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scription faulters about these constitutional questions. It is therefore the policy of each party to take its claims at the highest, and to wrestle for them at convenient opportunities. Those demagogues who agitate such questions during war, when the influence and patronage of government are greatest, are commonly foiled; and thus they occasion a retrogression of liberty or of popular power. Those demagogues, on the contrary, who move such questions during peace, or under insipid administrations, when the people gape for the occupation of public and collective effort, have often succeeded. Wilkes was of this wiser class of agitators. The whole force of his talent, which was energetic, and of his industry, which was unrelenting, he heartily devoted to the cause which he undertook, and with a vehemence and perseverance that gave him the victory. He delivered public men from the fear of general warrants; and he obtained for voters the right of setting aside a parliamentary disqualification. For a statesman, however, he indulged too much in personalities, and became more formidable as an enemy than efficacious as a friend. Great as a speaker, and greater as a writer, he carried perhaps the arts of style to the utmost limits of good and sound taste: but he is not reproached, like Johnson, Gibbon, and Burke, with the wanton and excessive use of ornament."

It was the misfortune of Mr Wilkes, on his first entrance into life, to become acquainted with a number of debauched young noblemen. With these he indulged in a gay but delusive round of dissipation, that ruined his fortune, and added but little to his reputation. A few years after his marriage he separated from his wife, whom he had treated with great injustice and cruelty; but to the last hour of his existence he was fondly attached to his daughter. As a writer he distinguished himself by a variety of publications, all of which discover an easy style, a ready flow of wit, a keen and piercing satire, and a rich variety of classical allusions. He lived for many years in great intimacy with the most eminent literary characters of the day,-such as Lloyd, Churchill, Thornton, Sterne, the bishop of Salisbury, Horne Tooke, &c. As an orator he was deficient in two of the qualifications considered eminently necessary by Cicero, for his person and his voice were but ill-qualified for public exhibition; yet his speeches display much research and information, and were accompanied by a boldness of assertion, and bitterness of invective, that rendered them poignant and delectable to all but the objects of his attack. Throughout life he abused the Scotch with extraordinary bitterness; and never lost an opportunity of expressing his contempt for the land o' cakes.' "Among all the flights"-said he, during a discussion with Johnson on the genius of Shakspeare-" among all the vagaries of that author's imagination, the boldest certainly is that of Birnam wood being brought to Dunsinane; making a wood where there never was a shrub! A wood in Scotland! Ha ha ha l'

Lord-Chief-Justice Eyre.

BORN A. D. 1724.-DIED A. D. 1799.

LORD-CHIEF-JUSTICE EYRE was a native of Wiltshire. His family was connected with that of Lord Pembroke. He received his educa

tion at Winchester and Oxford, whence he proceeded to one of the inns of court. At an early period of his professional life. we find him one of the four common pleaders belonging to the city of London, who purchase their situations, and are commonly called the city-counsel. He was at this time not known beyond the practice of the lordmayor's and sheriff's courts, and had displayed no particular tokens of future eminence.

At this period Sir William Morton was recorder of London. He had quitted the practice of the bar, and confined himself to the duties of that respectable office. He had been brought into parliament by the influence of the duke of Bedford, and was respectable from private fortune as well as public situation. He was now getting old, and applied to the court of aldermen for leave to appoint a deputy to assist him in his official duties. The common-sergeant, the second law-officer in the corporation of London, had an evident claim to such an appointment. Mr Nugent, a most amiable and excellent man, though of no great professional name, now filled that situation. These gentlemen, however, having differed on some points of legal discussion that had been officially proposed to their consideration, such a coolness had taken place between them, that Mr Eyre, who had gained the favour of Sir William Morton, was now proposed by him to be deputy-recorder, and his influence overbearing that of Mr Nugent, obtained the appointment for him.

Mr Eyre was now elevated into importance; and though the recorder may have indulged his splenetic aversion in passing by the commonsergeant on this occasion, it soon appeared that he had nominated an assistant who possessed knowledge and abilities adequate to his station. On the death of his patron in the year 1762, Mr Eyre was elected by the court of aldermen to succeed him. As recorder of London, he now enjoyed an office of great respectability, as well as considerable emolument. It also gave him the distinction of a silk gown in Westminster-hall, and precedency after the sergeant-at-law.

