any strength but its own. The King, weary of upholding the Bute cabinet against its original tendency to go down, at length cast it off, and it sank never to rise again. The Grenville ministry succeeded to its place, and its unpopularity. It was charged with the Bute principles without their palliatives, with purchasing place by the spoils of the people, with crushing the national liberties with one hand, while it was surrendering the national honour to foreigners with the other; of being a government of nepotism, favouritism, and secret patronage, a Bute ministry in masquerade. The general outcry at once demanded its overthrow, and the restoration of Pitt. The King, with a submissiveness which fully contradicts the charges of obstinacy, now offered the government to the man of the popular choice. Burke, in a letter to the celebrated Flood, written in 1765, with admirable sagacity, narrates the course of the negotiation, and almost predicts its results. “There is a strong probability that new men will come in, and not improbably with new ideas. There is no doubt that there is a fixed resolution to get rid of them all, (unless perhaps of Grenville,) but principally of the Duke of Bedford. So that you will have much more reason to be surprised to find the ministry standing by the end of the next week, than to hear of their entire removal." His idea of Lord Chatham is curious, and the event shewed his knowledge of that memorable man's character. "Nothing but an INTRACTABLE temper in your friend Pitt can prevent a most admirable and last ing system from being put together. And this crisis will shew whether pride or patriotism be predominant in his character; for you may be assured, he has it now in his power to come into the service of his country upon any plan of politics he may think proper to dictate, with great and honourable terms for himself and every friend he has in the world, and with such a strength of power as will be equal to every thing but absolute despotism over the King and kingdom. A few days will shew whether he will take this part, or that of continuing on his back at Hayes talking fustian! excluded from all ministerial, and incapable of all Par liamentary service. For his gout is worse than ever, but his pride may disable him more than his gout." The history amply confirmed the conjecture. The Duke of Cumberland was sent by the King to offer the premiership to Pitt. He refused it. The ministry, elated by the discovery that a substitute was not to be found, and indignant at the attempt to find one, raised their demands upon the King. But the royal resources were not yet exhausted, and within two months the Marquis of Rockingham was placed at the head of a new cabinet. Burke's panegyric on the premier was the exuberance of a glowing fancy set in motion by a grateful heart. But it was an error. The Marquis was not the leader to collect the scattered energies of party, and shape them into system. Compared with Bute, he wanted conciliation, and with Grenville, knowledge of life and business. Formal and frigid, relying upon personal rank for official dignity, and for public confidence on hereditary prejudices, and forgetting the new element which had risen to disperse all such prejudices, he found himself suddenly in the rear of public opinion, saw even his own adherents starting forward before him; saw his whole force broken up, and after a struggle of a few months between pride and feebleness, retreated from a field into which he ought never to have entered. Burke, on this event, probably as a matter of duty, wrote his defence, "A short History of a short Administration," a work of a few pages, and dry as it was brief. A dull epitaph, and only the fitter for the tomb that it covered. Pitt now came in in triumph, with the people yoked to his chariot; the King more reluctantly, but nearly as much yoked as the people; he rapidly formed an administration, and commenced his career with anenergy which justified the national election. But with all the qualities which could raise him to the highest rank, he wanted the one important quality which could alone keep him there. He made no allowances for the feelings, the habits, or the weaknesses of other men. In a despotic government, perhaps, he would have been minister for life, and the admiration, thousand pardons. I venture to say Burke, on the fall of his friends, Edmund Burke. 1833.] more. if not the terror, of Europe; his The difficulty of forming the new cabinet, and the disunions which so quickly gave the King the power of dissolving it, were popularly caricatured by Burke. "He (Lord Chatham) put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tesselated pavement without cement, here a bit of black stone and there a bit of white, patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans, Whigs and Tories, treacherous friends and open enemies, that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to The touch and unsure to stand on. colleagues whom he had assorted at the same board, stared at each other, and were obliged to ask,-Sir, your name? Sir, you have the advantage of me.-Mr Such-a-one-I beg a the very prosperity of ambition, examples of terror, and motives to compassion. I believe the instances are exceedingly rare, of men immediately passing over the clear, marked line of virtue, into declared vice and corruption. There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes; there is something uncertain on the confines of the two empires, which they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and imperceptible. There are even a sort of splendid impositions, so well contrived, that at the very time when the path of rectitude is quitted for ever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of public conduct. Not that such impositions are strong enough in themselves; but that a powerful interest, often concealed from those whom it affects, works at the bottom and secures the operation. Men are thus debauched away from those legiti mate connexions, which they had formed on a judgment, early perhaps, but sufficiently mature, and wholly unbiassed." With what countenance might some of the apostates who carried the Catholic question look in this mirror held up to them by the frowning genius of Burke! With what shame and remorse might those who have still the power of feeling, see the features stamped by that guiltiest of all tergiversations! With what terror might those who are beyond shame see their crime blazoned and thrown into hideous light, for the scorn and warning of all posterity! The only distinction between Burke and the reality is, that the apostasy which is long to wreak its retribution on England, had none of the flowery descants, the smooth and stealing lapses, the gentle labyrinthine circuits into vice. There was no gradation. The treachery did not condescend to wear a mask, nor the wooer to desire one; the crime was embraced in all its deformity, and the criminals boasted of the openness of the intrigue, and made a reputation of the audacity with which they abandoned every sense of personal and public honour. characterless