ance.

flowed still more from the mildness of his nature than from familiar intercourse with the most polished society of Europe. His conversation, when it was not repressed by modesty or indolence, was delightful. The pleasantry, perhaps, of no man of wit had so unlaboured an appearIt seemed rather to escape from his mind than to be produced by it. He had lived on the most intimate terms with all his contemporaries, distinguished by wit, politeness, philosophy, learning, or the talents of public life. In the course of thirty years he had known almost every man in Europe whose intercourse could strengthen, or enrich, or polish the mind. His own literature was various and elegant. In classical erudition, which, by the custom of England, is more peculiarly called learning, he was inferior to few professed scholars. Like all men of genius, he delighted to take refuge in poetry from the vulgarity and irritation of busi

ness.

The character of his mind was displayed in his extraordinary partiality for the poetry of the two most poetical nations or, at least, languages of the west-those of the Greeks and of the Italians. He disliked political conversation, and never willingly took any part in it.

To speak of him justly as an orator would require a long essay. Everywhere natural, he carried into public something of that simple and negligent exterior which belonged to him in private. When he began to speak, a common observer might have thought him awkward; and even a consummate judge could only have been struck with the exquisite justness of his ideas, and the transparent simplicity of his manners. But no sooner had he spoken for some time than he was changed into another being. He forgot himself and everything around him. He thought only of his subject. His genius warmed, and kindled as he went on. He darted fire into his audience. Torrents of impetuous and irresistible cloquence swept along their feelings and conviction. He certainly possessed above all moderns that union of reason, simplicity, and vehemence which formed the prince of orators. He was the most Demosthenean speaker since Demosthenes. "I knew him," says Mr Burke, in a pamphlet written after their unhappy difference, "when he was nineteen; since which time he has risen, by slow degrees, to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater that the world ever saw." The quiet dignity of a mind roused only by great objects, the absence of petty bustle, the contempt of show, the abhorrence of intrigue, the plainness and downrightness, and the thorough goodnature which distinguished Mr Fox, seem to render him no very unfit representative of that

old English national character which, if it ever changed, we should be sanguine indeed to expect to see succeeded by a better. The simplicity of his character inspired confidence, the ardour of his eloquence roused enthusiasm, and the gentleness of his manners invited friendship. "I admired," says Mr Gibbon, "the powers of a superior man, as they are blended in his attractive character, with all the softness and simplicity of a child; no human being was ever more free from any taint of malignity, vanity, or falsehood." From these qualities of his public and private character, it probably arose that no English statesman ever preserved, during so long a period of adverse fortunes, so many affectionate friends and so many zealous adherents. The union of ardour in public sentiment, with mildness in social manner, was in Mr Fox an here. ditary quality. The same fascinating power over the attachment of all who came within his sphere is said to have belonged to his father; and those who know the survivors of another generation will feel that this delightful quality is not yet extinct in the race.

Perhaps nothing can more strongly prove the deep impression made by this part of Mr Fox's character than the words of Mr Burke, who, in January 1797, six years after all intercourse between them had ceased, speaking to a person honoured with some degree of Mr Fox's friend. ship, said, "To be sure, he is a man made to be loved!" and these emphatical words were uttered with a fervour of manner which left no doubt of their heartfelt sincerity.

These few hasty and honest sentences are sketched in a temper too sober and serious for intentional exaggeration, and with too pious an affection for the memory of Mr Fox, to profane it by intermixture with the factious brawls and wrangles of the day. His political conduct belongs to history. The measures which he supported or opposed may divide the opinion of posterity, as they have divided those of the present age. But he will most certainly command the unanimous reverence of future generations by his pure sentiments toward the commonwealth, by his zeal for the civil and religious rights of all men, by his liberal principles favourable to mild government, to the unfettered exercise of the human faculties, and the progressive civilisation of mankind; by his ardent love for a country, of which the well-being and greatness were, indeed, inseparable from his own glory, and by his profound reverence for that free constitution which he was universally admitted to understand better than any other man of his age, both in an exactly legal and a comprehensively philosophical sense.

