of nine) was about to be repeated, when (March 20) Lord North, who had gone through the form of resignation three or four times already, at length resigned in right earnest, and the King was absolutely compelled to part with him. His Majesty, anticipating that uncongenial advisers, including some of his former Whig taskmasters, might be forced upon him, threatened to retire to Hanover if they did not moderate their language and their terms; and it is certain, if we may believe Walpole, that the Royal yacht was got ready for a start. Everything the King did was done with the worst possible grace. He refused to see Lord Rockingham, whom he had authorized to form a Ministry, till the Ministry was formed, and would only communicate with him through Lord Shelburne. He also insisted that Thurlow, from whom he could exact implicit obedience, should continue Lord Chancellor.

The Administration was composed of two parties, or sections of parties, headed by Fox and Shelburne, who were constantly at variance. It was on the point of being broken up by their divisions when it came to an untimely end by the sudden death of its chief (July 1, 1782); having lasted only fifteen weeks. Short-lived and disunited as it was, it did some good work, especially in the way of economical reform and in the adoption of a conciliatory policy towards Ireland.

The history of the Irish Volunteer movement is well known. It was encouraged by the English Government when the country was drained of regular troops, and is a striking exemplification of the maxim, that England's trouble is Ireland's opportunity. Then or never was the time to strike for independence, to shake off a degrading yoke, and free Irish commerce from the trammels which an illiberal and shortsighted policy had fastened on it. The popular feeling may be inferred from the language of Burgh, the Prime Serjeant, in 1779: Talk not to me of peace. Ireland is not in a state of peace. It is smothered war. England has sown her laws like dragons' teeth, and they have sprung up in armed men.' Grattan was the soul of the movement, and its success was heralded by the opening sentences of his speech.

'I am now to address a free people. Ages have passed away, and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation. I found Ireland on her knees: I watched over her with an eternal solicitude: I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift! Spirit of Molyneux! your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation. In the new character I hail her, and bowing to her august presence, I say, Est o perpetua.'

This was spoken on the 16th of April, 1782, before the claim of independence was recognized by England; but in the emphatic words of Tocqueville, pour qu'un peuple soit libre, il faut le vouloir'-a people has only to will it to be free; the Irish people had willed it, and willed it with an unanimity which made opposition vain. On the 17th of May, 1782, Fox moved the repeal of the Act (6 George I.) which asserted the right of the British Parliament to legislate for Ireland.

The Royal Message, recommending an effectual plan of retrenchment in all branches of the public expenditure, so delighted Burke, that he pronounced it 'the best of messages to the best of people from the best of kings.' Referring long afterwards to the actual measures founded on it, he writes: 'I was loaded with hatred for everything that was withheld, and with obloquy for everything that was given.' It was during this Administration, and with its full sanction, that Wilkes carried a motion which had become an annual one, for expunging from the journals of the House of Commons the Resolution of 1769 declaring his incapacity to sit after re-election in the Parliament from which he had been expelled. It was carried by 115 to 47: Fox being the only member of the Government who voted in the minority.

6

It was the pointed remark of Walpole, that the Crown devolved on the King of England on the death of Lord Rockingham. The Whig cabal that had forced him on the Crown were now without a competent leader, and on their suggesting the Duke of Portland as his successor, they were curtly informed that the King had named Shelburne First Lord of the Treasury; upon which Fox, Lord John Cavendish, Burke, Sheridan, and others, immediately resigned. It is very entertaining,' remarks Walpole (July 10, 1782), that two or three great families should persuade themselves that they have an hereditary and exclusive right of giving us a head without a tongue.' The most important of the new appointments was that of Pitt to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. The negociations for peace, the main ground of difference between Shelburne and Fox, were now pushed on to completion with comparative smoothness, and with a loftier tone on the part of England owing to Rodney's victory of the 12th of April, which had produced a decisive change in the relative position of the belligerents. The terms were as good as could be expected under the circumstances, but they did not satisfy the nation, and became the chief object of vehement attack in both Houses. It was on a Resolution censuring the Peace that the Coalition broke ground, and it

was

was in reply to Fox that Pitt, in exposure of their real motives, spoke the celebrated passage:

*

I repeat then, sir, that it is not this treaty, it is the Earl of Shelburne alone, whom the movers of this question are desirous to wound. This is the object which has raised this storm of faction; this is the aim of the unnatural coalition to which I bave alluded. If, however, the baneful alliance is not already formed, if this illomened marriage is not already solemnized, I know a just and lawful impediment, and, in the name of the public safety, I here forbid the banns.'

The vote of censure was carried (February 22, 1783) by 207 to 190, and Lord Shelburne resigned on the 24th, but there was no First Minister, hardly anything that could be called a fixed Government, till April 2nd, when the King at last consented to accept the Duke of Portland, the figure-head nominee he had formerly rejected, as First Lord, with Fox and Lord North as joint Secretaries of State. It has grown into a proverb that England does not love coalitions, but the dislike of them was not displayed in any palpable shape on this occasion till it had gained force from other causes. Fox and Lord John Cavendish, who vacated their seats by acceptance of office, were re-elected unopposed by the large and important constituencies of Westminster and Yorkshire. The Coalition of 1783 were discredited by their conduct and language, by the indiscretion of Fox and the intemperance of Burke. They were finally wrecked on their India Bill. The part Pitt took in crushing this unprincipled combination is well known. With admirable judgment and temper he postponed the appeal to the country till the flood-tide of public opinion was at the full, and the dissolution fell amongst his opponents with the destructive force of a thunderbolt :

'No fewer than 160 members, nearly all of them belonging to the Opposition, were driven from Parliament. Fox himself barely succeeded in retaining his seat for Westminster. The united Opposition was utterly shattered. The old lines of party division were, for a time at least, submerged or effaced, and Pitt met the Parliament of 1784 at the head of a majority which made him the most powerful minister ever known in the parliamentary history of England.'

