principles proves how little they were really to be feared. The great bulk of the people of England detested them, and the more they were known, the less likely they were to prevail. The revolutions of foreign countries are not an example but a warning to England, and their results, far from inviting, repel us.

The public calamities reached the highest pitch in 1797. Hoche threatened the invasion of Ireland, which was the scene of constant treason and incessant rebellion. A party of French marauders landed in Pembrokeshire. The Austrians, abandoned by Germany and defeated by the young conqueror of Italy, signed the preliminaries of Leoben. The drain upon the Bank of England was such that, on the 26th February, Pitt caused the King to pass an order in Council prohibiting the directors from further cash payments. Lord Stanhope observes that nothing but a most energetic determination on the part of the Executive Government could have saved the Bank, or in its train the State, from insolvency. But what is the distinction here drawn between a suspension of cash payments and an actual insolvency? It mattered nothing that 3,800,000l. still remained in the Bank, if no one conld receive anything but a note of paper. National bankruptcy was averted, not by the issue of inconvertible paper in 1797, but by the resumption of cash payments in 1820. For twenty years, the State and the Bank of England compelled their creditors to accept an inconvertible promise to pay for a payment."

Yet even this form of national bankruptcy was not the greatest peril that befell the country. In the month of April in the same year, the fleet mutinied, first at Portsmouth, and afterwards at Sheerness, and for several weeks the right arm of England was not only powerless, but turned against herself. Lord Stanhope's narrative of the mutiny at the Nore is extremely animated and interesting. But here again, we must remark that this formidable occurrence,

* Mr. Pitt seems to have been taken by surprise by the announcement of impending insolvency first made to him by the Bank Directors on the 21st February. Lord Stanhope supposes, on the authority of the financial statement made to the Houses of Parliament, that there remained to the Bank on the 25th February a clear surplus of 3,800,000l. But it was shown at the time by Mr. Allerdyce, a Member of the Committee, that the real amount of cash in the Bank on the evening of the 25th February was 1,272,000l., from which a sum of nearly 200,000l. seems to have been abstracted on the 28th February. The statement put forth to show that the Bank 'was in the most affluent and prosperous situation,' was utterly worthless and delusive.

which has been truly described as the darkest day in our annals, was due far more to the brutal injustice and incapacity of the Admiralty than to any disloyal or treasonable spirit among the seamen. They no doubt took a highly culpable method of extorting redress for their grievances, but their grievances were real and intolerable. No increase of pay to the fleet, and no improvements in the service, had taken place since the reign of Charles II. The complaints of the men had been treated with scorn, and we cannot entirely acquit the Prime Minister of that 'gross ignorance or gross unconcern' which Lord Stanhope imputes to the admirals on active service on this occasion. It is obviously the duty of the Prime Minister of this country to have his eye on every branch of the public service to know its wants and the manner of providing for them and not suddenly to find himself in presence of such events as a suspension of cash payments and a mutiny of the fleet.

One quality Mr. Pitt possessed which no one has ever called in question. Throughout these extraordinary trials, his indomitable courage and composure never for one hour forsook him; and it is that, more than any other element of his character, which places him on a pinnacle of greatness and endears him for ever to Englishmen. He had shown it in his early youth when he faced the Coalition. He showed it again when the madness of the King tossed everything into confusion, and when a few days more would have thrown the supreme power into the hands of a profligate prince, and of his own political enemies. In presence of these tremendous events, Mr. Pitt stood unmoved at the helm of the state, as if he had taken for his motto those words of adamantine import, He that endureth 'to the end shall be saved!'

Mr. Pitt was at length convinced, as the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel were convinced thirty years afterwards, that the policy of resistance and repression had its limits, and that these principles of government could never restore peace to Ireland or strength to that portion of the empire. The administration of Lord Camden and the fanatical bigotry of the Protestant party, then in exclusive possession of power at Dublin, had driven that island to a state of actual rebellion, and caused many of her most ardent sons to enter into treasonable correspondence with France. In 1798, Pitt changed the Irish policy of his Government, to the dismay of those who had hitherto been the chief instruments of the former system. The appointment of Lord Cornwallis to the LordLieutenancy was the first step in this new direction. That nobleman entered upon his painful and onerous task with

sentiments of humanity and moderation, which now stand recorded in his published correspondence to his immortal honour; and we learn from the Auckland Letters that his policy was viewed from the first with suspicion and hatred by such men as Mr. Beresford and Lord Clare. But Mr. Pitt had framed a design which they were unable to comprehend, and he was resolved to execute it by the sacrifice of the long-cherished prejudices of his adherents, or even, as the result proved, by the sacrifice of his own power. The union of Ireland to the United Kingdom was this great and difficult enterprise; and partly by the purchase of the borough interest, partly by the conciliatory tone of Lord Cornwallis to the Roman Catholics, it was at length carried. But even here, and in the hour of success, the ill fortune which beset so many of Mr. Pitt's best concerted plans, marred the consummation of the measure, and indefinitely postponed that act of justice to the Irish Catholics which was an essential part of it. The secret influences which had more than once opposed the prejudices of the King to the wisdom of his Minister were unscrupulously employed, and with such effect, that the mind of George III. was unhinged, his life was in danger, and the Government itself was overthrown.

