question, Pitt, Fox, and Burke heartily agreed,—although the finest of all Mr. Pitt's speeches were those which he pronounced against it, and although every press and every pulpit in the island habitually cried it down. How are we, then, to account for the extreme tenacity of life which the hateful reptile showed?— how to explain the fact that all those powerful hands fell paralyzed and could not bring it to death? If little honour redounds to the Parliament from this passage in our history, and if it is thus plainly shown that the unreformed House of Commons but ill represented the country, it must also be confessed that Mr. Pitt's conduct gains as little glory from the retrospect. How could he, who never suffered any of his coadjutors, much less his underlings in office, to thwart his will even in trivial matters-he who would have cleared any of the departments of half their occupants, had they presumed to have an opinion of their own upon a single item of any budget, or an article in the year's estimates-how could he, after shaking the walls of the Senate with the thunders of his majestic eloquence, exerted with a zeal which set at defiance all suspicions of his entire sincerity, quietly suffer, that the object, just before declared the dearest to his heart, should be ravished from him when within his sight, nay, within his reach, by the votes of the secretaries and under-secretaries, the puisne lords and the other fry of mere placemen,-the pawns of his board? It is a question often anxiously put by the friends of the Abolition, never satisfactorily answered by those of the Minister; and if any additional comment were wanting on the darkest passage of his life, it is supplied by the ease with which he cut off the Slave traffic of the conquered colonies, an importation of thirty thousand yearly, which he had so long suffered to exist, though an order in Council could any day have extinguished it. This he never thought of till 1805, and then, of course, the instant he chose, he

destroyed it for ever with a stroke of his pen. Again, when the Whigs were in power, they found the total abolition of the traffic so easy, that the measure, in pursuing which Mr. Pitt had for so many long years allowed himself to be baffled, was carried by them with only sixteen dissentient voices in a house of 250 members. There can then, unhappily, be but one answer to the question regarding Mr. Pitt's conduct on this great measure. He was, no doubt, quite sincere, but he was not so zealous as to risk anything, to sacrifice anything, or even to give himself any extraordinary trouble for the accomplishment of his purpose. The Court was decidedly against abolition; Geo. III. always regarded the question with abhorrence, as savouring of innovation,—and innovation in a part of his empire connected with his earliest and most rooted prejudices, the Colonies. The courtiers took, as is their wont, the colour of their sentiments from him. The Peers were of the same opinion. Mr. Pitt had not the enthusiasm for right and justice, to risk in their behalf losing the friendship of the mammon of unrighteousness; and he left to his rivals, when they became his successors, the glory of that triumph in the sacred cause of humanity, which should have illustrated his name, who in its defence had raised all the strains of his eloquence to their very highest pitch.

3.50

MR. CANNING.

WHEN Mr. Pitt, in 1784, stood against the united powers of the Coalition by the support of the court and the people, in debate he had only Mr. Dundas, and occasionally Mr. Wilberforce, to whom he could look for assistance while attacked by Fox, Burke, North, Sheridan, Erskine, Windham. But a younger race afterwards grew up and came to his assistance; and of these Mr. Canning was undoubtedly the first. He was in all respects one of the more remarkable persons who have lived in our times. Born with talents of a high order, these had been cultivated with an assiduity and success which placed him among the accomplished scholars of his day; and he was only inferior to others in the walks of science, from the accident of the studies which Oxford cherished in his time being pointed almost exclusively to classical pursuits. But he was anything rather than a mere scholar. In him were combined lively original fancy -a happily retentive and ready memory-singular powers of lucid statement—and occasionally wit in all its varieties, now biting and sarcastic to annoy, if not to overwhelm an antagonist-now pungent or giving point to an argument-now playful for mere amusement, and bringing relief to a tedious statement, or lending a charm to dry chains of close reasoningErant ea in Philippo quæ, qui sine comparatione illorum spectaret, satis magna dixerit; summa libertas in oratione, multæ facetiæ; satis creber in reprehendendis, solutus in explicandis sententiis; erat etiam imprimis, ut temporibus illis, Græcis doctrinis insti

tutus, in altercando cum aliquo aculeo et maledicto facetus. (CIC., Brutus.) Superficial observers, dazzled by this brilliancy, and by its sometimes being over-indulged, committed their accustomed mistake, and supposed that he who could thus adorn his subject was an amusing speaker only, while he was helping on the argument at every step,—often making skilful statements perform the office of reasoning, and oftener still seeming to be witty when he was merely exposing the weakness of hostile positions, and thus taking them by the artillery of his wit. But in truth his powers of ordinary reasoning were of a very high order, and could not be excelled by the practised master of dialectics. It was rather in the deep and full measure of impassioned declamation in its legitimate combination with rapid argument, the highest reach of oratory, that he failed; and this he rarely attempted. Of his powers of argumentation, his capacity for the discussions of abstract science, his genius for adorning the least attractive subjects, there remains an imperishable record in his celebrated speeches upon the "Currency," of all his efforts the most brilliant and the most happy.

This eminent person was for the most part not the slave of mean or paltry passions, except what flowed from his irritable and impatient temper; but a lofty ambition inspired him; and had he not too early become trained to official habits, he would have avoided the distinguishing and fatal error of his life, an impression which clung to him from the desk, that no one can usefully serve his country, or effectually further his principles, unless he possesses the power which place alone bestows. The traces of this belief are to be seen in many of the most remarkable passages of his life; and it even appears in the song with which he celebrated the praise of his illustrious leader and friend; for he treats as a fall Mr. Pitt's sacrificing power to principle, at a time when, by retiring fro

office, he had earned the applause of millions. Mr. Canning himself gave an example equally signal of abandoning office rather than tarnish his fame; and no act of his life can be cited which sheds a greater lustre on his memory, than his retiring from the Government rather than bear a part in the proceedings against the Queen.

In private society he was amiable and attractive, though, except for a very few years of his early youth, he rarely frequented the circles of fashion, confining his intercourse to an extremely small number of warmly attached friends.* In all the relations of domestic life he was blameless, and was the delight of his family, as in them he placed his own.† His temper, though naturally irritable and uneasy, had nothing petty or spiteful in it; and as no one better knew how and when to resent, so none could more readily or more gracefully forgive.

It is supposed that, from his early acquaintance with Mr. Sheridan and one or two other Whigs, he originally had a leaning towards that side of the question. But he entered into public life at a very early age, under the auspices of Mr. Pitt, to whom he continued steadily attached till his death; accompanying him when he retired from power, and again quitting office upon his decease. His principles were throughout those of a liberal Tory, above the prejudices of the

* It is necessary to state this undoubted fact, that the folly of those may be rebuked who have chosen to represent him as "a great diner-out." It may be safely affirmed that none of those historians of the day ever once saw him at table.

† It is well known how much more attachment was conceived for his memory by his family and his devoted personal friends than by his most staunch political adherents. The friendships of statesmen are proverbially of rotten texture; but it is doubtful if ever this rottenness was displayed in a more disgusting manner than when the puny men of whose nostrils he had been the breath, joined his worst enemies as soon as they had laid him in the grave. It was said by one hardly ever related to him but in open hostility, that "the gallantry of his kindred had rescued his memory from the offices of his friends,”—in allusion to Lord Clanricarde's powerful and touching appeal on that disgraceful occasion.