individually known to their posterity. Their measures are usually the acts of the whole body; and by that body the praise or the blame is promiscuously participated. But each, in his speeches, may bequeath some distinc tive, characteristic mark of his own mind and manner, some portrait, in which his peculiar features shall be discriminatively preserved. The following sketch is designed from such relics, as far as they have been left perfect, and, as to the rest, filled up from a remembrance of the living originals, which was first engraven at an age when the mind is most susceptible of lively impressions, and which has since been too frequently and zealously retraced to have suffered much by obliteration.

Mr Fox was a member of the House of Commons, before any of the speak. ers who can fairly be considered as the contemporaries of Mr Windham; for the luxuriance of Mr Burke had bloomed upon a preceding generation.

Mr Fox began his oratorical career, not without success, but certainly with little promise of a fame so splendid as that which he afterwards attained. "It was," as Mr Sheridan is said to have declared, "it was by slow degrees that he rose to be the most accomplished debater the world ever saw." And, but for the word "accomplished," which we conceive inapplicable to Mr Fox, we should think the panegyric perfectly just. Mr Fox was in truth an unrivalled debater, but not a polished rhetorician. The accomplishments of his art seem to have been precisely what he wanted. His arrangement, his language, his tones, and his gestures, were often in a remarkable degree slovenly and unskilful. His admirers have numbered it among his merits, that he was never at the pains of assisting his recollection by a systematic distribution of his subject, the natural tenacity of his memory enabling him

to bring all his conceptions into action without artificial resources. What is thus extolled as a merit, seems to us a material defect. If an orator spoke only for men like himself, this "admired disorder" might be of no moment; but, since he has to deal with many hearers of memories less powerful than his own, it becomes a part of his duty to dispose his arguments in such a form as may enable a common mind most readi ly to apprehend and retain them. Mr Fox, of all debaters, needed unjust panegyric the least, inasmuch as he had the largest endowment of those qualities, for which an enthusiastic applause might have been deservedly bestowed. The praise, however, which we would pay to his great abi. lities, is certainly not that of judici ous method, nor of graceful phraseology. His words rather burst, than flowed from him, the impetuous eager ness with which he pressed forward to the enunciation of a thought, precluding the possibility of an elegant selection of terms. But what he wanted in grace, he nobly compensa ted in force. No man had ever a more complete command of those energetic words and phrases, which, at one blow, drive a sentiment home to the hearer's understanding, and infix it, like a thunderbolt in the earth.

The objects of a rhetorician have been variously classed and defined. There are two, which a debater in the British parliament seems to keep almost exclusively before his eyes. These are, first, to establish certain strong and simple rallying points for his own ar gument: and, secondly, by all possible means, within the fair license of discussion, to annoy, expose, and discredit his adversaries. In both these operations Mr Fox was transcendently successful; and to these he, for the most part, confined himself, regard less of ornament and un ambitious of display. The common fault of ora•

tors is to think too much of themselves, and too little of their subject, They exhibit themselves, like horsevaulters, in a thousand attitudes, managing and turning their subject in numberless ways, jumping along, and across, and over, and under it, but never getting astride into the saddle. Mr Fox was always too much in earnest to indulge in such antics. He laboured to concenter his light, not upon himself, but upon his arguments; and it was reflected back upon himself with a tenfold lustre. It will therefore be readily conceived that he lengthened no discourse for the vanity of engrossing attention; that he introduced no pleonastic synonime for the reputation of fluency; that he spun no interstice in his argument, to interpolate a metaphor or a joke. He seemed to say what he said simply because he thought it, and to think it, simply because it was true. To this air of earnest sincerity, an air not counterfeited for the sake of deeper deception, but natural, genuine, and privately as well as publicly habitual to him, he was indebted for much of the powerful effect which his oratory produced upon the House of Commons. In an assembly where so much talking must necessarily be endured, it naturally happens that talking for talking's sake, hollow, showy affectation, is decidedly discouraged. Men of very inferior ability, who say what they think, are more readily tolerated than the cleverest of those intellectual posturemasters who are for ever thinking what they shall say; for the house disdains to be used for practice, for profit, or for vanity. When Mr Fox, therefore, was found to unite both the sincerity of the one class of speakers, and the ability of the other, he rose rapidly into the favour and confidence of his hearers; and the mind was the more easily led away, because the heart was so powerfully prepossessed. His feel

ing, when it became warmed by exertion, swept along with a vehemence unequalled and almost inimitable. It was that sort of feeling which has been not unaptly defined, a quick reasoning; and though this quickness was now and then slurred into a hurry, which betrayed. him too far for the concurrence of more moderate tempers, his wildness had an air of grandeur and noble honesty, that redeemed his accidental indiscretions, and seemed almost to sanctify his very faults.

