the State were filled with the enemies of the accused, Lord Melville was brought to trial before his Peers, and by a large majority acquitted, to the almost universal satisfaction of the country. Have we any right to regard him as guilty after this proceeding? It is true that the spirit of party is charged with the event of this memorable trial; but did nothing of that spirit preside over the proceedings in the Commons, the grand inquest of the nation, which made the presentment, and put the accused upon his trial? That Lord Melville was a careless man and wholly indifferent about money, his whole life had shown. That he had replaced the entire sum temporarily used, was part even of the statement which charged him with misemploying it. That Mr. Pitt, whom no one ever accused of corruption, had been a party to two of his supporters' using four times as much of the public money for a time, and without paying interest, was soon after proved; though for the purpose of pressing more severely upon Lord Melville, a great alacrity was shown to acquit the Prime Minister, by way of forming contrast to the Treasurer of the Navy. In a word, the case proved against him was not by any means so clear as to give us the right to charge the great majority of his Peers with corrupt and dishonourable conduct in acquitting him; while it is a known fact that the Judges who attended the trial were, with the exception of the Lord Chief Justice, all clearly convinced of his innocence. Nor, let it be added, would the charge against him have been deemed, in the times of the Harleys and the Walpoles, of a nature to stain his character. Witness Walpole rising to supreme power after being expelled the House of Commons for corruption; and after having only urged in his own defence, that the thousand pounds paid to him by a contractor had been for the use of a friend whom he desired to favour, and to whom he had paid it all over; not to mention his having received above seventeen thousand pounds under circumstances of the gravest suspicion, the day before he quitted office, and which he never seems to have accounted for, except by saying he had the King's authority to take it.* It is very * Mr. Coxe, in his Life of Walpole, cannot, of course, put the defence on higher ground than Walpole himself took, as to the 10007. received on the contract, in 1711, when he was Secretary at War. As to the sum reported by the House of Commons' Committee (17,4617.) to have been obtained by him in 1712, on the authority of two Treasury orders, the biographer's main argument is, that the money must have been immediately wanted for public purposes, though these never were particularised, and that the King must have approved of the draft, because he signed the warrants. A weaker defence cannot well be conceived; nor is it much aided by the assertion which follows, that Sir Robert began writing a vindication of himself, which he broke off on a conviction that his answer must either have been materially defective, or he must have related many things highly improper to be exposed to the public." The fact of a man, with an estate of about 2000l. a-year at first, and which never rose to much above 4000l., having lived extravagantly, and amassed above 200,000l., is not at all explained by Mr. Coxe; and it is mainly on this expensive living and accumulation of fortune, that the suspicions which hang over his memory rest. But it is needless to say more upon a topic which could form no justification of Lord Melville, if he were guilty. The subject is only alluded to in this place for the purpose of showing how much more pure our public men now are, and how much higher is our standard of official virtue. The acquittal of Lord Melville was deemed insufficient to sanction his restoration certain that these remarks will give little satisfaction to those whose political principles have always kept them apart from, and inimical to Lord Melville. But to what purpose have men lived for above thirty years after the trial, and survived the object of the charge more than a quarter of a century, if they cannot now, and upon a mere judicial question, permit their judgments to have a free scope,-deciding calmly upon events that belong to the history of the past, and involve the reputation of the dead? to office; although Sir Robert Walpole, without any attempt to rescind the vote of 1712, was afterwards advanced to the place of Prime Minister, and held it for twenty years. MR. ERSKINE. THE Ministry of Mr. Pitt did not derive more solid service from the Bar in the person of Mr. Dundas, than the Opposition party did ornament and popularity in that of Mr. Erskine. His Parliamentary talents, although they certainly have been underrated, were as clearly not the prominent portion of his character. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that, had he appeared in any other period than the age of the Foxes, the Pitts, and the Burkes, there is little chance that he would have been eclipsed even as a debater; and the singular eloquence and powerful effect of his famous speech against the Jesuits' Bark Bill in the House of Lords,* abundantly proves this position. He never appears to have given his whole mind to the practice of debating; he had a very scanty provision of political information; his time was always occupied with the laborious pursuits of his profession ; he came into the House of Commons, where he stood among several equals, and behind some superiors, from a stage where he shone alone, and without a rival; above all, he was accustomed to address a select and friendly audience, bound to lend him their patient attention, and to address them by the compulsion of his retainer, not as a volunteer coming forward in his own person; a position from which the transition is violent and extreme, to that of having to gain and to keep a promiscuous and, in great * 1808. |