Mr. Pitt may perhaps be accused on this occasion, as Sir Robert Peel was accused in 1845, of a want of confidence in those persons who conceived that they had a claim to a full measure of it. He neglected to prepare the mind of the King during the autumn of 1800 for the plan which had been for some time in contemplation; and this silence was turned to fatal account by men, who were bound at least by the ties of personal friendship and official duty not to cabal against the Minister whom they served. Of these, Lord Clare, Lord Loughborough, and Lord Auckland were the most influential. We think it is proved that Lord Clare was the person who first roused the scruples of the King as to his Coronation oath: it was Lord Loughborough who took advantage of his stay with the King at Weymouth in September 1800 to poison his mind against the measures about to be proposed by the Prime Minister; it was Lord Auckland who aided the correspondence, and brought the Archbishop of Canterbury, his brother-in-law, to aid in the plot.

The Editor of the Auckland Papers' has attempted in the forty-second chapter of that work (vol. iv. p. 113.), to refute these charges, at least as far as Lord Auckland is concerned. But so far is he from having succeeded in this task that he has brought to light the most decisive evidence of the truth of them, under the hand of Mr. Pitt himself.

Mr. Pitt had very little intercourse with Lord Auckland in the summer and autumn of 1800, although that nobleman had been actively employed by him in preparing the commercial conditions of the Union in the preceding year. But at the close of an insignificant letter from Lord Loughborough to Lord Auckland, dated from Weymouth, 20th September, 1800, we remark the following strange sentence:

Your very private article is very generally whispered, and I believe with foundation.'

It is highly probable that this expression relates to the view taken by Pitt of the Catholic question. Mr. Pitt's letter to Lord Loughborough summoning him to attend a Cabinet on the subject, was dated ten days later, on the 30th September. It was not, however, until the month of January following that Mr. Pitt resolved formally to communicate his policy to the King. At the last moment Lord Auckland addressed to him a vehement appeal to divert him from his purpose, to which Mr. Pitt returned the following answer :

Private.

'Downing Street, Saturday, January 31. 1801, 8 P.M. 'My dear Lord, I have many reasons for not wishing to say much in answer to your letter of this morning. Widely as we differ on the subject itself which led to it, I am afraid we should differ at least as much as to the question on which side there had been a failure of friendship, confidence, or attention in reference to this business. I feel this so strongly that I will not dwell upon it. Nothing belonging to this occurrence, painful as it is to my personal feelings, with respect to yourself, can make me forget how long and how sincerely I have been affectionately yours

(Auckland Papers, vol. iv. p. 125.)

'W. PITT.'

After the production of such a document, it is absurd to contend that the charges against Lord Auckland in this transaction. rest on the loose statements of Lord Malmesbury. They rest on the positive and final judgment of Mr. Pitt, who thenceforward never renewed his acquaintance with the man who had made the Coalition of 1783; who had afterwards attempted to reconcile Lord Shelburne, alternately if not simultaneously, with Lord North and with Mr. Fox; who had then deserted the Whigs for the service of Pitt; and who ended by caballing against the wise and conciliatory policy of his friend and benefactor.*

* It deserves remark that Lord Auckland in the course of his long and servile official life never reached the Cabinet. When Lord

We have confined ourselves on the present occasion to those parts of Mr. Pitt's career on which some new light has been thrown by recent publications, and we shall not now revert to the questions raised by Mr. Pitt's resignation, and by his relations to the Minister who succeeded him. The fourth volume of Lord Stanhope's work, in which these transactions are related, down to the close of Mr. Pitt's life, is fully equal, if not superior, to the preceding volumes; and although we have stated reasons for differing from some of the noble biographer's views, which he himself admits to be somewhat biassed by early associations and by constant veneration for his illustrious kinsman, we are most anxious to do justice to the dignified and dispassionate spirit which he displays throughout his work.

În conclusion we will only advert to an opinion expressed by Lord Stanhope, that if Mr. Pitt had been able to meet Parliament in 1806 in tolerably good health, his ministry would have recovered its former power and durability. We cannot think so. Upon his return to office in 1804 he stood between two parties in Parliament, that of Fox and Lord Grenville, still proscribed by the King, that of Addington and the old Tories, ever ready, as was shown by actual experiment, to fly off from him. His own attempts alternately to ally himself with one or the other of these parties, prove how difficult he thought it to maintain himself in opposition to both of them. But, on the other hand, conscious of his own importance, he was less than ever disposed to make fresh sacrifices to the demands of the King, and to the exigencies of the old Tory party acting with Lord Sidmouth. If he had lived,' said Lord Sheffield at the time, he would have been liable to 'mortification too great for his haughty spirit to bear, and the 'country would have sunk under parliamentary wrangles.' The enchanter's wand, which had so long swayed the tempests of the State, was broken. And although Mr. Pitt died at forty-six, before the dawn of peace and independence was discernible on the horizon of Europe, we believe that his work was accomplished, and that a prolonged tenure of office would have added nothing to his fame.

Grenville and Mr. Fox entered into negotiations in 1806 on the formation of the Ministry of all the talents, each of those statesmen said to the other that there was one man they wished to exclude from the Cabinet. Both named their man- and both named Lord Auckland.