world of his labours. A boy with whom he was at play, accidentally struck the point of a knife into his eye, and deprived it of sight. The defect was not visible in after life, but the sight was never restored. At this period, though his scholarship was reluctant, he occasionally discovered some of the ready shrewd ness which characterised his conversation in manhood. At Eton, the seat of aristocracy, when a circle of the boys, boasting of their own origin, proceeded to question Horne on his parentage, he silenced them at once by saying that his father was an eminent Turkey merchant;" an answer which, in the existing state of the Levant trade, implied peculiar opulence. At a village school in Kent, he had played truant and returned home, to the great displeasure of his father. On being angrily asked the cause of this act of disobedience, he said that "his master was utterly unfit to instruct him, for though perhaps he might know what a verb or a noun was, he understood nothing about a preposition or conjunction; and so finding him an ignorant fellow, he had thought it best to leave him." 66 of her proudest colleges, while Dunning and Kenyon were the pupils of nameless provincial schools, and were never at college; yet Dunning rose to the first rank as counsel, and to the Peerage, and Kenyon died Chief Justice of the King's Bench. At the time of their intimacy with Horne, the three were ludicrously poor. They dined often, during the vacation, at a little eating-house near Chancery Lane, where, he afterwards used to tell, "Dunning and myself were generous, for we gave the girl who waited on us a penny a-piece. But Kenyon, who always knew the value of money, sometimes rewarded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes with a promise.' But he was not destined to make the experiment of this precarious, though tempting profession. His father was unluckily determined to see him a churchman. In 1760 he took priest's orders, and soon after was inducted into the living of New Brentford, purchased by his father. Its value, between two and three hundred pounds a-year, was a sufficient income at the time, and this income he enjoyed for eleven years. During one or two of the earlier years of this period, he travelled as tutor with a son of Elwes, the wellknown miser. His conduct in his living was not indecorous. He probably had no great liking for the simple duties of a station so opposed to his eager, jealous, and restless temper; but the world was quiet, public affairs seemed beyond his reach, and he had not yet acquired the foolish and culpable habit of volunteering on all occasions of public disturbance. It has been a subsequent matter of wonder, that he was during this period avowedly hostile to the system and pretensions of Popery, and not less to the dissenters. But the true solution is, that the topics were then profitless, that the laurels of popularity were to be gathered in other fields, and that his time for publicity had not yet arrived. He had even narrowly es caped being appointed a King's chaplain. At nineteen, he was sent to St John's, Cambridge; his name was among the Triposes in 1758, among others with Beadon, afterwards Master of Jesus College, and Bishop of Bath and Wells. Soon after this period, Horne, either pressed by circumstances, or led by caprice, became usher in a school kept by one Jennings at Blackheath. But this life he found too irksome, and at the request of his father, who seems to have been an honest and decent man, he took deacon's orders, and served a curacy in Kent, where he got the ague. He now gave up the curacy, and began to think of another profession more suited to his restless and ambitious mind. He entered his name at the Inner Temple in 1756, and there became acquainted with Dunning and Kenyon, two men who had a considerable influence on his future career. The three fellowstudents associated much together, and Horne might be presumed to have the advantage of his companions, from his having been educated at the two principal schools of England, and being a graduate of one The beginning of the reign of George the Third affords an admirable lesson of the true spirit of faction. If a patriot ever sat upon the throne of England, that patriot was George the Third. Handsome, ho. nourable, virtuous, unwearied in business, zealous for his country, and signalizing his first steps to power by boons to the liberty of the nation, he seemed made for popularity; it might appear impossible for political virulence to have assailed the King. No public distress gave it an excuse; the kingdom had never known such a continuance of prosperity. No infliction of Heaven had subdued her harvests, no luckless war had embittered the spirit of her people. Yet faction burst out with a fury which might almost prefigure the violence of the desperate days of France. In the midst of perpetual additions to the strength of the Constitution, the cry was suddenly raised that the Constitution was on the point of ruin. With opulence pouring on the country, from every quarter of the globe, the cry was, that the Empire was on the brink of bankruptcy. What was the source of all this frenzy? Lord Bute was Minister, and Wilkes was his enemy. The libeller began his war, and was checked. The check was sufficient to canonize