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    NEW YORK & LONDON
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    The Knickerbocker Press
    1884




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CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE
    WILLIAM PITT                                                       1

    WILLIAM PITT                                                      19
        ON HIS REFUSAL TO NEGOTIATE WITH NAPOLEON BONAPARTE; HOUSE
          OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 3, 1800.

    CHARLES JAMES FOX                                                 99

    CHARLES JAMES FOX                                                108
        ON THE REJECTION OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE’S OVERTURES OF
          PEACE; HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 3, 1800.

    SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH                                             176

    SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH                                             185
        IN BEHALF OF FREE SPEECH. ON THE TRIAL OF JEAN PELTIER,
          ACCUSED OF LIBELLING NAPOLEON BONAPARTE; COURT OF
          KING’S BENCH, FEBRUARY 21, 1803.

    LORD ERSKINE                                                     262

    LORD ERSKINE                                                     273
        ON THE LIMITATIONS OF FREE SPEECH; DELIVERED IN 1797
          ON THE TRIAL OF WILLIAMS FOR PUBLICATION OF PAINE’S
          “AGE OF REASON.”




WILLIAM PITT.


The younger Pitt was the second son of Lord Chatham, and was seven
years of age when his father in 1766 was admitted to the peerage. The
boy’s earliest peculiarity was an absorbing ambition to become his
father’s successor as the first orator of the day. His health, however,
was so delicate as to cause the gravest apprehensions. Stanhope tells
us that before he was fourteen “half of his time was lost through ill
health,” and that his early life at Cambridge was “one long disease.”
There is still extant a remarkable letter that reveals better than any
thing else the fond hopes of the father and the physical discouragement
as well as the mental aspirations of the son. Chatham wrote: “Though
I indulge with inexpressible delight the thought of your returning
health, I cannot help being a little in pain lest you should make more
haste than good speed to be well. How happy the task, my noble, amiable
boy, to caution you only against pursuing too much all those liberal
and praiseworthy things, to which less happy natures are perpetually
to be spurred and driven. I will not tease you with too long a lecture
in favor of inaction and a competent stupidity, your two best tutors
and companions at present. You have time to spare; consider, there
is but the Encyclopædia, and when you have mastered that, what will
remain?” The intimations of precocity here given were fully justified
by the extraordinary progress made by the boy notwithstanding his
bodily ailments. He entered the University of Cambridge at fourteen,
and such was his scholarship at that time that his tutor wrote: “It is
no uncommon thing for him to read into English six or eight pages of
Thucydides which he had not previously seen, without more than two or
three mistakes, and sometimes without even one.”

At the university, where he remained nearly seven years, his course
of study was carried on strictly in accordance with his father’s
directions and was somewhat peculiar. His most ardent devotion was
given to the classics; and his method was that to which his father
always attributed the extraordinary copiousness and richness of his
own language. After looking over a passage so as to become familiar
with the author’s thought, he strove to render it rapidly into elegant
and idiomatic English, with a view to reproducing it with perfect
exactness and in the most felicitous form. This method he followed for
years till, according to the testimony of his tutor, Dr. Prettyman,
when he had reached the age of twenty, “there was scarcely a Greek or
Latin writer of any eminence _the whole of whose works_ Mr. Pitt had
not read to him in this thorough and discriminating manner.” This was
the laborious way in which he acquired that extraordinary and perhaps
unrivalled gift of pouring out for hour after hour an unbroken stream
of thought without ever hesitating for a word or recalling a phrase
or sinking into looseness or inaccuracy of expression. The finest
passages even of the obscurer poets he copied with care and stored
away in his memory; and thus he was also qualified for that aptness of
quotation for which his oratory was always remarkable.

With his classical studies Pitt united an unusual aptitude and
fondness for the mathematics and for logic. To both of these he gave
daily attention, and before he left the university, according to the
authority above quoted, he was master in mathematics of every thing
usually known by young men who obtain the highest academical honors.
In logic, Aristotle was his master, and he early acquired the habit
of applying the principles and methods of that great logician to a
critical examination of all the works he studied and the debates he
witnessed. It was probably this course of study which gave him his
unrivalled power in reply. While still at Cambridge it was a favorite
employment to compare the great speeches of antiquity in point of
logical accuracy, and to point out the manner in which the reasoning
of the orator could be met and answered. The same habit followed him
to London and into Parliament. His biographers dwell upon the fact,
that whenever he listened to a debate he was constantly employed in
detecting illogical reasoning and in pointing out to those near him
how this argument and that could easily be answered. Before he became
a member of Parliament, he was in the habit of spending much time in
London and in listening to the debates on the great subjects then
agitating the nation. But the speeches of his father and of Burke, of
Fox, and of Sheridan seemed to interest him chiefly as an exercise for
his own improvement. His great effort was directed to the difficult
process of retaining the long train of argument in his mind, of
strengthening it, and of pointing out and refuting the positions that
seemed to him weak.

It would be incorrect to leave the impression that these severe courses
of study were not intermingled with studies in English literature,
rhetoric, and history. We are told that “he had the finest passages
of Shakespeare by heart,” that “he read the best historians with
care,” that “his favorite models of prose style were Middleton’s Life
of Cicero, and the historical writings of Bolingbroke,” and that
“on the advice of his father, for the sake of a copious diction, he
made a careful study of the sermons of Dr. Barrow.” Making all due
allowance for the exaggerative enthusiasm of biographers, we are still
forced to the belief that no other person ever entered Parliament with
acquirements and qualifications for a great career equal on the whole
to those of the younger Pitt.

