have been severely felt; but now it falls with a weight that crushes. The very existence of that interest which has maintained the cause of the country since the revolution, is in danger of terminating in his person. The only hope and endeavour must be, in my humble opinion, to keep the troops together, by withdrawing them from action for a time, and leaving the enemy to pursue his operations, till they can have recovered their spirits, and retrieved their losses, sufficiently to make a new attack. Some of the most considerable amongst them are strongly of that opinion, and urge the immediate resignation of their places, if Lord Shelburne is to be at the head of affairs. Others are of opinion that they should still continue in, in order to complete the good they have begun, and not quit the public service till his conduct shall have driven them from it. The advocates for either opinion are actuated by perfectly honest motives. I am, for my own part, clearly for the sentiments of the former, and think there can be neither credit nor safety to themselves, nor consequently final advantage to the country, in their continuing in office. The danger of continuing is, that they will miss an opportunity of breaking off with credit and effect, 'and never find another.'

connected with his acceptance of this appointment. On his expressing to his friend Dr. Johnson, some doubts whether he could bring himself to practise the arts which might be thought necessary in his new situation, the doctor humourously replied, 'Don't be afraid, sir; you will soon make a very pretty rascal.' It appears, however, that Mr. Windham's doubts were not ill founded. He yielded up his secretaryship to Mr. Pelham (now earl of Chichester) in August 1783, about four months after his appointment; and his resignation is ascribed, in a late publication, to a certain distribution of patronage by the viceroy, in favour of the old court party, which had given a just offence to Lord Charlemont and his friends, who had been the best supporters of the whigs of the mother-country before they came into office. The writer alluded to relates, that Mr. Windham, who had served as a bond of union, on the viceroy's first coming to Ireland, between him and Lord Charlemont, now wisely preferred the county of Norfolk to the Phoenix Park near Dublin, and retired from his situation. Lord Charlemont had long known and esteemed him as an accomplished, amiable man. This secession added much to his (Lord C.'s) chagrin, as might reasonably be expected.' In a letter, dated Dublin, 26th August, 1782, which at the time found its way anonymously into a newspaper, but which is believed to have been written by a gentleman who had good means of knowing the facts connected with this resignation, it is stated to have been occasioned by a want of due requisites in Mr. Windham to become a supple and venal courtier.' Some assert,' this writer adds, that his resignation was chiefly owing to a coolness be

tween

tween him and a certain great personage (the lord lieutenant).-Mr. Windham is a man of deep science, and of great penetration and abilities; the great personage likes a deep bottle-to penetrate a corkand has strong abilities of bearing wine. The one was an enemy to thinking; the other to drinking, and so they parted.'

"The same writer adds an anecdote which ought not to be omitted. It is given in these words: The following circumstance respecting Mr. Windham is an absolute fact, and shews more and more the loss this country (Ireland) has experienced by his resignation. A few days previous to his leaving Ireland, a gentleman from England waited on him with a strong letter of recommendation from Mr. Burke, requesting Mr. Windham would embrace an opportunity of presenting him with some little preferment that might fall in the gift of government. Mr. Windham assured the gentleman he should be happy to present a person so strongly recommended by Mr. Burke with a much greater piece of preferment than that requested; but that it was his fixed determination, should he remain in the secretaryship (of which he had some doubts), to give every place in his power to Irishmen; as he had long been persuaded that the natives had the best right to the bread of their own land.' Whatever may have been the cause of this resignation, which has, by other accounts, been attributed to ill health, it appears that on this, and

