able dissipation which has proved the ruin of half the young English nobility; that he made him feel intensely the importance of character to a British statesman; that, in short, he pursued a course directly opposite to that of Lord Holland with his favorite son, is obvious from what remains to us of his correspondence, and from the results that appear in the early life of Mr. Pitt. But there is no evidence that he took any active part in his intellectual training. Dr. Prettyman says "the only wish ever expressed by his Lordship relative to Mr. Pitt's studies, was that I would read Polybius with him ;" and we should naturally conclude, from the character of Lord Chatham, and the confidence he had in the talents and industry of his son, that having settled the general outline of his studies, he left his mind to its own free growth, subject only to those occasional influences which would, of course, be felt when they met in the intervals of collegiate study. Such, at least, is the only inference we can draw from the statements contained in the biographies of the father and the son; from all the letters between them which have come down to us; and especially from the course which Lord Chatham pursued with his favorite nephew, Lord Camelford, as shown in his correspondence afterward published. There must, therefore, have been an entire mistake in the statements of Coleridge on this subject. In a bitter, disparaging sketch of Mr. Pitt, written in early life, under the influence of hostile feelings, he says: 'His father's rank, fame, political connections, and parental ambition were his mold -he was cast rather than grew. A palpable election, a conscious predestination controlled the free agency and transfigured the individuality of his mind, and that which he might have been was compelled into that which he was to be. From his early childhood, it was his father's custom to make him stand upon a chair and declaim before a large company, by which exercise, practiced so frequently, and continued for so many years, he acquired a premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of words, which must, of necessity, have diverted his attention from present objects, obscured his impressions, and deadened his genuine feelings." This story of his declaiming from a chair is not alluded to either by Dr. Prettyman in his Life of Mr. Pitt, or by Mr. Thackeray in his Memoirs of Lord Chatham. That the boy sometimes recited the speeches of others in a circle of family friends is not improbable, for it was at that time a very common practice in England; but if Coleridge meant that Lord Chatham set a child, under fourteen years of age, to "declaim," or make speeches of his own," before a large assembly," and that Mr. Pitt thus “acquired a premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of words," productive of all the evils stated, it is what few men would believe, except from a desire to make out some favorite theory. Mr. Coleridge's theory (for he could do nothing without one) was intended to run down Mr. Pitt as having "an education of words," which "destroys genius;" as "a being who had no feelings connected with man or nature, no spontaneous impulses, no unbiased and desultory studies, nothing that constitutes individuality of intellect, nothing that teaches brotherhood or affection." So much for theory; we may learn the fact from the testimony of his tutor and of his most intimate companions. Dr. Prettyman says: "Mr. Pitt now began [at the age of sixteen] to mix with other young men of his own age and station in life then resident in Cambridge, and no one was ever more admired and beloved by his acquaintances and friends. He was always the same person in company, abounding in playful and quick repartee." Mr. Wilberforce, who became his most intimate friend at the age of twenty, remarks: "He was the wittiest man I ever knew, and, what was quite peculiar to himself, had at all times his wit under entire control.

1 In America the word declaim is often used for recite in the English sense of the term; i. e., to pronounce the speech of another when committed to memory. But in England it is very rarely used in this sense; and the context seems to show that such could not have been the meaning of Coleridge.

Others appeared struck by the unwonted association of brilliant images; but every possible combination of ideas seemed always present to his mind, and he could at once produce whatever he desired. I was one of those who met to spend an evening in memory of Shakspeare, at the Boar's Head, East Cheap. Many professed wits were present, but Pitt was the most amusing of the party, and the readiest and most apt in the required allusions. He entered with the same energy into all our different amusements."

The truth is, Mr. Pitt had by nature a mind of such peculiar and unyielding materials, that Lord Chatham would have been wholly unable (whatever might be his wishes) to mold or fashion it after any preconceived model of his own. With some general resemblance in a few points, it has rarely happened in the case of two individuals so highly gifted, and placed in such similar circumstances, that a son has been so entirely unlike a father in all the leading traits of his intellectual character. It may interest the reader to dwell for a moment on some of the differences between them, before we follow Mr. Pitt into the scenes of public life. Lord Chatham, with all his splendid abilities, was still pre-eminently a man of feeling and impulse, governed by the suggestions of an ardent imagination, hasty in his resolves, wanting in selfcommand, irregular and often changeable in his plans and purposes. Mr. Pitt, with all his burning energy, was equally the man of intellect, deficient in imagination, gifted with extraordinary powers of abstract reasoning, having all his faculties brought into complete subjection to his will; so wary and circumspect in the midst of his boldest schemes, that Mr. Fox declared "he had never caught him tripping in a single instance" during a twenty years' contest; inflexible in his determinations, regular and symmetrical in the entire structure of his character. Both were lofty