The affair of Wilkes gave the recorder not a little trouble. A very large majority of the livery espoused every measure that was brought forward in opposition to government, and the corporation itself became at length subject to the predominating influence of Wilkes and his cause. In this state of things, the recorder conducted himself with firmness; but he could only offer his counsel, and passively submit to the voice of the corporation. At length a remonstrance to the throne was proposed and carried in a court of common-council, which contained such opinions, that the recorder peremptorily refused to exercise his official functions on the occasion. He represented it as enforcing doctrines which he should ever oppose, and expressed in language unfit for the sovereign to hear. He, therefore, declined being the organ by which his majesty should receive such an insult. Sir James Hodges, the town-clerk, supplied the place of the recorder on this occasion. The recorder himself was summoned to justify his conduct before the common-council, and his speech on that occasion was not calculated to avert the vote of censure which followed it. At this crisis, such conduct was certain of its reward; and the recorder was, in the year 1772, appointed a baron of his majesty's exchequer. A short time subsequent to his possession of the ermine, on a question proposed to

the twelve judges by the house of lords, Baron Eyre was distinguished by his argument on that occasion. That he conducted himself with honour and ability in his judicial station, appears from his successive advancements. In 1787 he succeeded Sir John Skynner as chief-baron of his own court. On the resignation of Lord Thurlow in 1792, he was appointed first commissioner of the great seal; and on the removal of Lord Loughborough in the succeeding year to the chancery-bench, he succeeded the noble judge as chief-justice of the common pleas.

Wellbore Ellis, Lord Mendip.

BORN A. D. 1714.-died a. D. 1802.

"THIS gentleman," says a contemporary, "is esteemed one of the most steady uniform courtiers in either house of parliament, as there has been scarcely an administration for the last thirty years in this country, in which he has not borne a share, and cheerfully parted with his colleagues the instant they parted with power." The dexterous politician of whom this affirmation was made in the year 1776, was a younger son of the bishop of Meath. From a king's scholarship at Westminster he was elected, in 1732, to Christ church, Oxford. In 1749 he was appointed lord of the admiralty, and in 1763 secretary at war. On the accession of the Rockingham party he retired from office; but when Lord North became premier, he accepted the vicetreasurership of the navy.

He took an active part in the measures against Wilkes. The zeal he manifested on this occasion provoked Junius to introduce him as the Guy Faux of the plot which he said was hatching against the liberties of the country. The same writer describes him as a contemptible mannikin, unworthy of notice, and constantly sure of disgrace in his place in parliament. The next conspicuous appearance Ellis made, after the affair of the Middlesex election, was his opposition to Grenville's bill "for regulating the trial of controverted elections." After having opposed it vehemently in all the preceding stages, he moved, on the order to take the report into consideration, that the bill be put off for two months. On a division, however, the ministry, "for the first time since their being imbodied into a regular standing corps," says the anonymous writer already quoted, "found themselves in a minority: the numbers being 187 to 125, on the question being put, whether the bill should be engrossed."

Mr Ellis was very active in the same session (1770) in endeavouring to stifle all inquiry into the then state of America: in that, and his opposition to the bill brought in by Mr Herbert for regulating expulsions, he was more successful than in his attempt to defeat Mr. Grenville's bill. "His conduct respecting American affairs since the breaking out of the present troubles," says his contemporary, "has been uniform, decisive, and steady. He has always declared himself for the supremacy of parliament, and for receiving no concession short of unconditional submission. He spoke very warmly against the minister's conciliatory proposition of the 20th of February, 1775; and in the course of last session frequently hinted at the supineness of administra

