tified in giving to the King an uncalled-for assurance that, in whatever situation he might hereafter find himself, whether as a minister of the Crown or a private member of Parliament, his Majesty should never again hear more from him of the Roman Catholics or their claims? In our opinion he was justified. If George III. had been a common man, or if the country had had any experience of how a regency would work, we might qualify this judgment. But, looking to the King's condition of mind-to his constant liability to the saddest disease which afflicts humanityand looking, further, to what were then the professed political creeds of the Prince of Wales, and of the band of statesmen with whom he associated, we really do not see how Mr Pitt, entertaining the opinions which he did, could, as a man of probity and wisdom, act otherwise. He had to choose between carrying a particular measure-a great measure, without doubt, and especially in favour with himselfthrowing thereby the influence of Government into hands which he could not trust; and putting violence upon his own wishes, besides postponing indefinitely a particular good, in order that many and enormous evils might be avoided in the meanwhile. Whether George III. did right in then opposing himself to the known wishes of the statesman whom, above all others, he loved and trusted most, is quite another question. It would be idle now to argue that question. But in the wrong, if wrong it was, he was supported by the great bulk of his subjects, very many of whose descendants remain to this day unconvinced that George IV., in following the advice of the Duke of Wellington, acted wisely.

Again, Pitt has been blamed by both Whig and Tory writers for his conduct to Mr Addington, whom it was long the pleasure of the former to represent as the mere warmingpan of the great Minister. But here, again, we are of opinion that Lord

Stanhope has fully vindicated both Mr Pitt and Mr Addington from reproach. Mr Pitt never professed to believe that Addington had taken office only to keep the treasury benches warm for him. The more ardent of his followers affected to hold this opinion; and Canning, in particular, charged the Doctor, as he called him, with gross breach of faith, because he persisted in refusing to make a cipher of himself. But neither Mr Canning's views, nor his manner of putting them forward, received any encouragement from Mr Pitt. Doubtless it would have been unnatural had Pitt, a man of high political genius, been content to see the destinies of the empire committed permanently to the charge of so very commonplace though excellent a person as Mr Addington. And so it came to pass, when the progress of events made more and more manifest Addington's incapacity, that Pitt first grew cool in the assistance which he rendered to the Government, and then took steps to overturn it. Let it not be forgotten, however, that Pitt's opposition, when he went into it, was an independent opposition. He declined Lord Grenville's proposal to make common cause with Fox, and lost thereby, for ever, the political friendship of that proud man. As to the charge that he retired in 1800 because he found himself no longer able to carry on the war, that we regard, with Lord Stanhope, as a weak invention of the enemy. Pitt might be-he probably was-anxious in 1800 to make peace with France on safe and honourable terms; but there was no possible reason why he should have vacated his place in order to accomplish that end. For surely the peace of Amiens, had he seen fit to accept so hollow an engagement, would have been as easily settled with Pitt, as it was with Addington, at the head of the Government.

And this brings us to a consideration of Mr Pitt's merits as a War Minister. Lord Stanhope, as we

have hinted elsewhere, contends that his hero rises, in this respect, as far above reproach as he is admitted to have done in his views and projects in times of peace. We are sorry that we cannot agree with the noble biographer; and we owe it both to him and to the object of his eulogies, to state some of the reasons on which our opinion is founded.

In dealing with this part of our subject, it seems scarcely worth while to waste words in vindicating Pitt's memory from the charge of wantonly plunging the country into a war which might have been avoided. His real error lay in continuing to shut his eyes to the signs of the times, which weaker men could interpret rightly. His memorable French treaty, entered into at a moment when France was approaching the very crisis of the Revolution; his reduction of English armaments, by land and sea, just as the Continent began to bristle with bayonets; his curious announcement in the House of Commons, that a fifteen years' peace might be counted upon, only a few months previously to the death of Louis XVI., and to the outrages offered to the rights of Holland, sufficiently exculpate him from the guilt which it was once the habit of party writers and speakers to lay to his door. The fact is, that Pitt, engrossed with other matters, would not, in 1792, admit the idea that the peace of Europe could be broken. He made no preparation, therefore, for such a breach. Could this have happened had his genius for war been at all commensurate with his genius for peaceful government? Compare him in this respect with his illustrious father. Chatham, then Mr Pitt the elder, prognosticated the storm, which broke, as he had foretold it would, in the seven years' war. He called in vain upon the Government and the House of Commons to make adequate preparations in time; and, when the war was begun, he denounced the system of combined parsimony and extravagance on

Lord

which it was conducted. A reluctant King and a hostile Minister were forced at last to take him into their counsels, and the management of the war fell at once into his hands. How grand he was in the arrangement of his plans! how judicious in the choice of his instruments! On the Continent of Europe he did not hesitate to place both English and Hanoverian troops under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Prussia; and a single campaign sufficed to recover all that had been lost in three. In America, his measures were neither less prompt nor less vigorous. The campaign of 1758 put the English in possession of Cape Breton, and would have made them masters of Ticonderoga likewise, had General Abercrombie known how to handle the large force placed at his disposal. But it was the campaign of 1759 which established Lord Chatham's reputation. He had taken a just measure of the military abilities of Wolfe, and made choice of him, though a very young officer, to direct the most critical operation of the war. The attack upon Quebec from the St Lawrence, which was Chatham's scheme, Wolfe conducted, with what results history has told. Thus, in two campaigns, was brought to a triumphant close a contest which Chatham's predecessors had managed to spread ingloriously over five, and which, but for his decision, and the forethought which characterised his arrangements, might have been spun out till, like the war of the French Revolution, it extended over a quarter of a century.