him with the ragged patriotism of the suburbs. The roar was raised round Lord Bute, and from Lord Bute it reached the throne. It was in this tempestuous atmosphere that Horne Tooke first plumed his political wing. The "injuries" of Wilkes, and the "tyranny" of Bute, were his theme. His first contribution in the cause was a song on the release of the demagogue from his well-deserved confinement in the Tower. His next effort was a pamphlet, of such overcharged virulence, that for a long time he could not find a publisher, even among the tools of faction, daring enough to print it. It at length appeared, but under a condition, that if it were prosecuted, the author should come forward. The author desired little more. It was evident that the bastard popularity of Wilkes made him unhappy, roused his rivalry, and determined him to try whether by adopting his audacity he might not be heir to his fame. This pamphlet was a piece of vulgar ribaldry on Lords Bute and Mansfield: it was entitled "The Petition of an Englishman; with which are given a copperplate of the Croix de S. Pillory, and a true and accurate plan of some part of Kew Gardens." The pamphlet is addressed" to the right honourable, truly noble, and truly Scottish, Lords Mortimer and Jefferies." Nothing can be more trifling and contemptible in point of authorship than this performance, but its insolence may be supposed to have made up for its meagre mediocrity. The two Lords are supposed to have established a new Order in the kingdom, an order of knighthood, of the pillory. "The boon I beg of you," says the scribbler, "is to be admitted a knight companion of this honourable order; and that you would in consequence of this my request, speedily issue forth a particular warrant for me to be invested with this noble Croix de pillory. Some such institution as the above mentioned has long been wanting in this kingdom. "And since by you, my Lords, the English name is now melted down to Britain, and liberty, wrested from our hands, is, with great propriety, trusted to the keeping of Scotch jus tices and court boroughs, leave us not naked of every honourable distinction; give us this badge in lieu of what you have taken from us, that we may afford a striking proof to some future Montesquieu, how true it is, that the spirit of liberty may survive the constitution; and that, though it is possible for an infamous royal favourite, by corruption of, and with the assistance of, an iniquitous prerogative judge, to harass and drive insulted liberty from our arms; yet still she finds a refuge from which she never can be expelled-a freeman's heart." We shall close this verbiage with his character of Wilkes, which even the notorious habits of the man did not prevent him from publishing. "It is not sufficient that he pay an inviolable regard to the laws; that he be a man of the strictest and most unimpeached honour; that he be endowed with superior abilities and qualifications; that he be blessed with a benevolent, generous, noble, free soul; that he be inflexible, incorruptible, and brave; that he prefers infinitely the public welfare to his own interest, peace, and safety; that his life be ever in his hand, ready to be paid down cheerfully for the liberty of his country; and that he be dauntless and unwearied in her serviceall this avails him nothing." Yet those outrages on truth and public knowledge went down with faction as fact, and Wilkes was a martyr. One brief passage, which was truth, must be given. It shews what sacrifices will be made to the insane avarice of popular agitation. "Even I, my countrymen, who now address myself to you,-—I, who am at present blessed with peace, with happiness, and independence, a fair character and an easy fortune, am at this moment forfeiting them all." For this scandalous performance, in which he was palpably angling for prosecution, he was not punished. It may have been thought too contemptible to attract the resentment of Ministers. And the accident of his undertaking the care of the son of a Mr Taylor in his neighbourhood, on a tour of Italy, for a time withdrew him from his pursuit of fine and pillory. But the first step which he took on his arrival in France, shewed how completely he was already disqualified for his sacred profession. He threw off his black coat, figured in the most gaudy habili ments of that gaudy time and country, and was a coxcomb even in the land of coxcombs. The list of his wardrobe, which he consigned to the care of Wilkes at Paris, on his return to England in the following year, is a satisfactory display of the giddy and indecorous vanity of the man. "DEAR SIR,-According to your permission, I leave with you I Suit of scarlet and gold cloth! 