Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847

With Burke, the impeachment was a vision, half Roman, half Oriental—the august severity of a Roman senate, combining with the mysterious splendour of the throne of Aurungzebe. He was the Cicero impeaching Verres in the presence of the eighteenth century, or a high-priest of some Indian oracle promulgating the decrees of eternal justice to the eastern world.

With Pitt, the whole event was a fortunate diversion of the enemy, a relief from the restless assaults of a Whig opposition, a perpetual drain on Whig strength, and by a result more effective still, a fruitful source of popular ridicule on the lingering impotence of Whig labours.

On the acquittal of Hastings, Burke wrote several letters to Addington as Speaker, which have a tone of the deepest despondency. He writes in the impassioned anguish of a man to whom the earth exhibited but one aspect of despair. They were letters such as Priam might have indited on the night when his Troy was in a blaze. It was evident that the powerful genius of Burke was partially bewildered by the bent of his feelings. He raised an imaginary sepulchre for England on the spot where he had contemplated the erection of a dungeon for Indian crime through all ages to come.

The Indian directors voted Hastings, an annuity of five thousand pounds, which he enjoyed to a very advanced age: yet his acquittal has not received the seal of posterity. A calmer view has regarded him as the daring agent of acts fitter for the meridian of Hindoo morality than European. To serve the struggling interests of the Company seems to have been his highest motive, and there can be no doubt that he served them with equal sagacity and success. That he was a vigorous administrator, an enterprising statesman, and a popular governor, is beyond denial; that he was personally unstained by avarice or extortion, is admitted. But history demands higher proofs of principle; and no governor since his time has ever attempted to imitate his example, or ever ventured to excuse his own errors, by alleging the conduct or the acquittal of Hastings.

There are some men, whom no position can render ridiculous, and there are some quite the reverse: of the latter class was Ferguson of Pitfour. Ferguson's notion of the essential quality of a Lord Advocate was tallness. "We Scotch members," said he, "always vote with the Lord Advocate, and we therefore require to see him in a division. Now I can see Mr Pitt, and I can see Mr Addington, but I cannot see the Lord Advocate." His lordship evidently not rising to Ferguson's regulation size of a statesman.

One evening as Ferguson was taking his dinner in the coffee-room, some one ran in, to say, that "Pitt was on his legs." Every one rose to leave the room, except Ferguson. "What!" said they, "won't you go to hear Mr Pitt?" "No," he replied, "Why should I? do you think Mr Pitt would go to hear me?"

At a dinner given by Dundas, at Wimbledon, where Addington, Sheridan, and Erskine were present, the latter was rallied on his not taking so prominent a part in the debates as his fame required. Sheridan said (with a roughness unusual with him,) "I tell you how it happens: Erskine, you are afraid of Pitt, and that's the flabby part of your character."

This piece of candour, however, was probably owing to the claret. But Erskine's comparative taciturnity in the House may be accounted for on more honourable terms. Erskine was no poltroon: he was the boldest speaker at the bar. But the bar was his place, and no man has ever attained perfection in the two styles of oratory. It is true, that distinguished barristers have sometimes been distinguished in the House of Commons, but they have not been of the race of orators; they have been sharp, shrewd, bitter men, ready on vexatious topics, quick in peevish speech, and willing to plunge themselves into subjects whose labour or license is disdained by higher minds. But Erskine was an orator, vivid, high-toned, and sensitive; shrinking from the common-place subjects which common-place men take up as their natural portion; rather indolent, as is common with men of genius; and rather careless of fame in the senate, from his consciousness of the unquestioned fame which he had already won at the bar.

Of Fox some pretty anecdotes are told, substantiating that eminent man's character for courtesy. One day, as Addington was riding by the grounds of St Ann's Hill, he was seen over the palings by Fox, who called out to him to stop, invited him in, and displayed the beauties of his garden, to which he had always devoted a great deal of care. As Addington particularly admired some weeping ash trees, Fox promised him some cuttings. Some months elapsed, when one evening, Fox, after going through a stormy meeting, in Palace-yard, went up to the Speaker in the chair, and said—"I have not forgotten your cuttings, but have brought them up to town with me," giving him directions at the same time for their treatment. In a few minutes after, he was warmly engaged in debate with Pitt and Burke.

