"But is Fox nothing?" I asked.
"A great deal," was the answer. "He is the finest talker, I suppose, in the world. The first of babblers."
"Of babblers!" I involuntarily repeated.
"Yes; for what is babbling but speaking in vain, pouring out endless speculations without a purpose or the hope of a purpose, indulging a remarkably powerful and productive mind with the waste of its own conceptions, pouring out a whole coinage of splendid thoughts with no more expectancy of practical result than if he poured the mint into the Thames? You may rely upon it that such is the opinion of the House, as it will be yours when you get there; and such will be that of posterity, if they shall ever take the trouble to think about any of us."
This conversation was evidently more than accidental; and I gave to it some of my most perplexing hours. I had an original fondness for the life of arms. I was of the age to feel its variety, animation, and ardour. My experience had been fortunate; I had seen nothing but victory, and had been flattered by personal distinction. But then came the reverse of the medal. I remembered the opinion of the most sagacious and penetrating spirit which it had been my lot ever to know; and I felt that the Continent was to be our field of battle no longer. The languor of home service, to one who had seen war in its stateliest shape, and in its most powerful activity, rose before my mind with an inexpressible sense of weariness. On the other hand, supposing that I possessed the faculties for political life, was I possessed of the temper, the endurance of toil, the measureless patience, the inexhaustible equanimity, which every night of my public existence would henceforth demand? Why was this heart-wearying struggle to be preferred to the simple and straightforward pursuit of an honourable profession, in which the only weight was the carrying of my sword, and the only secret of distinction possessing an untarnished name?
But I soon made up my mind. The question narrowed itself to this: which was the more active life? The point of honour was no longer the adherence to a profession whose purposes were necessarily changed. Every hour gave additional evidence that the gates of the Continent were closing upon the English soldier. Influence, impression, publicity, were the prizes of a political career. I saw all other names fade before the great senatorial names of England. I saw men of humble extraction filling the world with their fame. I saw a succession of individuals, who, if their profession had been arms, or if their birth-place had been the Continent, would have lived and died in the routine of obscure service, here rising to the height of national homage, lustres of their generation, and guiding by their opinions the courts of Europe. Whether I should ever take my place among those illustrious names, scarcely entered into my thoughts. But I was determined never to waste my life in conscious indolence. Scarcely knowing what faculties I might possess, I had fully resolved on trying their utmost strength; and grown almost indifferent to the ordinary pursuits of human indulgence, I looked with something of a melancholy yet proud hope, to the enjoyment which was to be found in giving myself up to the solitary and stern toil of living for a great cause, and leaving a name behind me that should not be forgotten.
On that very day the intelligence arrived that the British troops had marched towards the north of Germany; that the royal duke had returned to England; and that the Allies had, by common consent, abandoned the invasion of France. My habits were always prompt. Before the hour was over in which the gazette appeared, I waited on my ministerial friend, and expressed my full acquiescence in his proposal.
I pass by the process of getting into Parliament. It was then a simpler matter than it has since become. A treasury borough was then the gate through which all the leading names of the country had entered the legislature, and I merely followed the path of all but the lords of acres.
Every man who will make himself master of an occupation must serve an apprenticeship. Parliament, too, has its seven years' indentures, and the few who have refused the training have seldom been the wiser for their precipitancy. I "bided my time," taking a slight occasional share in debates with whose topics I happened to be well acquainted; and expecting the chances, which, to every one who employs himself vigorously, are all but certainties. Still I felt that this mere hovering on the outskirts of debate must not last too long, and that nothing was more hazardous to final reputation than to be too slow in attempting to lay its first stone. Yet I felt some difficulty in every great question; and, after bracing my nerves for the onset, I always found my courage fail at the sight of the actual encounter. I felt as a young knight might have felt in some of the tilting-matches of old — master of his charger in the open field, and delighting in the pressure of his armour and the weight of his lance; but when he once rode within the barrier, saw the galleries filled, and the heralds lifting the trumpets to their lips, feeling his blood grow chill, and the light depart from his eyes.