and assuming, but these qualities in Lord Chatham were connected with a love of display, with ceremonious manners notwithstanding the warmth of his affections, and a singular delight in the forms of office and state; while Mr. Pitt had the severe simplicity of one of the early Romans, with a coldness of address, as he advanced in life, which was repulsive to every one except his most intimate friends. Lord Chatham loved fame, and was influenced more than he would have been willing to acknowledge by a desire for popularity and a regard to the opinion of others. Mr. Pitt loved power: he cared but little for office except as it gave him command over others. Without a particle of vanity, he had excessive pride; he despised popularity, and looked with contempt on the vulgar, "among whom he included a large proportion of the peerage and commonalty of England." Mr. Pitt had less genius than his father, but greater strength of mind; and while the one swayed the feelings of his countrymen by the vehemence of his own, the other guided their wills and formed their purposes by the intense energy of his understanding.

Mr. Pitt lost his father in 1778, and being left in straitened circumstances, applied himself to the law as affording the most direct means of support, and was called to the bar on the 12th of June, 1780. He rode the western circuit during that and the next year, having causes put occasionally into his hands which he managed with great skill and success, especially one which he argued before Judge Buller, in a manner that awakened the admiration of the bar, and another before Lord Mansfield, on granting the writ of habeas corpus to a man charged with murder, in which he received the warmest applause from that distinguished jurist. He was a favorite with his brethren of the circuit, one of whom remarks: "Among the lively men of his own time of life, Pitt was always the most animated and convivial in the many hours of leisure which occur to young men on circuit. He joined all the little excursions to Southampton, Weymouth, and such parties of amusement as were habitually formed. He was extremely popular. His name and reputation for high acquirements at the University commanded the attention of his seniors. His wit and

good humor endeared him to the younger part of the bar. After he became minister he continued to ask his old circuit intimates to dine with him, and his manners remained unchanged."

In January, 1781, he was returned as member of Parliament from Appleby, a borough belonging to Sir James Lowther. He immediately joined the Opposition under Burke and Fox, at a time when Lord North, besides the revolt of the American colonies, was engaged in a war with France, Spain, and Holland. His maiden speech was delivered on the twenty-sixth of the next month, and being wholly unpremeditated, gave a surprising exhibition of the readiness and fertility of his mind. One of Mr. Burke's bills on Economical Reform was under debate, and when Lord Nugent rose to oppose it, Mr. Byng, a member from Middlesex, asked Mr. Pitt to come forward in reply. He partly assented, but afterward changed his mind, and determined not to speak. Byng, who understood him otherwise, the moment Lord Nugent sat down, called out "Pitt, Pitt," and the cry at once became general throughout the House. At first he declined; but finding that the House were bent on hearing him, he rose with entire self-possession, took up the argument with all the dexterity and force of a practiced debater, and threw over the whole a glow, an elegance, a richness of thought and fervor of emotion, which called forth a round of applause from every quarter of the House. Burke took him by the hand, declaring that he was "not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself." Fox carried him to Brookes' when the House adjourned, and had him enrolled among the élite of the Whigs; and the nation felt that the mantle had fallen upon one who was already qualified to go forth in "the spirit and power" of his illustrious predecessor. spoke but twice that session; and at the close of it, as some one was remarking, “Pitt promises to be one of the first speakers that was ever heard in Parliament," Mr. Fox, who was passing at the moment, turned instantly round and replied, " He is so already." Thus, at the age of twenty-two, when most men are yet in the rudiments of political science, and just commencing their first essays in oratory, he placed himself at a single bound in the foremost rank of English statesmen and orators, at the proudest era of English eloquence. What is still more wonderful, he became, not by slow degrees, like Mr. Fox, but, as it were, by "inspiration" (in the language of Lord Brougham), one of the most accomplished debaters in the British Parliament.