1 Suit of black silk. 1 Black velvet surtout. was received with peculiar favour. Wilkes promised to correspond with him, an honour which Horne appreciated so highly, that he commenced the correspondence by this general and most extraordinary disburthening of his soul. If you have any fellow-feeling, you cannot but be kind to them, since they too, as well as yourself, are outlawed in England; and on the same account, their superior worth. I am, my dear sir, your very affection ate humble servant, JOHN HORNE." He had sought an intercourse with Wilkes, immediately on his arrival in Paris; and through a letter from one Cotes, who is characteristically described as a "politician and winemerchant, who had recently become a bankrupt, by his steadily supporting the cause of patriotism,"-" patriotism" having always a prodigious propensity to cheat its creditors, he "TO JOHN WILKES, Esq. Paris. "Montpelier, Jan. 3, 1766. "Dear Sir,-I well recollect our mutual engagement at parting, and most willingly proceed to fulfil my part of the engagement. "You are now entering into a correspondence with a parson, and I am greatly apprehensive lest that title should disgust; but give me leave to assure you, I am not ordained a hypocrite. It is true, I have suffered the infectious hand of a bishop to be waved over me, whose imposition, like the sop given to Judas, is only a signal for the devil to enter! "I allow that, usually at that touch, fugiunt pudor, verumque, fidesque; in quorum subeunt locum fraudes, dolique, insidiæque, &c. &c.; but I hope I have escaped the contagion ; and if I have not, if you should at any time discover the black spot under the tongue, pray, kindly assist me to conquer the prejudices of education and profession." With these sentiments, it cannot be doubted that he was completely equipped for a popular career. But the dénouement of this profligate confidence was incomparably in keeping. Horne, in the pride of knowledge, had shewn in a paragraph of the letter, that he was acquainted with Wilkes's attempt to obtain the Turkish embassy, and also the negotiation with the Rockingham Ministry, for a sum to be paid to him by its members, as hushmoney, or a bribe to keep him out of the country. Those intrigues were the secrets of Wilkes's soul, and he was equally surprised and indignant at their coming upon him in the shape of a commonplace correspondence with a rambling parson. In his wrath, he disdained to continue the corre spondence; but in his craft, which never slept, he determined that the letter should be forthcoming against the writer. Horne, mortified at the neglect, on his return through Paris, took an opportunity of enquiring "why his letter had been left unanswered." Wilkes made some jesting excuse. Horne, now first conscious that he had fallen into slippery hands, demanded his letter. Wilkes had his answer ready: "He had never received it." The treachery was palpable; but the glory even of having been tricked by the "Man of the People," was too important to the rising patriot, to be cast away for any personal insult, and the parties separated with the blandest cordiality. Horne had no sooner arrived in London, than he found his letter everywhere staring him in the face. Wilkes had shewn it to every body, with a direct menace, that if the writer made any disturbance on the subject, it should appear in print, and thus minister to his universal fame. The next event was the Brentford Election, in which the outlaw offered a fresh insult to the laws and decencies of his country. The life of Wilkes still remains to be written. It ought to be the tribute of some man of talent and principle to the wisdom of his country. No work could be more effective as a moral lesson to the men who persist in believing that popular opinion has even the simplest faculty of deciding between vice and virtue, that the selfishness of party shrinks from the utmost baseness in its favourites, or that the mob ever look for any other qualities in its leaders than effrontery, daring defiance of every feeling that honest men revere, and the ruffian hardihood that is to be abashed by no sense of shame, no respect for law, and no homage for religion. John Wilkes was born in London, the son of a distiller. His father seems to have been so strongly tinged with politics, that he dreaded the taint of slavery, which it was the fashion of the time to attribute to the English Universities. Wilkes was therefore sent to accomplish himself at Leyden, in the land of William and liberty; and his father's opulence enabled him subsequently to travel with some distinction on the continent, where he was on terms of intercourse with several of the English nobility. On his return he married a woman of fortune, settled at Aylesbury, became an active advocate for the Militia Bill, then a highly unpopular topic; and, after act ing for some time as a captain in the Buckinghamshire militia, was, by Lord Temple, lord-lieutenant of the county, appointed to the command of the corps. Wilkes commenced his political career in 1754 as candidate for Berwick, where he failed. His residence at Aylesbury, however, had given him weight there, and for this borough he sat in two successive Parliaments. But his restless and reckless spirit was not to be satisfied with the tardy progress of Parliamentary honours, as he soon became fully convinced that he had not powers for the Senate. He sought an easier channel to the abject distinctions that he loved, and became an echo of the popular outcry against the Ministry. Lord Chatham had just been forced to give way before the favouritism of Lord Bute. This was the popular version. Lord Chatham had been driven from power by his own imperiousness; by the utter difficulty of finding a Cabinet with whom he could act, for he would be despotic or nothing; and by the awakened indignation of the King, who must have surrendered