bowed to them as he proceeded. Having taken his seat on the bench of the earls, he listened to the speech of the Duke of Richmond with the most profound attention. After Lord Weymouth had spoken against the Address, Lord Chatham arose with slowness and difficulty from his seat, leaning on his crutches, and supported by his two relations. He took one hand from his crutch and raised it towards heaven, and said, "I thank God that I have been enabled to come here this day, to perform my duty and to speak on a subject which is so deeply impressed on my mind. I am old and infirm; have one foot, more than one foot, in the grave. I have risen from my bed, to stand up in the cause of my country-perhaps never again to speak in this House!" The reverence, the attention, the stillness of the House, were here most affecting; had any one dropped a handkerchief, the noise would have been heard. At first, Lord Chatham spoke in a low and feeble tone, which showed the effects of severe illness; but as he grew warm, his voice rose, and became as harmonious and rich as ever. He recounted the whole history of the American war, the measures to which he had objected, and all the evil consequences which he had foretold; adding at the end of each period, "And so it proved." In one part of his speech he ridiculed the apprehension of an invasion, and then recalled the remembrance of former invasions. "A Spanish invasion, a French invasion, a Dutch invasion, many noble Lords must have read of in history; and some Lords (looking keenly at one who sat near him) may remember a Scotch invasion." He then continued with redoubled force : "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 most noble monarchy. Pressed down as I am by the hand of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country in this most perilous conjuncture; but, my lords, while I have sense and memory, I will never consent to deprive the royal offspring of the House of Brunswick, the heirs of the Princess Sophia, of their fairest inheritance. Where is the man that will dare to advise such a measure? My lords, his Majesty succeeded to an empire as great in extent as its reputation was unsullied. Shall we tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest posses 3 Thackeray's Life of Chatham, vol. ii. p. 377. sions? Shall this great kingdom, that has survived whole and entire the Danish depredations, the Scottish inroads, and the Norman conquest; that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish armada, now fall prostrate before the House of Bourbon? Surely, my lords, this nation is no longer what it was! Shall a people that, seventeen years ago, was the terror of the world, now stoop so low as to tell its ancient inveterate enemy, 'Take all we have, only give us peace?' It is impossible! "I wage war with no man, or set of men. I wish for none of their employments: nor would I co-operate with men who still persist in unretracted error; or who, instead of acting on a firm, decisive line of conduct, halt between two opinions, where there is no middle path. In God's name, if it is absolutely necessary to declare either for peace or war, and the former cannot be preserved with honour, why is not the latter commenced without hesitation? I am not, I confess, well informed of the resources of this kingdom, but I trust it has still sufficient to maintain its just rights, though I know them not. But, my lords, any state is better than despair. Let us, at least, make one effort; and, if we must fall, let us fall like men!" When Lord Chatham sat down Lord Temple said to him, "You have forgot to mention what we have been talking about. Shall I get up?" Lord Chatham replied, "No, no, I will do it bye and bye." The Duke of Richmond replied, urging the impossibility of England competing with the numerous enemies who were leagued against her. During part of his speech, Lord Chatham indicated, both in his countenance and gestures, symptoms of emotion and displeasure, and on the Duke's sitting down, Lord Chatham rose and made an eager effort to address the House, but his strength failed him, and he fell backwards in convulsions. He was immediately supported by the peers around him, and by his younger sons, who happened to be present as spectators. He was conveyed first to the house of Mr. Sargent in Downing Street, and thence to Hayes. He lingered till the 11th of May, on which day he expired amid his sorrowing family, having borne his sufferings to the last with the fortitude of a great man, and with the Christian resignation of a good one. I hope that, even in this brief memoir, Lord Chatham has been sufficiently pourtrayed to render any general summing up of his character needless. Criticism may detect some blemishes. He may have been sometimes inconsistent in his policy: sometimes over vehement in his expressions. His mode of addressing his Sovereign may have partaken too much of the ceremonious obsequiousness of the age. He may sometimes have been harsh towards a rival or imperious to a colleague. These things, as was said of graver faults in a far inferior man, are mere specks in the I am not going to scrutinise them; and shall only add a few remarks on Lord Chatham's speeches, in the form in which we possess them. sun. The reports of the early ones seem so meagre, and some of them are so apocryphal, that no judgment of Chatham's powers can be formed from them. The reply to old Horace Walpole's taunt about youth bears to mind internal evidence of Johnson's authorship. I see nothing in it to make an admirer of Chatham claim it for his idol. my In the later speeches we have better and fuller materials for estimating the eloquence of "the Great Commoner," and greater peer. The first and most certain