I mentioned my embarrassment to my Scottish friend, and almost expected a remonstrance. To my great surprise and infinite pleasure, he congratulated me. "You cannot give a better sign," said he. "My only fear of you was, that you would dash into debate at once, like a tumbler jumping from a precipice; and that, like him, all that you would have gained by it would be broken limbs for life. If the fellow had kept to his slack-rope and his stage, he would have been safe enough, and gained some applause besides."
"But what is to be done in the House, without some hazard of the kind?"
"Wrong — quite wrong. A great deal is to be done. Take myself for the example. You see where I am, and yet I never made a speech in my life. From the beginning of my career, I never allowed any one to look for any thing of the kind from me; and the consequence was, that by some I was regarded as a much shrewder personage than I ever believed myself to be; and by others was thought to know a great deal more than I ever acquired."
"But will this account for the rapid distinctions of your public life?"
"Perfectly, so far as they have gone. I obtained ministerial confidence on the essential merits of being a safe man — one who made no ambitious attempts to lower the crests of those above me. I escaped the jealousy of those below me by adopting the style which mediocrity assumes by nature. I was thus like the senior subaltern in a marching regiment — I wore the same uniform with the colonel, and went through the same exercise with the ensign. The field-officers knew that I would not tread upon their heels, and every subaltern wished to see my promotion, as a step to his own."
My official duties, the mere entrance into office, occupied me laboriously for a while, and I felt all the habitual difficulties of my noviciate. It had been fully my intention to follow the advice of my experienced friend, and leave the hour which was to call for my exertions in the House to the chances of the time. But that time came more rapidly than I had expected. The public mind was fevered, hour by hour; the news from the Continent was more and more startling; the successes of the Republican armies had assumed a shape which our desponding politicians regarded as invincibility, and which our factious ones pronounced to be the ruin of Europe. The cabinet offered only the prospect of a melancholy struggle. But six months before, it had stood, strong as a citadel erected by the national hands, and garrisoned by the spirit of the empire. It still stood, but it stood dismantled; there were evident breaches in its walls, and the fugitives of Opposition, rallying with the hope of success, advanced again to the storm, headed by their great leader, and sustained by the capricious and fluctuating multitude. The premier was harassed by the incessant toil of defence — a toil in which he had scarcely a sharer, and which exposed him to the most remorseless hostility. Yet, if the historian were to choose the moment for his true fame, this was the moment which ought to be chosen. He rose with the severity of the struggle; assault seemed to give him new vigour; the attempt to tear the robe of office from his shoulders only gave the nobler display of his intellectual proportions. When I saw him, night after night, standing almost alone, with nothing but disaster in front and timidity in the rear, combating a force such as had never before been arrayed under the banners of Opposition; the whole scene of magnificent conflict and still grander fortitude, reminded me of the Homeric war and its warriors. — The champion of the kingdom, standing forth in despite of evil omens thickening round him, of the deepening cloud, and the sinister thunders.
I speak of those times, and of the great men of those times, in no invidious contrast with later days. I have so strong a faith in the infinite ability which freedom gives to a great empire, that I am convinced of our being able, in all its eras, to find the species of public talent essential to its services. I regard the national mind, as the philosopher does the natural soil, always capable of the essential produce, where we give it the due tillage. The great men of the past century have passed away along with it; they were summoned for a day of conflict, and were formed for the conflict; their muscular vigour, the power with which they wielded their weapons, the giant step and the giant hand, were all necessary, and were all shaped and sustained by that necessity. But this day had its close; the leaders of man — like the "mighty hunters" of an Age, when the land was still overshadowed with the forest, and the harvest was overrun with the lion and the panther, would naturally give place to a less daring and lofty generation, when the forest had given way to the field, and the lair of the wild beast had become the highway and the bower. But if the evil day should again return, the guardian power of intellect and virtue will again come forth in the human shape, and vindicate the providence that watches over the progress of mankind. I utterly deny the exhaustion of national genius; I even deny its exhaustibility. If the moral vegetation languishes, and the soil is parched for a while, the great source of refreshing and fertility still lies before us — the public mind, in its boundless expansion, and in its unfathomable depth; the intellectual ocean which no plummet has ever sounded, and which no shore has ever circumscribed, lies ready to restore the balance of nature.
