always shunned, we may affirm with truth and impartiality, that no man was ever better fitted than Mr. Pitt, to be the minister in a great and powerful nation, or better qualified to carry that power and greatness to their utmost limits. There was in all his designs a magnitude, and even a vastness, which was not easily comprehended by every mind, and which nothing but success could have made to appear reasonable. If he was sometimes incorrect, he was never vulgar.

His power, as it was not acquired, so neither was it exercised in an ordinary manner. With very little parliamentary and with less court influence, he swayed both at court and in parliament with an authority unknown before to the best supported ministers. He was called to the ministry by the voice of the people; and what is more rare, he held it with that approbation; and under him for the first time, administration and popularity were seen united. Under him Great Britain carried on the most important war, in which she ever was engaged, alone, and unassisted, with greater splendour, and with more success than she had ever enjoyed at the head of the most powerful alliances. Alone this island seemed to balance

the rest of Europe.

In

In the conduct of the war he never suffered the enemy to breathe, but overwhelmed them with reiterated blows, and kept up the alarm in every quarter. If one of his expeditions was not so well calculated or so successfully executed, amends was made by another, and by a third. The spirit of the nation once roused, was not suffered for a moment to subside; and the French, dazzled as it were, by the multitude and celerity of his enterprizes, seemed to have lost all power of resistance. short, he revived the military genius of our people; he supported our allies; he extended our trade; he raised our reputation; he augmented our dominions; and on his departure from administration, left the nation in no other danger than that which ever must attend exorbitant power, and the temptation which may be, to the invidious exertion of it. Happy it had been for him, for his sovereign, and his country, if a temper less austere, and a disposition more practicable, more compliant, and conciliating, had been joined to his other great virtues. The want of these qualities disabled him from acting any otherwise than alone: it prevented our enjoying the joint fruit of the wisdom of many able men, who might mutually have tempered, and mutually forwarded each other; and finally, which was not the meanest loss, it deprived us of his own immediate services.

Those who censured his political conduct the most severely, could raise but few exceptions to it; none of them singly, and perhaps, the whole united, of no great weight against a person long engaged in so great a scene of action.

Whether the part, which under his administration we rather continued to act than newly took, with regard to the affairs of Germany, be for the real interest of Great Britain, is a question of the utmost difficulty, and which perhaps will never admit a satisfactory solution. To condemn him on this head, we must be sure of this solution. It has been observed in favour of that contested measure, that France demonstrated, through the whole progress of the late treaty,1 the most earnest desire, that we should abandon that German connection; no trifling argument, that our enemy did not look upon it to be extremely prejudicial to our interests. If he has carried on that war at

a vast expense, a prodigious stand has been made against the entire power of France; had less been expended, the whole expense might have been lost. How far this part of his conduct was agreeable to his former declarations, is a discussion which can avail but little. He found the nation engaged in these affairs; it was more easy to push them forward, than to extricate himself from them; as he proceeded, he discovered by experience the advantages of that plan of action, and his opinion was changed.

But even admitting, that, to attain the ends of opposition, he had once fallen upon popular topics, which even then he knew were not tenable, it can form but a very small blemish in a public character, however wrong it may be by application to the strict rules of morality. Ill would it fare with statesmen, if this sort of consistency were to be expected from the most consistent of them.

3

With regard to the pension 2 and title, it is a shame that any defence should be necessary. What eye cannot distinguish, at the first glance, the difference between this and the exceptionable case of titles and pensions? What Briton, with the smallest sense of honour and gratitude, but must blush for his country, if such a man retired unrewarded from the public service, let the motives to that retirement be what they would? It was not possible that his sovereign could let his eminent services pass unrequited; the sum that was given was

1 Conducted fruitlessly during the spring of 1761.

2 £3000 a year for three lives.

3 His wife was created Baroness Chatham.

undoubtedly inadequate to his merits; and the quantum was rather regulated by the moderation of the great mind that received it, than by the liberality of that which bestowed it.

The conduct of Mr. Pitt when the parliament met, in which he made his own justification, without impeaching the conduct of any of his colleagues, or taking one measure that might seem to arise from disgust or opposition, has set a seal upon his character.

97. No. 45 OF THE "NORTH BRITON" (1763).

Wilkes first issued the North Briton to attack Lord Bute, and, after a short suspension, continued it to attack George Grenville's ministry in No. 45. Lack of space prevents insertion of the full text, but the sections which alarmed the government and led to Wilkes' illegal prosecution are given.

SOURCE.-North Briton. No. xlv. John Wilkes (1727-1797). Taken from Shorter Works in English Prose. Ed. H. Morley. London. (Cassell). No date. P, 300.

