PITT's official career as Paymaster of the Forces was marked by a contempt of gain, unfortunately very rare among the politicians of his time. The emoluments of the office were principally derived from certain perquisites, such as the interest of a large sum of money which the Paymaster was allowed to hold in his hands, and an allowance on the subsidies granted by Parliament to foreign Powers. These he absolutely refused to accept. He would take nothing but the moderate salary attached to the post. Such conduct showed that he was proof against all sordid temptations, if not exempt from the "last infirmity of noble minds." But, in truth, it would be unfair to judge his conduct in accepting a place from Pelham, by the moral standard we now apply to English statesmen. The distinctions of Party were still obscure. The principles which should govern ministerial policy were still undefined, and it was considered no disgrace to support, when in office, the measures which had been denounced when the speaker was in opposition. We nowadays profess to embody our political doctrine in the maxim, "Measures not Men," though our actions frequently ill-accord with our profession; but in the Hanoverian reign the politician's watchword was "Men not Measures." It is to the honour of Pitt that, on the whole, he rose superior to his contemporaries in the motives

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which guided his political conduct; and that he consistently adhered to a course actuated by a steadfast regard for the national interests; though apt, on minor points, to yield to passing impulses and personal considerations.

For eight years peace reigned in the English Cabinet, which Pelham guided with a prudence and a skill not always acknowledged by historians. The Opposition dwindled into the shadow of a shade; the death of Prince Frederick of Wales in 1756 depriving it of its last feeble prop. The country daily increased in prosperity and contentment; and even in the Scottish Highlands the influence of law and order was making itself felt. Had Pelham lived, this halycon condition of affairs might have lasted still longer. As an administrator he displayed great ability, but much of the success of his Government was due to the eagerness with which, unlike Walpole, he endeavoured to secure the co-operation of the ablest. He gave reason to none to attach themselves to the Opposition. And he had no cause to fear that any of them would supplant him. He knew that their mutual jealousies constituted a sufficient safeguard. Thus, Harry Fox and Murray and Pitt, though differing widely in feelings and sentiments, readily acted under his supremacy, while neither would have yielded to the dictation of the others.

William Murray, afterwards Earl of Mansfield, was scarcely inferior, perhaps, to Pitt himself in intellectual power; but he had none of his enthusiasm, energy, courage, and resolution. A similar distinction was to be seen in their oratory. Murray excelled in lucidity

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of statement and force of argument; but he was incapable of those bursts of glowing eloquence with which his great rival awed or charmed the House of Commons.* His oratory resembled a full and tranquil river, which rolls onward with even current, always transparent, and never chafed by rock or tempest; Pitt's was like a mighty torrent, which was sometimes turbid and obscure, sometimes spent itself in wayward digressions, but when it poured forth in all its strength was irresistible. Horace Walpole, on hearing the two orators some years before, had remarked, "In all appearance they will be great rivals;" and Murray would probably have run his competitor close in the race for power had he not, with characteristic caution, abandoned the political for the judicial career, and became Chief Justice instead of First Lord of the Treasury. The change was one for which England had reason to be grateful; since in Lord Mansfield we must recognise the founder of our commercial law.

Murray was born in the ancient palace of Scone, near Perth, on the 2nd of March, 1705. He was the eleventh child of the fifth Viscount Stourmont, a Scotch nobleman of ancient blood, but small estate. In 1718 he was sent to Westminster School, then under the mastership of Atterbury, and in 1723 he entered Christ

His eloquence was of an argumentative metaphysical cast," says Lord Shelburne," and his great art always appeared to me to be to watch his opportunity to introduce a proposition unperceived, when his cause was ever so bad, afterwards found a true argument upon it, of which nobody could be more capable, and then give way to his imagination in which he was by no means wanting, nor in scholarship, particularly classical learning, thanks to Westminster."-(Life, by Lord E. Fitzmaurice, i. 88).

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Church, Oxford, with a foundation scholarship. In 1724, through the liberality of Lord Foley, he became a member of Lincoln's Inn, and six years later he was called to the bar. For a time he worked hard and suffered much; but gradually his remarkable abilities obtained a wide recognition, and his skilful conduct of one or two difficult cases placed him, in 1738, at the head of the bar. In the same year he married Lady Elizabeth Finch, a daughter of the Earl of Winchelsea. The marriage was a happy one, and it materially assisted Murray's advancement. In 1742 he was appointed Solicitor-General, and entered the House of Commons; where his persuasive eloquence and rare mental gifts soon gave him a prominent position. In 1754 he succeeded to the office of Attorney-General and undertook the leadership of the House of Commons.

Pitt's other rival, Henry Fox, has suffered considerably in renown through the greater and more enduring fame of his illustrious son, Charles James Fox, the Whig champion of "peace, of truth, and of liberty."

Henry Fox, the son of Sir Stephen Fox, was born in the same year as Murray, and belonged to the same college at Oxford. But while Murray's youth was laborious and distinguished, Fox's was sullied by the wildest dissipation, which so impaired his moderate fortune that he was compelled to retire to the Continent. Having secured the favour of Lord Sunderland by his social fascinations and his abilities, he was returned to Parliament in 1735 as member for Hindon. From the

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first he seems, as Chesterfield says, to have had not the least notion of a regard for the public good or the constitution, but despised their cares as the objects of narrow minds. Hence he never won the confidence of the people, though he contrived to hold office in a large number of administrations, Whig and Tory. Adopting the side of Sir Robert Walpole, he obtained in 1737 the place of Surveyor at the Board of Works. On Walpole's retirement he rose to a Lordship of the Treasury. His political influence being increased, in 1744, by his clandestine marriage with Lady Charlotte Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond, he became, two years later, Secretary at War; an office which he held throughout the Pelham administration. Fox was an able debater and a politician of great sagacity; courageous, prompt and resolute, of a fine temper, and as true a friend as he was a thorough-going partisan. No man, it has been said, was more warmly or justly beloved by his family or by his associates. He might have risen to the foremost place in the State but for his want of political morality, and his confusion of Statecraft with Statesmanship. "He had been trained," says Macaulay, "in a bad political school-in a school, the doctrines of which were, that political virtue is the mere coquetry of political prostitution, that every patriot has his price, that Government can be carried on only by means of corruption, and that the State is given as a prey to statesmen."

On the death of Pelham, March 6th, 1754, the long truce which had been maintained between the rival politicians