"It is related that once in the House of Commons he began a speech with the words, 'Sugar, Mr. Speaker,'-and then, observing a smile to pervade the audience, he paused, looked fiercely around, and with a loud voice, rising in its notes and swelling into vehement anger, he is said to have pronounced again the word 'Sugar! three times, and having thus quelled the house, and extinguished every appearance of levity or laughter, turned round and disdainfully asked, 'Who will laugh at sugar now? We have the anecdote upon good traditional authority; that it was believed by those who had the best means of knowing Lord Chatham is certain; and this of itself shows their sense of the extraordinary powers of his manner, and the reach of his audacity in trusting to those powers."

The character and actions of Lord Chatham may well furnish a study for those who are in any manner engaged in directing the efforts of their fellow-men. We may learn from him, that there exists a wide difference between wisdom and prudence. Lord Chatham was certainly a wise man, or he could not, surely, have been a successful man. No statesman ever, commencing with so small means, multiplied them so rapidly, or achieved with them. such surprising results. But this was not done by shrinking from responsibility, by casting the labor of action and of decision upon others, and then clutching the reputation of success, or dodging the consequences of failure. Such a course may save a man's own skin from abrasion, but it will carry forward no important enterprise, and will, in the end. administer the extreme unction to its own reputation. It will multiply its own shifting and shuffling spirit, until every one escapes responsibility; that is to say, until every thing stands still. True wisdom is of a different temper, and moves in a widely different circle. It is the harmonious union of clearness of intellect, sagacity in foresight and boldness in execution. It allows of no baffling, no shuffling, no dodging. It is manly, true, sincere, cautious, and yet decided. It neither covets power nor shrinks from responsibility. Distinctly perceiving the limits of its obligations, it will no more be guilty of the pusillanimity of falling short of its duty, than of the arrogance of going beyond it. This was the spirit of Lord Chatham's administration, and, if we mistake not, it was the spirit of the administrations of Cromwell, of Washington, of Wellington, and indeed of all those, who have made themselves illustrious as the directors of human affairs.

VOL. IV.NO. XV.

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A man more different from Lord Chatham, than Lord North, can scarcely be conceived. With but little learning, with by no means large capacity, holding no hereditary claim upon the affections of the British people, with no pretensions to remarkable eloquence, and with no strong backers but the king, Mr. Wedderburn and Mr. Thurlow, opposed by the most splendid constellations of of talent that the House of Commons ever gazed upon, he held his office during the stormy period of the American Revolution; and, if he cannot be said to have governed well, may fairly be acknowledged to have sustained himself against such tremendous odds, that not to have been defeated is higher praise than to have gained a common victory. Nor is this all. After having borne every thing that ferocity could dictate in political warfare, he beheld his most inveterate foes willing to take office with him, and thus, by their own act, give the practical lie to all their former vituperation.

It is somewhat singular, that the means by which this remarkable person was enabled thus to sustain himself, was the most imperturbable good-nature, and the most ready and delightful wit. If an argument pressed hard upon him, he got the better of it by a joke. If an attack was vindictive, he hurled back its whole force by a brilliant repartee. If his measures were reprobated, he defended them with calmness and good sense, and in all cases, preserved an unruffled serenity, which was a thousand times more annoying to his assailants than the outpourings of the most corroding sarcasm.

Our author records a few of his sayings in the heat of debate, which will show us something of the character of the man. We extract the following:

"But if it would be endless to recount the triumphs of his temper, it would be equally so and far more difficult to record those of his wit. It appears to have been of a kind peculiarly characteristic and eminently natural; playing easily and without the least effort; perfectly suited to his placid nature, by being what Clarendon says of Charles II, "a pleasant, affable, recommending sort of wit;" wholly unpretending; so exquisitely suited to the occasion that it never failed of effect, yet so readily produced and so entirely unambitious, that although it had occurred to nobody before, every one wondered it had not suggested itself to all. A few only of his sayings have reached us, and these, as might be expected, are rather things which he had chanced to coat over with some sarcasm or epigram

that tended to preserve them; they consequently are far from giving an idea of his habitual pleasantry and the gayety of thought which generally pervaded his speeches. Thus, when a vehement declaimer, calling aloud for his head, turned round and perceived his victim unconsciously indulging in a sort of slumber, and, becoming still more exasperated, denounced the Minister as capable of sleeping while he ruined his country,-the latter only complained how cruel it was to be denied a solace which other criminals so often enjoyed, that of having a night's rest before their fate. When surprised in a like indulgence during the performance of a very inferior artist, who, however, showed equal indignation at so illtimed a recreation, he contented himself with observing how hard it was that he should be grudged so very natural a release from considerable suffering; but, as if recollecting himself, added that it was somewhat unjust in the gentleman to complain of him for taking the remedy which he himself had been considerate enough to administer. The same good-humor and drollery quitted him not when in opposition. Every one has heard of the speech which, if it had failed to injure the objects of its attack, was very effectual in affixing a name upon its honest and much-respected author. On Mr. Martin's proposal to have a starling placed near the chair, and taught to repeat the cry of 'Infamous coalition! Lord North coolly suggested that, as long as the worthy member was preserved to them, it would be a needless waste of public money, since the starling might well perform his office by deputy. That in society such a man must have been the most delightful of companions may well be supposed. In his family, and in all his private intercourse, as in his personal character, he was known to be in every respect amiable; of scrupulous integrity and unsullied honor."