tion, their indecisive conduct,-their mistaken lenity; and attributed, in a great measure, all the miscarriages that had hitherto happened to a want of firmness, alacrity, and information. To soften this direct charge against the puppets in power, he attributed our disappointments more to wrong information than any thing else, and congratulated the house on the conversion of administration. In fine, he predicted two things: that our arms would in the end prove victorious, perhaps without much bloodshed; but whether or not, they would prove victorious: the inevitable consequence of which would be, the obtaining a revenue towards easing the heavy burdens borne by the people of this country. "Mr Ellis," this writer continues, "as a parliamentary speaker, is certainly very able. He is well-acquainted with men and books, practice and speculation. Long trained to business, and the various details of almost every official board, he speaks on every subject connected with them with perspicuity, confidence, and precision. Few persons, if any in the house, either in or out of administration, can venture to contend with him in this line with any prospect of success. To a sound native understanding, he has united a close and judicious attention to business; the result of which is, that he is one of the best-informed men in the house of commons. His oratory is not shining or brilliant, but his discourses are all regular, correct, and finished. He delivers himself in the language of a gentleman and a scholar, and with an elegance and conciseness equalled by few, and surpassed scarcely by any. He never fails to close his speeches by proving his arguments on the clearest principles of logical deduction, allowing his facts to be true. In fine, he is no less dexterous at demolishing the arguments of his opponents, than in raising and judiciously constructing his own. On the other hand, when hard pressed, he suits himself to his situation; and is as ingenious in evading, palliating, explaining away, and straining precedents, as he is at other times persuasive, logical, and convincing. He then learns to magnify trifles, and trace similitudes where there never existed a likeness. He can promise, because he is not responsible; he can venture to predict, because he does not pretend to inspiration. He may deny, or assert, when the proofs are not within reach. On the whole, though he is one of the ablest speakers administration have to boast of, and much the ablest support they have in the moment of difficulty, yet he has a certain finicalness in his voice and manner, which is no less fatal to his pretensions to the rank of a first-rate energetic orator, than the necessity arising from his political views, emoluments, and pursuits, is often to his arguments, deductions, and abstract definitions." By another writer his oratory has been described "as a stream that flowed so smoothly, and was at the same time so shallow, that it seemed to design to let every pebble it passed over be distinguished." His manners, the same writer describes as so courteous, that “had he been a hermit, he would have bowed to a cock-sparrow.'

In 1782 he took the colonial secretaryship at the king's express desire, but soon afterwards again resigned office. He supported the coalition ministry against Pitt until 1793, when he saw it convenient to secede from the opposition. Next year he was raised to the peerage by the title of Mendip. From this period he mixed little in public life. His lordship died without issue on the 2d of February, 1802.

Petty, Marquess of Lansdowne.

BORN A. D. 1787.-died a. D. 1805.

THE greater portion of this nobleman's political life was spent in the period we are now treating of, while earl of Shelburne. He had withdrawn from public life for some years previous to the French revolution, and although that crisis drew him from his retirement, and he saw it to be his duty to support the Fox party, yet he took no active lead in any of the measures of the day.

William Fitzmaurice Petty was the elder son of Baron Wycombe. He entered the guards in early life, and served some time abroad as a volunteer under the duke of Brunswick. At the termination of the seven years' war he returned to England, and was appointed aid-decamp to George III. in 1760. In the following year he entered parliament as representative for Chipping-Wycombe; and in the course of the same year took his seat in the house of peers on succeeding to his father's title of earl of Shelburne.

Lord Shelburne strenuously opposed the treaty of peace of 1762; and was rewarded for his exertions by the presidency of the board of trade, and a seat in the privy-council. Soon afterwards, however, he threw up his appointments, and joined himself to Pitt's party.

"We find Lord Shelburne in the cabinet as one of Lord Chatham's secretaries of state, in the spring of 1767, when the American port-duties were devised elsewhere, but publicly supported by a faithless chancellor of the exchequer,' contrary to the sentiments of his colleagues in office This," continues a contemporary of these transactions, "is the prevailing opinion: he is not forthcoming to answer for himself; but as no man who knew him entertains a single doubt of his unbounded ambition, his versatility and want of system, charity obliges, and common sense urges us to suppose, that the duke of Grafton, and the lords Chatham, Shelburne, and Camden, be their faults what they may in other respects, would hardly have consented to a measure which would at once have emptied them of every pretension to public virtue or political value, if they had not been compelled by a power greater or as great as the king himself. Lord Shelburne, therefore, we may presume, pushed on by this sovereign irresistible momentum, gave way; the consequence of which was, that we were presented with that famous law for laying duties on tea, paper, painters' colours, and glass. The administration we have just been speaking of, the blackest and the most destructive this nation ever saw, was in its dissolution no less extraordinary than in its formation. It was no sooner imbodied than its ruin was determined. The noble lord who was at the head of it, lost his senses, as well as his health and popularity. The chancellor of the exchequer, who always hated, envied, and feared him, profited of the glorious opportunity: he sowed, with the most wicked and able malignity, jealousies and animosities, that became impossible to cure or remove. He paid his court alternately in the closet, and to the house of

Charles Townshend.

"Lord Chatham.

? Charles Townshend.

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