He

At the next session, commencing in November, 1781, Mr. Pitt entered into debate on the broadest scale, and made the most strenuous exertions to put an end to the American war. The defeat of Cornwallis had rendered the contest absolutely hopeless; and he denounced it as one which "wasted the blood and treasure of the kingdom without even a rational object." But he avoided the error of Fox; he made no personal attack on the King. With that forecast which marked all his actions, in opposing the favorite measure of his sovereign, he did nothing to wound his pride or to rouse his resentment. He put the responsibility on his ministers, where the Constitution rests it, and inveighed against them as men, "who, by their fatal system, had led the country, step by step, to the most calamitous and disgraceful situation to which a once flourishing and glorious empire could possibly be reduced-a situation which threatened the final dissolution of the state, if not prevented by timely, wise, and vigorous efforts." A few days after, he again called forth a burst of admiration by one of those classical allusions, united to the keenest sarcasm, with which his early productions were so often adorned. In a speech on the army estimates, while commenting with great severity on a contradiction in the statements of Lord North and Lord George Germaine, he saw the two (who were seated near each other) conversing with great earnestness, while Welbore Ellis, Treasurer of the Navy, was interposing between them as if to impart some seasonable information. Stopping in the middle of a sentence, and turning the eyes of the whole House upon the group, he said, in a

significant tone, "I will pause until the Nestor of the Treasury Bench shall settle the difference between Agamemnon and Achilles." The suddenness of the stroke, and the idea especially of making Lord George an Achilles after the part he acted at the battle of Minden, produced a roar of laughter throughout the House, which was instantly followed by a tumult of applause. It was by such means that Mr. Pitt always took care to repress any disposition to treat his remarks with levity or disrespect.

At the end of a few weeks, Lord North was driven from office, and the Rocking. ham administration came into power, March 19, 1782, with Mr. Fox and Lord Shelburne as principal secretaries of state. Various stations, and among them one of great emolument, the vice-treasurership of Ireland, were offered Mr. Pitt, but he declined them all, having resolved, with that lofty feeling which always marked his character, never to take office until he could come in at once as a member of the cabinet.

The Rockingham ministry was terminated by the death of its chief, at the end of thirteen weeks. Lord Shelburne succeeded, and with him brought in Mr. Pitt as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Such an event had never before happened in the history of English politics. The conduct of the entire finances of the empire had hitherto been reserved for men of tried experience. Godolphin, Oxford, Walpole, Pelham, Grenville, Townsend, and North, had risen by slow degrees to this weighty and responsible office. Mr. Pitt alone received it at once without passing through any subordinate station, at the age of twenty-three, and the country hailed him with joy as worthy to take his father's place in the management of the highest concerns of the empire. Lord Shelburne now made peace (October 30, 1782), on terms quite as favorable as could have been expected, after the disgraceful results of Lord North's contest with America and France. But it was already obvious that his Lordship, though head of the government, was not master of the House of Commons. Mr. Fox, who had seceded when the new ministry came in, held the balance of power between them and Lord North: some union of parties was, therefore, indispensable, or the government could not go on, and Mr. Pitt was commissioned to negotiate with Mr. Fox for a return to power. Their in terview was short. Fox instantly demanded whether, under the proposed arrangement, Lord Shelburne was still to remain prime minister. Pitt replied that nothing else had ever been contemplated. "I can not," said Fox, warmly, "ever consent to hold office under his Lordship." "And I certainly have not come here," replied Pitt, "to betray Lord Shelburne." They parted, and never again met under a private roof. From the entire contrariety of their habits and feelings, they could never have acted except as political opponents. Fox now united with Lord North, and voted down the ministry, as already mentioned, on the 17th of February, 1783. Four days after, Lord John Cavendish followed up the blow by moving a resolution involving a severe censure upon ministers, for the terms on which they had concluded peace. The debate was a long one, and Mr. Fox reserved himself for the close of the evening, obviously intending to overwhelm his young antagonist and put an end to the discussion by the force and severity of his remarks." The moment he sat down, Mr. Pitt rose, to the surprise of all, and grappled at once in argument with "the most accomplished debater the world ever saw." Though imperfectly reported, his speech contains passages which he never surpassed in his long and brilliant career of eloquence. Some of them will here be given, and the reader can not fail to admire the dignity with which he faces his opponent, the compact energy of his defense touching the con

2 Mr. Pitt was seriously indisposed during this debate, and, as Mr. Wilberforce states, was "actually holding Solomon's porch door (a portico behind the House) open while vomiting during Fox's speech, to which he was to reply."

cessions made in the treaty, and the lofty spirit of self-assertion with which he turns back the assault of Mr. Fox, and vindicates his conduct and his motives.