Fox's enjoyment of St Ann's Hill was proverbial. On some one's asking General Fitzpatrick, in the midst of one of the hottest periods of the debates on the French war—Where is Fox? the answer was, "I daresay he is at home, sitting on a hay-cock, reading novels, and watching the jays stealing his cherries."

The year 1796 was a formidable year for England. Prussia and Spain had given up her alliance. Belgium and Holland had been taken possession of by the French. Austria was still firm, but her armies were dispirited, her generals had lost their reputation, her statesmen had been baffled, her finances were supported only by English loans, and France was already by anticipation marking out a campaign under the walls of Vienna. The English Opposition, at once embittered by defeat, and stimulated by a new hope of storming the cabinet, carried on a perpetual assault in the shape of motions for peace. The remnants of Jacobinism in England united their strength with the populace once more; and, taking advantage of the continental defeats, of the general timidity of our allies, and of the apparent hopelessness of all success against an enemy who grew stronger every day, made desperate efforts to reduce the government to the humiliation of a forced treaty of peace.

The necessity for raising eighteen millions, followed by seven millions and a half more, increased the public discontent; and, although the solid strength of England was still untouched, and the real opinion of the country was totally opposed to their rash demands for peace, there can be no question, that the louder voice of the multitude seemed to carry the day. A bad harvest also had increased the public difficulties; and, as if every thing was to be unfortunate at this moment, Admiral Christian's expedition—one of the largest which had ever left an English port, and which was prepared to sweep the French out of the West Indies—sailing in December, encountered such a succession of gales in the chops of the Channel that a great part of this noble armament was lost, and the admiral reached the West Indies with the survivors, only to see them perish by the dreadful maladies of the climate.

But, to complete the general disastrous aspect of affairs, a new phenomenon suddenly blazed over Europe. The year 1796 first saw Napoleon Buonaparte at the head of an army. Passing the Alps on the 9th of April, he fell with such skill and vigour on the Austrian and Italian troops, that in his first campaign he destroyed five successive Austrian armies; broke up the alliances of that cluster of feeble and contemptible sovereignties which had so long disgraced Italy in the eyes of Europe; trampled on their effeminate and debauched population, with the sternness of an executioner rather than the force of a conqueror; and after sending the plunder of their palaces to Paris, in the spirit and with the pomp of the old Roman triumphs, dragged their princes after him to swell his own triumphal progress through Italy.

The war now engrossed every feeling of the nation; and England showed her national spirit in her gallant defiance of the threat of invasion. The whole kingdom was ready to rise in arms on the firing of the first beacon;—men of the highest rank headed their tenantry; men even of those grave and important avocations and offices, which might seem to imply a complete exemption from arms, put themselves at the head of corps in every part of the empire; and England showed her prime minister as Colonel Pitt of the Walmer volunteers, and the speaker of her House of Commons, as Captain Addington of the Woodley cavalry.

But a brilliant change was at hand. In September, Addington received the following note from Pitt, enclosing the bulletin of the battle of the Nile:—

"I have just time to send you the enclosed Bulletin (vive la Marine Anglaise,) and to tell you, that we mean, (out of precaution) the meeting of Parliament for the 6th of November.

"Sir, ever yours, W. P."

The bulletin which gave value to this note, belongs to history, and gives to history one of the noblest events of our naval annals. It exhibits a singular contrast to the present rapidity of communication, that even the "rumour" of Nelson's immortal victory did not reach until fifty-seven days after the event. The Gazette could not be published until the 2d of October.

But the star of Pitt, which had hitherto shone with increasing brightness from year to year, and which had passed through all the clouds of time uneclipsed, was now to wane. The Irish attempt to establish a separate Regency, the Irish Rebellion, and the growing influence of the Popish party, combined with Liberalism in the Irish legislature, had determined Pitt to unite the parliaments of the two kingdoms. For this purpose, he made overtures to the Popish party, whose influence he most dreaded in the Irish House; and, in a species of "understanding" rather than a distinct compact, he proposed to the Popish body the measure which has been subsequently called "Emancipation," with some general intimation of pensioning their priesthood.