cabinets that England ever saw, began its operations, with a populace inflamed to the most extraordinary excesses, with a failing finance, a general convulsion of the commercial system, and the whole body of the colonies in uproar, hurling scorn on the mother country, denying and defying her laws, disputing her rights, and with the same rebellious banners waving from their shores to repel the authority of England, and welcome the alliance of her enemies. Burke was now the acknowledged leader of that part of opposition which professed the principles of the Marquis of Rockingham; Mr Grenville, of that part which had fallen with himself from power. No two men could have fewer conceptions in common. Differing in all points of policy, they were kept together only by their hostility to the weak and wavering cabinet, whose overthrow they hourly contemplated. At length, a pamphlet entitled, "The present State of the Nation," written by either Mr Grenville, or his former secretary Mr Knox, under his dictation, and containing some sarcasms on the Rockingham Ministry, brought Burke into action. He flew to the defence of a cause which he considered his own, and by his "Observations on a late State of the Nation," completely retorted the charges, and added to his fame all that profound thought, exact details of the national interests, and animated eloquence could give. But the chief excellence of all this eminent person's works is, that they are for the general experience of mankind; they are not the artificial ornaments of the hour, but instinct with a spirit of life, which makes them flourish as green as ever from generation to generation. Rapid and brilliant as his conceptions rise from the passion of the moment, and transitory as may be the circumstances of their origin, they have in them nothing transitory, nothing of the meteor; they take their place at a height above the vapours of this dim world, and miuister illumination to every age to come. He thus speaks of the fatal facility with which public men slide into apostasy-(The Bedford party had at this period seceded from their old friends, and joined administration)- "It is possible to draw, even from The picture of the bond slaves of party, who begin by sacrificing their principles, and then sacrifice their friends, is incomparable. People 66 Edmund Burke. 1833.] not well grounded in the principles of public morality, find a set of maxims in office ready made for them, which they assume as naturally and inevitably as any of the insignia or instruments of the situation. A certain tone of the solid and practical is immediately acquired. Every former profession of public spirit is to be considered as a debauch of youth, or, at least, as a visionary scheme of unattainable perfection. The very idea of consistency is exploded. The convenience of the business of the day is to furnish the principle for doing it. Then the whole ministerial cant is quickly got by heart. The prevalence of faction is to be lamented. All opposition is to be regarded as the effect of envy and disappointed ambition. All administrations are declared to be alike. Flattering themselves that their power is become necessary to the support of all order and government, every thing which tends to the support of that power is sanctified, and becomes a part of the public interest. Growing every day more formed to affairs, and better knit in their limbs; when the occasion (now their only rule) requires it, they become capable of sacrificing those very persons to whom they had before sacriIt is ficed their original friends. now only in the ordinary course of business to alter an opinion, or to betray a connexion. Frequently relinquishing one set of men and adopt ing another, they grow into a total indifference to human feeling, as they had before to moral obligation, until, at length, no one original impression remains on their minds, every principle is obliterated, every sentiment effaced. 66 is to be abandoned and destroyed. We shall now have to follow Burke "In the meantime, that power which all these changes aimed at securing, remains still as tottering and uncertain as ever. They are delivered up into the hands of those who feel neither respect for their persons, nor gratitude for their favours; who are put about them in appearance to serve, in reality to govern them; and when the signal is given, to abandon and destroy them, in order to set up some new dupe of ambition, who in his turn THE puncture in Mr Bang's neck from the boarding-pike was not very deep, still it was an ugly lacerated wound; and if he had not, to use his own phrase, been somewhat bullnecked, there is no saying what the consequences might have been. "Tom, my boy," said he, after the doctor was done with him, "I am nicely coopered now-nearly as good as new-a little stiffish or sofucky to have such a comfortable coating of muscle, otherwise the carotid would have been in danger. So come here, and take your turn, and I will hold the candle." It was dead calm, and as I had desired the cabin to be used as a cockpit, it was at this time full of poor fellows, waiting to have their wounds dressed, whenever the surgeon could go below. The lantern was brought, and, sitting down on a wadding tub, I stripped. The ball, which I knew had lodged in the fleshy part of my left shoulder, had first of all struck me right over the collarbone, from which it had glanced, and then buried itself in the muscle of the arm, just below the skin, where it stood out, as if it had been a sloe both in shape and colour. The collar-bone was much shattered, and my chest was a good deal shaken, and greatly bruised; but I had perceived nothing of all this at the time I was shot; the sole perceptible sensation was the pinch in the shoulder, as already described. I was much surprised (every man who has been seriously hit being entitled to expatiate) with the extreme smallness of the puncture in the skin through which the ball had entered; you could not have forced a pea through it, and there was scarcely any flow. of blood. "A very simple affair this, sir," said the surgeon, as he made a minute incision right over the ball, the instrument cutting into the cold dull lead with a cheep, and then pressing his fingers, one on each side of it, it jumped out nearly into Aaron's mouth. 66 A pretty sugar-plum, Tom-if that collar-bone of yours had not been all the harder, you would have been embalmed in a gazette, to use your own favourite expression. But, my good boy, your bruise on the chest is serious; you must go to bed, and take care of yourself." Alas! there was no bed for me to go to. The cabin was occupied by the wounded, where the surgeon was still at work. Out of our small crew, nine had been killed, and eleven wounded, counting passengers -twenty out of forty-two-a fearful proportion. At length the night fell. "Pearl, send some of the people aft, and get a spare square-sail from the sailmaker, and" "Will the awning not do, sir?" "To be sure it will," said I-it did not occur to me. "Get the awning triced up to the stancheons, and tell my steward to get the beds |