of 1688, was good.

PITT.-Yes: but when they afterwards compacted themselves together to monopolise place and power, and thought it presumption in any one, whose family they deemed less ancient and less wealthy than their own, however highly he was gifted by intellect and acquirements, to break in upon their ranks then they became noxious and insufferable. TEMPLE. They might, in particular cases, carry this a little too far; but generally they were a useful control both on the Crown and the People.

PITT. My father broke down this phalanx. TEMPLE. He did: but whom did he let in? The tories. From the entrance of Lord Bute, we may trace the American War, the French Revolution, the enormous debt under which England groans even to the point of death, and all the disturbances of Europe.

PITT.-You are rather severe in your deductions, and place upon my father a very heavy responsibility. Lord Bute's entry into power was totally independent of the effects of my father's political career.

TEMPLE. I think the whig aristocracy would have kept out Lord Bute, if Lord Chatham had not weakened them.

PITT.-These are but remote, subtle, and shadowy speculations, which I never had much leisure to dwell upon. The business of the day before me was more than I had time and strength to manage. I took parties as I found them at the date of my early entrance into power. I found the whigs in close ranks attempting again what they had attempted against my father; and I resolved, like him, to put myself in the forlorn hope, and attack them once more. They had with them the greater part of the property, as well as of the rank and historical influence of the country; and, what was still more, they had almost all the talent and genius. But in their over-weening self-confidence, they grasped at too much, and lost their balance-then down they fell with a mighty crash! A new power had sprung up, of which they did not sufficiently weigh the political strength-the commercial power! We are all creatures of circumstances: it was a tide that lifted me up, and I rode upon its waves! Because I opposed this mighty conspiracy of whigs, I was called a tory! Now, a tory is for unlimited kingly power: no one will say that this was my case. Tories stickle for ancient rank and hereditary influence: this was not my case! I am even accused of a preferring

gree, to resort to such men, when it was to the commercial body that I owed my power. I found that the high-born and titled scions would not do my work, nor bow to my influence. I wanted unity in my plans, and all to be directed by one movement; a divisum imperium would not do for me! I resolved to cleanse the Augean stable, and purify all the offices. I chose, therefore, men from secondary classes-not too proud to labour; and who, having much to gain from me, would be subservient to my views. Such men I brought into notice, wealth, and rank; and I changed the face of society.

TEMPLE. You did exactly so; and the consequences of that line of conduct have been such as you had no conception of, and probably would still wish to be blind to. Many of the barriers of society, which are called prejudices, have resulted from deep and unerring experience. Their effects are not seen upon a superficial view; and the accidental political circumstances in which you were born, aided you in overlooking them. But when you came to conflict with the principles of the French Revolution, they took much of your ground from under you. It was some time before you could see in prospect the mischiefs of the storm that was brewing; and you never, to the last, entered heartily into Burke's reasonings and views.

PITT.-Sir William, Burke had been a whig, and now he turned tory.-I was neither.

TEMPLE. You fall into the vulgar error there! Burke's opposition to the French anarchy was the true consequence of all the political principles he had professed through life.

PITT.-I never could relish those imaginative and highly coloured feelings which he indulged.

TEMPLE.-To speak frankly, you had not had time sufficiently to cultivate literature, and nature had not given you your father's imagination and warmth, though it gave you his courage, and decision, and patriotic desires.

PITT. I derived from my mother's family the love of the dry details of business.

TEMPLE. To that family I had myself a remote alliance, but no congeniality of taste or pursuits.

PITT.-As in your present state, you have become acquainted with what is passing above, give me your opinion, whether in the present age the condition of the English people is improved or deteriorated?

TEMPLE.-Greatly deteriorated! The national debt alone is sufficient cause for that. PITT. It began in your time. TEMPLE.-True. The false policy ought to have been seen in the beginning, for the bad consequences are quite as certain as in the case of individuals; but it is the excess, the enormous addition of the last half century, which has demonstrated its ruinous results.

PITT.-I gave much of my mind to finance, and I long had the credit of an excellent financial minister.

TEMPLE. Some things you did well: the effect was the extension of credit, and the temporary prosperity of agriculture and

commerce.

SWIFT.-I have taken little part in this conversation; for my patron, Sir William, knows that, coming to him in my youth, when he was high, and I in an humble station, I was always afraid of him.

PITT.-I have not had time to read your history and writings, Dr. Swift. I was too much taken up with public business. I had no leisure for literature.

TEMPLE.-Many complain of your encouragement of paper money, Mr. Pitt. I do not complain of that. I complain that you grounded upon it a profuseness in the public expenditure, and an idea that the national wealth had no limits; whereas, the wealth that is withdrawn from the productive to the non-productive classes must come to a stop, and, in the meantime, does more mischief than good. The due distribution of wealth is of as much consequence as its amount, and taxation generally draws it into wrong channels. It has made almost all the property of the nation change hands, and contributed to do that which your father did, by his individual genius-to overthrow the Whig aristocracy!

PITT. I have not brought my mind to think that a great evil! I did not love that phalanx any more than my father; and I do not agree with you on the effect of taxation upon the productive classes. I have been all for the productive classes; and for this reason, among others, I have had little respect for the whig aristocracy. I would not encourage idleness and luxury; and therefore, the taxation that draws their wealth from them may make them more useful members of society.

