her colonies was "an injury, an indignity, an intolerable grievance"; even if the claims were good, "the excesses admitted to have been done in consequence of this pretended right were utterly unjustifiable." He asserted that the treaty for compensation was fraudulent, illusory, and wholly to the benefit of Spain, and the honour of England was sacrificed solely that ministers might remain in office. "The complaints of your despairing merchants and the voice of England have condemned it. Be the guilt of it upon the head of the adviser. God forbid that this committee should share the guilt by approving it." On the 5th of February, 1740, he opposed a bill which would have conferred extraordinary powers on the press-gangs and justices for the seizing of seamen. He denounced it as cruel and arbitrary, and declared that it was impossible that it could be executed. Horace Walpole attacked him in reply, and taunted him on the score of his youth and theatrical gestures. Pitt's answer was a model of caustic satire. "The atrocious crime of being a young man," he replied, "which the hon. gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. Whether youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach, I will not assume the province of determining; but surely age may become justly contemptible, if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have subsided. The wretch who after having seen the consequences of a thousand errors, still continues to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his gray head should secure him from insults." He then dealt with the charge of theatrical behaviour in the same tone of scathing satire. Mr. Winnington, however, called him to order with such bitterness of language that Pitt retorted on him. "If this be to preserve order, there is no danger of indecency from the most licentious tongue; for what calumny can be more atrocious, or what reproach more severe, than that of speaking without any regard to truth? Order may sometimes be broken by passion or

inadvertence, but will hardly be re-established by a monitor like this, who cannot govern his own passion while he is restraining the impetuosity of others."

On December 10, 1742, in a speech against the Hanoverian subsidies, he made use of the celebrated expression: "It is now too apparent that this powerful, this great, this mighty nation is considered only as the province to a despicable electorate." Numerous utterances of his exist, containing fierce criticisms of the Hanoverian policy of Carteret, and especially the sums paid to Hanoverian troops, and the indignities suffered by the English soldiers at the hands of the allies. His opposition, however, ceased on the dismissal of Carteret, and in 1746, when the objections and hatred of George II. had been finally crushed, he was admitted into the Cabinet as Paymaster of the Forces. Naturally, the period which followed was one of considerable parliamentary inactivity, nor was it till 1754 that he again became really a prominent figure on the parliamentary stage. To the period, however, which followed the death of Pelham belong many of his best known speeches. It was at this time that he obtained such a command of the House that he was able to take liberties with it such as no other statesman could or has ever dared to do. It is recorded that on one occasion he rose after Mr. Delaval had convulsed the House by a witty speech in his own defence on a charge of bribery, and addressed them in a tone of the severest censure. He was astonished, he declared, when he heard what had been the occasion of their mirth. Was the dignity of the House of Commons on so sure foundations that they might venture themselves to shake it? and so on. It was observed that by his two first periods he brought the House to a silence and attention that, in the words of Mr. Fox, you might have heard a pin drop. On the 26th of February, 1755, he attacked Murray, the Attorney-General, with regard to a bill for subjecting the tenure of office of Scotch sheriffs to the king's pleasure, and delivered one of his best worded and most spirited declamations in favour of liberty. He declared he had more dread of arbitrary power dressing itself in the long robe than even of military power. He added that he would not recur for precedents to the diabolic divans of the second Charles and

James-he did not date his principles of the liberty of this country from the Revolution: they are eternal rights; and when God said, Let justice be justice, He made it independent.