The Union was carried; and Lord Castlereagh, who had conducted it in Ireland, was appointed to bring the Popish proposition forward. It had been a subject of deliberation in the cabinet for nearly six months before they mentioned it to the king. His Majesty virtually pronounced it irreconcilable to his conscience; and, after having received the opinion of Lord Kenyon, the chief-justice, in complete confirmation of his own, he sent for the speaker. Pitt had written, in the meantime, to the king, that he must carry the measure or resign. The king then proposed that Addington should take the conduct of the government. On his entreating to decline the proposal, the king said emphatically "Put your hand upon your heart, and ask yourself where I am to turn for support, if you do not stand by me?" Addington then honourably attempted once more to induce Pitt to be reconciled to the king's desire, who replied, as to Addington's taking the cabinet, "I see nothing but ruin if you hesitate." A letter from the king to Pitt still left an opening for his return, but his answer was still inflexible; and, on the 5th of January, 1801, the correspondence was concluded by the royal announcement that "a new arrangement would be made without delay."

The determination of George III. was personal and purely conscientious. An anecdote is given by General Garth strikingly in accordance with this opinion. The General, who was one of the royal equerries, was riding out with the king one day at this time, when his Majesty said to him, "I have not had any sleep this night, and am very bilious and unwell;" he added, "that it was in consequence of Mr Pitt's applying to him on the subject of Catholic Emancipation."

On his arrival at Kew, he desired Garth to read the Coronation Oath, and then followed the exclamation,—"Where is that power on earth to absolve me from the due observance of every sentence of that oath, particularly the one requiring me to maintain the Protestant religion? Was not my family seated on the throne for that express purpose? And shall I be the first to suffer it to be undermined, perhaps overturned? No. I had rather beg my bread from door to door throughout Europe, than consent to any such measure."

This was the language of an honest man, and it was also the language of a wise one. What has the introduction of Papists into parliament occasioned to England, but political confusion? What benefit has it produced to Ireland? No country in the wildest portion of the earth has exhibited a more lamentable picture of insubordination, dissension, and public misery. The peasantry gradually sinking into the most abject poverty; the gentry living on loans; the laws set at defiance; the demand for rents answered by assassination; a fierce faction existing in the bowels of the land, as if for the express purpose of inflaming every passion of an ignorant people into frenzy, and deepening every visitation of nature into national ruin. At this moment, England is paying for the daily food of two millions of people; employing seven hundred thousand labourers, simply to keep them alive; and burthening the most heavily-taxed industry in the world with millions of pounds more, for the sole object of rescuing Ireland from the last extremities of famine.

We take our leave of this most distressing subject, by the obvious remark, that Pitt and the politicians, in treating popery as a political object, have all alike overlooked the true nature of the question. Popery is a religion, and if that religion be false, no crime can be greater in the sight of Heaven, nor more sure to bring evil on man, than to give it any assistance in its temptations, progress, or power, by any means whatever. To propagate a false religion is to declare war against the Divine will, and in that warfare suffering must follow. But what Protestant can have a doubt upon the subject? England may regard herself as signally fortunate, if the just penalty of her weakness is already paid.

Mr Addington's Ministry began auspiciously, with the peace of Amiens. The world was weary of war. France had just learned the power of the British army, by the capture of her army in Egypt; she was without a ship on the seas; Napoleon was desirous of consolidating his power, and ascending a throne; and thus, all interests coinciding, peace was proclaimed.

Lord Sidmouth's life from this period was connected with the highest transactions of the state, until 1822, when he retired from office, followed by the universal respect of the country, and bearing with him into his retirement a conscience as void of offence, as perhaps ever belonged to any Minister of England.

Then followed a period, which might have been regarded as, even here, the fitting reward of such a life. Prom 1822 to 1844, he lived in the enjoyment of health, and that honour, and those troops of friends, which are the noblest human evidence of a well-spent existence.