But the sense of power itself in the national mind forbids the exhibition of its strength in tranquil times. It is lofty and fastidious; it will not stoop to a contest in which nothing is to be contended for. It is not an actor; and it cannot adopt the figured passion of the actor, rend its robe, and flourish, and obtest heaven against the traitor and the oppressor, to the sound of an orchestra, or in the glitter of stage lamps. The true ability of the empire must scorn all mimic encounter; and what else can be the little struggles of party shut up in the legislature, whose sound scarcely transpires through the walls, whose triumphs are a tax, and whose oracles are an intrigue? But, when the true day of trial shall come — when an enemy shall be seen hovering on the coasts of the Constitution — when trumpet answers trumpet, and the "country is proclaimed in danger" — then, and not till then, shall we know the superb resources of our intellectual strength: whatever may have been the prowess of the past, we may see it not merely rivaled but thrown into eclipse by the future; the burnished armour, and massive swords and maces of our old intellectual chivalry, superseded by more manageable and more destructive implements of success; and the sterner conflict followed by the more consummate triumph. Yet, when we undervalue the living ability of a nation from its quietude at the moment, we but adopt the example of every past age in succession. The last ten years of the last century were preceded by a period of despair; Chatham's career was run, and the national regrets over his tomb were mingled with sorrows for the extinction of all parliamentary renown! — The day had gone down, and darkness was to cover the sky for ever. But while the prediction was scarcely uttered, the horizon as in a blaze, mighty meteors rushed across it in a thousand courses of eccentric speed and splendour; and a period of intellectual display began, which at once dazzled and delighted mankind. Anne's Augustan age of war, negotiation, and eloquence, was once pronounced to be, like the Augustan age of Rome, incapable of rivalship by posterity; but our own times have seen a bolder war, a broader peace, and a richer development of science, invention, and eloquence. For fifty years, England was pronounced to have worn herself out by the prolific brilliancy of the half century before; like a precocious infant, to have anticipated her powers, and ensured their premature decay; like the Bœotians, to have had her Pindaric period, and thenceforward to have paid for its raptures and renown by perpetual darkness; or like the Israelites in Egypt, to be condemned to drudgery for life, sunk into an intellectual slave-caste; — when in the midst of the scoffing, or the sorrow, suddenly arrived a new epoch, a new summons to the national genius, a time of lofty interpositions, "thunderings in the air, and lightning running along the ground," an era of the marvellous things of mind; the chains fell off the hands, and the generation went forth, with a new sense of superiority, into new scenes of knowledge, discovery, and empire.
Whether it was my good or ill fortune to make my first effort in the midst of the men whose names have immortalized their day, I shall not venture to decide. But my resolve had been firmly taken — not to remain in Parliament unless I discovered in myself faculties fit for its service. I was determined not to play the mute if I had the means of uttering a voice. But now the whole force of administration was demanded; and I made up my mind to ascertain by trial, what no man can be sure of without that trial, whether I possessed any capacity for public life.
