies, when he lavished subsidies with anexampled profusion; when he execrated the Hanoverian connection; when he declared that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire; he was still invariably speaking the language of a virtuous and enlightened statesman. inon. Almost every mechanical employment, it is said, has a tendency to injure some one or other of the bodily organs of the artisan. Grinders of cutlery die of consumption; weavers are stunted in their growth; and smiths become blear-eyed. In the same manner almost every intellectual employment has a tendency to produce some intellectual malady. Biographers, translators, editors-all, in short, who employ The truth is, that there scarcely ever lived a themselves in illustrating the lives or the person who had so little claim to this sort of writings of others, are peculiarly exposed to praise as Pitt. He was undoubtedly a great the Lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration. man. But his was not a complete and wellBut we scarcely remember ever to have seen proportioned greatness. The public life of a patient so far gone in this distemper as Mr. Hampden, or of Somers, resembles a regular Thackeray. He is not satisfied with forcing drama, which can be criticised as a whole, and us to confess that Pitt was a great orator, a every scene of which is to be viewed in convigorous minister, an honourable and high-nection with the main action. The public life spirited gentleman. He will have it that all virtues and all accomplishments met in his hero. In spite of gods, men, and columns, Pitt must be a poet-a poet capable of producing a heroic poem of the first order; and we are assured that we ought to find many charms in such lines as these: "Midst all the tumults of the warring sphere, My light-charged bark may haply glide; of Pitt, on the other hand, is a rude though striking piece-a piece abounding in incongruities-a piece without any unity of pian, but redeemed by some noble passages, the effect of which is increased by the tameness or extravagance of what precedes and of what follows. His opinions were unfixed. His con. duct at some of the most important conjunctures of his life was evidently determined by Some gale may waft, some conscious thought shall pride and resentment. He had one fault, which cheer, And the small freight unanxious glide." Pitt was in the army for a few months in time of peace. Mr. Thackeray accordingly insists on our confessing that, if the young cornet had remained in the service, he would have been one of the ablest commanders that ever lived. But this is not all. Pitt, it seems, was not merely a great poet in esse, and a great general in posse, but a finished example of mo A History of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, containing his Speeches in Parliament, a considerable portion of his Correspondence when Secretary of State, upon French, Spanish, and American Affairs, never before published; and an account of the principal Events and Persons of his Time, connected with his Life, Sentiments, and Administration. By the Rev. FRANCIS THACKERAY, A.M. 2 vols. 4to. London. 1827.. of all human faults is most rarely found in company with true greatness. He was extremely affected. He was an almost solitary instance of a man of real genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding spirit, without simplicity of character. He was an actor in the closet, an actor at Council, an actor in Parliament; and even in private society he could not lay aside his theatrical tones and attitudes. We know that one of the most distinguished of his partisans often complained that he could never obtain admittance to Lord Chatham's room till every thing was ready for the repre sentation, till the dresses and properties were all correctly disposed, till the light was thrown with Rembrandt-like effect on the head of the illustrious performer, till the flannels had been |