associates; and their warfare for the rights of the people during the dismal period of alarm which elapsed from 1723 to 1801, when the healing influence of the Addington Government was applied to our national wounds, cannot be too highly extolled. The Whigs thus regained the confidence of the nation, which their Coalition ten years before seemed to have forfeited for ever. The new junction with the Grenville party in 1804 was liable to none of the same objections; it was founded on common principles; and it both honoured its authors and served the State. But when, upon Mr. Pitt's death, Mr. Fox again became possessed of power, we find him widely different from the leader of a hopeless though high-principled Opposition to the Court of George III. He consented to take office without making any stipulation with the King on behalf of the Catholics; a grave neglect which afterwards subverted the Whig Government; and if it be said that this sacrifice was made to obtain the greater object of peace with France, then it must be added that he was slack indeed in his pursuit of that great object. He allowed the odious income-tax to be nearly doubled, after being driven, one by one, from the taxes proposed; and proposed on the very worst principles ever dreamt of by financiers. He defended the unprincipled arrangement for making the Lord Chief Justice of England a politician, by placing him in the Cabinet. He joined as heartily as any one in the fervour of loyal enthusiasm for the Hanoverian possessions of the Crown. On one great subject his sense of right, no less than his warm and humane feelings, kept him invariably true to the great principles of justice as well as policy. His attach

ment was unceasing, and his services invaluable to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which his last accession to office certainly accelerated by several years. For this, and for his support of Lord Erskine in his amendment of the Law of Libel, the lasting gratitude of his country and of mankind is due; and to the memory of so great and so amiable a man it is a tribute which will for ever be cheerfully paid. But to appreciate the gratitude which his country owes him, we must look, not to his ministerial life; we must recur to his truly glorious career as leader of the patriot band which, during the almost hopeless struggle from 1793 to 1801 upheld the cause of afflicted freedom. If to the genius and the courage of Erskine we may justly be said to owe the escape from proscription and from arbitrary power, Fox stands next to him as the preserver of that sacred fire of liberty which they saved to blaze forth in happier times. Nor could even Erskine have triumphed as he did, had not the party which Fox so nobly led persevered in maintaining the sacred warfare, and in rallying around them whatever was left of the old English spirit to resist oppression.

MR. PITT.

THE circumstances of his celebrated antagonist's situation were as different from his own as could well be imagined. It was not merely disparity of years by which they were distinguished; all the hereditary prejudices under which the one appeared before the country were as unfavourable, as the prepossessions derived from his father's character and renown were auspicious to the entrance of the other upon the theatre of public affairs. The grief, indeed, was yet recent which the people had felt for the loss of Lord Chatham's genius, so proudly towering above all party views and personal ties, so entirely devoted to the cause of his principles and his patriotism -when his son appeared to take his station, and contest the first rank in the popular affections with the son of him whose policy and parts had been sunk into obscurity by the superior lustre of his adversary's capacity and virtues. But the young statesman's own talents and conduct made good the claim which his birth announced. At an age when others are but entering upon the study of state affairs and the practice of debating, he came forth a mature politician, a finished orator,-even, as if by inspiration, an accomplished debater. His knowledge, too, was not confined to the study of the classics, though with these he was familiarly conversant; the more severe pursuits of Cambridge had imparted to