revolution that existed without his agency; the other, of effecting the same purpose by bringing on, by his own efforts, a similar catastrophe. Time is avenging both their memories; both are now patriots-neither a traitor. The world is coming round to their opinions, and has not made them the outcasts and marks for scorn that it was prophesied by their enemies they would be.

Next to Mirabeau, perhaps his superior, and certainly, in many particulars, much beyond him as a popular orator, is Charles Fox. The essential difference between them arises from the habits of their two nations, more than from the habits of their intellects. Sounder and better founded principles, more extended knowledge, the development of the reason rather than of the imagination-all that can give assurance of honourable distinction, especially to one intended from his birth for the legislature of a free country, are the natural consequences of an English education. These constitute the dividing qualities between the two men. There was the same violence of passion, the same ambition, the same love of country; though the one had never gone through such misfortunes, or been thrown among so many agitating scenes, as the other, nor acquired that deep intimacy with the worst portions of human nature which is gathered by indiscriminate association with the elements of society, and which was of such importance to Mirabeau in the management of the materials of the assembly. He knew the geography of that body perfectly-where to find the unscrupulous, the designing, the ambitious, or the honest-for what men were working, and how they were working: he became himself a part of each man's design, by placing himself as an obstacle in his way, or urging him with some of his own boldness and warmth of impulse. This was the secret of his sway, as it made him far more dreaded than any exertion of genius or display of logic could have done. The arena of Fox was altogether different. He had only to inspire men with his own generosity and liberality, to make them throw by the trammels of custom; in truth, his only object and sole labour were to open their bosoms to the spirit of the times. He only partially succeeded, as his countrymen are the least malleable or excitable of people, and require not only length of time, but a deep conviction, before they will give way, and let feeling surmount and subdue interest. We are not sure that the term popular orator applies to him, or defines his rank. Burke called him the most brilliant debater the world had ever seen, which does not imply the talents of an orator, but rather the possession of argumentative and logical abilities. He has been called the Demosthenes of the house of commons, from being supposed to possess some of the attributes of the celebrated Athenian,

whose name calls up the impression of the highest powers, and the great ends for which they can be exerted. All contemporary accounts declare him the most impassioned and vehement speaker ever seen in the house of commons; and, in truth, his speeches are full of a warmth and impetuosity of feeling that convince you of his sincerity, and, from the seeming imprudence of his remarks, strengthen very much the idea of integrity. He appears to repress nothing, but to give way to the moment, as if it were all important, and the last opportunity he should have of making known his opinions. This disposition to exaggerate present circumstances, at times perhaps from conviction, but more frequently for producing effect, is the usual mode with those who address popular assemblies, or intend their language for the popular ear. Fox had some excuse, however, in the nature of the times, that were undoubtedly dangerously excited, though his latent object might have been to rouse the feelings of the nation by popular topics, and change the current that then set so strong for the minister. We are willing to acquit him of the bad ambition, the traitorous and revolutionary designs, with which his enemies charged him. Except in the broad accusations of his opponents, we can detect no trace of even suspicious motives. His conduct, in the midst of all the exasperation of the moment, the disappointment of his hopes, the sneers of his foes, and desertion of his friends, appears to us patriotic and magnanimous. But his violence, accompanied as it was by a determined and even captious assault on the measures of government, has encouraged the idea of his being instigated by personal objects. Any other mode of accounting for that, may be as near the truth; for private slander, or the calumnies of political hostility, should not enter into historical evidence. The condition of the times may offer the best apology for Fox and his rival; and the conduct of both can be as well justified on the basis of the purest intention, when that is considered, as in assuming that the one acted from an unprincipled ambition, and the other was directed by a narrow-minded policy, and governed by inflexibility of temper. Europe was convulsed; its strongest and most dangerous nation fearfully excited, and warring with every neighbour in its principles, and ready to fight to the last for their diffusion and defence. It was not then the part of kings or cabinets to go into an argument as to whether they were right or wrong. They saw that, wherever the truth might lie, their thrones and lives were at hazard. Their aim was then to save themselves; and to do this, involved the necessity of resisting to the utmost the crusade France had undertaken against all who did not acknowledge the doctrines she put forth. Her gigantic efforts, her tremendous excitement, compelled other nations either to the degrading VOL. XXI.—No. 42.

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course of concession, or decided resistance to French ferocity, and supplicants for mercy; or else of pledging every resource and every energy against the foe, and a determination to conquer or be conquered. At the commencement of the struggle, many or most of the powers of Europe took this lofty ground, and the war was declared "bellum internecinum." It was forgotten that it was a war of principle, in which the parties were the governed and their governors; the one seizing the occasion to put forward claims to which heretofore all expression had been closed; the other driven for their own preservation, however they might feel the justice of those demands, to oppose them through all extremities. In England the abuses under which men suffered, and the restraints they produced, made the freedom they really enjoyed a source of danger; for the people knew what they had, and what they had not, what they should have, and what was kept from them; and, in this way, adding to excitement, by making their wants and deficiencies yet more evident. This appeared at the opening of the French revolution. The discontented of England took advantage of the occasion to urge their claims on the government. All classes had some wish to gratify; the disappointed and profligate, rich and poor, wanted power, and the government, in the midst of this turbulent state of feeling, was compelled to strengthen itself by appealing to patriotism, ambition, and fear. The great question was, whether the way in which this was done, under existing or under any circumstances, was justifiable. On this point the party in power and the opposition divided; and on this ground the two champions of things as they were, and things as they ought to be, the rivals in ability and desire of power, took their position, and fought foot to foot for more than twenty years.