By common consent, however, it is agreed that the greatest of his speeches during this period was the magnificent burst of oratory in which he attacked the degrading coalition of Fox and Newcastle (November 13, 1755). It was delivered during one of the longest debates then on record, and was at once the cause of his own dismissal from office, and in the end the fall of the Newcastle Ministry. "But," he cried, referring to the King's Speech, "there are some parts of this address which do not seem to come from the same quarter with the rest. I cannot unravel this mystery-yes (suddenly raising his hand to his forehead), I, too, am inspired. Now it strikes me ! I remember at Lyons to have been carried to see the conflux of the Rhone and the Saone; the one a gentle, feeble, languid stream, and though languid, of no depth; the other a boisterous and impetuous torrent. But they must meet at last, and long may they continue united, to the comfort of each other, and to the glory, honour, and security of the nation." The whole speech, on the authority of Lord Orford, lasted above an hour and a half, and was kept up with inimitable spirit, though it did not begin till past one in the morning, after an attention and fatigue of ten hours. And yet for theatrical effect even this fine effort must yield to the speech with which he opened the session of 1758 on November 17. In the course of it he did not attempt to disguise the expense and difficulties under which the country laboured-heaps of millions, he said, must be raised; we could not make the same war as the French, or as our ancestors did, for the same money. He described in the most glowing terms the advantages which had sprung from the war, the victories, the glories which had followed our arms in both hemispheres. Then suddenly, assuming an attitude of stern but dignified defiance, he shouted till the old rafters of the House of Commons rang again and again, "Is there an Austrian among you? Let him stand forward and reveal himself. I invite him now to speak out instead of dispersing anonymous pamphlets among the people." Such a coup de théatre would now only excite contempt and laughter, but

then the effect was magical. There was a dead pause, a silence during which a man might have heard the beating of his own heart ;-but no one dared rise and attack him; Mr. Dodington, against whom the challenge was really levelled, was too utterly cowed by the impressive dignity of the speaker and the silence of the House to attempt a reply.

The principal orators of this period, besides Pitt, were Henry Fox and Murray. Granville (Carteret) still continued to be a well-known figure in Parliament, but his influence was entirely gone. Chesterfield, who had given great promise both of oratorical and diplomatic power, was afflicted by an attack of incurable deafness, which practically withdrew him from active political life. Bath (Pulteney) had too entirely lost all power and popularity to be of any importance. George Grenville's time had not yet come. The great figures of the past-Walpole (Orford), Shippen, Cotton, Barnard, Wyndham, all in turn were quitting the troubled stage on which the greater portion of their lives was spent, leaving the field clear for younger men; of these, as yet, the most prominent figures were Pitt, Fox, and Murray; the annals of the time bear copious evidence of the part they played in the wild guerilla warfare of Newcastle's Ministry. Murray, however, was determined to get on in his profession: he sacrificed politics to the bar. Fox was bent on accumulating money: he sacrificed honour to avarice. Pitt alone preserved at once the unity of his career and the purity of his character. By the side of Fox his figure assumes a majesty and a dignity almost like that of Olympian Jove himself, which inspired awe and terror even in the reckless soul of his rival, and which appears portentous, and almost inconceivable, even at this distance of time.

CHAPTER XIV.

INNER LIFE OF PARLIAMENT IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

WHAT

HAT was Parliament itself like? is a question which must often have occurred to our readers. Well, it was not very unlike the modern Parliament; the resemblances were far greater than the contrasts. And yet the latter were numerous enough, and being, as it were, concerned more with the inner life, the private as opposed to the public business, were quite sufficiently marked to have rendered the by-laws of Parliament almost a terra incognita to many a modern M.P.

The Speaker-to deal with the highest first-may be regarded as completely independent after the Revolution. He is from that date the servant of the House solely, appointed by their choice alone. The last remnant of royal influence-the right of veto on his election-which had enabled Charles II. to peremptorily decline to receive the haughty Sir Edward Seymour as the chosen Speaker of the Commons, was suffered to fall into oblivion, along with the royal veto on legislation. The Speaker improves, too, in dignity and privileges. He becomes really and truly the First Commoner in England. He is appointed a regular official salary of suitable dimensions, is given an official residence during his term of office, and is allowed certain other comfortable perquisites in the shape of hogsheads of wine, and other solid comforts. At the beginning of the century, it was still the custom to make the election of a Speaker the first business of the session, and, in some cases, the first trial of party power. Sir Spencer Compton's Speakership was remarkable for its prolongation throughout the whole reign of George I. Speaker Onslow (1727-1761) may be regarded as the man who did most to establish the Chair on its modern footing, to create for it that character for impartiality which is so essential to the position, to endow it with the dignity