master of all the ordinary rules of grammar, but taking great pleasure in the philological disquisitions of critics and commentators, he became deeply versed in the niceties of construction and peculiarities of idiom, both in the Latin and Greek languages. He had also read the first six books of Euclid's Elements, Plane Trigonometry, the elementary parts of Algebra, and the two quarto volumes of Rutherford's Natural Philosophy, a work in some degree of repute while Mr Wilson was a student at Cambridge, but afterwards laid aside. Nor was it in learning only that Mr Pitt was so much superior to persons of his age. Though a boy in years and appearance, his manners were formed, and his behaviour manly. He mixed in conversation with unaffected vivacity; and delivered his sentiments with perfect ease, equally free from shyness and flippancy, and always with strict attention to propriety and decorum. Lord Chatham, who could not but be aware of the powers of his son's mind and understanding, had encouraged him to talk without reserve upon every subject, which frequently afforded opportunity for conveying useful information, and just notions of persons and things. When his lordship's health would permit, he never suffered a day to pass without giving instruction of some sort to his children; and seldom without reading a chapter of the Bible with them. He must indeed be considered as having contributed largely to that fund of knowledge, and to those other advantages, with which Mr Pitt entered upon his academical life."

On leaving his Alma Mater, young Pitt entered Lincoln's inn, nearly at the same time with Mr Addington. At the end of three years, he was called to the bar, and-as is customary with junior counsel― selected one of the circuits as the scene of his first professional efforts. A gentleman who was very intimate with Pitt, on the western circuit, and afterwards, till they were separated, in 1792, by a difference of political opinions, thus writes of him at this stage of his career: "Among lively men of his own time of life, Mr Pitt was always the most lively and convivial in the many hours of leisure which occur to young unoccupied men on a circuit; and joined all the little excursions to Southampton, Weymouth, and such parties of amusement as were habitually formed. He was extremely popular. His name and reputation of high acquirements at the university, commanded the attention of his seniors. His wit, his good humour, and joyous manners, endeared him to the younger part of the bar. In some bribery causes from Cricklade, be was retained as junior counsel; but even in that subordinate character, he had an opportunity of arguing a point of evidence with extraordinary ability. I remember also, in an action of crim. con. at Exeter, as junior counsel, he manifested such talents in cross-examination, that it was the universal opinion of the bar that he should have led the cause. During his short stay in the profession he never had occasion to address a jury; but upon a motion in the court of king's bench, for an habeas corpus to bring up a man to be bailed, who was charged with murder, Mr Pitt made a speech which excited the admiration of the bar, and drew down very complimentary approbation from Lord Mansfield. When he first made his brilliant display in parliament, those at the bar who had seen little of him, expressed surprise; but a few who had heard him once speak in a sort of mock debate at the Crown and Anchor tavern, when a club, called the Western Circuit Club, was dissolved, agreed

that he had then displayed all the various species of eloquence for which he was afterwards celebrated. Before he distinguished himself in the house of commons, he certainly looked seriously to the law as a profession. The late Mr Justice Rooke told me that Mr Pitt dangled seven days with a junior brief and a single guinea fee, waiting till a cause of no sort of importance should come on in the court of common pleas. At Mr Pitt's instance an annual dinner took place for some years at Richmond hill, the party consisting of Lord Erskine, Lord Redesdale, Sir William Grant, Mr Bond, Mr Leycester, Mr Jekyll, and others; and I well remember a dinner with Mr Pitt and several of his private friends, at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, in celebration of Shakspeare's Falstaff. We were all in high spirits, quoting and alluding to Shakspeare the whole day; and it appeared that Mr Pitt was as well and familiarly read in the poet's works as the best Shakspearians present. But to speak of his conviviality is needless. After he was minister he continued to ask his old circuit intimates to dine with him, and his manners were unaltered."

But he was soon called to a different sphere of life. He had been bred a statesman from his boyhood; and he always contemplated the house of commons as the goal whence he was to start in his political career. At the request of many of his friends he first offered himself to represent the university of Cambridge, but was unsuccessful. Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale, then procured his return for Appleby, on the solicitation of the duke of Rutland, and with the express understanding that the young commoner should enter parliament totally unfettered. On the 26th of February, 1781, the future premier made his maiden-speech. "The subject of debate," says his biographer, "was Mr Burke's bill for economical reform in the civil list. Lord Nugent was speaking against the bill; and Mr Byng, member for Middlesex, knowing Mr Pitt's sentiments upon the measure, asked him to reply to his lordship. Mr Pitt gave a doubtful answer; but, in the course of Lord Nugent's speech, he determined not to reply to him. Mr Byng, however, understood that Mr Pitt intended to speak after Lord Nugent; and the moment his lordship sat down, Mr Byng, and several of his friends, to whom he had communicated Mr Pitt's supposed intention, called out, in the manner usual in the house of commons, Mr Pitt's name as being about to speak. This probably prevented any other person from rising; and Mr Pitt, finding himself thus called upon, and observing that the house waited to hear him, thought it necessary to rise. Though really not intending to speak, he was from the beginning collected and unembarrassed. Before Mr Pitt had a seat in parliament he had been a constant attendant in the gallery of the house of commons, and near the throne in the house of lords, upon every important debate; and whenever he heard a speech of any merit on the side opposite to his own opinions, he accustomed himself to consider, as it proceeded, in what manner it might be answered; and when the speaker accorded with his own sentiments, he then observed his mode of arranging and enforcing his ideas, and considered whether any improvement could have been made, or whether any argument had been omitted. To this habit, and to the practice already mentioned, of reading Greek and Latin into English, joined to his wonderful natural endowments, may be attributed that talent for