Pitt chose to consider the revolution in France as an accident; that it had not been produced by a long course of oppression; and that its seeds had not been for a long time taking root in the minds of men; but that it was the result of mere temporary excitement, and instigated by a band of visionary philosophers, while its chief actors were a body of ferocious assassins. He saw nothing in it but the subversion of all government—the downfall of law and order-the obliteration of the prerogatives of time and every vestige of the past; and ridiculed the idea that it was the opening of a new era in the history of man. Fox took a directly opposite view. He regarded it as the greatest event that had ever occurred-a revolution in man's civil and intellectual life-a complete change in his destinies and his hopes. However the manner in which it was conducted was open to abhorrence-however fierce and bloody its scenes he looked beyond these, and did not hesitate to approve, with his whole

soul, the event itself. His opponent saw, under the false pretence of justice, the innocent, the virtuous, all whose wealth made them objects of envy, whose qualities dignified human nature, perish on the scaffold. He drew back from the contemplation of the future in the view of the present, and permitted the disgust and horror roused by the scenes before him, to turn him from the perception of the developments of time. The other lamented the wide ruin and reckless havoc that accompanied the event; but considered them as the natural and necessary consequences of a long oppressed people suddenly and by violence acquiring their rights, without understanding or knowing how to make use of them. The blame of these excesses was not with the people of France, but with those who had kept them under the basest of all servitude-the vassalage of ignorance; and who now deemed that from a condition of such degradation they were at once to become a mild and enlightened nation. Was it to be supposed that they would not act up to the character thus impressed upon them, and seek retribution, without regard to any thing but the gratification of their revenge? To hope the contrary, was to expect too much from men; and it was on this ground that Fox looked from the manner in which France conducted the revolution, to the principles it involved; and in these he saw freedom to men, equal rights, and all by which human character can be elevated, all by which men and nations can be advanced in moral excellence and intellectual greatness. This was a natural view with a mind so enlarged and liberal as that of Mr. Fox, and which ever took the favourable side of human character. But Pitt thought this romantic or untrue; or, from his situation of first minister, he had formed very different conclusions concerning men from those of his opponent, or he might have been really alarmed for England, or, what is as probable, his mind was not expanded and warmed by his heart, but narrowed by the extreme caution his position required, and its tremendous responsibility. There was this difference in the character of the two men; the one ever advocated the most generous principles, and carried all his ideas of government to an extreme: he wished an entirely new era, in which men and minds should be able to exist by themselves and for themselves, without the control of self-constituted power; in fact, he upheld the sovereignty of the people. Pitt clung to old habits of thinking, and conceived that men could only be governed by their interests or corruption. From the sketch here given of the characters and principles of these two individuals, it is not difficult to declare which of the two was the better orator-the one who opened the heart, who warmed its benevolence, who excited its best and purest feelings, who elevated men's views of himself

and his fellow men, who struggled to awaken his hope of attaining excellence, and to improve his capacity for it, and who, to sum his virtues as a man, in the words of Burke, was born to be loved; or he who called forth men's patriotism by stimulating their cupidity and pandering to their ambition, who relied upon corruptness of motive and selfish design as the basis of human action, and the conceding to these as the surest if not only means of making men subserve his purposes.

It would be unjust to create an impression that Pitt acted on these principles with any personal object; he is universally acquitted of this, though he is charged with political corruption in all its extremes. This might be, and probably was, essential for the preservation of his power; but whether power so preserved is for the moral or political advantage of a nation, is another question. He may have regarded himself (and it is best if not safest in judging men to concede to them honourable motives) as the defender of his country and its constitution; and with this feeling and for such ends, that any mode of supporting himself in authority was lawful and necessary. But, however we may view Pitt, it is impossible to conceive him to be as great an orator as his rival. His dignified manner, his well modulated voice, his beautiful language and polished periods, heightened as they were by his father's fame, his own talents and moral character, must have made him effective in any body; though, through the idea one forms of the cold concentration of his manners and disposition, the heart and imagination do not warm to him as they do to Fox. We cannot conceive him to have been a popular orator, or as more than a debater the term Burke applies to Fox, though he qualifies its meagreness, and the minor rank it seems to assign him, by the words, "the most brilliant and accomplished the world has seen." But perhaps the best example of what an orator should be, is Burke. He cannot be cut down to the narrow sphere of a debater, but moves in the full orbit of a great orator. His fine philosophical spirit, his capacity, more enlarged than any other of his time, his acquirements, the richness of his imagination, and brilliancy of his fancy, made him pre-eminent among the great spirits of his time, not as an orator alone, but as a man. No one approached his intellectual dimensions; no one could encounter him without being humbled; and no one could listen to him without being instructed. To this we have the testimony of Fox after their rupture, "that if he were to put all the political information which he had learned from books, all which he had gained from science, and all which any knowledge of the world and its affairs had taught him, into one scale, and the improvement which he had derived from his right honourable friend in the other, he should be at a loss to decide to which to give the