Of the two talents, which we have pointed out as the favourite weapons of a modern debater, namely, the art of establishing certain simple and fundamental axioms as a basis of discussion, and the faculty of disconcerting the opposite partisans, the former is obviously the higher and more respectable power. Mr Fox's method of establishing his axioms was severely analytical. After a long and intricate debate,-after the doublings and redoublings of adversaries, incomparably skilful in bafiling and entangling their pursuers, he was ever able to retread the mighty maze by a master-clue of his own, and to place his cause before his judges, in its plain and original simplicity. He was fond of reducing all things to first principles: He despised the presumption of fools, and abhorred the sophistry of knaves; and he attacked with acrimony whatever had the appearance either of clumsy conceit, or of colourable contrivance. A favourite argument he seldom laid by, till he had turned it in all directions, and ventilated it on every side. The necessary consequence was, that his speeches abounded with repetitions of the same sentiment in different forms. But he justified this practice upon system: for he said that he had observed many men remaining unconvinced by an argument in one shape, and yet converted by the same argument in another; and, as his object was to ef

fect conviction rather than to acquire applause, he willingly waved the reputation of elegance for the consciousness of utility.

Such were his methods of strengthening his own positions. In the secondary object, of disconcerting the plans of his antagonists, his favourite resource was the "reductio ad absurdum.” There was scarcely any species of argument which he could not weaken, either by making it appear to involve an inconsistency in itself, or by drawing out its consequences till they seemed to terminate in an absurdity. Those who understand the power of strong ridicule in a popular assembly, will easily conceive how formida ble this talent must have rendered Mr Fox to talkers who were in the habit of relying, rather on the "pomp and circumstance" of their speeches, than

on any

solid basis of close reason. And his ridicule was the more tremendous, because it was seldom a jocular display, of which the effect might have evaporated in a laugh it was an irony deep, caustic, and destructive: it seemed to be generated not by levi ty, but by cordial indignation; it excited against the adversary's argument, not so much of fanciful merriment, as of moral contempt.

The following passage will serve to shew by how slender an inadvertence he could profit, when it was his object to throw his opponents into disorder. Mr Pitt had said that it was advisable for us to pause, and wait for some earnest of good-faith from Buonaparte, before we should consent to trust ourselves unconditionally to his mercy, by concluding a pacification with France. In answer to this counsel, Mr Fox exclaimed,

"So that we are called upon to go on merely as a speculation!We must keep Buonaparte for some time longer at war, as a state of probation! Graeious God! sir, is war a state of pro

bation? Is peace a rash system? Is it dangerous for nations to live in amity with each other? Is your vigilance, your policy, your common power of observation, to be extinguished by putting an end to the horrors of war? Cannot this state of probation be as well undergone without adding to the catalogue of human sufferings?" But we must pause!" What! must the bowels of Great Britain be torn out— her best blood be spilt-her treasure wasted that you may make an experiment? Put yourselves, oh that you would put yourselves, in the field of battle, and learn to judge of the sort of horrors that you excite! In former wars, a man might, at least, have some feeling, some interest, that served to balance in his mind the impressions which a scene of carnage and of death must inflict. If a man had been present at the battle of Blenheim, for instance, and had enquired the motive of the battle, there was not a soldier engaged who could not have satisfied his curiosity, and even, perhaps, allayed his feelings:-they were fighting to repress the uncontrouled ambition of the Grand Monarque. But if a man were present now at a field of slaughter, and were to enquire for what they were fighting-" Fighting!" would be the

66 answer; they are not fighting, they are pausing." Why is that man expiring? Why is that other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury? The answer must be, "You are quite wrong, sirYou 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 Buonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore-and, in the mean time, we have agreed to a pause in pure friendship." And is this the way, sir, that you are to shew your selves 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."-Speech on the Refusal of Ministers to treat with France, February 4th, 1800,

The genius of Mr Fox, and that of Mr Pitt, were of characters widely distinct.