impression that we feel in reading Chatham, is, that we have before us the workings of no ordinary mind. We feel ourselves in the presence of a high soul, and a commanding genius. We feel, moreover, that the mighty spirit, who deals with the audience, deals with them as beings inferior to himself. Chatham does not stoop to reason as with equals; he enunciates some great truth, some bold principle, and commands obedience to it. He speaks to our hearts, not to our heads. He abounds in axioms, and an utter fearlessness of consequences marks his axioms. He never shrinks from following them out to the last, however startling may be their results. The nervous fiery style, with its bold metaphors and close compact sentences, is worthy of the spirit. There are few audiences, and there are few occasions, for which such speaking is adapted. It suits not deprecation, it contains not the elements of reasoning or of persuasion. No traces of skill in narrative are to be found in Chatham. His eloquence is only the eloquence of declaration and denunciation. But in those two, how transcendent is his genius! All other modern orators, and almost all ancient ones, seem dwarfed by comparison with him. Perhaps Mirabeau among the moderns comes nearest to him. Demades among the ancients possibly equalled him. I, of course, always except Demosthenes, the perfect, the unapproachable in every branch of eloquence. But how wordy seem Cicero's invectives by the side of Chatham's; how mean and weak those of Eschines! As for Curran, Erskine, Burke, &c. &c., Chatham flashes more on the soul in one sentence, than they convey in pages. The lines in which Aristophanes describes the eloquence of Pericles seem well to image that of Chatham : “Ἐντεῦθεν ὀργῇ Περικλέης οὑλύμπιος ἤστραπτεν, ἐβρόντα, ξυνεκύκα τὴν Ἑλλάδα.” I ought also to have excepted Pericles in placing the orators of old below Chatham. Unfortunately we only possess Pericles in Thucydides and I think the historian has dimmed the brightness, though he may have added to the weight, of the speeches which he has fused into his great work. What we miss in Chatham's speeches is calmness:-the calmness of majestic self-conscious strength. Pericles and Demosthenes possessed this. They could thunder: but they were, like the heavens, sublime in other moods besides their thunderstorms. -(Life by Thackeray.-Lord Mahon's History.-Lord Brougham's Historical Sketches of Statesmen.) LORD CAMDEN. one LORD CAMPBELL, in his "Lives of the Chancellors," speaks of the pleasure he felt in entering on the memoir of Charles Pratt, afterwards Lord Chancellor of England and Earl Camden. It is with pleasure that I echo Lord Campbell's words respecting of the brightest ornaments of my profession." And Eton may well be proud of ranking him among her sons; for Lord Camden "was a profound jurist, and an enlightened statesman-his character was stainless in public and in private life-when raised to elevated station he continued true to the principles which he had early avowed-when transferred to the House of Peers, he enhanced his fame as an asserter of popular privileges-when an Ex-Chancellor, by a steady co-operation with his former political associates, he conferred greater benefits on his country, and had a still greater share of public admiration and esteem than when he presided on the woolsack-when the prejudices of the Sovereign and of the people of England produced civil war, his advice would have preserved the integrity of the empire-when America, by wanton oppression, was for ever lost to us, his efforts mainly contributed to the pacification with the new republic-and Englishmen to the latest generation will honour his name for having secured personal freedom, by putting an end to arbitrary arrests under general warrants for having established the constitutional right of juries, and for having placed on an imperishable basis the liberty of the press." He was a gentleman by birth, and his family had long been settled at Careswell Priory, near Colhampton, in Devonshire, a county which has truly been said to have always been, and still to be, fertile in illustrious lawyers. Lord Camden's father, Sir John Pratt, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench in George the First's reign; but he died when his fifth son Charles, the subject of the present memoir, was only ten years old; so that the future Chancellor rose fairly through the ranks of the profession; nor could any one apply to him the bitter sarcasm, which exhibitions of parental partiality on the Bench have sometimes provoked, that "the ermine of the father was made a begging bag for the son's briefs." Charles Pratt was sent to Eton, and was elected on the foundation, soon after his father's death. While very young, he was warned that the slender patrimony which fell to his share as a younger child would do no more than educate him; and that he must look to that education and his own exertions as his means for rising in the world. Young Pratt understood his position, and applied himself cheerfully to its duties. During the years which he passed at Eton he acquired an unusual amount of classical learning; and, without doubt, the rough atmosphere of a public school did much in fostering the manly independence of character which marked him in after life. There is, probably, no other place in the world at which so many and so permanent friendships have been formed as at Eton; and, among the "Amicitiæ Etonenses" of four centuries, few have been more sincere or more valuable in their consequences than the friendship which sprang up at Eton between Charles Pratt, afterwards Earl Camden, and William Pitt, afterwards Earl Chatham. The former 4 Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. v. |