ference. Irritated at this factious conduct on the part of his colleagues, Halifax threw up politics in disgust, and retired to the seclusion of his old Cistercian Abbey. Twice only did he come before the public; once when he spoke in favour of the liberty of the press, and again when he opposed a bill to amend trials for high treason.

The position occupied by Halifax in English politics is unique. We have had men who have been Whigs or Tories, Liberals or Radicals, Conservatives or Republicans; we have had men who have changed their opinions and have ended the opposite to what they began; we have had a class of hesitating politicians called Waverers; but Halifax is our only instance of an acknowledged and systematic Trimmer. At the present day a statesman who held office now in a Tory Cabinet and then in a Whig Cabinet; who advocated Roman Catholic Emancipation when the Whigs were in power and opposed it when the Tories were supreme; who was a friend of the Church of England one moment and a hostile critic the next; and who adapted his principles according to the circumstances surrounding him, would inspire scant faith in the purity of his convictions or the strength of his honesty. Such an one would be rightly deemed an adventurer, a traitor, and a turncoat.

Though Halifax pursued an apparently tortuous

and interested course, still no man was in reality more consistent or straightforward. He lived in an age of passionate excitement, when the most opposite feelings were surging around the bark of the Constitution and threatening to overwhelm her in their angry hostilities. Weighing down the frail vessel to her gunwale, on the one side were Popery, French influence, Barillon bribery, a vicious Court party, injustice, oppression, and despotic measures; on the other side, acting as a counter-weight, were Protestantism, a vindictive patriotism burning with fierce and dangerous hate of France, freedom of thought with a strong leaven of Republicanism, and the schemes of the dynastic intriguer. Between these two sections stood Halifax, the Trimmer.

It was impossible for any man who had the real welfare of the country at heart, whose ambition was above corruption, and whose judgment was free from party prejudice, to occupy in those conflicting times any other position than that of a mediator between the Papist and the Protestant, the Whig and the Tory. Halifax was the middle-man. When in power he had to trim with the opposition in order to check the burning zeal of his colleagues. When in opposition he had to trim with the Government in order to restrain the ardour of the popular party. Hence it was that when Republicans were

persecuted he interested himself in favour of Republicans; when Papists were executed, in favour of Papists; and when Dissenters were oppressed, in favour of Dissenters. Hence it was that when the Duke of York was attacked he opposed the Exclusion Bill. Hence it was that he confronted the despotism of James, and ended by giving in his adhesion to William of Orange. Apparently inconsistent, he was in reality most consistent, for he was always on the side of toleration, justice, and sound freedom.

Yet it so happened that he lived in a peculiar time and under such special circumstances as to be prevented from attaching himself to any one party, and carrying out any one fixed and decided policy. He was, to use his own word, a Trimmer, nor was he ashamed to profess its creed. Among the statesmen of our country the name of Halifax will always occupy a conspicuous position. He was more a speculative philosopher than a man of action: he lacked decision; he was so anxious to be neutral, that his views were sometimes colourless and sophistical; yet it is to his sound judgment, his finely balanced intellect, his exquisite tact, that the England of the present day is deeply indebted for much of the strength and liberality of her institutions, and for much of that harmony which prevails between the executive and legislative powers.

SIR ROBERT WALPOLE,

THE MINISTER OF PEACE.

1676-MARCH 18, 1745.

DURING the last few years the history of our country has been gradually re-written. The mine of literary wealth hid from the eyes of the past generation-our State Papers open to the public, the family documents of our aristocracy and landed gentry now being brought to the light, the labours of foreign critics on special periods of English life, and the rest-has caused English history to enter upon a new phase of its existence. The works of Lord Macaulay, based upon the pamphlet literature of centuries, are read by all who prefer brilliancy of style to accuracy of statement. The historian of the Norman Conquest has given us a new reading of the period preceding the compilation of Domesday, and has shown us how little is the value to be attached to the text-books and histories of the days of our youth. Mr. Stubbs, raking amid ancient parchments and other anti

quarian treasure-trove, has thrown a new light upon our early constitutional history. Mr. Froude has retold the story of the Reformation-of its originators, abettors, and opponents. Mr. Gardiner, busy among the national archives, has written the lives of the first two Stuarts who succeeded to the English throne. The late Earl Stanhope, from his own family manuscripts, has added much that was new to the Hanoverian period. Other writers, in their essays and biographies, have carried on the same good work of studying original authorities, weighing carefully disputed statements, and scrupulously avoiding second-hand references, until the history of England has emerged from the inquiry in such a condition as scarcely to be recognised by Kemble, Sharon Turner, Hume, Rapin, and our old friend Mrs. Markham. Statements which we have always regarded as facts are proved to be false; events which, with their dates, we have religiously acquired, are said never to have occurred; illustrious men, whose lives and deeds are graven on our memory, appear now to have never existed; and what with battles that have never been fought, invasions that never took place, laws that were never passed, and speeches that were never made, the amount that an elderly man at the present day has to unlearn is as difficult as it is disheartening.

But perhaps the chief feature in this new render