all these desires were gratified, and these feelings indulged, by a system which, under the mask of retaliation upon France, professed to extinguish, or to absorb into our own commerce, the trade of all the neutrals whom France had oppressed in order to injure us; and Mr. Perceval thus became as strenuous a champion of this unjust and preposterous plan as its author himself. In 1808 he had prevailed with Parliament to give it a full trial; and in four years, instead of collecting all the trade of the world into England, it had effectually ruined whatever Napoleon's measures had left of our own.

Accordingly, a motion was carried at the end of April, 1812, for examining the question in a committee of the whole house, and in taking the evidence which was adduced to show the ruinous effects of the system, he with Mr. Stephen bore night after night the principal part. As they both hoped that the clamour out of doors would subside if time were given, the struggle always was to put off the inquiry, and thus to protract the decision; and Messrs. Brougham and Baring, who conducted it, with some difficulty prevailed so far as to begin the examination of the witnesses exactly at half-past four o'clock. On the 11th of May, Mr. Perceval had been later than the appointed time, and after complaining of this delay, Mr. Brougham, at a quarter before five, had called his first witness, and was examining him, when a messenger deputed to bring the minister met him walking towards the house with Mr. Stephen arm-in-arm. He instantly, with his accustomed activity, darted forward to obey the summons, but for which Mr. Stephen, who happened to be on his left side, would have been the victim of the assassin's blow, which prostrated Mr. Perceval as he entered the lobby. The wretched man, by name Bellingham, had no kind of quarrel with him; but complained of a suit at St. Petersburgh having been neglected by our ambassador there, Lord Gran

ville, whom he intended to have destroyed had not Mr. Perceval fallen first in his way. He never attempted to escape; but was taken, committed, tried, condemned, executed, dissected, all within one week from the time that he fired the shot. So great an outrage upon justice never was witnessed in modern times; for the application to delay the trial, until evidence of his insanity could be brought from Liverpool, was refused; and the trial proceeded, while both the court, the witnesses, the jury, and the people, were under the influence of the feelings naturally excited by the deplorable slaughter of one of the most eminent and virtuous men in any rank of the community.

It has been said already that Mr. Perceval was both imperfectly educated and very narrow minded. He was the slave of violent prejudices, and had never made any effort to shake them off, or to mitigate them by instructing himself in any of the branches of learning out of his own profession, save only that he had the ordinary portion of classical learning which all English gentlemen acquire in their early youth. How amiable soever in private life, he was intolerant of others who differed with him in the proportion of his ignorance; and committed the error of all such consentious but bigoted men, the forgetting that those of opposite sentiments have exactly the same excuse for unyielding obstinacy that they have for rooted dislike towards adverse doctrines. They feel all the heat of intolerance, but make no kind of allowance for others feeling somewhat of the fire which burns so fiercely within themselves.

330

LORD GRENVILLE.

THE two eminent personages of whom we have been speaking, were Mr. Pitt's contemporaries and political adherents, though of a less advanced age. But Lord Grenville was of his own standing, followed his fortune during the eventful period of the coalesced opposition and the first French war, left office with him in 1801, nor quitted him until he consented to resume it in 1804, preferring place to character, and leaving the Whigs, by whose help he had overthrown the Addington Administration. From that moment Lord Grenville joined the Whig party, with whom to the end of his public life he continued to act.

A greater accession to the popular cause and the Whig party it was impossible to imagine, unless Mr. Pitt himself had persevered in his desire of rejoining the standard under which his first and noblest battles. were fought. All the qualities in which their long opposition and personal habits made them deficient, Lord Grenville possessed in an eminent degree. Long habits of business had matured his experience and disciplined his naturally vigorous understanding. A life studiously regular had surrounded him with the respect of his countrymen, and of those whom the dazzling talents of others could not blind to their loose propensities or idle habits. A firm attachment to the Church as by law established attracted towards him the confidence of those who subscribe to its doctrines and approve its discipline; while his tried prudence and discretion were a balance much wanted against the opposite defects of the Whig party, and especially of their most celebrated leader.

After Mr. Grattan, it would be difficult to point out any person to whom the great and fundamental question of Irish Policy, and the cause of religious liberty in general, was so much indebted as Lord Grenville;* while, in the sacrifices which he made to it, he certainly much exceeded Mr. Grattan himself. He was enabled to render this valuable service to his country, not more by his natural abilities, which were of a very high order-sound judgment, extraordinary memory, an almost preternatural power of application -and by the rich stores of knowledge which those eminent qualities had put him in possession of, than by the accidental circumstances in his previous history and present position-his long experience in office, which had tried and matured his talents in times of unexampled difficulty-his connexion with Mr. Pitt, both in the kindred of blood and of place, so well fitted to conciliate the Tory party, or at all events to disarm their hostility, and lull their suspicions-above all, the well-known and steady attachment of himself and his family to the principles and the establishment of the Church of England.

When, therefore, he quitted power with Mr. Pitt in 1801, rather than abandon the Catholic Emancipation, the carrying of which had only a year before been held out as one of the principal objects of the Union; and when, in 1804, he peremptorily refused to join Mr. Pitt in resuming office, unless a ministry should

*The plan of this work of course precludes all reference, at least all detailed reference, to the conduct and the merits of living statesmen. But for this an ample field would be opened, in which to expatiate upon the transcendent services of Lord Grey, and the ample sacrifices which he made, during the greater part of his political life, to the rights and the interests of the Irish people.-Lord Wellesley's services in the same cause, it is also, for the same reason, impossible to enter upon, further than to remind the reader that, after having almost begun life as the advocate of the Catholic claims, he, and after him Lord Anglesey, first set the example to succeeding Viceroys of ruling Ireland with the most perfect justice to all parties, and holding the balance of favour even, with a steady hand, between Catholic and Protestant, Churchman and Dissenter.

be formed upon a basis wide enough to comprehend the Whig party; the cause of liberal, tolerant principles, but, above all, the Irish question, gained an able supporter, whose alliance, whether his intrinsic or accidental qualities were considered, might justly be esteemed beyond all price. The friends of civil and religious liberty duly valued this most important accession; and the distinguished statesman whom they now accounted as one of their most powerful champions, and trusted as one of their most worthy leaders, amply repaid the confidence reposed in him, by the steady and disinterested devotion which, with his characteristic integrity and firmness, he gave to the cause. Taking office with Mr. Fox, and placed at the head of the government, upon the death of that great man he peremptorily, and with bare courtesy, rejected all the overtures of the King to separate from the Whigs, and rejoin his ancient allies of the Pitt school. Soon afterwards, in firm union with the remains of the Fox party, he carried the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and retired from power, rather than bind himself not to press the Catholic Emancipation upon the narrow-minded though conscientious Prince whom he served. Continuing in close alliance with the Whigs, he shared with them the frowns of the Court and the habitual exclusion from office which has, for the most part, been their portion in public life. Nor can it be doubted that the perseverance with which he abided by his declared opinions in favour of the Catholic Question alone prevented him from presiding over the councils of his country, during, at the least, twenty years of his life. They who have come to the aid of the liberal cause only when its success made an adhesion to it the road to Court favour, with all its accompaniments of profit and of power, have a very different account of mutual obligation to settle with their country, from that which Lord Grenville could at any time since his retirement