Old age came on him at last, but with singular gentleness. Some of his maxims exhibit the mild philosophy of his temperament. "In youth," said he, "the absence of pleasure is pain, in age the absence of pain is pleasure." He characteristically observed, "At my age, it strikes me very much, what little proportion there is between man's ambition, and the shortness of his life." Of the wars during his time he said, "I used to think all the sufferings of war lost in its glory; I now consider all its glory lost in its sufferings." In allusion to the desponding tone of some public men, he said, "I have always fought under the standard of hope, and I never shall desert it." At another time, he expressed the truth, which only the wise man feels—"It is a very important part of wisdom, to know what to overlook." He repeated a fine expression of George III, of which he acknowledged the full value,—"Give me the man who judges one human being with severity, and every other with indulgence."

His religious feelings were such as might be expected from his well-spent life,—pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often shall I be with you, my children!"

On the 3d of February, 1844, he was seized with an attack of influenza, which on the 10th became hopeless; and on the 15th he calmly died, in his 87th year.

We have preferred giving an abstract of the leading portions of this able and amiable man's ministerial career, to following it minutely through his later public years, as the earlier were those which decided the character of the whole: and we have also preferred the tracing the course of the individual, to criticisms on the volumes of his biographer. But the work deserves much approval, for its general intelligence, the clearness of its arrangement, and the fulness of its information. It exercises judgment in the spirit of independence, and, expressing its opinions without severity, exhibits the grave sagacity of a man of sense, the style of a scholar, and the temper of a divine.

HOW THEY MANAGE MATTERS IN THE MODEL REPUBLIC

In our last April number—on the appropriate Day of Fools—we laid before our readers a few stray flowers of speech, culled with little labour in that rich garden of oratorical delight—the Congress of the United States. Sweets to the sweet!—We confess that we designed that salutary exposure less for the benefit of our readers and subscribers in the Old World, than of those who are our readers, but not our subscribers, in the New. For, in the absence of an international copyright law, Maga is extensively pirated in the United States, extensively read, and we fear very imperfectly digested. This arrangement appears to us to work badly for all the parties concerned. It robs the British publisher, and impoverishes the native author. As to the American public, if our precepts had exercised any influence upon their practice, they would have learned long ago that ill-gotten goods never prosper, and that they who make booty of other men's wits, are not excepted from the general condemnation of wrong-doers. Some day, perhaps, they will consent to profit by what they prig, and thus, like the fat knight, turn their diseases to commodity—the national disease of appropriation to the commodity of self-knowledge and self-rebuke.

An American journalist, however, has put the matter in quite a new light, so far as we are concerned. Lord Demus, it appears, like other despots, is a hard master, and exacts from his most oppressed slaves a tribute of constant adulation. We, too, are invited to applaud his felonious favours, and assured that the honour and glory of being read by him on his own free and easy terms, is enough for the like of us.

"So long," says the editor of the New York Gazette and Times "as our National Legislature refuses to give the Republic an International Copyright Law, so that American periodicals of a higher class may be supported among us, the English reviews will do the thinking of our people upon a great variety of subjects. They make no money, indeed, directly, by their circulation here; but their conductors cannot but feel the importance, and value the influence of having the whole American literary area to themselves. Blackwood, whose circulation on this side of the Atlantic is, on account of its cheapness, double perhaps that which it can claim in the British islands, is more and more turning its attention to American subjects, which it handles generally with its wonted humorous point, and witty spitefulness."

This is very fine; but we can assure our friendly critic, that we feel no call whatever to undertake the gratuitous direction of the American conscience. Our ambition to "do the thinking" of our Yankee cousins is materially damped by the unpleasant necessity which it involves, of being "done" ourselves. They seem, however, to claim a prescriptive right to the works of the British press, as well as to the funds of the British public. They read our books, on the same principle as they borrow our money, and abuse their benefactors into the bargain with more than Hibernian asperity. After all, however, we believe that the candour of Maga has as much to do with their larcenous admiration of her pages, as the "cheapness" to which our New York editor alludes. To use their own phrase, "they go in for excitement considerable;" and, to be told of their faults, is an excitement which they seldom enjoy at the hands of their own authors. Now, we are accustomed to treat our own public as a rational, but extremely fallible personage, and to think that we best deserve his support, by administering to his failings the language of unpalatable truth. And we greatly mistake the character of Demus, and even of that conceited monster the American Demus,—

