nent ability, and who had received the best information of the hostile intentions, and private intrigues of the court of Spain, proposed in council, an immediate declaration of war against that kingdom. Giving full scope to his patriotism, he warmly exclaimed, "This is the time for humbling the whole house of Bourbon! and if the glorious opportunity is let slip, we shall in vain look for another. Their united power, if suffered to gather strength, will baffle our most vigorous efforts, and possibly plunge us into the gulph of ruin. We must not allow them a moment to breathe. Self-preservation bids us crush them, before they can combine or recollect themselves." This popular minister, however, was over-ruled in the council, all the members of which declared themselves of a contrary opinion, excepting his brother-in-law earl Temple.

Mr Pitt now found the decline of his influence, and it was supposed that the earl of Bute, who had a considerable share in directing the education of the king, had acquired an ascendancy in the royal favor. He therefore haughtily said, "That as he was called to the ministry by the voice of the people, to whom he considered himself as accountable for his conduct, he would no longer remain in a situation, which made him responsible for measures he was no longer allowed to guide."

Mr Pitt, conformable to his declared resolution, carried the seals of his office to the king; not without hopes, as is believed, that he would be desired to retain them. But his majesty re

ceived the seals from his minister with ease and dignity, with a magnanimity equal to his own. He expressed his regret for the loss of so able a servant, at a time when abilities for public business were so much required; but he did not solicit him to resume his office. Little prepared for a behavior so firm, yet full of condescension, the haughty secretary is said to have burst into tears. This was the time for conciliation between the youthful sovereign and his greatest subject, if the highest ability to serve the state can entitle a subject to that distinction. But a subject though a good one, may be too great. The king chose, and perhaps wisely, to abide by the opinion of the majority of his council. He accepted Mr Pitt's resignation, settled upon him a pension of three thousand pounds a-year for three lives, and conferred the title of baroness upon his lady, he himself declining the honor of nobility, but willing that it should descend to his offspring.

These advantages and honors had unquestionably been well deserved by his public services; but his acceptance of them greatly lessened his popularity, and many arts were employed to produce this effect. A very considerable degree of discontent, notwithstanding, prevailed in the nation, on account of his removal from power; and it was certainly extremely natural, that the people should behold, with the utmost regret, the removal of a minister from the direction of public affairs, of whose abilities and integrity they had the highest opinion, and in the midst of a war, which he had conducted with so

much honor to himself and to his country, and in a manner that had excited the astonishment of Europe.

CHAP. LXXXVII.

Character of Mr Pitt.

THE secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind over-awed majesty itself. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, no idle contest for ministerial victories, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great; but over-bearing, persuasive, and intractable, his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished; always seasonable, always adequate, the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardor, and enlightened by prophecy.

The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent were unknown to him. No do

X

mestic difficulties, no domestic weakness reached him; but aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and to decide.

A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents. -His eloquence was an era in the senate, pe culiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. He did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of his mind, which like those of his eye were felt, but could not be followed.

Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilder

ness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe.

CHAP. LXXXVIII.

Lord Chesterfield's Character of Mr Pitt.

MR PITT owed his rise to the most considerable posts and power in this kingdom, singly to his own abilities. In him they supplied the want of birth and fortune, which latter in others too often supply the want of the former, He was a younger brother of a very new family, and his fortune only an annuity of one hundred pounds

a-year.

The army was his original destination, and at cornetcy of horse his first and only commission in it. Thus unassisted by favor or fortune, he had no powerful protector to introduce him into business, and (if I may use that expression) to do the honor of his parts; but their own strength was fully sufficient.

His constitution refused him the usual pleasures, and his genius forbad him the idle dissipations of youth; for so early as the age of sixteen, he was the martyr of an hereditary gout. He therefore employed the leisure which that tedious and painful distemper either procured or allowed him, in acquiring a great fund of premature and useful knowledge. Thus, by the unaccountable