To these we beg leave to add one or two others from recollection.

Lord North, during the later years of his life, was blind; and he shared this affliction with his bitter political antagonist, Col. Barrè. Replying to some remarks of the latter, in the House of Commons, Lord North said, "Notwithstanding the hostility which the honorable gentleman opposite has shown towards me, yet, I am certain, that there are no two persons in the world who would be more happy to see each other."

On another occasion, some one of his opponents spoke of him most contemptuously as "The thing called a minister." Lord North, who was very corpulent, in rising to reply, said as follows: "The honorable gentleman has seen fit to designate me as The thing called a minister.' At first, I confess, that I was unable to decide in what manner the remark of my honorable friend was to be taken. That I am a thing (patting his fat sides with

6

both his hands), I certainly cannot deny. But, inasmuch as the honorable gentlemen, said I was the thing called a minister,—the thing, which above all others, I knew he would like to be himself,-I took it decidedly as a compliment."

We have mentioned these anecdotes, not so much on account of their intrinsic importance, as for another reason. They show us the value of perfect good-nature; of unchanging sweetness of temper, in all cases, when men meet in deliberative assemblies. We do not believe in buffoonery; we dislike as much as any one, the turning of every thing serious into a jest. Yet it is surely better to turn aside an ill-natured remark by a harmless pleasantry, than to concoct for a week, or even for an hour, a venomous reply, and then utter it, with the deliberate and avowed intention of inflicting upon an adversary all the pain in our power. When men meet together in free discussion, it would be marvellous if, in the heat of debate, remarks did not often escape a speaker which his sober judgment would not sanction. While we make no excuse for grossness of attack, yet we can almost as ill excuse grossness of reply. It is surely wiser to defeat unkindness by good-nature, than by falling into a passion.

We cannot but, in this respect, feel mortified by the spectacle so frequently presented in our halls of general and state legislation. There may frequently be seen, among our legislators, a spirit of personal hostility, a malicious design to lacerate and cauterize, as alien to civilization as it is to Christianity. In one case, a short time since, in one of the Southern States, the Speaker of the House of Assembly assassinated a man in his place, for words spoken in debate, while yet the offensive expressions were trembling upon his lips. We can scarcely conceive of any thing more horridly brutal, or more infamously wicked.

But we have dwelt on the character of Lord North, for another reason. We presume that no man was ever more universally detested, than this statesman, during the whole of our revolutionary war. He was believed to be the incarnation of tyranny, the undisguised patron of every vice, the author of every calamity endured either by his own country, or by the colonies, whom his mismanagement forced into rebellion. It is somewhat cheering, now that the

smoke of the controversy has passed away, to look upon. this distinguished individual, and to find that he was a man of most amiable temper, of the sweetest good-nature, the delight of his friends and the idol of his family; nay, to learn, that to his very good-nature all our calamities may, in part, be attributed. It is now a matter of unquestioned history, that Lord North was, from the beginning, wholly opposed to the American war; that in consequence of his opposition, he was anxious to resign; that he held his place because he could not resist the importunity of his king; and that George III alone was the real author of all the calamities of that season of misrule; while Lord North was nothing but the unwilling instrument, who had not the moral courage to give pain to his sovereign.

In the character of Lord Thurlow, we take but little interest. He was a man to be shunned for his personal vices, and abhorred for his deep and fathomless duplicity. Although a man of decided ability, we are inclined to believe his talents inferior to those so commonly attributed to him. The following description of his appearance as chairman of the House of Lords is too characteristic to be omitted:

"Of his powers as a debater there are now no means to form an estimate, except what tradition, daily becoming more scanty and precarious, may supply. He possessed great depth of voice, rolled out his sentences with unbroken fluency, and displayed a confidence both of tone and of assertion which, accompanied by somewhat of Dr. Johnson's balanced sententiousness, often silenced when it did not convince; for of reasoning he was proverbially sparing: there are those indeed who will have it that he never was known to do any thing which, when attended to, even looked like using an argument, although to view the speaker and carelessly to hear him, you would say he was laying waste the whole field of argumentation and dispersing and destroying all his antagonists. His aspect was more solemn and imposing than almost any other person's in public life, so much so that Mr. Fox used to say it proved him dishonest, since no man could be so wise as he looked. Nor did he neglect any of the external circumstances, how trifling soever, by which attention and deference could be secured on the part of his audience. Not only were his periods well rounded, and the connecting matter or continuing phrases well flung in, but the tongue was so hung as to make the sonorous voice peal through the hall, and appear to convey things which it would be awful to examine too near, and perilous to question. Nay, to the more trivial circumstance of his place, when addressing the House of Lords, he scrupulously attend