THE FALL OF BONAPARTE.* GENTLEMEN, as your guest, I thank you from my heart for the honourable and affectionate reception which you have given me. As the representative of Liverpool, I am most happy in meeting my constituents again, after a year's experience of each other, and a year's separation; a year, the most eventful in the annals of the world, and comprising within itself such a series of stupendous changes as might have filled the history of an age.

Gentlemen, you have been so good as to couple with my name the expression of your acknowledgments for the attention which I have paid to the interests of your town. You, gentlemen, I have no doubt, recollect the terms upon which I entered into your service; and you are aware, therefore, that I claim no particular acknowledgment at your hands for attention to the interests of Liverpool, implicated as they are with the general interests of the country. I trust, at the same time, that I have not been wanting to all or to any of you in matters of local or individual concern. But I should not do fairly by you, if I were not to take this opportunity of saying that a service (which certainly I will not pretend to describe as without some burden in itself) has been made light to me, beyond all example, by that institution which your munificence and provident care have established: I mean the office in London, through which your correspondence with your members is now carried on. I had no pretension, gentlemen, to this singular mark of your consideration; but neither will it, I hope, be thought presumptuous in me to confess, that I might not have been able to discharge the service which I owe you, in a way which would have satisfied my own feelings as well as yours-that I might, in spite of all my endeavours,

have been guilty of occasional omissions, if I had not been provided with some such medium of communication with my constituents. Of an absent and meritorious individual, it is as pleasing as it is just to speak well; and I do no more than justice to the gentleman [Mr John Backhouse] whom you have appointed to conduct the office in question (with whom I had no previous acquaintance), in bearing public testimony to his merit, and in assuring you that it would be difficult to find any one who would surpass him in zeal, intelligence, and industry.

Having despatched what it was necessary for me to say on these points, I know, gentlemen,

* A speech delivered at Liverpool, January 10, 1814.

that it is your wish, and I feel it to be my duty, that I should now proceed to communicate to you my sentiments on the state of public affairs, with the same frankness which has hitherto distinguished all our intercourse with each other. That duty is one which it does not now require any effort of courage to perform. To exhort to sacrifices, to stimulate to exertion, to shame despondency, to divert from untimely concession, is a duty of a sterner sort, which you found me not backward to discharge, at a period when, from the shortness of our acquaintance, I was uncertain whether my freedom might not offend you. My task of to-day is one at which no man can take offence. It is to mingle my congratulations with your rejoicings on the events which have passed and are passing in the world.

If, in contemplating events so widely (I had almost said so tremendously) important, it be pardonable to turn one's view for a moment to local and partial considerations, I may be permitted to observe, that, while to Great Britain, while to all Europe, while to the world and to posterity, the events which have recently taken place are matter of unbounded and universal joy, there is no collection of individuals who are better entitled than the company now assembled in this room (in great part, I presume, identically the same, and altogether representing the same interests and feelings as that of which I took leave, in this room, about fourteen months ago) to exult in the present state of things, and to derive from it, in addition to their share of the general joy, a distinct and special satisfaction.

We cannot forget, gentlemen, the sinister omens and awful predictions under which we met and parted in October 1812. The penalty denounced upon you for your election of me was embarrassment to the rich and famine to the poor. I was warned that, when I should return to renew my acquaintance with my constituents, I should find the grass growing in your streets. In spite of that denunciation, you did me the honour to elect me; in spite of that warning, I venture to meet you here again. It must be fairly confessed that this is not the season of the year to estimate correctly the amount of superfluous and unprofitable vegetation with which your streets may be teeming; but, without presuming to limit the power of productive nature, it is at least satisfactory to know that the fields have not been starved to clothe your quays with verdure; that it is not by economising in the scantiness of the harvest that nature has reserved her vigour for the pastures of your Exchange.

