and actuaries of our public companies. Mr. Pitt's respectful attention to all deputations of merchants and tradesmen, does him honor: he always took the pains to make himself master of their grounds of complaint, and usually accommodated his measures, in a great degree, to their representations. This deference for the will of the commercial interest, his somewhat corrupt alliance with the great monopoly companies to the prejudice of unprivileged trade, and the facility with which peerages were scattered among the personal chieftains of the monied aristocracy, have caused that decided popularity upon the Exchange, which still renders the administration of Mr. Pitt an object of sincere regret among the London merchants. His taxes were numerous. Taxes may be (1) useful: as when they are imposed on those sources of revenue which maintain the idle, and thus com pel an increase of productive exertion; such are taxes on the rent or income of houses, lands, fixed and funded property. Taxes may be (2) indifferent: as when they fall on every one in proportion to his ability, and not so sensibly as to inflict privations; such are in a great degree the assessments, yet they somewhat favour the two extreme classes, at the expence of the middle class. Taxes may be (3) noxious: as when they levy on the poor and on the rich an equal sum; such are poll-taxes, and excisetaxes on objects of universal consumption, as beer, tea, soap, candles. Now, it is remarkable, that a very small proportion of Mr. Pitt's taxes belong to the first class, a larger to the second, but the great mass of them to the third of these distributions; so that, as a taxgatherer, the exertion of his skill is unquestionably blame-worthy. It has not been made out by theorists, whether (4) taxes on circulation, such as on stamps, legacies, conveyances, freight, &c. are useful, indifferent or noxious; we there fore avoid noticing them, as objects of applause or reproach. We suspect, however, that they ought to spare the minor, which are the productive, and to attack the major, which are the unproductive forms of circulation. If so; in this case again, Mr. Pitt has egregiously erred. As an orator, he ranks in the higher, but not in the highest forms of excellence. If one has a foreign guest, who wishes to hear the debates in parliament, one picks preferably the evening whe Mr. l'itt is expected to speak. Then in his delivery an imposing majesty, in his verbiage an unrelenting fluency, which is sure to satisfy the spectator and hearer: he will return to his own cour try with an idea that the ministers worthy to represent the nation. Yet a the foreigner happens to be a critic, an to think over and analyze what he ha heard, he will probably discover that he was more delighted by the form th by the matter of the harangue. T phrases were turned with the roundres of an author, and accumulated with al luring volubility. Repetition, which is a vice in a writer, is a virtue in a speaker, who can seldom, like Mirabeau, impress at a blow his opinion. The or tor, therefore, ought to restate his inferences in altered words, that the seatiment may have time to make its way. Mr. Pitt has eminently this power of amplification; but he accomplishes i rather by a change of phrase than of illustration, rather by multiplying his words than by varying his tropes, rather by dint of memory than of imagi nation; in the long list of his speeches, there is scarcely a figure one recollects. The argumentative part is never ex haustive, and seldom pointed; but it has always the merit of embracing the leading topics in just proportion, and of pressing those grounds especially, for the comprehension of which the public mind at the time is most prepared.This is the great secret of popularity and success in public speaking-to ar gue with the very data of the hearers, to exact no new efforts of thought or reflection from their indolence, and ra ther to lend expression than idea to them. It is the sure road to the appro bation of ordinary minds and common capacities; because it flatters a vanity which instruction would humiliate.Some persons (the foible is common in the speculative world) are too prospec tive, too far-sighted in their views and schemes, and consider every question by universal principles and remote con tingencies, rather than by its specific pressure and immediate operation. Mr. Pitt, on he contrary, is somewhat too near-sighted, (if the metaphor may be allowed), and is remarkable for the locality and momentaneity, and conse quently for the transientness of his grounds of advice. Speeches which usually seem to win the victory in the newspaper, have already, in the parliamentary register, lost their superiority; and when recorded by the historian have faded into very insufficient defences of his proceedings. Much irrelevant though really active motive was adduced: actual conduct was indeed accounted for; but the idea of perfect conduct should have been evolved and recommended. There is but too much reason to suspect that this narrow mode of arguing is not merely exoteric; but is in fact the faithful and honest transcript of Mr. Pitt's mode of deciding business; for he is commonly found to modify his measures by the criticism of his adversaries, as if their observations were new to him and had not been anticipated. To have skill in men, to be a judge of merit, is the most important qualification of a prime minister: like the manager of a band of players he should know how to cast every part aright; so as to perform, with the given cotempotary agents, the public business of the nation in the best possible manner.Either Mr. Pitt wants this skill, or sacrifices, to the pressure of parliamentary solicitation and interest, the pleasure of lifting merit, and the duty of preferring ability. His subordinate appointments have been notoriously injudicious; in short, if his return to office could be borne without impatience, his retirement from it may well be seen without regret. After conducting his reader to the resignation of Mr. Pitt, our author continues his history to the treaty of peace, of which, in a concluding paragraph, he thus gives his opinion: "In negociating a pacification, three