ministry, occasioned by Mr. Fox's famous bill for new modelling the government of India, a new cabinet was appointed at the close of 1783, with Mr. Pitt presiding at the treasury. But the ex-ministers still retaining a considerable majority in the house of commons, it was found necessary to dissolve the parliament in March 1784. On this occasion, Mr. Windham claimed the promises of his friends at Norwich, but soon found that Mr. Fox and his party had lost much of their popularity in that city, as well as in most other parts of the kingdom; particularly amongst the dissenters, by whom they had before been warmly supported. The question too of parliamentary reform, which had already stood in his way at Westminster, was become a highly popular one amongst his Norwich friends. Still he was not to be dismayed. On the contrary, his intrepidity rose with the difficulties which threatened him; for, besides avowing at a public meeting his dislike to the prevailing doctrines of reform, he published a very manly address to the electors, in which he spurned the popularity to be acquired by a servile accommodation to changes of public opinion, and declared that he should, on all occasions, make his own dispassionate judgment the sole and fixed rule of his conduct. Dangerous as it must at first have appeared, the boldness of this address (which gave a just presage of his future political course) met with a generous reward from those who could not approve of his public connexions; and he had, on the result of the election, the satisfaction of being returned by a majority of sixtyfour over his antagonist, the late honourable Henry Hobart. In this contest, his success was remarkable, for in almost every other popular election,

election, the coalition party were totally defeated. In the county of Norfolk, Mr. Windham warmly exerted himself in the cause of his friend Mr. Coke; but, that gentleman, notwithstanding the great influence he derived from his large property, and many estimable qualities, was driven from the field by the same cry which, in other places, proved fatal to Lord John Cavendish, General Conway, Mr. Byng, and many other friends of Mr. Fox, who, by a humourous allusion to the book of that title, gained the appellation of Fox's Martyrs."

"There certainly was no part of Mr. Windham's political course that he reviewed with more satisfaction than this early stage of it. The writer of this narrative has frequently heard him, in the latter period of his life, deplore in strong terms the system which began and finally prevailed in this contest between the crown and the commons ;-a system which he always considered as ruinous to the best interests of the country. The ministers, how ever, were completely triumphant; their majorities in both houses were large and decisive; and the opposition, strong as they continued to be in talents, were so reduced in numbers, as to be no longer formi. dable in any other way than by occasionally putting the ministers to the necessity of defending themselves by argument.

"Mr. Windham made his first speech in parliament on the 9th of February 1785, early in the second session after his election. The question which occasioned this trial of his powers, was the celebrated one of the Westminster scrutiny. It will be necessary to recollect, that Mr. Fox had been successful on the poll for that city by a majority of more than two hundred votes, but Sir Cecil Wray had demanded a scruti

ny, which the high bailiff had proceeded upon, and in the mean time, at his own discretion, had delayed making his return to the writ. Against this measure, Mr. Fox (who had been returned for another place) had in vain called for the censure of the house, in the preceding session. The scrutiny slowly proceeded, and the return was still withheld. At the commencement of the second session, the assessors who had been appointed by the high bailiff were examined at the bar of the house concerning the delay; and it was in the support of a motion, grounded upon this examination, and calling upon the bailiff for an immediate return, that Mr. Windham made the speech which is here alluded to. He rose immediately after Mr. Pitt had spoken on the other side, and he was followed by Mr. Fox, who congratulated the house on the accession of the abilities which they had witnessed.' The scanty report, however, which has been preserved of this speech, will certainly disappoint the reader; nor was it till late in Mr. Windham's parliamentary career, that his peculiar style of eloquence was sufficiently understood or attended to by those who furnished the public with the substance of the debates. The motion for requiring the return was lost, and the high bailiff received the sanction of the house for proceeding in the scrutiny, though with an intimation that it ought to be prosecuted with more expedition. It was not till some time af-terwards that, upon a contrary vote of the house of commons, the scrutiny was abandoned, and Mr. Fox returned duly elected. He subsequently, in a court of law, recocovered 2,000l. damages from the high bailiff, for the loss he had sustained by the scrutiny..

