ready on the string; and justice bends the arrow at their heart, and strains the bow. God includes all being and all holiness. Enmity with him is enmity with all true life and power; an infinite evil, fraught with infinite and endless woe. To exist in union with him is the highest well-being, that shall increase in glory and joy throughout eternity.

God is his own chief end in creation. But, as he includes all being, his glory includes the glory and the perfecting of the universe. The whole human race, throughout its entire career of existence, hath oneness and identity, and “constitutes one complex person,' ‚” “one moral whole." The glory of God includes the redemption and glory of humanity. From the moment of creation to the final judgment, it is all one work. Every event which has swayed "the state of the world of mankind," "all its revolutions," proceed, as it was determined, towards "the glorious time that shall be in the latter days," when the new shall be more excellent than the old.

God is the absolute sovereign, doing according to his will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants on earth. Scorning the thought of free agency as breaking the universe of action into countless fragments, the greatest number in New England held that every volition, even of the humblest of the people, is obedient to the fixed decrees of Providence, and participates in eternity.

Yet, while the common mind of New England was inspired by the great thought of the sole sovereignty of God, it did not lose personality and human freedom in pantheistic fatalism. Like Augustine, who made war both on Manicheans and Pelagians; like the Stoics, whose morals it most nearly adopted, it asserted by just dialectics, or, as some would say, by a sublime inconsistency, the power of the individual will. In every action it beheld the union of the motive and volition. The action, it saw, was according to the strongest motive; and it knew that what proves the strongest motive depends on the character of the will. Hence, the education of that faculty was, of all concerns, the most momentous. The Calvinist of New England, who longed to be "morally good and excellent," had no other

object of moral effort than to make "the will truly lovely and right."

Action, therefore, as flowing from an energetic, right, and lovely will, was the ideal of New England. It rejected the asceticism of entire spiritualists, and fostered the whole man, seeking to perfect his intelligence and improve his outward condition. It saw in every one the divine and the human nature. It did not extirpate the inferior principles, but only subjected them. It placed no merit in vows of poverty or celibacy, and spurned the thought of non-resist ance. In a good cause its people were ready to take up arms and fight, cheered by the conviction that God was working in them both to will and to do.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MINISTERS ARE ADVISED TO TAX AMERICA BY ACT OF

PARLIAMENT.

NEWCASTLE'S ADMINISTRATION.

1754-1755.

1754.

SUCH was America, where the people was rapidly becoming sovereign. It was the moment when the aristocracy of England, availing itself of the formulas of the Revolution of 1688, controlled the election of the house of commons, and possessed the government.

To gain a seat in parliament, the great commoner himself was forced to solicit the nomination and patronage of the Duke of Newcastle. On the death of Henry Pelham, in March, 1754, Newcastle, to the astonishment of all men, declaring he had been second minister long enough, placed himself at the head of the treasury; and desired Henry Fox, then secretary at war, to take the seals and conduct the house of commons. The "political adventurer," who had vigor of mind, and excelled in quick and concise replication, asked to be made acquainted with the disposition of the secret service money. 66 My brother," said Newcastle, “never disclosed the disposal of that money, neither will I.” "Then," rejoined Fox, "I shall not know how to talk to members of parliament, when some may have received gratifications, others not." He further inquired, how the next parliament, of which the election drew near, was to be secured. 'My brother," answered Newcastle, "has settled it all.”

66

Fox declining the promotion offered him, the inefficient Holdernesse was transferred to the northern department; and Sir Thomas Robinson, a dull pedant, lately a subordinate at the board of trade, was selected for the southern, with the management of the new house of commons. duke," said Pitt, "might as well send his jackboot to lead us." The house abounded in noted men. Besides Pitt and

"The

Fox and Murray, the heroes of a hundred magnificent debates, there was "the universally able" George Gren1754. ville; the solemn Sir George Lyttelton, known as a poet, historian, and orator; Hillsborough, industrious, precise, well-meaning, but without sagacity; the arrogant, unstable Sackville, proud of his birth, ambitious of the highest stations; the amiable, candid, irresolute Conway; Charles Townshend, flushed with confidence in his own ability. Then, too, the young Lord North, well educated, abounding in goodhumor, made his entrance into public life, with such universal favor that every company resounded with the praises of his parts and merit. But Newcastle had computed what he might dare; at the elections, corruption had returned a majority devoted to the minister who was incapable of settled purposes or consistent conduct. The period when the English aristocracy ruled with the least admixture of royalty or popularity was the period when the British empire was the worst governed.

One day, a member, who owed his seat to bribery, defended himself in a speech full of wit, humor, and buffoonery, which kept the house in a continued roar of laughter. With all the fire of his eloquence, and in the highest tone of grandeur, Pitt, incensed against his patron, gave a rebuke to their mirth. "The dignity of the house of commons," he cried, "has, by gradations, been diminishing for years, till now we are brought to the very brink of the precipice, where, if ever, a stand must be made, unless you will degenerate into a little assembly, serving no other purpose than to register the arbitrary edicts of one too powerful subject." "We are designed to be an appendix to-I know not what; I have no name for it,”—meaning the house of lords.

Thus did Pitt oppose to corrupt influence his genius and his gift of speaking well. Sir Thomas Robinson, on the same day, called on his majority to show spirit. "Can gentlemen," he demanded, "can merchants, can the house bear, if eloquence alone is to carry it? I hope words alone will not prevail;" and the majority came to his aid. Even Fox, who "despised care for the constitution as the object

of narrow minds," complained to the heir of the Duke of Devonshire that "taking all share of power from the commons is not the way to preserve whig liberty. The lords stand between the crown and the privilege of both peers and commons ;" "after we are nothing," he continued, addressing the great chieftains of the whig clans, "you will not long continue what you wish to be." George II., the aged king, was even more impatient of this thraldom to the aristocracy, which would not leave him a negative, still less an option, in the choice of his servants. "The English notions of liberty," thought 'he, "must be somewhat singular, when the chief of the nobility choose rather to be the followers of a Duke of Newcastle than the friends and counsellors of their sovereign." The king was too old to resist ; but the first political lesson which his grandson, Prince George, received at Leicester house, was such a use of the forms of the British constitution as should emancipate the royal authority from its humiliating dependence on a few great families. In this way Pitt and Prince George became allies, moving from most opposite points 1754. against the same influence; Pitt wishing to increase the force of popular representation, and Leicester house to recover independence for the prerogative.

These tendencies foreshadowed an impending change in the great whig party of England. Its fires had gone out; the ashes on its altars were grown cold. It must be renovated, or given over to dissolution. It had accomplished its original purposes, and was relapsing into a state of chaos. Now that the principle of its former cohesion and activity had exhausted its power, and that it rested only on its traditions, intestine divisions and new combinations would necessarily follow. The whigs had, by the Revolution of 1688, adjusted a compromise between the liberty of the industrial classes and the old feudal aristocracy, giving internal rest after a long conflict. With cold and unimpassioned judgment, they had seated the house of Hanover on the English throne, in the person of a lewd, vulgar, and ill-bred prince, who was neither born nor educated among them, nor spoke their language, nor understood their con