to him all but the sceptre. England had long honoured him, for she had never seen a more successful Minister. In the early years of his government his name was triumph, but all his great qualities were already tarnished by the spirit of dictation. Prompt, sagacious, and bold, no man was ever more distinctly moulded for command. But his pride drew an impassable line between him and all public men. He could condescend to no associate. He tolerated no alliance. All authority must be concentrated in his person. He at length urged his claims to a height which would have made the King a citizen, the Cabinet a tool, and the government a dictatorship. He fell; and he revenged himself by assailing the Cabinet through the sides of the country, and labouring to make the King feel the loss of the Minister by his power of stimulating the popular hostility to the throne, and sanctioning the outrage of the Colonies against the Empire. It is painful to be compelled thus to desecrate the tomb where the man of fame and genius lies. But it should be more painful to dis guise the truth. The more brilliant the name, the more important the example. The mighty mind of Chatham, humiliated and rendered useless for a great portion of his public career by a single fault, supplies a moral to all the future weakness of ambition. If a combination of qualities unrivalled in English political history, the highest eloquence, the most commanding foresight, the most vigorous and daring activity of mind, should have sunk into the clientship of a factious opposition, and the advocacy of an illegitimate revolt; if Chatham could stoop from wielding the destinies of England to the patronage of the mob; how sensitively should the inferior race of statesmen shrink from the crime, if they would escape the condemnation ! pulsion from one Parliament, and an address to the King for his prosecu tion, from its successor; the whole closing with outlawry and exile. But the attachment of the multitude, proverbially fickle in all that belongs to the true servant of the country, can exhibit the most memorable constancy, where its object is stigmatized by every offence that degrades the human character. Wilkes was found persevering, audacious, and violent. Such qualities saved him from being forgotten for a moment. On the dissolution of Parliament, he was summoned from France, where he had taken refuge from the laws, to be proposed as member for Middlesex. Horne now found himself, at last, in a position to snatch at least a fragment of that notoriety which had so long and so largely been monopolized by Wilkes. With all the consciousness that he had already been scorned and insulted, he applied himself to the service of the insulter with the most unbridled zeal, advanced or staked his credit for the expenses of the election, submitted to the more serious sacrifice of involving his cloth in electioneering transactions, and finally had the triumph, more disgraceful still, of bringing at least to the doors of Parliament, as member for the great metropolitan county, a man stigmatized by the grossest imputations. But Wilkes enjoyed an unequivocal triumph alike in his success and in his defeat. He lived on public disturbance. In reviewing the events of those days, it has been conceived, that it would have been wiser to have despised this man, and suffered him to sink into oblivion, than to have lifted him into perpetual notice by public infliction. Yet it may also be conceived, that to overlook the offender, is to join with him in his offence; that the vigour of justice is strongly connected with the vindication of the laws; that men like Wilkes live in an element of public agitation; and that with nature, interest, and necessity for his stimu lants, his cultivation of the arts of public evil would be exhausted but with his life. Wilkes, ineffective in Parliament, and characterless in society, made his attack from behind the press. There he fought under cover. The virulence of the charge was unchecked by personal fear, and its extravagance suffered no drawback from the detected habits of the accuser. In the North Briton, established in 1762, the King was the object of perpetual contempt; the Ministry, the Judges, every man of honour and eminence in the kingdom, were successively held up to the popular hatred. Wilkes at length became the object of private retribution, and brought two duels upon himself by his intolerable calumnies, with various personal insults by the injured; but his popularity received an accession from every fresh instance of either his crime or his punishment. He had been hitherto simply the partisan of the multitude, he was now the champion; what he had done was heightened by what he had suffered; and the brand of public justice was now the only instrument wanting to place him at the summit of patriot supremacy. This was not long wanting. No man had laboured with a more evident determination to bring down the wrath of the laws on his own head. The pursuit was hourly of too much importance to his fame, and even to his finances, to be now remitted. He rapidly succeeded in inviting at once a prosecution by the Attorney-general, a dismissal from his regiment, an ex The law now laid its grasp upon him. He was arrested by a warrant from Lord Mansfield. He was de |