ing and obvious characteristic, if we omitted to mention Pitt's well-managed shyness and his surpassing pride.

In all descriptions of Pitt's appearance in the House of Commons, a certain aloofness fills an odd space. He is a 'thing apart,' different somehow from other members. Fox was the exact opposite. He was a good fellow; he rolled into the House, fat, good-humoured, and popular. Pitt was spare, dignified, and reserved. When he entered the House, he walked to the place of the Premier, without looking to the right or to the left, and he sat at the same place. He was ready to discuss important business with all proper persons, upon all necessary occasions; but he was not ready to discuss business unnecessarily with anyone, nor did he discuss anything but business with any save a very few intimate friends, with whom his reserve at once vanished, and his wit and humour at once expanded, and his genuine interest in all really great subjects was at once displayed. In a popular assembly this sort of reserve rightly manipulated is a power. It is analogous to the manner which the accomplished author of Eöthen' recommends in dealing with Orientals: 'it excites terror and inspires respect.' A recent book of memoirs illustrates it. During Addington's administration, a certain rather obscure Mr. G.' was made a privy-councillor, and the question was raised in Pitt's presence as to the mode in which he could have obtained that honour. Some one said, 'I suppose he was always talking to the Premier, and bothering him.' Mr. Pitt quietly observed, 'In my time I would much rather have made him a privy-councillor than have spoken to him.' It is easy to conceive the mental exhaustion which this well-managed reserve spared him, the number of trivial conversations which it economised, the number of imperfect ambitions which it quelled before they were uttered. An ordinary man could not of course make use of it. But Pitt at the earliest period imparted to the House of Commons the two most important convictions for a member in his position: he convinced them that he would not be the King's creature, and that he

desired no pecuniary profit for himself. As he despised royal favour and despised real money, the House of Commons thought he might well despise them.

We have left ourselves no room to speak of Mr. Pitt's policy at the time of the French Revolution. It would require an essay of considerable length to do it substantial justice. But we may observe, that the crisis which that revolution presented to an English statesman was one rather for a great dictator than for a great administrator. The English people were at first in general pleased with the commencement of the French Revolution. 'Anglo-manie,' it seemed, had been prevalent on the Continent; the English constitution it was hoped would be transplanted; the fundamental principles of the English Revolution it was, at any rate, hoped, would be imitated. The essay of Burke by its arguments, the progress of events by an evident experience, proved that such would not be the history. What was to come was uncertain. There was no precedent on the English file; the English people did not know what they ought to think; they were ready to submit to anyone who would think for them. The only point upon which their opinion was decided was, that the French Revolution was very dangerous; that it had produced awful results in France; that it was no model for imitation for sober men in a sober country. They were ready to concede anything to a statesman who allowed this, who acted on this, who embodied this in appropriate action.

Mr. Pitt saw little further than the rest of the nation; what the French Revolution was he did not understand; what forces it would develop he did not foresee; what sort of opposition it would require he did not apprehend. He was, indeed, on one point much in advance of his contemporaries. The instinct of uncultivated persons is always towards an intemperate interference with anything of which they do not approve. A most worthy police-magistrate in our own time said, that 'he intended to put down suicide.' The English people, in the very

same spirit of uncultured benevolence, wished to put down the French Revolution.' They were irritated at its excesses; they were alarmed at its example; they conceived that such impiety should be punished for the past and prohibited for the future. Mr. Pitt's natural instinct, however, was certainly in an entirely opposite direction. He was by inclination and by temperament opposed to all war; he was very humane, and all war is inhuman; he was a great financier, and all war is opposed to well-regulated finance. He postponed a French war as long as he could; he consented to it with reluctance, and continued it from necessity.

Of the great powers which the sudden excitement of democratic revolution would stimulate in a nation seemingly exhausted, Mr. Pitt knew no more than those who were around him. Burke said that, as a military power, France was 'blotted from the map of Europe;' and though Pitt, with characteristic discretion, did not advance any sentiment which would be so extreme, or any phrase which would adhere so fixedly to everyone's memory, it is undeniable that he did not anticipate the martial power which the new France, as by magic, displayed; that he fancied she would be an effete country; that he fancied he was making war with certain scanty vestiges of the ancien régime, instead of contending against the renewed, excited, and intensified energies of a united people. He did not know that, for temporary purposes, a revolutionary government was the most powerful of all governments; for it does not care for the future, and has the entire legacy of the past. He forgot that it was possible, that from a brief period of tumultuous disorder, there might issue a military despotism more compact, more disciplined, and more overpowering than any which had preceded it, or any which has followed it.

But, as we have said, the conclusion of a prolonged article is no place for discussing the precise nature of Mr. Pitt's antirevolutionary policy. Undoubtedly, he did not comprehend

the Revolution in France; as Lord Macaulay has explained, with his habitual power, he over-rated the danger of a revolution in this country; he entirely over-estimated the power of the democratic assailants, and he entirely under-estimated the force of the conservative, maintaining, restraining, and, if need were, reactionary, influence. He saw his enemy;— he did not see his allies. But it is not given to many men to conquer such difficulties; it is not given to the greatest of administrators to apprehend entirely new phenomena. A highly imaginative statesman, a man of great moments and great visions, a greater Lord Chatham, might have done so, but the educated sense and equable dexterity of Mr. Pitt failed. All that he could do he did. He burnt the memory of his own name into the Continental mind. After sixty years, the French people still half believe that it was the gold of Pitt which caused many of their misfortunes; after half a century it is still certain that it was Pitt's indomitable spirit and Pitt's hopeful temper which was the soul of every continental coalition, and the animating life of every anti-revolutionary movement. He showed most distinctly how potent is the influence of a commanding character just when he most exhibited the characteristic limitation of even the best administrative intellect.

157

BOLINGBROKE AS A STATESMAN.

[1863.]

WHO now reads Bolingbroke? was asked sixty years ago. Who knows anything about him? we may ask now. Professed students of our history or of our literature may have special knowledge; but out of the general mass of educated men, how many could give an intelligible account of his career? How many could describe even vaguely his character as a statesman? Our grandfathers and their fathers quarrelled for two generations as to the peace of Utrecht, but only an odd person here and there could now give an account of its provisions. The most cultivated lady would not mind asking, The peace of Utrecht! yes-what was that?' Whether Mr. St. John was right to make that peace; whether Queen Anne was right to create him a peer for making it; whether the Whigs were right in impeaching him for making it the mass of men have forgotten. So is history unmade. Even now, the dust of forgetfulness is falling over the Congress of Vienna and the peace of Paris; we are forgetting the last great pacification as we have wholly forgotten the pacification before that; in another fifty years' Vienna' will be as 'Utrecht,' and Wellington be no more than Marlborough.

In the meantime, however, Mr. Macknight has done well to collect for those who wish to know them the principal events of Bolingbroke's career. There was no tolerable outline of them before, and in some respects this is a good one. Mr. Mac

The Life of Henry St. John Viscount Bolingbroke, Secretary of State in the reign of Queen Anne. By Thomas Macknight, author of the History of the Life and Times of Edmund Burke.