fury?" The answer must be: “You are quite wrong, sir; you deceive yourself—they are not fighting-do not disturb them-they are merely pausing! This man is not expiring with agony -that man is not dead-he is only pausing! Lord help you, sir! they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of quarrel; but their country thinks that there should be a pause. All that you see, sir, is nothing like fighting-there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor bloodshed in it whatever; it is nothing more than a political pause! It is merely to try an experiment-to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore; and in the meantime we have agreed to a pause, in pure friendship!" And is this the way, sir, that you are to show yourselves the advocates of order? You take up a system calculated to uncivilize the world-to destroy order-to trample on religion—to stifle in the heart, not merely the generosity of noble sentiment, but the affections of social nature; and in the prosecution of this system, you spread terror and devastation all around you.

Sir, I have done. I have told you my opinion. I think you ought to have given a civil, clear, and explicit answer to the overture

which was fairly and handsomely made you. If you were desirous that the negotiation should have included all your allies, as the means of bringing about a general peace, you should have told Bonaparte so. But I believe you were afraid of his agreeing to the proposal. You took that method before. Ay, but you say the people were anxious for peace in 1797. I say they are friends to peace now; and I am confident that you will one day acknowledge it. Believe me, they are friends to peace; although by the laws which you have made, restraining the expression of the sense of the people, public opinion can not now be heard as loudly and unequivocally as heretofore. But I will not go into the internal state of this country. It is too afflicting to the heart to see the strides which have been made by means of, and under the miserable pretext of, this war, against liberty of every kind, both of power of speech and of writing, and to observe in another kingdom the rapid approaches to that military despotism which we affect to make an argument against peace. I know, sir, that public opinion, if it could be collected, would be for peace, as much now as in 1797; and that it is only by public opinion, and not by a sense of their duty, or by

the inclination of their minds, that ministers will be brought, if ever, to give us peace.

I conclude, sir, with repeating what I said before: I ask for no gentleman's vote who would have reprobated the compliance of ministers with the proposition of the French Government. I ask for no gentleman's support tonight who would have voted against ministers, if they had come down and proposed to enter into a negotiation with the French. But I have a right to ask, and in honor, in consistency, in conscience, I have a right to expect, the vote of every honorable gentleman who would have voted with ministers in an address to his Majesty, diametrically opposite to the motion of this night.

This speech of Fox is said to have made a deep impression on the House; but it appears scarcely to have weakened the opposition to Napoleon's measures as set forth in the speech of Pitt. The address approving of the Government's course was carried by the overwhelming majority of 265 to 64. It was the reasoning of Pitt and the vote which followed the debate that determined the general line of English policy till Napoleon was landed at St. Helena. The speech of Fox, though not successful in defeating the governmental policy, was the ablest presentation ever made of the Opposition view.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.

BORN on the 24th of October, 1765, James Mackintosh was fifteen years younger than Erskine, and thirty-five younger than Burke. He early showed a remarkable fondness for reading, and when he was ten years of age was regarded in the locality of his birth near Inverness, in Scotland, as "a prodigy of learning." His favorite amusement at this period of his life appears to have been to gather his schoolfellows about him and entertain them by delivering speeches in imitation of Fox and North, on the American war,-then the great question of the day. At fifteen, he entered King's College, Aberdeen, where he soon established a friendship with Robert Hall, which continued through life. Their tastes were similar, and they devoted themselves with

great earnestness to the study of the classics, and to the more abstruse forms of philosophical reasoning. They were in the habit of studying together and discussing the works of Berkeley, Butler, and Edwards, as well as those of Plato and Herodotus. This exercise, kept up during a large part of their collegiate course, appears to have exerted a great influence on the formation of their minds and tastes. Mackintosh afterward declared that he learned more from those discussions "than from all the books he ever read"; and Hall testified to the great ability of his companion, by saying that "he had an intellect more like that of Bacon than any other person of modern times."

After spending four years at Edinburgh in the study of medicine, Mackintosh repaired to London with a view to the practice of his profession. His heart seems, however, not to have been very fully enlisted in the work, and he was soon driven to the public press as a means of support. His first great work, published in 1791, commanded immediate attention, not