retail but in grofs, the reward of thofe who vifit the prifoner; and he has fo foreftalled and monopolized this branch of charity, that there will be, I trust, little room to merit by fuch acts of benevolence hereafter. Speech at Bristol previous to the Election.

KEPPEL (LORD.)

I EVER looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and beft men of his age; and I loved, and cultivated him accordingly. He was much in my heart, and I believe I was in his to the very last beat. It was after his trial at Portfmouth that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and anxious affection I attended him through that his agony of glory; what part my fon in the early flush and enthufiafm of his virtue, and the pious paffion with which he attached himfelf to all my connections, with what prodigality we both fquandered ourselves in courting almost every fort of enmity for his fake, I believe he felt, juft as I fhould have felt, fuch friendfhip on fuch an occafion. I partook indeed of this honour, with feveral of the first, and beft, and ableft in the kingdom, but I was behind hand with none of them; and I am fure, that if to the eternal difgrace of this nation, and to the total annihilation of every trace of honour and virtue in it, things had taken a different turn from what they did, I fhould have attended him to the quarter-deck with no lefs good will and more pride, though with far other feelings, than I partook of the general flow of national joy that attended the juftice that was done to his virtue.

Pardon, my Lord, the feeble garrulity of age, which loves to diffufe itfelf in difcourfe of the de

parted great. At my years we live in retrofpe&t alone and, wholly unfitted for the fociety of vigorous life, we enjoy, the best balm to all wounds, the confolation of friendship, in thofe only whom we have loft for ever. Feeling the lofs of Lord Kep

pel at all times, at no time did I feel it fo much as on the first day when I was attacked in the House of Lords.

Had he lived, that reverend form would have rifen in its place, and with a mild, parental reprehenfion to his nephew the Duke of Bedford, he would have told him that the favour of that gracious prince, who had honoured his virtues with the government of the navy of Great Britain, and with a feat in the hereditary great council of his kingdom, was not undefervedly fhewn to the friend of the beft portion of his life, and his faithful companion and counsellor under his rudeft trials. He would have told him, that to whomever else these reproaches might be becoming, they were not decorous in his near kindred. He would have told them that when men in that rank lofe decorum, they lofe every thing.

On that day I had a lofs in Lord Keppel; but the public lofs of him in this aweful crifis! I fpeak from much knowledge of the perfon, he never would have liftened to any compromise with the rabble rout of this Sans Culotterie of France. His goodnefs of heart, his reafon, his tafte, his public duty, his principles, his prejudices, would have repelled him for ever from all connection with that horrid medley of madnefs, vice, impiety, and crime.

His

Lord Keppel had two countries; one of defcent and one of birth. Their interefts and their glory are the fame; and his mind was capacious of both. family was noble, and it was Dutch. That is, he was of the oldeft and pureft nobility that Europe can boaft, among a people renowned above all others for love of their native land. Though it was never fhewn in infult to any human being, Lord Kepple was fomething high. It was a wild ftock of pride, on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the 'milder virtues. He valued ancient nobility; and he was not difinclined to augment it with new honours. He valued the old nobility and the new, not as an

excufe for inglorious floth, but as an incitement to virtuous activity. He confidered it as a fort of cure for felfifhnefs and a narrow mind; conceiving that a man born in an elevated place, in himfelf was nothing, but every thing in what went before, and what was to come after him. Without much fpeculation, but by the fure inftinet, of ingenuous feelings, and by the dictates of plain unfophifticated natural understanding, he felt, that no great Commonwealth could by any poffibility long fubfift, without a body of fome kind or other of nobility, decorated with honour, and fortified by privilege. This nobility forms the chain that connects the ages of a nation, which otherwife (with Mr. Paine) would foon be taught that no one generation can bind another. He felt that no political fabric could be well made without fome fuch order of things as might, through a feries of time, afford a rational hope of fecuring unity, coherence, confiftency, and ftability to the ftate. He felt that nothing elfe can protect it against the levity of courts, and the greater levity of the multitude. That to talk of hereditary monarchy without any thing elfe of hereditary reverence in the Commonwealth, was a low-minded abfurdity; fit only for thofe deteftable" fools afpiring to be knaves," who began to forge in 1789, the falfe money of the French Conftitution-That it is one fatal objection to all new fancied and new fabricated Republics (among a people, who, once poffeffing fuch an advantage, have wickedly and infolently rejected it) that the prejudice of an old nobility is a thing that cannot be made. It may be improved, it may be corrected, it may be replenished: men may be taken from it, or aggregated to it, but the thing itfelf is matter of inveterate opinion, and therefore cannot be matter of mere pofitive inftitution. He felt, that this nobility, in fact, does not exift in wrong of other orders of the ftate, but by them, and for them

