He well knows what snares are spread about his path, from personal animosity, from court intrigues, and possibly from popular delusion. But he has put to hazard his ease, his security, his interest, his power, even his darling popularity, for the benefit of a people whom he has never seen. This is the road that all heroes have trod before him. He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will remember, that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory: he will remember, that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph. These thoughts will support a mind, which only exists for honor, under the burden of temporary reproach. He is doing, indeed, a great good; such as rarely falls to the lot, and almost as rarely coincides with the desires of any man. Let him use his time. Let him give the whole length of the reins to his benevolence. He is now on a great eminence, where the eyes of mankind are turned to him. He may live long, he may do much. But here is the summit. He never can exceed what he does this day.

He has faults; but they are faults that though they may in a small degree tarnish the lustre, and sometimes impede the march of his abilities, have nothing in them to extinguish the fire of great virtues. In those faults there is no mixture of deceit, of hypocrisy, of pride, of ferocity, of complexional despotism, or want of feeling for the distresses of mankind.

*

I confess, I anticipate with joy the reward of those, whose whole consequence, power, and authority, exist only for the benefit of mankind; and I carry my mind. to all the people, and all the names and descriptions, that relieved by this bill, will bless the labours of this parliament, and the confidence which the best House of Commons has given to him who the best deserves it. The little cavils of party will not be heard, where freedom and happiness will be felt. There is not a tongue,

a nation, or religion in India, which will not bless the presiding care and manly beneficence of this House, and of him who proposes to you this great work. Your names will never be separated before the throne of the Divine Goodness, in whatever language, or with whatever rites, pardon is asked for sin, and reward for those who imitate the Godhead in his universal bounty to his creatures. These honors you deserve, and they will surely be paid, when all the jargon of influence and party, and patronage, are swept into oblivion.

CHARACTER OF LORD CHATHAM.

The secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty, and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, no idle contest for ministerial victories, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great : but overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished; always seasonable, always adequate, the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardour, and enlightened by prophecy. The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent, were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness reached him; but aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its in

tercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and to decide.

A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence was an æra in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he like Townshend, for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed.

Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to suminon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe.

INVECTIVE AGAINST MR. CORRY, IN REPLY TO HIS ASPERSIONS.

My guilt or innocence have little to do with the question here. I rose with the rising fortunes of my country-I am willing to die with her expiring liberties. To the voice of the people I will bow, but never shall

I submit to the calumnies of an individual hired to be

tray them and slander me. The indisposition of my body has left me perhaps no means but that of lying down with fallen Ireland and recording upon her tomb my dying testimony against the flagitious corruption that has murdered her independence. The right honorable gentleman has said that this was not my place that instead of having a voice in the councils of my country, I should now stand a culprit at her bar at the bar of a court of criminal judicature, to answer for my treasons. The Irish people have not so read my history-but let that pass-if I am what he has said I am, the people are not therefore to forfeit their constitution. In point of argument the attack is bad-in point of taste or feeling, if he had either, it is worse-in point of fact it is false, utterly and absolutely false, as rancorous a falsehood as the most malignant motives could suggest to the prompt sympathy of a shameless and a venal de fence. The right honorable gentleman has suggested examples which I should have shunned, and examples which I should have followed. I shall never follow his, and I have ever avoided it. I shall never be ambitious to purchase public scorn by private infamy-the lighter characters of the model have as little chance of weaning me from the habits of a life spent, if not exhausted, in the cause of my native land. Am I to res nounce those habits now for ever, and at the beck of whom? I should rather say of what-half a minister -half a monkey-a 'prentice politician, and a master coxcomb. He has told you that what he said of me here, he would say any where. I believe he would say thus of me in any place where he thought himself safe in saying it. Nothing can limit his calumnies but his fears in parliament he has calumniated me to-night, in the king's courts he would calumniate me to-mor row, but had he said or dared to insinuate one-half as much elsewhere, the indignant spirit of an honest man would have answered the vile and venal slanderer with -a blow:

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH AGAINST WARREN

HASTINGS.

Had a stranger, at this time, gone into the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujuh Dowla, that man, who, with a savage heart, had still great lines of character, and who with all his ferocity in war, had still, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the riches which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil.-If this stranger, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation,and all the horrors of the scene-of plains unclothed and brown-of vegetation burnt up and extinguished— of villages depopulated and in ruins of temples unroofed and perishing-of reservoirs broken down and dry-he would naturally inquire what war had thus laid waste the fertile fields of this once beautiful and opulent country-what civil dissensions have happened, thus to tear asunder and separate the happy societies that once possessed those villages-what disputed succession-what religious rage has, with unholy violence, demolished those temples, and disturbed fervent, but unobtruding piety in the exercise of its duties?What merciless enemy has thus spread the horrors of fire and sword-what severe visitation of Providence has dried up the fountain, and taken from the face of the earth every vestige of verdure? Or rather, what monsters have stalked over the country, tainting and poisoning, with pestiferous breath, what the voracious appetite could not devour? To such questions, what must be the answer? No wars have ravaged these lands, and depopulated these villages-no civil discord has been felt no disputed succession-no religious rage -no cruel enemy-no affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged for a moment, cut off the sources of resuscitation-no voracious and poisoning monstersno: all this has been accomplished by the friendship, generosity and kindness of the English nation.

They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits of their alliance. What,