Our readers are probably aware, that, in each of the two legislative assemblies, there is usually a member of the cabinet, selected for his oratorical abilities, who, in the parliamentary phrase, is denominated, "the leader of the house." On his competency to the duties of his situation, the interests of his whole party will always materially depend. For he has several subordinate chiefs acting under his command, as generals of divisions: and their utility is of course augmented or diminished, by the greater or less degree of skill with which he chalks out the plan of the battle. It should be his care, privately to furnish them, before the debate begins, with a complete view of the ground on which the ministry mean to rely, in order that no straggler, by unwarily cutting across the main design, may rashly commit his colleagues, or lay open the weak points of their position. Thus instructed, they go into the field, each with an accurate knowledge of the particular service expected from him, and each especially vigilant upon the

particular points entrusted to his guardianship. Unforeseen contingencies may indeed derange the plan; but the greater probability there may be of such an inconvenience, the greater is the necessity that each of the generals shall know precisely the object of his commander-in-chief, in order that, if he be driven from the ground which it is the most desirable to secure, he may occupy that which shall afford the next best chance of accomplishing the main ends, and keeping the trains of argument distinct and compact. When they have performed the services allotted to them, the leader should finish the chain of operations, by a general summing up: presenting a clear statement of the case on the part of ministers, bringing back the debate where it has wandered from the preconcerted course, reconciling those difficulties or inconsistencies with which accident.or misfortune may have embarrassed him, and deducing and arranging the results intended to be established, in such a manner, as to leave upon the minds of the house a clear and entire impression of the end contended for, of the chief reasons relied on by government, and of the order, connection, and importance which those reasons may bear with relation to one another.

For leader of the House of Commons, in this view of the character, Mr Pitt was most eminently qualifi ed. The ministerial speakers, under his direction, exhibited a degree of skill and discipline, of readiness and aptitude for their several tasks, which has seldom, if ever, been equalled. Of his own eloquence it is difficult to offer a decided and discriminating character. It would require talents congenial to his own to do justice to the unrivalled oratory of this great statesman. The pen of Burke and of Grattan was employed to describe the eloquence of the father; the eloquence of the son furnishes a theme equal

ly noble. We can only speak of the occasions on which it was called forth, the collisions by which it was elicited and improved, the effects of which it was productive, and some of the more prominent features by which it was distinguished.

If ever an occasion occurred the best fitted to call forth the highest talents into the most vigorous exercise, it was the dark and troubled scene in which it was his lot to live and to act. The enterprises of Philip, and the criminal ambition of Catiline and Mark Antony, did not furnish a nobler scope for the eloquence of the two great orators of antiquity, than the frenzy and anarchy of revolutionary France yielded to the modern advocate of freedom, and humanity. We surely do no injustice to Eschines and Hor tensius when we say that they were inferior to the illustrious opponents of Pitt, viz. Fox, Sheridan, and Burke: and, making due allowance for the character of the assemblies addressed, the severity of modern taste, and the comparative insensibility of the inhabitants of a higher latitude, the eloquence of Mr Pitt, in respect of the effects which it produced, need not shrink from a comparison with that of any other statesman, whether ancient or modern. From one of the most illustrious individuals which this land of freedom has produced, Mr Pitt inherited, as his birthright, a lofty boldness of spirit, a high-toned, disinterested mind,inextinguishable love of glory, an intellect uncommonly acute and powerful, and all those aptitudes with which nature casts, in her happiest mould, the consummate orator. Thus originally gifted, he enjoyed all the advantages of the earliest and most successful instruction, the encouraging voice, the anxious superintendance, the paternal care and guidance of the first of orators and statesmen and from the success of the experiment, we cannot doubt that

if Cicero had been blessed with such a son as heaven gave to Chatham, Grecian must have yielded the palm to Roman eloquence. The second William Pitt had been taught the true principles of the British constitution, the grand interests of the nation as connected with the policy of Europe, and the permanent objects which it is the duty of the British statesman to pursue. He was intimately acquainted with the history and the state of parties, understood the course they were likely to steer on the occurrence of great events, and was taught to make his choice of his ground and coadjutors. He was prepared to discern, as it were intuitively, what was due to the character, the interests, and glory of Britain; his time, his talents, his whole soul, were devoted to the service of his country, and his eloquence was employed in unfolding and recommending the measures which he thought most likely to promote its safety or aggrandisement. The power of making vigorous efforts of instantaneous invention, calling up long trains of connected thought, and clothing them in the happiest language, constitutes that species of eloquence which, from its ease, freedom, and interest, is best fitted for influencing the minds of men, and directing the course of events. By singular copiousness and felicity of thought and language, by an intuitive perception of the weak and vulnerable parts of his antagonist's speech, by matchless skill and power in answering objections, unravelling what had been purposely perplexed, exposing sophistry by strength of ar gument, crushing petulance by the edge and potency of sarcasm, placing the opinions which he wished to en force in the most imposing light, Mr Pitt ruled in debate, and stood unrival led in reply. But he possessed higher powers; patient, profound thinking, various extensive political and moral