TEMPLE. I perceive that you consider the owners of rent non-productives, and think that this profit would be better in the hands of fundholders. This is a strange misappre

hension. What classes are so non-productive, idle, and luxurious, as the fundholders? All taxation finally falls on the land, by adding to its costs, and diminishing the surplus. This increases the cost of all other things, of which the price must proportionally rise, so as to bear the same profits as before. But rent stands on a different basis from profits, and is diminished by the whole amount of the increase of costs. This is not the current doctrine; but I think I could clearly demonstrate it, were this the opportunity.

PITT.-I have not understood this debateable question in the same light. I had most the ear of the monied and commercial interests, and confess that I most listened to them they had most acuteness, readiness, and pliancy. But the agriculturists, if not their landlords, were also mainly with me; for the effects of my financial system were to throw capital into the hands of the cultivators, and this put the yeomanry in the best humour with me.

TEMPLE. You did not look far enough: some of this prosperity was of a temporary nature; even the profusion of government expenditure gave a momentary stimulus both to agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. But it was the funding system which sowed the fatal poison. If the revenue had been raised from the produce of the year, and only iu proportion to the increased annual wealth, the ultimate evils would not have been the same. At the same time, it is but justice to you to say, that, by an opposite conduct on the part of your successers, many of these evils might have been checked, instead of having been augmented and aggravated tenfold, as they have been. To borrow in a profuse currency, and then to pay in a stinted one, is a sort of insane folly, for which no terms of reprehension are sufficiently strong. I give you credit for this, that, if you had lived, your sagacity would soon have seen to what evils your system led, and you could have corrected them, while you would have firmly persevered in its more beneficial parts. They who have followed you have, with unpardonable blindness and obstinacy, done the direct reverse!

PITT.-I have heard of the currencyrestriction acts with horror; and with all experience in favour of a liberal circulation at a crisis when commodities were increased at least fivefold, and when there was no plausible argument against a paper-medium, except such as was drawn from minor abuses, which the legislature might easily have corrected.

TEMPLE. See the effects of the ear you were too apt to give to the stock-exchange! PITT. It is easy to be wise after events have shown us consequences.

TEMPLE. Certainly. My opinions now delivered result from the information I have received of what has been passing above up to the present crisis. It must not be looked for in any writings.

PITT. I believe you wrote much, and enjoyed the happiness of a country retirement in your latter days.

TEMPLE.-There lay my delight, with my books, my garden, and the soothing silence, or the soothing murmurs of its umbrage, and its little stream.

PITT. You allude to Moor Park, near Farnham. I visited it, with a respect for your memory. They assured me that its Dutch garden, its terraces, parterres, and arbours, remained much the same as in your time.

SWIFT.-Yes; there I laid the foundation of those writings which afterwards brought me into celebrity.

TEMPLE. O noctes, cœnæque Deûm! After the fatigue and perplexities, and wearisome formalities of state affairs, how delightful is the tranquillity of a country retirement, if we have early laid in the food of thought and meditation by the literary culture of the mind!

PITT. You had lived in troublesome times, and seen many important changes of

state.

TEMPLE.-But experience did not teach wisdom to the Stuarts. They were a race without discretion, though not without talent; and Charles I. had many high qualities.

PITT.-I did not look to those times with any pleasure. The aristocracy were raised too high, or sunk too low. The parliamentarians were a dogged, sour, hypocritical set; and afterwards, the court of Charles II. was disgustingly dissolute and trifling. The remains of feudality, without its virtues or spirit, lingered in the manners of the higher classes; and the total absence of public integrity has left nothing to relieve and soothe the retrospect.

SWIFT.-But there were features in the reign of Queen Anne which were glorious. Her ministers at least favoured literature. What say you to Bolingbroke and Oxford? TEMPLE. They had many great qualities. PITT.-They were traitors to their country. The literary brilliance of Bolingbroke was out of place in a statesman. He was unprincipled, and he did much more harm than good.

TEMPLE. You always undervalue literature-so did Sir Robert Walpole. Your father did not do so. Sir Robert said that history must be false! This was a vulgar assertion. He had seen things so near, that he saw all the roughnesses and specks; but I am convinced, on the contrary, that the general character of history is true. We must not rely on private anecdotes and prejudiced representations.

PITT.-I found a good deal of falsehood in what was written in my time.

TEMPLE. You mean in the party pamphlets of the day.

SWIFT.-Yes, we all know how those things were conducted in our time.

PITT.-But the wits governed too much in your time. We admitted no such men as you and Pope to our intimacies, nor ever trusted to a pamphlet or a poem to influence the public opinion.

SWIFT.-Yet you had some sorry scribblers with you.

PITT. I would have had nothing to do with them, if I could have avoided it. I even wished that old officious George Rose would have let his pamphlets alone. When I came into power, I and my party suffered too much by the Rolliad, and by Sheridan's sarcasms, to have any taste for authors.

TEMPLE. Then you knew nothing of the philosophy of politics and history.

PITT.-I knew no philosophy but practical good sense, and fitness for the conduct of human affairs.

TEMPLE. You had a happy faculty of popular oratory, which in you supplied the place of literature, for the purposes of the

state.

SWIFT. We may say with Horace

"Vixêre fortes ante Agamemnona,
Multi," &c. &c.

By too much reliance on the oral eloquence which perishes, your fame is already much faded.

PITT. I was content with living fameI cared little for that which

"Would deck the cold insensate grave with bays."

TEMPLE.-My spirit is soothed, when I hear that my works are still pored upon, and live in the memory of men.

SWIFT. And I glorify myself, that my works are still considered standards of a clear style, of good sense, sagacity, and useful and amusing fiction.

PITT. Well, then, let us embrace, and depart in peace!