But, gentlemen, I am sure you feel, with me,

that these are topics which I treat with levity only because they are not, nor were, at the time when they were seriously urged, susceptible of a serious argument; they did not furnish grounds on which any man would rest his appeal to your favour, or on which your choice of any man could be justified. If I have condescended to revert to them at all, it is because I would leave none of those recollections untouched which the comparison of our last meeting with the present, I know, suggests to your minds as well as my own; and because I would, so far as in me lies, endeavour to banish from all future use, by exposing their absurdity, topics which are calculated only to mislead and to inflame. That the seasons would have run their appointed course, that the sun would have shone with as genial a warmth, and the showers would have fallen with as fertilising a moisture, if you had not chosen me for your representative, is an admission which I make without much apprehension of the consequence. Nor do I wish you to believe that your choice of any other than me would have delayed the return of your prosperity, or prevented the revival of your commerce.

I make these admissions without fear, so far as concerns the choice between individuals. But I do not admit that it was equally indifferent upon what principles that choice should be determined. I do not admit, that if the principles which it was then recommended to you to countenance had unfortunately prevailed in Parliament, and, through the authority of Parliament, had been introduced into the counsels of the country, they would not have interfered with fatal operation, not indeed to arrest the bounty of Providence, to turn back the course of the seasons, and to blast the fertility of the earth, but to stop that current of political events which, "taken at the flood," has placed England at the head of the world.

Gentlemen, if I had met you here again on this day in a state of public affairs as doubtful as that in which we took leave of each other; if confederated nations had been still arrayed against this country, and the balance of Europe still trembling in the scale, I should not have hesitated now, as I did not hesitate then, to declare my decided and unalterable opinion, that perseverance, under whatever difficulties, under whatever privations, afforded the only chance of prosperity to you, because the only chance of safety to your country, and the only chance of safety to the country, because the only chance of deliverence to Europe. Gentlemen, I should be ashamed to address you now in the tone of triumph, if I had not addressed you then in that of exhortation. I should be ashamed to appear before you shouting in the train of success, if I had not looked you in the face and encouraged you to patience under difficulties. It is because my acquaintance with you commenced in times of peril and embarrassment,

and because I then neither flattered nor deceived you, that I now not only offer to you my congratulations, but put in my claim to yours, on the extinction of that peril, on the termination of that embarrassment, and on the glorious issue to which exertion and endurance have brought that great struggle in which our honour and our happiness were involved.

Gentlemen, during the course of a political life, nearly coeval with the commencement of the war, I have never given one vote, I have never uttered one sentiment, which had not for its object the consummation now happily within our view.

I am not ashamed, and it is not unpleasing or unprofitable, to look back upon the dangers which we have passed, and to compare them with the scene which now lies before us. We behold a country inferior in population to most of her continental neighbours, but multiplying her faculties and resources by her own activity and enterprise, by the vigour of her constitution, and by the good sense of her people; we behold her, after standing up against a formidable foe throughout a contest, in the course of which every one of her allies, and at times all of them together, have fainted and failed-nay, have been driven to combine with the enemy against her-we behold her, at this moment, rallying the nations of Europe to one point, and leading them to decisive victory.

If such a picture were merely the bright vision of speculative philosophy, if it were presented to us in the page of the history of ancient times, it would stir and warm the heart. But, gentlemen, this country is our own; and what must be the feelings which arise, on such a review, in the bosom of every son of that country? What must be the feelings of a community such as I am now addressing, which constitutes no insignificant part of the strength of the nation so described; which has suffered largely in her privations, and may hope to participate propor. tionably in her reward? What (I may be per. mitted to add) must be the feelings of one who is chosen to represent that community, and who finds himself in that honourable station at the moment of triumph, only because he discountenanced despair in the moment of despondency!

From the contemplation of a spectacle so mighty and magnificent as this, I should disdain to turn aside to the controversies of party. Of principles, however, it is impossible not to say something; because our triumph would be incomplete, and its blessings might be transient, if we could be led astray by any sophistry; if we could consent, in a sort of compromise of common joy, to forget or to misstate the causes from which that triumph has sprung. All of one mind, I trust and believe we are, in exulting at the success of our country; all of one mind, I trust, we now are throughout this land, in deter mining to persevere if need be in strenuous exertion to prosecute, and, I hope, to perfect the

great work so happily in progress. But we know that there are some of those who share most heartily in the public exultation, who yet ascribe effects, which happily cannot be disputed, to causes which may justly be denied. No tenderness for disappointed prophecies, gentlemen, ought to induce us thus to disconnect effect and cause. It would lead to errors which might be dangerous, if unwarily adopted and generally received.