The expectations formed of him were not disappointed. It has frequently
happened that members of Parliament have attained to great and
influential careers after the most signal failures as speakers in
their early efforts. But no such failure awaited Pitt. He entered
the House of Commons in 1781, at the age of twenty-two, and became a
member of the opposition to Lord North, under the leadership of Burke
and Fox. His first speech was in reply to Lord Nugent on the subject
of economic reform, a matter that had been brought forward by Burke.
Pitt had been asked to speak on the question; but, although he had
hesitated in giving his answer, he had determined not to participate in
the debate. His answer, however, was misunderstood, and therefore at
the close of a speech by Lord Nugent, he was vociferously called upon
by the Whig members of the House. Though taken by surprise, he finally
yielded and with perfect self-possession began what was probably the
most successful _first_ speech ever given in the House of Commons.
Unfortunately it was not reported and has not been preserved. But
contemporaneous accounts of the impression it made are abundant. Not
only was it received with enthusiastic applause from every part of the
House; but Burke greeted him with the declaration that he was “not
merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.” When some
one remarked that Pitt promised to be one of the first speakers ever
heard in Parliament, Fox replied, “He is so already.” This was at the
proudest era of British eloquence, and when Pitt was but twenty-two.

During the session of 1781–82 the powers of Burke, Fox, and Pitt
were united in a strenuous opposition to the administration of Lord
North. After staggering under their blows for some weeks, the ministry
fell, and Lord North was succeeded by Rockingham in February of 1782.
Rockingham’s ministry, however, was terminated by the death of its
chief after a short period of only thirteen weeks. Lord Shelburne
was appointed his successor, and he chose Pitt as the Chancellor of
the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Thus Burke and
Fox were passed by, and not only the responsible leadership of the
Commons, but also the finances of the empire, were entrusted to a
youth of twenty-three. The reason of this preference certainly was
not an acknowledged pre-eminence of Pitt; but rather in the attitude
he had assumed in the course of his attacks on the administration
of North. He had not inveighed against the king, but had attached
all the responsibility of mismanagement to the ministry, where the
Constitution itself places it. Fox, on the other hand, had allowed
himself to be carried forward by the impetuosity of his nature, and had
placed the responsibility where we now know it belonged—upon George
III. The consequence had been that the enraged king would not listen
to the promotion of Fox, though by constitutional usage he was clearly
entitled to recognition. That Fox was offended was not singular, but it
is impossible even for his most ardent admirers to justify the course
he now determined to take. He had been the most bitter opponent of
Lord North. He had denounced him as “the most infamous of mankind,”
and as “the greatest criminal of the state.” He had declared of his
ministry: “From the moment I should make any terms with one of them, I
should rest satisfied to be called the most infamous of mankind.” He
had said only eleven months before: “I could not for a moment think of
a coalition with men who, in every public and private transaction as
ministers, have shown themselves void of every principle of honor and
honesty.”[A] And yet, notwithstanding these philippics, which almost
seem to have been delivered as if to make a coalition impossible, Fox
now deserted his old political companions, and joined hands with the
very object of his fiercest denunciation. The Coalition thus formed
voted down the Shelburne ministry in February, 1783.

    [A] Fox’s Speeches, II., 39.

The debate which preceded the final vote was one of the most remarkable
in English history. The subject immediately at issue was a vote of
censure of Shelburne’s government for the terms of the treaty closing
the American war. North assailed the treaty, as bringing disgrace upon
the country by the concessions it had made. Fox spoke in the same
strain, having reserved himself till the latter part of the night, with
the evident purpose of overwhelming the young leader of the House by
the force and severity of his presentation. But the moment he sat down,
Pitt arose and grappled with the argument of his opponent in a speech
that has seldom been surpassed in the history of parliamentary debate.
Lord North spoke of its eloquence as “amazing,” and, although the
Coalition was too strong to be broken, it made such an impression that
there could no longer be any doubt that Pitt was now the foremost man
of his party.

In the course of the speech Pitt intimated that even if the vote of
censure came to pass, the king might not feel called upon to accept
the decision. He declared it an unnatural Coalition, which had simply
raised a storm of faction, and which had no other object than the
infliction of a wound on Lord Shelburne. Then in one of his impassioned
strains he exclaimed: “If, however, the baneful alliance is not already
formed,—if this ill-omened marriage is not already solemnized, I know
a just and lawful impediment,—and in the name of the public safety, I
here forbid the banns.”

But all availed nothing. The vote of censure was passed, and
Shelburne’s ministry tendered their resignation. The king hesitated.
He was unwilling to bring the Coalition into power, because he had an
insurmountable repugnance to Fox. He sent for Pitt, and urged him in
the most pressing terms to accept the position of Prime-Minister. But
Pitt, with that steadfast judgment which never deserted him, firmly
rejected the flattering offer. The most he would consent to do was to
remain in the office he then held till the succession could be fixed
upon. The king was almost in despair; and thought seriously of retiring
to Hanover. It was Thurlow that dissuaded him from taking so dangerous
a step. “Nothing is easier than for your Majesty to go to his Electoral
dominions;” said the old Chancellor, “but you may not find it so easy
to return when you grow tired of staying there. James II. did the same;
your Majesty must not follow his example.” He then assured the king
that the Coalition was an unnatural one, and could not long remain
in power without committing some fatal blunder. After six weeks the
king reluctantly submitted, and appointed the Duke of Portland as the
Prime-Minister, and North and Fox as the Chief Secretaries of State.

The end came sooner than Thurlow had dared