The King's Speech has always been considered by the legislature, and by the public at large, as the Speech of the Minister. It has regularly, at the beginning of every session of parliament, been referred by both houses to the consideration of a committee, and has been generally canvassed with the utmost freedom, when the minister of the crown has been obnoxious to the nation. The ministers of this free country, conscious of the undoubted privileges of so spirited a people, and with the terrors of parliament before their eyes, have ever been cautious, no less with regard to the matter, than to the expressions of speeches, which they have advised the sovereign to make from the throne, at the opening of each session. They well knew, that an honest house of parliament, true to their trust, could not fail to detect the fallacious arts, or to remonstrate against the daring acts of violence, committed by any minister. The Speech at the close of the session has ever been considered as the most secure method of promulgating the favourite court creed among the vulgar; because the parliament, which is the constitutional guardian of the liberties of the people, has in this case no opportunity of remonstrating, or of impeaching any wicked servant of the crown.

This week has given the public the most abandoned instance of ministerial effrontery ever attempted to be imposed on

mankind. The minister's speech of last Tuesday, is not to be paralleled in the annals of this country. I am in doubt, whether the imposition is greater on the sovereign, or on the nation. Every friend of his country must lament that a prince of so many great and amiable qualities, whom England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious measures, and to the most unjustifiable, public declarations, from a throne ever renowned for truth, honour, and unsullied virtue. I am sure all foreigners, especially the king of Prussia, will hold the minister in contempt and abhorrence. He has made our sovereign declare, "My expectations have been fully answered by the happy effects which the several allies of my crown have derived from this salutary measure of the definitive Treaty.1 The powers at war with my good brother the King of Prussia have been induced to agree to such terms of accommodation as that great prince has approved; and the success which has attended my negotiation, has necessarily and immediately diffused the blessings of peace through every part of Europe." The infamous fallacy of this whole sentence is apparent to all mankind: for it is known, that the King of Prussia did not barely approve, but absolutely dictated, as conqueror, every article of the terms of peace. No advantage of any kind has accrued to that magnanimous prince from our negotiation, but he was basely deserted by the Scottish prime minister of England. He was known by every court in Europe to be scarcely on better terms of friendship here, than at Vienna; and he was betrayed by us in the treaty of peace. What a strain of insolence, therefore, is it in a minister to lay claim to what he is conscious all his efforts tended to prevent, and meanly to arrogate to himself a share in the fame and glory of one of the greatest princes the world has ever seen? The king of Prussia, however, has gloriously kept all his former conquests, and stipulated security for all his allies, except for the elector of Hanover. I know in what light this great prince is considered in Europe, and in what manner he has been treated here; among other reasons, perhaps, from some contemptuous expressions he may have used of the Scot: expressions which are everyday echoed by the whole body of Englishmen through the southern part of this island.

The Preliminary Articles of Peace were such as have drawn the contempt of mankind on our wretched negotiators. All our most valuable conquests were agreed to be restored, and the

1 Treaty of Paris.

2 Lord Bute.

East-India company would have been infallibly ruined by a single article of this fallacious and baneful negotiation. No hireling of the minister has been hardy enough to dispute this; yet the minister himself has made our sovereign declare, the satisfaction which he felt at the approaching re-establishment of peace upon conditions so honourable to his crown, and so beneficial to his people. As to the entire approbation of parliament, which is so vainly boasted of, the world knows how that was obtained. The large debt on the Civil List, already above half a year in arrear, shows pretty clearly the transactions of the winter. It is, however, remarkable, that the minister's speech dwells on the entire approbation given by Parliament to the Preliminary Articles, which I will venture to say, he must by this time be ashamed of; for he has been brought to confess the total want of that knowledge, accuracy, and precision, by which such immense advantages both of trade and territory were sacrificed to our inveterate enemies. These gross blunders are, indeed, in some measure set right by the Definitive Treaty; yet, the most important articles, relative to cessions, commerce, and the fishery, remain as they were, with respect to the French. The proud and feeble Spaniard too does not renounce, but only desists from all pretentions, which he may have formed, to the right of fishing-where? only about the island of Newfoundland-till a favourable opportunity arises of insisting on it, there, as well as elsewhere.

In vain will such a minister, or the foul dregs of his power, the tools of corruption and despotism, preach up in the speech that spirit of concord, and that obedience to the laws, which is essential to good order. They have sent the spirit of discord through the land, and I will prophesy, that it will never be extinguished, but by the extinction of their power. Is the spirit of concord to go hand in hand with the PEACE and EXCISE through this nation? Is it to be expected between an insolent Exciseman, and a peer, gentleman, freeholder, or farmer whose private houses are now made liable to be entered and searched at pleasure? Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and in general all the cyder countries, are not surely the several counties which are alluded to in the speech. The spirit of concord hath not gone forth among them; but the spirit of liberty has, and a noble opposition has been given to the wicked instruments of oppression. A nation as sensible as the English, will see that a spirit of concord, when they are oppressed, means a tame submission to injury, and that a spirit of liberty ought