We have heard, for instance, that the war has now been successful, because the principles on which the war was undertaken have been renounced; that we are at length blessed with victory, because we have thrown away the banner under which we entered into the contest; that the contest was commenced with one set of principles, but that the issue has been happily brought about by the adoption of another. Gentlemen, I know of no such change. If we have succeeded, it has not been by the renunciation, but by the prosecution of our principles; if we have succeeded, it has not been by adopting new maxims of policy, but by upholding under all varieties of difficulty and discouragement, old, established, inviolable principles of conduct.

We are told that this war has of late become a war of the people, and that by the operation of that change alone the power of imperial France has been baffled and overcome. Nations, it is said, have at length made common cause with their sovereigns, in a contest which heretofore had been a contest of sovereigns only. Gentlemen, the fact of the change might be admitted, without therefore admitting the argu

ment.

It does not follow that the people were not at all times equally interested in the war (as those who think as I do have always contended that they were), because it may be and must be admitted that the people in many countries were for a time deluded. They who argue against us say that jarring interests have been reconciled. We say that gross delusions have been removed. Both admit the fact that sovereigns and their people are identified. But it is for them who contend that this has been effected by change of principles to specify the change. What change of principles or of government has taken place among the nations of Europe? We are the best judges of ourselves-what change has taken place here? Is the constitution other than it was when we were told (as we often were told in the bad times) that it was a doubt whether it were worth defending? Is the constitution other than it was when we were warned that peace on any terms must be made, as the only hope of saving it from popular indignation and popular reform?

There is yet another question to be asked. By what power, in what part of the world, has that final blow been struck which has smitten

the tyrant to the ground? I suppose, by some enlightened republic; by some recently-regener

ated government of pure philanthropy and uncorrupted virtue; I suppose, by some nation which, in the excess of popular freedom, considers even a representative system as defective, unless each individual interferes directly in the national concerns; some nation of enlightened patriots, every man of whom is a politician in the coffee-house, as well as in the senate: I suppose it is from some such government as this that the conqueror of autocrats, the sworn destroyer of monarchical England, has met his doom. I look through the European world, gentlemen, in vain I find there no such august community. But in another hemisphere I do find such a one, which, no doubt, must be the political David by whom the Goliath of Europe has been brought down. What is the name of that glorious republic, to which the gratitude of Europe is eternally due-which, from its innate hatred to tyranny, has so perseveringly exerted itself to liberate the world, and at last has successfully closed the contest? Alas, gentlemen, such a republic I do indeed find; and I find it enlisted, and (God be thanked!) enlisted alone, under the banner of the despot. But where was the blow struck? Where? Alas for theory! In the wilds of despotic Russia. It was followed up on the plains of Leipsic-by Russian, Prussian, and Austrian arms.

But let me not be mistaken. Do I, therefore, mean to contend-do I, therefore, give to our antagonists in the argument the advantage of ascribing to us the base tenet that an absolute monarchy is better than a free government? God forbid! What I mean is this, that, in appreciating the comparative excellence of political' institutions, in estimating the force of national spirit, and the impulses of national feeling, it is idle-it is mere pedantry, to overlook the affections of nature. The order of nature could not subsist among mankind, if there were not an instinctive patriotism, I do not say unconnected with, but prior and paramount to, the desire of political amelioration. It may be very wrong that it should be so. I cannot help it. Our business is with fact. And surely it is not to be regretted that tyrants and conquerors should have learned, from the lessons of experience, that the first consideration suggested to the inhabitant of any country by a foreign invasion, is not whether the political constitution of the state be faultlessly perfect or not, but whether the altar at which he has worshipped-whether the home in which he has dwelt from his infancy -whether his wife and his children-whether the tombs of his forefathers-whether the place of the sovereign under whom he was born, and to whom he therefore owes (or, if it must be so stated, fancies that he therefore owes) allegiance -shall be abandoned to violence and profanation.