The rest of the book is occupied with the history of Ireland,

Pitt's famous speech... Stomach disordered and actually holding Solomon's porch door open with one hand whilst vomiting during Fox's speech, to which he was to reply'-(Wilberforce's Diary'). Solomon's porch was the portico behind the old House of Commons. The history of Lord Shelburne's Administra tion is clearly and fully given by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice in the third volume of his 'Life of William Earl of Shelburne.'

more

which is distinct from that of England, except at brief intervals where they cross and clash, as in 1783. In the Preface to his first volume, Mr. Lecky announced that he should include art, manners, and social changes, but he has kept to the broad current of general events, although subjects like the Johnsonian age of Literature and the rise of the English School of Art under Reynolds, fell strictly within his province and lay temptingly within his reach.* This is to be regretted on accounts than one, but most especially because the impression left by our political annals, foreign and domestic, during the period we have been reviewing, is very far from favourable. There were bright points. The national character for bravery was sustained in the midst of disaster by some gallant feats of arms on both sea and land: by the defence of Gibraltar and the defeat of De Grasse by Rodney. The Houses of Parliament never shone more brightly, as regards oratory, than when they were lighted up and illustrated by the fervid, thoughtful, imaginative eloquence of Burke, the sparkling wit of Lord North and Charles Townshend, the debating brilliancy of Fox, the setting glories of Chatham and the rising splendour of his But those same Houses were distracted by faction and degraded by venality. The Monarchy presented the lamentable picture of a constitutional king vainly striving to become an absolute one-dismembering the empire by his obstinacyauthorizing instead of suppressing or reproving briberyencouraging instead of discountenancing intrigue-descending to and getting worsted in a personal contest with a demagogue. The highest class (with rare exceptions) was notorious for immorality: the lowest for brutality and lawlessness. Consistency and principle were contemptuously flung aside by statesmen; and public virtue was a laughing-stock. On a calm retrospect, therefore, we cannot help coming to the melancholy conclusion that there is no period of our history of which the nation has less reason to be proud: none where it was so near fulfilling the prophecy of Montesquieu: That as Rome, Sparta, and Carthage, lost their liberty and perished, so the Constitution of England will in time lose its liberty, will perish it will perish whenever the legislative power shall become more corrupt than the executive.'

son.

In one incidental reference to a legal difficulty (vol. i. p. 535), Mr. Lecky has fallen into the popular error of supposing that the writ of Habeas Corpus dates from the Habeas Corpus Act, 31 Car. 2. It is a common law writ, confirmed by the Petition of Right, and the Act, absurdly called the Palladium of our Liberties and a second Magna Charta, only applied to cases of committal for crime; leaving all other cases of arbitrary imprisonment and illegal detention untouched. It was extended in 1816 by 56 George 3, c. 100.

ART.

ART. VI.-Memories of Old Friends; being Extracts from the Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox, of Penjerrick, Cormcall; from 1835 to 1871. Edited by Horace M. Pym. Third Edition, with Fourteen Original Letters from J. S. Mill. London, 1882.

T is not surprising that this book, though only published at

expensive form, should already have reached a third edition; for it is a peculiarly charming example of one of the most attractive classes of books. Few subjects command so wide an interest as the personal characteristics of men and women who have played a distinguished part in life. When skilfully noticed and described, such particulars of habits, conversation, manners, and features, have at all times fascinated public attention. It is by details of this kind that we are best enabled to individualize the persons, by whose actions or writings we are attracted; and to most people, and especially to English people, individuals in all the distinctness of such peculiarities are much more interesting than the work they have done, or the imperfect ideas they have developed. In one of the many conversations with the late Mr. Mill recorded in these volumes, he makes the curious and characteristic mistake of saying that 'the French care most for persons, the English for things.' It is just the reverse. The French, for instance, will at any time desert their leaders for the sake of an idea; but English history is made up of the history of individuals, and of the attachment of the followers who have gathered around them. 'Boswell's Life of Johnson' is a typically English book, and the best literature of our country is animated by personal feeling, and breathes in a personal atmosphere. It is this characteristic which is the real source of our practical capacity; for the chief work of life consists in dealing with persons, not with things, and those who care most for persons know them best. It is no wonder, therefore, that a book has proved fascinating which brings us in every page into vivid and pleasant intercourse with a variety of the most brilliant and interesting personalities of the last halfcentury. One or two sections, indeed, of society predominate over the rest-those of science, of literature, and of the liberal school of theology of our time. But the writer comes into contact more or less with most classes at some point or other, and the Index to the book, which enumerates the persons referred to, includes a surprising number of the familiar names of our century. In the Journals of a single year, for instance,

we