 
αγροικοϛ οργην, κυαμοτρωξ, ακραχολοϛ υποκωφοϛ—
 

if this be not the direction in which the interest, as well as the duty, of the public writer lies. Certain it is, that even in the United States those books circulate most freely, which lash most vigorously the vices of the Republic. Honest Von Raumer's dull encomium fell almost still-born from the press, while the far more superficial pages of Dickens and Trollope were eagerly devoured by a people who are daily given to understand, by their own authors, that they are the greatest, the wisest, the most virtuous nation under the sun. Let a European author be never so well disposed towards them, his partial applause contributes but little to their full-blown complacency. But, when they hear that the Republic has been traduced by a foreign, and especially a British pen, their vanity is piqued, their curiosity excited, and their conscience smitten. Every one denounces the libel in public, and every one admits its truth to himself—"What!" say they, "does the Old World in truth judge us thus harshly? Is it really scandalised by such trifles as the repudiation of our debts, and the enslavement of our fellow creatures? Must we give up our playful duels, and our convenient spittoons, before we can hope to pass muster as Christians and gentlemen beyond our own borders? O free Demus! O wise Demus! O virtuous Demus! Will you betake yourself to cleanly, and well-ordered ways at the bidding of this scribbler?" Thus "they eat, and eke they swear;" vowing all the time that they "will horribly revenge." No doubt, however, the bitter pill of foreign animadversion, though distasteful to the palate, relieves the inflation of their stomachs, and leaves them better and lighter than before. But when will a native Aristophanes arise to purge the effeminacy of the American press, and show up the sausage-venders and Cleons of the Republic in their true light? How long will the richest field of national folly in the world remain unreaped, save by the crotchety sickles of dull moralists and didactic pamphleteers?

Not that moral courage is entirely wanting in the United States; but it is a kind of courage altogether too moral, and sadly deficient in animal spirits. The New Englanders especially, set up, in their solemn way, to admonish the vices of the Republic, and to inoculate them with the virulent virtues of the Puritanical school. The good city of Boston alone teems with transcendental schemes for the total and immediate regeneration of mankind. There we find Peace Societies, and New Moral World Societies, and Teetotal Societies, and Anti-Slavery Societies, all "in full blast," each opposing to its respective bane the most sweeping and exaggerated remedies. The Americans never do things by halves; their vices and their virtues are alike in extremes, and the principles of the second book of the Ethics of Aristotle⁵ are altogether unknown to their philosophy. At one moment they are all for "brandy and bitters," at the next, tea and turn-out is the order of the day, Here, you must "liquor or fight"—there, a little wine for the stomach's sake is sternly denied to a fit of colic, or an emergency of gripes. The moral soul of Boston thrills with imaginings of perpetual peace, while St Louis and New Orleans are volcanoes of war. Listen to the voice of New England, and you would think that negro slavery was the only crime of which a nation ever was, or could by possibility be guilty; go to South Carolina, and you are instructed that "the Domestic Institution" is the basis of democratic virtue, the cornerstone of the Republican edifice. Cant, indeed, in one form or other, is the innate vice of the "earnest" Anglo-Saxon mind, on both sides of the Atlantic, and ridicule is the weapon which the gods have appointed for its mitigation. You must lay on the rod with a will, and throw "moral suasion" to the dogs. Above all, your demagogue dreads satire as vermin the avenging thumb—'Any thing but that,' squeaks he, 'an you love me. Liken me to Lucifer, or Caius Gracchus; charge me with ambition, and glorious vices; let me be the evil genius of the commonwealth, the tinsel villain of the political melodrama; but don't threaten me with the fool's cap, or write me down with Dogberry; above all, don't quote me in cold blood, that the foolish people may see, after the fever heat has subsided, what trash I have palmed upon them in the name of liberty!' Yet this is the way, Jonathan, to deal with demagogues. You make too much of yours, man. You are not the blockhead we take you for after all; but you delight to see your public men in motley, and the rogues will fool you to the top of your bent, till it is your pleasure to put down the show. So now that the piper has to be paid, and a lucid interval appears to be dawning upon you, to the pillory at once with these "stump" orators, and pot-house politicians, who have led you into such silly scrapes; turn them about, and look at them well in the rough, that you may know them again when you see them, and learn to avoid for the future their foolish and mischievous counsels.