It will be observed that in this sketch we have taken no account of the naval victories which crowned Lord Chatham's efforts. Our reasons for keeping silence on that head will be made apparent by-and-by. Meanwhile, if the reader desire to have a more recent parallel brought under his notice, let him compare Pitt the younger, as a War Minister at home, with Lord Wellesley as a War Minister abroad. The latter, having been assured in

Leadenhall Street that he would find British India in a state of absolute tranquillity, quitted England in 1797, bound over to measures of economy and retrenchment. He no sooner took up the reins of government in Calcutta, than he saw that his viceregal throne stood upon the crust of a volcano. The native powers, on every side, were in league for his destruction. French influence was paramount, especially in Mysore, and the military resources of his own province were at the lowest ebb. His resolution was taken in a moment. He began to recruit his army at once; he collected stores, organised the means of transport; and, anticipating the enemy in their plans, took the field as soon as his own preparations were complete. Moreover, Lord Wellesley, like Lord Chatham, knew where to find instruments suited to his purpose. Without superseding good General Harris, he had the moral courage to bring forward his own brother, Colonel Wellesley, and to place him in situations which afforded scope for the exercise of his transcendent abilities. What the consequences were we need not stop to describe. British India, which a ruler of a different stamp would have probably shaken to pieces amid fruitless efforts to keep danger at a distance, went indeed, under him, through a crisis, but it came out of the crisis greater and stronger than before, and took at once that lead which it never afterwards lost in the politics of Southern Asia.

Turn now to the early history of the great war of the French Revolution, and observe how it was conducted. At the opening of the session of 1792, Pitt had boasted of his commercial treaty with France, and spoke of peace as insured for fifteen years to come. Before one year elapsed he found himself compelled to declare war without a single preparation having been made for the emergency. Nor was this all. Holland, threatened in her independence, called, as by treaty she had a right

to do, upon England to support her, and Pitt sent as many troops as he could spare to the Low Countries. Are our readers aware of the amount of force which this great country furnished to her ally on that occasion? Just 1872 men! Just one weak brigade of Guards and one battery of foot-artillery; the latter without horses, the former destitute of every appliance which soldiers require in a campaign, except their arms and ammunition !! It is true that more troops followed as they could be spared when the militia had been called out, and other extraordinary means were resorted to; and that in 1794 some 15,000 men were in the field. But neither then nor at any subsequent period during the struggle were these 15,000 men supplied with any one of the requisites without which an army can be regarded as efficient. Again, Mr Pitt placed at the head of this army the Duke of York-a brave prince, doubtless, and not without ability of a certain order; but young, destitute of experience, and otherwise unfitted, from his social habits, for such a post. Lord Stanhope, we perceive, defends Mr Pitt, by assigning as his reason for this act the King's natural anxiety that his favourite son should find an opportunity of earning distinction. We accept the apology for all that it is worth. The King's wishes strongly expressed, extenuate, if they do not justify, this first trial of the royal Duke's competency. But do they justify a repetition of the trial after so signal a failure as occurred in the Netherlands? Had Lord Chatham been in Mr Pitt's place, is it conceivable that, having been compelled to recall a general, in the autumn of 1794, from his command, he would have again placed him at the head of an army in 1799? Such, however, was Mr Pitt's line of action. He went to war having made no preparations for war. He endeavoured by a profuse expenditure of money to compensate for time lost. He

thought of nothing except how to bring men into the field, and he gave the command of these men to an incompetent chief. Bating the latter exception, it seems to us that the only statesman with whom, as a War Minister, he can be fitly compared, is the late Lord Aberdeen. Pitt drifted into his great struggle with France pretty much as Lord Aberdeen drifted into his war with Russia. And Mr Pitt's army in the Netherlands resembled, in its helpless lack of everything necessary to render troops effective, the 10,000 fine fellows whom Lord Aberdeen despatched, with sixty rounds of ball cartridge per man in their pouches, to overawe the Autocrat of all the Russias, and to protect Turkey.