"Sir, revering as I do the great abilities of the honorable gentleman who spoke last, I lament, in common with the House, when those abilities are misemployed, as on the present question, to inflame the imagination and mislead the judgment. I am told, sir, 'he does not envy me the triumph of my situation on this day,' a sort of language which becomes the candor of that honorable gentleman as ill as his present principles. The triumphs of party, sir, with which this self-appointed minister seems so highly elate, shall never seduce me into any inconsistency which the busiest suspicion shall presume to glance at. I will never engage in political enmities without a public cause ! I will never forego such enmities without the public approbation; nor will I be questioned and cast off in the face of this House by one virtuous and dissatisfied friend! These, sir, the sober and durable triumphs of reason over the weak and profligate inconsistencies of party violence; these, sir, the steady triumphs of virtue over success itself, shall be mine, not only in my present situation, but through every future condition of my life-triumphs which no length of time shall diminish, which no change of principle shall ever sully."

3

Having dwelt at large on the disgraces and dangers of the country at the close of the American war, Mr. Pitt now asks, "Could Lord Shelburne, thus surrounded with scenes of ruin, affect to dictate the terms of peace? Are these articles seriously compared with those of the peace of Paris in 1763 ?" This leads him to speak of the elevated position in which the country was at that time left by his father, and from this he passes to defend the concessions made by Lord Shelburne.

"I feel, sir, at this instant, how much I have been animated in my childhood by the recital of England's victories. I was taught, sir, by one whose memory I shall ever revere, that at the close of a war far different, indeed, from this, she had dictated the terms of peace to submissive nations. This, in which I have something more than a common interest, was the memorable era of England's glory. But that era has passed; she is under the awful and mortifying necessity of employing a language which corresponds to her true condition: the visions of her power and pre-eminence are passed away.

"We have acknowledged American independence. That, sir, was a needless form: the incapacity of the noble Lord who conducted our affairs [Lord North]; the events of war; and even a vote of this House, had already granted what it was impossible to withhold.

"We have ceded Florida. We have obtained Providence and the Bahama Islands.

"We have ceded an extent of fishery on the coast of Newfoundland. We have established an extensive right to the most valuable banks.

"We have restored St. Lucia and given up Tobago. We have regained Grenada, Dominica, St. Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat, and have wrested Jamaica from her impending danger. In Africa we have ceded Goree, the grave of our countrymen; and we possess Senegambia, the best and most healthy settlement.

"We have likewise permitted his most Christian Majesty to repair his harbor of Dunkirk. The humiliating clause for its destruction was inserted, sir, after other wars than the past; and the immense expense attending its repair will still render the indulgence of no value to the French.

"In the East Indies, where alone we had power to dictate the terms of peace, we have restored what was useless to ourselves, and scarcely tenable in a continuance of the war.

"But we have abandoned the American Loyalists to their implacable enemies. Little, sir, are those unhappy men befriended by such language in this House; nor shall we give much assistance to their cause, or add stability to the reciprocal confidence of the two states, if we already impute to Congress a violence and injustice which decency forbids us to suspect. Would a continuance of the war have been justified on the single principle of assisting these unfortunate men? or would a continuance of the war, if so justified, have procured them a more certain indemnity? Their hopes must have been rendered desperate, indeed, by any additional distresses of Britain; those hopes which are now revived by the timely aid of peace and reconciliation.

The

"These are the ruinous conditions to which this country, engaged with four powerful states, and exhausted in all its resources, thought fit to subscribe for the dissolution of that alliance, and the immediate enjoyment of peace. Let us examine what is left with a manly and determined courage. Let us strengthen ourselves against inveterate enemies, and reconciliate our ancient friends. misfortunes of individuals and of kingdoms, when laid open and examined with true wisdom, are more than half redressed; and to this great object should be directed all the virtue and abilities of this House. Let us feel our calamities-let us bear them, too, like men!

3 This was one of Mr. Pitt's severest sarcasms. Sir Cecil Wray, Mr. Powys, and others, who had long been connected with Mr. Fox as political adherents and personal friends, had put to him during this debate the most painful interrogatories respecting his coalition with Lord North, and renounced all connection with him if that measure was consummated.