LATTER

"I

"Beaconsfield, Dec. 18, 1809.

have been here for some days, and have just been joined by Mrs. Windham, who left London to day We are on our way to Bristol, and must lose no time, as Mr. ———, who is here, insists on my being in London during the second week of next month. I shall come very reluctantly, having during this recess indulged myself so much in other pursuits, and contracted, by one means or another, so strong a dislike to the politics of the times, that I am by no means in a frame of mind favourable for the commencement of a parliamentary session. The air of the country, however, will do something, if not to dispose me more to business, at least to render me more capable of it. One of the events that tend to create a great impatience of all public concerns, is this disgraceful and mischievous triumph of the O. P's, and the humiliating submission of the managers. Their conduct is quite unaccountable, unless they have secret information that the juries at the sessions would follow the example of Mr. Clifford's jury; and even then the sacrifice of Brandon is something so scandalous, that no consideration ef interest can excuse it. I am the more alive, I suppose, to this defeat of the managers, because I see it as a rehearsal of what is meant for higher performers; the managers being the government; the new prices, the taxes; Brandon myself perhaps; and the D. P.'s exactly the same description

"This was one of the last letters which I received from him. He returned to town soon after Christmas, and at the commencement of the session of 1810 was at his post. He took an early occasion to express in very strong terms his disapprobation of the object and conduct of the expedition to the Scheldt. The vote for an inquiry upon the subject of that armament, ought, he contended, to be carried by acclamation; the British army he described as having been marched to its grave;-to be extinguished amidst the pestilential air of Walcheren ;-to go out like a candle in a

vault." But the battle of Talavera, on the other hand, called from him a warm panegyric, both on the skill of Lord Wellington, and the gallantry of the troops. In this speech, which did honour to his feelings as an Englishman, dated the military renown of our later days from our achievements in Egypt;-the battle of Maida confirmed it;-and those of Vimeira, Corunna, and Talavera, he declared he would not exchange for a whole archipelago of sugar

islands.'

islands. This decided preference of national glory to mere acquisition of wealth or territory, may be considered as the key-stone which supported the whole fabric of his political opinions.

"The part which he took on a subsequent question exposed him to much temporary unpopularity. In the prosecution of the inquiry which the house of commons instituted on the subject of the Scheldt expedition, Mr. Yorke thought it necessary to move daily the standing order for excluding strangers. This measure was reprobated by Mr. Sheridan, who proposed that the standing order should be referred to a committee of privileges. Mr. Windham, who had always professed to dislike the custom of reporting debates in the newspapers, not only warmly opposed Mr. Sheridan's motion, but used some expressions by which the reporters in the gallery considered themselves to be personally calumniated. Their resentment, as might be expected, broke forth in daily attacks on him in the public prints; and they soon came to a formal agreement that his speeches should no longer be reported. For these marks of vengeance, Mr.Windham had fully prepared himself, and he imputed no blame to those who inflicted them. To the honour of the conductors of the daily press, it should be remembered that a few months afterwards, they buried their resentments in the grave of their illustrious adversary, and joined with the public voice in lamenting the loss of his talents and virtues.

"By the temporary exclusion of Mr. Windham's speeches from the newspapers, some valuable ones have been wholly lost, while of others there have been preserved only a few slight and unsatisfactory

fragments. Only one, and that a very short one, remains entire, namely, his eulogium on the character and conduct of the Roman Catholics of England. From that body (whose claims, it will be remembered, received his warm support in 1790) he now presented two petitions, praying, in loyal and respectful language, for the removal of the pains and disabilities to which they were liable by law, on account of their religious principles. Mr. Windham's speech on this occasion was preserved by Mr. Butler of Lincoln's Inn, in a late valuable publication, and has been obligingly communicated by him to the author of this narrative.

"Another speech, which he made in support of Lord Porchester's motion, censuring the expedition against the Scheldt, is represented by those who heard it, to have been one of the most eloquent ever delivered in parliament. It arrested and fully recompensed the attention of the house for nearly two hours. He was urged by some of his friends to prepare it for publication in the form of a pamphlet, but his answer was, that as the subject was temporary, so was the speech, and he felt no anxiety to preserve it. A short and imperfect report of it was given some time afterwards in one of the newspapers, and will be found in the ensuing collection. On the result of the inquiry, the ministers were successful by a majority of forty votes.

"In the proceedings of the house of commons against Sir Francis Burdett, for a breach of their privileges, Mr. Windham stood forward in maintaining what he conceived to be the rights of parliament, and concurred in the vote which was finally agreed upon, for committing Sir Francis a prisoner to the Tower.