It is remarkable that while a perception of the ridiculous, perhaps to excess, is characteristic of the British mind, and is at the bottom of many defects in the national manners, commonly attributed to less venial feelings, our Transatlantic descendants err in just the opposite direction. The Americans seldom laugh at any body, or any thing—never at themselves; and this, next to an unfortunate trick of insolvency, and a preternatural abhorrence of niggers, is perhaps the besetting sin of an otherwise "smart" people. As individuals, their peculiarities are not very marked; in truth there is a marvellous uniformity of bad habits amongst them; but when viewed in their collective capacity, whenever two or three of them are gathered together, shades of Democritus! commend us to a seven-fold pocket-handkerchief. The humours of most nations expend themselves on carnivals and feast-days, at the theatre, the ball-room, or the public garden; but the fun of the United States is to be looked for at public meetings, and philanthropical gatherings, in the halls of lyceums, female academies, and legislative bodies. There they spout, there they swell, and cover themselves with adulation as with a garment. From the inauguration of a President, to the anniversary of the fair graduates of the Slickville female Institute, no event is allowed to pass without a grand palaver, in which things in general are extensively discussed, and their own things in particular extensively praised. They got the trick no doubt from us, whose performances in this line are quite unrivalled in the Old World, but they have added to our platform common-places a variety and "damnable iteration" entirely their own. Besides, when Bull is called upon to make an ass of himself on such occasions, he seems for the most part to have a due appreciation of the fact, while Jonathan's imperturbability and apparent good faith are quite sublime. The things that we have been compelled to hear of that "star-spangled banner!"—and all as if they were spoken in real earnest, and meant to be so understood. We look back upon those side-rending moments with a kind of Lucretian pleasure, and indemnify ourselves for past constraint by a hearty guffaw. All this magniloquence and bad taste, however, is intelligible enough. It springs partly from a want of discipline in their society, and partly from the absence of those studies which purify the taste, enlighten the judgment, and make, even dulness respectable. American audiences are not critical—not merely because they are not learned, but because they all take it in turns to be orators, as they do to be colonels of militia and justices of the peace. Thus they learn to bear each other's burdens, and Dulness is fully justified of her children. In a country where all men, at least in theory, are equal, and where every man does in fact exercise a certain influence on public affairs, it is not surprising that a large number of persons should possess a certain facility of public speaking, which even in England is far from universal, and is elsewhere possessed by very few. No man in the United States is deterred from offering his views upon matters of state, by the feeling that neither his education nor his position justify his interference. It is difficult in England to realise the practical equality which obtains as a fundamental principle in the Republic. There every man feels himself to be, and in fact is, or at least may be, a potential unit in the community. As a man, he is a citizen—as a citizen, a sovereign, whose caprices are to be humoured, and whose displeasure is to be deprecated. Judge Peddle, for instance, from the backwoods, is not perhaps as eloquent as Webster, nor as subtile as Calhoun, but he has just as good a right to be heard when he goes up to Congress for all that. Is he not accounted an exemplary citizen "and a pretty tall talker" in his own neighbourhood, and where on "the univarsal airth" would you find a more enlightened public opinion? It would never do to put Peddle down; that would be leze-majesté against his constituents, the sovereign people who dwell in Babylon, which is in the county of Lafayette, on the banks of the Chattawichee. Thus endorsed, Peddle soon lays aside his native bashfulness, and makes the walls of Congress vocal to that bewitching eloquence which heretofore captivated the Babylonish mind. He was "raised a leettle too far to the west of sun-down" to be snubbed by Down-easters, any how; he's a cock of the woods, he is; an "etarnal screamer," "and that's a fact"—with a bowie knife under his waistcoat, and a patent revolver in his coat pocket, both very much at the service of any gentleman who may dispute his claims to popular or personal consideration.