objects ought to be kept in view,-honour, adsantage, and security. That we succeeded in all these desirable points of attainment, none will be so hardy as to affirm. After the frequent boasts of a full determination of acquiring indemnity, the dereliction of the far greater part of our conquests, and the loss of the effect of a brilliant series of naval triumphs, besides a very oppressive augmentation of the national debt, present a scene remarkably and essentially different to look forward. The honour of a negocia from the prospect to which we were taught the commanding posts which the conductors tion does not consist in being dislodged from of the war affected to occupy and to secure, or in being success vely driven to the last verge of evasion; nor will such a close of hostility be considered as a material advantage by the generality of political speculators; and, in point of security, we have les; reason to boast of our complete ability of self-defence than we had before the war commenced its mischievous career. ministers deserve not the severity of censure, Yet the They had a difficult task to execute. The unfortunate predicament in which the preceding leaders of the cabinet had involved the nation, rendered peace particularly necessary; and the extraordinary and portentous high claims of a nation which accused Greatincrease of the power of France, with the Britain of the guilt of aggression, precluded the hope of favourable or beneficial terms. Viewed with reference to this state of affairs, the treaty of Amiens calls for acquiescence and approbation, rather than disgust, objection, or complaint; and, if it should not be permanent, the fault will be that of the rash statesman whose impolicy promoted by of the prudent minister whose endeavours war the extension of Gallic power, not that were exerted for the restoration of peace. In the mean time, let us not give way to pu sillanimity or despondence. Though our security has been diminished, our resources are by no means contemptible. Confining our views to insular defence, we may defy the threatening storm; and, by the terrors of a naval war, we may humble the arrocontinued peace." gance of the enemy, and produce a desire of This convenient volume will, no doubt, find many readers, and will in nothing detract from the reputation of the historian of the union with Ireland. To the Lansdowne politics the author appears most habitually to incline. AaT. V. History of the Reign of George III. to the Termination of the late War. By ROBERT BISSET, LL. D. 8vo. 6 vols. DR. BISSET appears, to have seriously, though moderately, imbibed those precisely inverse notions of the duty of allegiance, which Mr. Burke's paradoxical daring thought fit to advance, in order by one excess to counteract what be considered as another. Mr. Burke holds out the church as Entitled to a preference of attachment, as first, and last, and midst in our minds. He allots the next degree of zeal to majesty, considering it as the key-stone that binds together the well-constructed arch of our constitution. Third in esti mation he ranks the house of lords, the tocracy, the great ground and pillar of chief virtual representative of our arissecurity to the landed interest, and that main link by which it is connected with the law and the crown. As for the house of commons, it is hustled by Mr. Burke among the revolutionary societies, as one of their own family. Thus the institutions which respect our posthumous security, are held up as of most immediate importance; those which chiefly concern our federative and diplomatic intercourse with foreign countries, are ranked next in domestic value; the body which gives force to our courts of justice, stability to our laws, and cohesion to our landed opulence, sinks into a subordinate confederacy; and the great assembly of the united representatives of the people, the source of all legislation, the pledge of voluntary obedience, the nursery of our statesmen, the confidant of our grievances, and the depositary of our hopes, is scarcely made an object of attention. Mr. Burke suggests an oratorical excuse for what he perceived to be absurd; and plainly intimates that his relative commendation had rather been proportioned to his actual sense of the danger, than of the value, of the institutions discussed. But here a grave and elaborate historian has adopted these freaks of rhetoric, resorted to for a transient purpose, as permanent rules of appreciation, and canons of historical criticism. Still the bias, though real, is not very prominent. Bating this perverse and dangerous leaning of opinion, Dr. Bisset's History is highly praiseworthy. It narrates with greater detail and completeness than Macfarlane, Belsham, or Adolphus, the transactions of the present reign. The parliamentary matter is not confined to the political, but embraces the statistical legislation and debates. The influence of literature on publie proceeding is not overlooked. The foreign campaigns and continental operations receive their due share of investigation and narrative. The style is natural, yet elegant; the information abundant, yet select; the criticism loyal, yet liberal. In short, it appears to us more likely than any of the rival historics to annex itself to Hume and Smollett, as the regular and generally received continuation of the History of England. One source of popularity in history-writing, is habitually to take part with the constituted authorities, and with the national spirit. Rulers when they have erred, a people when they have erred, are still grateful to those who becorre the apologists of their error, and the explainers of their decision: this art et ingratiation is much practised by Dr. Bisset. He is commonly the panegyrist of event, the preconizer of destiny: he rows with the stream; lie fans in its own direction the gale of public opinion; and turns away from the cotem porary scene, like Augustus, with request to the spectators to applaud He is the reverse of a discontente historian, but is candid even to the fac tious. A preliminary dissertation rapi ily sketches the state of party and events prior to the war of 1756. The first chapter continues this preparatory m. t