But it was not at the beginning of the contest alone that Pitt failed in giving proof of that genius for war which his friendly biographer claims for him. When he had raised the British army, as far as regarded numbers, to a respectable footing, he never knew what to do with it. His utmost ambition seemed rarely to go beyond providing against the risk of invasion from abroad, and the conquest of some distant French or Dutch colony. He got up coalitions among the Continental Powers, and supplied them liberally with money; but he sent no men into the field, except a handful here and there, to act, according to his own expression, as a diversion. The occupation and subsequent abandonment of Toulon, are exploits on which we have learned to look back with shame. Instead of 5000, had 30,000 or 40,000 British troops co-operated at that time with the Royalists in the south of France, how different the result might have been! How worse than useless, also, were the seizure of Corsica, only that it might be given up again; and the wretched expedition to Quiberon Bay, at once late in its execution and starved in its proportions. Nor is Lord Stanhope acting quite fairly when he claims for Pitt the merit

of having arranged the expedition to Egypt. The expedition to Egypt came about by something very like an accident. Sir William Erskine, one of the few officers who seems to have shown military talent in the war of American independence, had proposed a plan to the Government for co-operating with the Austrians in the reduction of Genoa. The plan was approved, and he was called upon to say with what amount of force he was prepared to carry it into execution. He demanded 40,000 men, and was offered 20,000. He argued against the impolicy of embarking upon a great enterprise with inadequate means, and was met by such reasoning as governments penny wise and pound foolish are apt on such occasions to employ. Much precious time was thereby lost, and he declined to commit himself, except on his own terms, to the enterprise. The result was that the Government took its own course: put fifteen or sixteen thousand men on board of ship; sent them to the Mediterranean, where they waited for final instructions till it was too late; and then did not know what to do with them. There followed, as is well known, the feint upon Cadiz, the landing at Ferrol, and one or two gyrations besides, equally deserving of admiration. At last it occurred to the home authorities that Sir Ralph Abercrombie and his troops might as well try their hands at the deliverance of Egypt as waste their health and their patience on board of ship. To Egypt they accordingly went; and British pluck gained for the Governmentas it had often done before, and has often done since-an amount of glory which was by no means merited. Whether the real author of the enterprise was Pitt or Addington seems to us, therefore, to bear very little upon the question which we are now considering. The whole affair was a blunder-a fortunate blunder, no doubt, if we could put out of mind what might have happened had Sir William

Erskine been permitted to follow his own lead in Italy, but not, by any means, an enterprise to be boasted of as the consequence of a far-seeing military policy.

But Lord Stanhope again steps in as the defender of the war arrangements of Mr Pitt, by quoting a silly remark of Lord Granville, "Whose judgment could we take That of some old woman in a red ribbon?" We were not aware till now, that the responsible Ministers of the Crown formed their plans of campaign on consultation with the wearers of red ribbons. We imagined, on the contrary, that they first made up their own minds as to the course which it would be judicious to follow, and then called in the wearers of red ribbons to advise respecting the best means of pursuing that course. Lord Chatham, we believe, himself conceived the idea of acting against Quebec by the St Lawrence; and Lord Liverpool's Cabinet, feeble as we admit it to have been, came to the determination of co-operating with the Spanish and Portuguese patriots in the Peninsula. In both cases the advice of military men was sought for, to help in the arrangement of details, not to say whither the strength of the country was to be directed. But Mr Pitt, if we are to accept his biographer's reasoning, did not venture to fix upon a single battlefield without consultation with military officers. If this were really so, and Pitt's many blunders arose out of the bad advice which he received, we cannot say that his reputation as a War Minister is, in our opinion, vindicated by the admission. The choice of a field of battle, using that expression in its widest sense, is a political rather than a military question. The statesman must first decide where he proposes to employ an army; and then, and not till then, he must call in professional experience to help him in estimating and equipping his means. Lord Liverpool did this. He selected the Peninsula as his battle-field. Had he gone farther, and consulted Sir Ar

thur Wellesley, as he ought to have done, in regard to the amount of force to be employed, and the best means of rendering it effectual, we should have had the Peninsular war without doubt; but it would have probably ended within two years, instead of spreading over seven, because the whole military strength of the empire would have been thrown into it. To excuse Pitt's mistakes, therefore, by asserting that there was not a general officer in the service capable of drawing up for him the plan of a campaign, is to beg the whole question at issue. A great War Minister first settles in the gross his own plan of campaign, and then, finding, as Chatham and Wellesley did, the proper persons for carrying his plans into execution, leaves to them the settlement of details, and takes care that all their applications are attended to.

Is Pitt, then, without merit as a War Minister? and is Canning's magnificent ballad destitute of truth? Was Pitt not, after all," the pilot who weathered the storm"? Far otherwise. Pitt possessed one quality, the absence of which cannot be atoned for by a thousand others. He was the bravest of men; not physically brave-though in that respect he stands above reproach-but morally brave-wise and clear-sighted amid all difficulties. No reverses could cast him down, no disappointments divert him from his purpose. Loth to commit the nation to war, he followed implicitly the advice of Polonius

"Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in, Bear't that the opposèd may beware of thee."

Pitt weighed well the comparative advantages of a hollow truce and a steady perseverance in hostilities, and he deliberately choose the latter.

His naval administration was, besides, excellent. No doubt a mind of far less expansive order is needed for the management of naval than of military affairs. Mechanical skill provides your