I knew the man I fpeak of; and, if we can divine the future, out of what we collect from the past, ho perfon living would look with more fcorn and horror on the impious parricide committed on all their ancestry, and on the defperate attainder paffed on all their posterity, by the Orleans, and the Rochefoucaults, and the Fayettes, and the Vifcomtes de Noailles, and the falfe Perigords, and the long et cætera of the perfidious Sans Culottes of the court, who like demoniacs, poffeffed with a fpirit of fallen pride, and inverted ambition, abdicated their dignities, difowned their families, betrayed the most fa-cred of all trufts, and by breaking to pieces a great link of fociety, and all the cramps and holdings of the ftate, brought eternal confufion and defolation on their country. For the fate of the mifcreant parricides themselves he would have had no pity. Compaffion for the myriads of men, of whom the world was not worthy, who by their means have perished in prifons, or on fcaffolds, or are pining in beggary and exile, would leave no room in his, or in any well-formed mind, for any such sensation. We are not made at once to pity the oppreffor and the oppreffed.

Looking to his Batavian defcent, how could he bear to behold his kindred, the defcendants of the brave nobility of Holland, whose blood prodigally poured out, had, more than all the canals, meers, and inundations of their country, protected their independence, to behold them bowed in the baseft fervitude, to the baseft and vileft of the human race; in fervitude to those who, in no refpect, were fuperior in dignity, or could afpire to a better place than that of hangmen to the tyrants, to whofe fceptered pride they had oppofed an elevation of foul, that furmounted, and overpowered the loftinefs of Caftile, the haughtiness of Auftria, and the overbearing arro gance of France?

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Could he with patience bear, that the children of that nobility, who would have deluged their country and given it to the fea, rather than fubmit to Louis XIV. who was then in his meridian glory, when his arms were conducted by the Turennes, by the Luxembourgs, by the Boufflers; when his councils were directed by the Colberts, and the Louvois ; when his tribunals were filled by the Lamoignons, and the Dagueflaus-that thefe fhould be given up to the cruel fport of the Fichegrus, the Jourdans, the Santerres, under the Rollands, and Briffots, and Gorfas, and Robespierres, the Reubels, the Carnots, and Talliens, and Dantons, and the whole tribe of regicides, robbers, and revolutionary judges, that, from the rotten carcafe of their own murdered country, have poured out innumerable fwarms of the loweft, and at once the most deftructive of the claffes of animated nature, which like columns of locufts, have laid wafte the faireft part of the world?

Would Keppel have borne to fee the ruin of the virtuous Patricians, that happy union of the noble and the burgher, who with fignal prudence and integrity, had long governed the cities of the confederate Republic, the cherishing fathers of their country, who, denying commerce to themselves, made it flourifh in a manner unexampled under their protection? Could Keppel have borne that a vile faction fhould totally deftroy this harmonious conftru&tion, in favour of a robbing Democracy, founded on the spurious rights of man?

He was no great clerk, but he was perfectly well verfed in the interefts of Europe, and he could not have heard with patience that the country of Grotius, the cradle of the Law of Nations, and one of the richest repofitories of all law, fhould be taught a new code by the ignorant flippancy of Thomas Paine, the prefumptuous foppery of La Fayette, with his ftolen rights of man in his hand, the wild profligate intrigue and turbulency of Marat, and the impious fophiftry

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