ter in greater detail to the accession of George the third. The first volume extends to the dissolution of the parliament in 1767. It deserves notice, that when the affairs of the India company came before this parliament, in November 1766, Lord Chatham denied the right of the company to have territorial possessions, as such were not conveyed by their charters, and were foreign to the nature and object of a trading company; and he maintained that Government, for its great expence in the pro tection of that company, was entitled to the territorial revenue of Hindostar, for the purpose of indemnification. These observations apparently inspired the scheme of that India bill, which Burke and Fox produced sixteen years after wards. In the second volume (at p. 45) there is a diverting misprint. Junius is de scribed as accusing Lord Mansfield of jacobinism. The first political symptoms of a religicus heterodoxy, now so much extended, are thus noticed by Dr. Bisset. the "Sir Henry Houghton made a motion relieve the dissenters from subscriptions and the high-church gentlemen. The dissenters penal laws, but was warmly opposed by it was said, by omitting to subscribe, had violated the law of the land; and the trans gressors, not satisfied with being exensed, desired the law to be changed in order accommodate a change in their opinions. total exemption from subscription woul open the way to heresy and infidelity. Th tain regard was due to their opinions; hu dissenters were a respectable body, and a cer the present bill, instead of proposing mere relief of non-conformists, was a pro for encouraging schism, and ultimately stroying the church of England: many the dissenters now maintained doctrines totally different from those of former times, and were inimical to the church of England, to the protestant religion, and to true christianity: to encourage such men, therefore, would be equally contradictory to sound policy, and to the interests of the established faith. The supporters of the bill contended, that subscriptions, while they operate against the pious and conscientious, are no restraints on the impious and wicked. The sectarians were charged with having deviated from the theological opinions of their predecessors; but in all ranks of a community advancing in knowledge and civilization, the more understandings were exercised, the greater would be the diversity in the result of dif ferent efforts. That some individual dissenters held principles inimical to christianity, might be true; but the charge against them as a body, was totally false: they had been uniformly the friends of civil and religious liberty, had supported the British constitution, the establishment of the house of Brunswic, and all those principles and measures by which our constitutional rights were upheld: they had moreover supported the christian faith against its most ardent impugners; and such men certainly deserved enjoy something more than mere impuity by connivance. By toleration, christianity had flourished; by intolerance, the number of believers had been lessened: let protestants be united, that we may be the better able to make head against infidels. These considerations induced a great majority in the house of commons to vote for the bill; but in the house of lords the bishops exerted themselves so strenuously against an indulgence which they conceived and represented to be dangerous to the church, that the bill was rejected by no less than a hundred and two to twenty-nine." A far more desirable measure than those which have hitherto been agitated, would be the repeal of the act of uniformity. It would at once admit the catholics of Ireland, and the unitarians of England, to that participation in the establishment to which the diffusion of their opinions and the weight of their property has. long entitled them. A division of the clergy into distinct sects would somewhat lessen the mischievous cohesion of that body corporate, now so subservient, not merely to the mandates of government, but to the personal caprice of the crown. But this cohesion might be further diminished by vesting in the clergy of the diocese the nomination of their own bishop; and by converting the prebendal stalls, which are wholly useless in the hierarchy, into lay preferments, distributable among the decayed authors and artists, to whom national gratitude owes some provision. There is a short passage in this volume which, with its connected note, we shall also present to our readers, as it obscurely touches a constitutional disease of long standing and felt peril. "Ever since the debate on the address, of the minister. He studiously avoided any great indecision had appeared in the conduct farther discussion on American politics, and frequently absented himself from the house. From these circumstances it was conjectured, that he did not fully concur in the coercive system; and this hypothesis was by no means inconsistent with either his known disposition or abilities. It was presumed, that a man of such a conciliating temper, and whose first ministerial act had been concession to appease the colonists, could really be no friend to violent and irritating measures; and that a statesman of his undoubted talents could not, from the dictates of his own understanding, devise or recommend such acts. Lord North, it was imagined, could not long be so completely deceived as to fact, and erroneous in argument, as the proposers of the ministerial measures appeared. Besides, it was supposed that his intellect was too enlightened, and his mind too liberal, to possess that contemptible obstinacy of character which is incident to men at the same time weak and vain, who adhere to a plan, not because it is proved to be right, but because they had once favoured its adoption. "It has been very often asserted, and by many believed, that lord North originally was, and always continued in his private sentiments, inimical to the American war; although he, as prime minister, in every measure of carrying it on, incurred the chief responsibility. This opinion, as an historian, I have not documents either to confirm or refute with undoubted certainty. To those who would confine themselves to