That, in the infancy of the French Revolution, many nations in Europe were, unfortunately, led to believe and to act upon a different persuasion,

is undoubtedly true; that whole countries were overrun by reforming conquerors, and flattered themselves with being proselytes till they found themselves victims. Even in this country, as I have already said, there have been times when we have been called upon to consider whether there was not something at home which must be mended before we could hope to repel a foreign invader with success.

It is fortunate for the world that this question should have been tried, if I may so say, to a disadvantage; that it should have been tried in countries where no man in his senses will say that the frame of political society is such as, according to the most moderate principles of regulated freedom, it ought to be; where, I will venture to say, without hazarding the imputation of being myself a visionary reformer, political society is not such as, after the successes of this war, and from the happy contagion of the example of Great Britain, it is sure gradually to become. It is fortunate for the world that this question should have been tried on its own merits; that, after twenty years of controversy, we should be authorised, by undoubted results, to revert to nature and to truth, and to disentangle the genuine feelings of the heart from the obstructions which a cold, presumptuous, generalising philosophy had wound around them.

One of the most delightful poets of this country, in describing the various proportions of natural blessings and advantages dispensed by Providence to the various nations of Europe, turns from the luxuriant plains and cloudless skies of Italy to the rugged mountains of Switzerland, and inquires whether there, also, in those barren and stormy regions, the "patriot passion" is found equally imprinted on the heart? He decides the question truly in the affirmative; and he says of the inhabitant of those bleak wilds:

"Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,

And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
And, as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to the mother's breast,
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar,
But bind him to his native mountains more.' 11 *

What Goldsmith thus beautifully applied to the physical varieties of soil and climate has been found no less true with respect to political institutions. A sober desire of improvement, a rational endeavour to redress error, and to correct imperfection in the political frame of human society, are not only natural, but laudable in man. But it is well that it should have been shown, by irrefragable proof, that these sentiments, even where most strongly and most justly felt, supersede not that devotion to native soil which is the foundation of national independAnd it is right that it should be under

ence.

*Goldsmith's "Traveller."

stood and remembered, that the spirit of national independence alone, aroused where it had slumbered, enlightened where it had been de luded, and kindled into enthusiasm by the insults and outrages of an all-grasping invader, has been found sufficient, without internal changes and compromises of sovereigns or governments with their people-without relaxation of allegi ance and abjurations of authority, to animate, as with one pervading soul, the different nations of the Continent; to combine, as into one congenial mass, their various feelings, passions, prejudices; to direct these concentrated energies with one impulse against the common tyrant; and to shake (and, may we not hope? to overthrow) the Babel of his iniquitous power.

Gentlemen, there is another argument, more peculiarly relating to our own country, which has at times been interposed to discourage the prosecution of the war. That this country is sufficient to its own defence, sufficient to its own happiness, sufficient to its own independence; and that the complicated combinations of continental policy are always hazardous to our interests, as well as burdensome to our means, has been, at several periods of the war, a favourite doctrine, not only with those who, for other reasons, wished to embarrass the measures of the Government, but with men of the most enlightened minds, of the most benevolent views, and the most ardent zeal for the interests as well as the honour of their country. May we not flatter ourselves, that upon this point, also, experience has decided in favour of the course of policy which has been actually pursued?

Can any man now look back upon the trial which we have gone through, and maintain that, at any period during the last twenty years, the plan of insulated policy could have been adopted, without having in the event, at this day, prostrated England at the foot of a conqueror ! Great, indeed, has been the call upon our exertions; great, indeed, has been the drain upon our resources; long and wearisome has the struggle been; and late is the moment at which peace is brought within our reach. But even though the difficulties of the contest may have been enhanced, and its duration protracted by it, yet is there any man who seriously doubts whether the having associated our destinies with the destinies of other nations be or be not that which, under the blessing of Providence, has eventually secured the safety of all?

It is at the moment when such a trial has come to its issue, that it is fair to ask of those who have suffered under the pressure of protracted exertion (and of whom rather than of those who are assembled around me-for by whom have such privations been felt more sensibly ?)—it is now, I say, the time to ask whether, at any former period of the contest, such a peace could have been made as would at once have guarded the national interests and corresponded with the