limits to the heaving of an earthquake or the swell of a deluge. Other great objects and causes may have their share in those things; but the facts are before mankind.

The probable ground of Pitt's reluctance to extinguish the slave-trade at the instant was, his fear of disturbing the financial system, in the midst of a period which made all minds tremble at the name of experiment. While the whole fabric of empire was tottering, there might be rashness even in the attempt to repair the building; and it required higher feelings than are to be learned in the subterranean of politics,the magnanimity of religious faith,—to do good without fear, and leave the rest to the great Disposer. The war had been altogether a war of finance. Pitt was pre-eminently a financier; and, like all men with one object perpetually before them, he perhaps involuntary suffered the consideration of revenue to distend on his sight until it shut out every other. The Abolition was a novelty; and he had seen a more auspicious novelty, a free constitution, overthrow the most powerful kingdom of Europe. England was at that hour covered with the embers of

France,-prince, priest, and noble, flying from

the brilliant evil.

The nature of its advocates, too, justified some jealously; for, mingled with the virtuous and patriotic, there were to be found individuals who would have scandalized the purest cause. None are more tolerant than they who scoff at all creeds alike; none more humane than they who have nothing to give; none more rigorous in demanding public sacrifices than they who feel themselves exempt from all sacrifice. In 1792, the date of Mr. Wilberforce's first efforts against the slave-trade, England was overrun with those cheap sages and heroes; the whole land was thick with a crop of spurious tolerance and worthless generosity. The slave-trade came forth a new topic. It acted as the live coal on the lips of the rebel seer, long weary of denouncing unperformed wrath against the throne. It supplied the whole bustling tribe of the Platos and Phocions of the streets with new illustration, and it supplied them with it safe. The acknowledged horrors of the trade threw an allegorical veil over the picture, while the artist was insolently limning the guilt and pu

nishment of supposed royal and aristocratic offences at home; the King of Dahomy prefigured a monarch, whom it was yet hazardous to denounce by name; the smiting of West Indian planters by the popular hand led the mind's eye to loftier execution on more hated possessors of wealth and power; and the havoc of negro insurrection lent its colourings to that promised tornado of vengeance which, “in an hour that we knew not of," was to sweep from the earth the nobility, church, and crown of the British empire.

Yet, it is to be lamented that, for the completion of a fame almost at the full, Pitt did not give more than his voice against the slave-trade; that he had not nobly dared; that by this solitary instance of hesitation in a cause worthy of himself, the illustrious act which shed glory on the close even of Fox's struggling career, was not permitted to scatter the darkness and sorrow which hung round his honoured death-bed; to give the great patriot a foretaste of the coming redemption of Europe, and finish in kindred splendour the long triumphs of the first statesman of the world.

CHAPTER III.

THE WHIG CABINET.

THE whig administration of 1807 totally failed, and deserved to fail. Its announcement had struck the nation with surprise; its progress with scorn. Lord Grenville in alliance with Fox! degraded alike the personal and public character of statesmanship; Lord Grenville, the direct agent of Pitt for so many years, the official opponent of democracy in all its shapes, the professional speaker against reform, the secretary who had dismissed M. Chauvelin and his republican peace with justified contempt, and who, with equal contempt, had denied alike the competence and the will of the successive tyrants of France to make peace; was it possible that he should now exhibit himself in close con

nexion with the antagonist of Pitt on every point of government, with the avowed reformer, the perpetual assertor of the sincerity of France; with Fox, the orator of the populace, the champion of Jacobin peace, the public panegyrist of Napoleon! The very name of Coalition jarred on the public ear. It was the opening of a sluice that let out a whole torrent of scorn.

The national mind of England has never yet made a wrong judgment. A whole people, furnished as England is with the means of knowledge, and the invaluable freedom of expressing its thoughts, that true salt of the constitution, cannot err. It is preserved from error by something like those great contrivances of nature which make the salubrity of the ocean and the atmosphere; the innumerable currents and diversities of public opinion sustain its activity, while they impel each other into the general course of national safety and wisdom.

Fox's coalition with North had been the original sin of his life. He never recovered from that first and fatal impression. Yet, there little was to be compromised but personal hostility. Here the hostility was on all the prin