comparison of the plans and conduct of government during that awful period, with the talents often displayed by fuis lordship, the conjecture may appear probable. But persons who take a candid view of the respectable and estimable moral qualities of the prime minister, will hesitate in justifying his wisdom at the expence of his integrity; they will sooner admit that a man of genius, literature, and political knowledge, reasoned falsely and acted unwisely, than that man of moral rectitude acted in deliberate and lasting opposition to his conscience, thereby involving his country in misfortune. At the same time, I am fully aware that there is a third hypothesis possible, and by many believed, if not by some known to be true. The pinion in question rather changes the situation than degrades the character of lord North, ANN. REV. VOL. II. R "The theory of an interior cabinet was revived; and it was asserted, that lord North, though ostensibly minister, was really compelled to obey the dictates of a secret junto. Having, however, no satisfactory evidence that such a cabal existed, nor that an able and estiinable nobleman submitted to such a disgraceful mancipation, I cannot record conjecture as a historical truth, and must narrate the measures proposed or adopted by lord North as his own, because for them he declared himself responsible." The third volume opens with the parliamentary session of 1777; when the hostile interference of France in behalf of American independence began to be apprehended. A fine piece of narrative is the final appearance of Lord Chatham in the house of peers, on the duke of Richmond's motion upon the state of the nation. "His lordship had that session frequently attended the house of peers, less from the relaxation of distemper than from the calls of duty, which the increasing calamities of his country made him consider as every day more imperious. In a bodily state fitted only for the stillness and quiet of a bed of sickness, he encountered the active warfare of the senate, hoping his counsels might at length be admitted by those who were experiencing such evils from former rejection and intractability, and that, in his old age, he might contribute to restore part of the prosperity, greatness, and glory, which he had acquired for his country in the vigour of his life, and which left her when he ceased to guide her affairs. His exertion, in the former part of the session, so much beyond his bodily strength, had increased his distemper; but, informed of the business that was to be agitated, and aware of the doctrines which would be brought forward, he thought it incumbent on himself to render it manifest to the world, that though he agreed with the marquis of Rockingham and his adherents in reprobating the system of ministry, he totally differed from them on the question of American independence. He accordingly betook himself to the senate, of which, for near half a century, he had been the brightest luminary. Having arrived in the house, he refreshed himself in the lord chancellor's room, until he learned that business was about to begin. The infirm statesman was led into the house of peers, attended by his son-in-law, lord Mahon, and resting on the arm of his second son, Mr. William Pitt. He was richly dressed in a superb suit of black velvet, with a full wig, and covered up to the knees in flannel. He was pale and emaciated, but the darting quickness, force, and animation of his eyes, and the expression of his whole countenance, shewed that his mind retained its primæral perspicacity, brilliancy, and strength. The lords stood up, and made a lane for him to pass through to the bench of the earls, and with the gracefulness of deportment for which he was so eminently distinguished, he bowed to them as he proceeded. Having taken his scat, he listened with the most profound attention to the speech of the duke of Richmond. When his grace had finished, lord Chatham rose; he lamented that, at so im portant a crisis, his bodily infirmities he interfered so often with his regular attendance on his duty in parliament. I have this day (said he) made an effort beyond the powers of my constitution, to come down to the house, perhaps the last time I shall enter its walls, to express my indignation against the proposition of yielding the sovereignty of America. My lord, I rejoice that the grave has not closed upon me, that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and noble monarchy. Pressed down as I am by the load of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most perilous conjunc ture; but, my lords, while I have sense and memory, I never will consent to tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions. Shall a people, so lately the terror of the world, now fall prostrate before the house of Bourbon? It is impossible. I am not, I confes, well informed of the resources of this kingdom; but I trust it has stiil suffi cient to maintain its just rights, though know them not; and any state, my lords, is better than despair. Let us at least make by representing him as merely his majesty's first commissioner of the treasury and chan cellor of the exchequer, instead of the prime political counsellor. Persons of very consi derable respectability, of very high veneration for the character of lord North, and wh with inviolable fidelity adhered to him in every vicissitude of fortune, have given thei opinion, that he was not really minister, but the official executor of positive command I am aware also, that in this assertion they are said to proceed, not merely on gener inferences, but on specific evidence From the nature of the alleged documents, I kno well that if they exist, they cannot at present be made public. If the truth of this count were established, we should, indeed, have to consider his lordship as official obeying orders, but not as voluntarily proposing counsels: this, perhaps, might ex him as the servant of a master, but would not be sufficient to acquit him as member deliberate assembly. Even in this last view, palliations might be found to apologize to t indulgent, though it would be more difficult to discover facts and arguments which wo satisfy the rigidly just." |