reply, and that command of language, for which he was from the first so highly distinguished." The young statesman seemed to have been pleased himself with his first essay. On the next day he wrote to his tutor at Cambridge, that "he had heard his own voice in the house of commons, and had reason to be satisfied with the success of his first attempt at parliamentary speaking." On the 31st of May, he spoke again on a motion relative to the commissioners of public accounts; and, for the third and last time during the session, on the 12th of June, in a debate respecting the American war. He expressed himself, on this occasion, in the most indignant terms, reprobating "the cruelty and impolicy of the contest with our colonies. It was conceived," he said, "in injustice; it was nurtured and brought forth in folly; its footsteps were marked with blood, slaughter, persecution, and devastation. In short, every thing that went to constitute moral depravity and human turpitude were to be found in it. It was pregnant with mischief of every kind, while it meditated destruction to the miserable people who were the devoted objects of the black resentments which produced it.” Strong to violence as such language was, his speeches elicited the following encomium from Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville: "I cannot say to Mr Pitt's face, what truth would extort from me, were he absent; yet even now I must declare that I rejoice in the good fortune of my country, and my fellow-subjects, who are destined to derive the most important services from so happy an union of first-rate abilities, high integrity, bold and honest independency of conduct, and the most persuasive eloquence." At the close of the session, some one having observed that Pitt promised to be one of the first speakers ever heard in the house of commons, Fox instantly replied, "He is so already." Some time afterwards, in allusion to a speech delivered by Pitt in support of a motion against the lords of the admiralty, Dunning confessed that nearly all the sentiments which he had collected in his own mind on the subject, had vanished like a dream on the bursting forth of a torrent of eloquence from the greatest prodigy that ever pernaps was seen, in this or in any other country,-a gentleman, possessing the full vigour of youth, united with the wisdom and experience of the maturest age."

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Notwithstanding his success in parliament Pitt still continued at the bar on the following circuit he held briefs in several election causes of considerable importance at Salisbury; and had the satisfaction of being spoken of in high terms, as well by Mr Justice Buller as the famous Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton. In the ensuing session he voted with Fox and the opposition; strongly censuring the conduct of ministers, Lord North, and his friends, particularly with regard to the American war.

Lord North and his friends were at length compelled to resign; but Pitt, as he was not offered a seat in the cabinet, declined taking office under Lord Rockingham, who succeeded to the premiership. On the 22d of May, 1782, he made an unsuccessful motion for a committee to inquire into the state of the representative system. On this occasion he spoke to the following import :

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"The representation of the commons in parliament," he observed; was a matter so truly interesting, that it had at all times excited the admiration of men the most enlightened; while the defects found in it

had given them reason to apprehend the most alarming consequences. That it had lately undergone material alterations, by which the commons' house of parliament had received an improper and dangerous bias, he believed it would be idle for him to attempt to prove. That beautiful frame of government, which had made us the envy and admiration of mankind, and in which the people were entitled to hold so distinguished a share, was so far dwindled and departed from its original purity, that the representatives ceased in a great degree to be connected with the people. It was not his intention to enter into any inquiry respecting the proper mode of reform, or to consider what would most completely tally and square with the original frame of the constitution: this he left to a committee; but he still felt it his duty to state some facts and circumstances which, in his opinion, made this object of reform essentially necessary. He believed, indeed, that there was no member of that house who would not acknowledge that the representation was incomplete. It was perfectly understood that there were some of the boroughs under the influence of the treasury, and others totally possessed by them. It was manifest that such boroughs had not one quality of representation in them. They had no share or concern in the general interests of the country; and they had in fact no stake for which to appoint guardians in the popular assembly. The influence of the treasury in some boroughs was also contested, not by the electors of those boroughs, but by some powerful man, who assumed or pretended to an hereditary property in what ought only to be the rights and privileges of the electors. There were other boroughs, which had now in fact no actual existence but in the return of members to that house. They had no existence in property, in population, in trade, or in weight of any kind. Another set of boroughs and towns claimed to themselves the right of bringing their votes to market. They had no other market, no other property, and no other stake in the country, than the property and price which they procured for their votes. Such boroughs were the most dangerous of all others. So far from consult

ing the interests of their country in the choice which they made, they held out their borough to the best purchaser; and in fact some of them belonged more to the nabob of Arcot, than they did to the people of England. They were towns and boroughs more within the jurisdiction of the Carnatic, than the limits of the empire of Great Britain; and it was a fact pretty well known, and generally understood, that the nabob of the Carnatic had no less than seven or eight members in that house. There was no man in that house who possessed more reverence for the constitution, and more respect even for its vestiges, than himself. But he was afraid that the reverence and enthusiasm which Englishmen entertained for the constitution would, if not suddenly prevented, be the means of destroying it; for, such was their enthusiasm, that they would not even remove its defects, for fear of touching its beauty. But so great was his reverence for the beauties of that constitution, that he wished to remove those defects, as he clearly perceived that they were defects which altered the radical principles of the constitution. That a reform of the present parliamentary representation was indispensably necessary, was the sentiment of some of the first and greatest characters in the kingdom; and he should also observe that he well knew it to be the sentiment of his much honoured father, the late earl of Chatham, 4 F

IV.