The subject on which I first spoke was an address to the throne, in answer to the King's message on the war. On this night Pitt, but lately recovered from a fit of his hereditary gout, spoke briefly, and with evident feebleness of frame. Fox, whose energy seemed always to depend on his rival's power, and whose eloquence always rose or fell with the vigour or languor of the minister — Fox, never so great as when Pitt put forth all his strength, on this night idled away his hour, through the mere want of an antagonist; but Sheridan made ample compensation for his leader. The House had fallen into lassitude, and the benches were already thin when he arose. I had heard him as the humorist on some trivial occasions of debate. I had enjoyed the social pleasantry which placed him at the head of the wits; but I was still but imperfectly acquainted with the strong sarcasm, the deep disdain, and the grave sophistry, which this extraordinary man could exhibit with such redundant ease, and wield with such vigorous dexterity. I must give but an outline: —
"You have made war," said he, "and you have made the arms of your country contemptible by failures, which you rendered inevitable by your rashness. You, sir," and he fixed his flashing eye on the premier, "have commenced that war by a series of declarations, which made our diplomacy as contemptible as our campaigns. The national sword had been wrested from our hands. But you were not content with that humiliation, and you added to it the disgrace of the national understanding. You laid down a succession of principles, and then trampled them in the dust on the first opportunity. You encumbered yourself for action with pledges which you could never have intended to sustain, or which in the first collision your pusillanimity threw away. Yet I deprecate your perfidy even more than I despise your weakness. I can comprehend the effrontery of a fair aggression; but I scorn the meanness of intrigue. I may face the man-at-arms, but I shudder at the assassin. I may determine to hunt down and destroy the lion, but I disdain the trap and the pitfall. And what has been the pretext of his majesty's ministers? Moderation. In this spirit of moderation they invaded France; in this spirit of moderation they captured her fortresses, and then handed them over to the Emperor; in this spirit of moderation they denounced the men who had given France a constitution; and in this spirit of moderation you now prepare to rebuild her Bastile, to restore her scaffolds, to reforge her chains, and summon all the kings of Europe, instead of taking a salutary lesson from the tomb of the monarchy, to see its skeleton exhumed, and placed, robed and crowned, upon the throne, with the nation forced to offer homage, at once in mockery and terror, to the grinning emblem; in which, with all your philtres, you can never put life again."
The orator then gave a general and singularly imposing view of the state of our European connexions; which he described as utterly frail, the result of interested motives, and sure to be broken up at the first temptation. But the "first lord of the treasury and chancellor of his majesty's exchequer," said he, "smiles at my alarm; he has his security at his side — he has the purse, which commands all the baser portion of our nature with such irresistible control! On one point I fully agree with the right honourable gentleman — that nothing but the purse could ever keep them faithful. Yet, is there nothing but gold that can bribe? is there no bribe in territory? will he not find, when he hurries to the purchase of allies with the millions of the treasury in his hand, that more powerful purchasers have been there before him? When he offers the loan, will he not find them offering the province? when he bids with the subsidy, will he not be outbid with the kingdom? Or, if the anticipated conquerors of Europe, raising their sense of dignity to the level of their power, should disdain the traffic of corruption; will not the roaring of the French cannon in the ears of kings make them feel, that, to persist in your ill-omened alliance, is to devote themselves to ruin? will they bargain, in sight of the axe? will they dare to traffic in the blood of their people, with the grave dug at their feet? will they be dazzled by your gold, while the French bayonet is startling their eyes? Within ten years, if England exists, she will be without an ally; or, if she continues to fight, it will be in loneliness, in terror, and in despair."
In this strain he poured out his daring conceptions for more than two hours, during which he kept the whole audience in the deepest attention. He concluded in an uproar of plaudits from both sides of the House.
My time now came. And the rising of a new member, always regarded with a generous spirit of courtesy, produced some additional interest, from the knowledge of my services on the Continent, and my immediate connexion with the ministry. The House, which had filled to overflowing in the course of Sheridan's incomparable speech, was now hushed to the most total silence, and every eye was turned on me. I shall say nothing of my perturbation, further than that I had stood before an enemy's line of ten thousand men, with their muskets levelled within half a hundred yards of me; and that I thought the benches of the House of Commons on that night looked much the more formidable of the two. My head swam, my throat burned, my eyes grew dim. I thought that the ground was shaking under my feet, and I could have almost rejoiced to have sunk into it, from the gaze and the silence, which equally appalled me. While I attempted to mutter a few sentences, of which I felt the sound die within my lips, my eye was caught by the quick turn of Pitt's head, who fixed his impatient glance upon me. Fox, with that kindliness of heart which always forgot party when a good-natured act was to be done, gave his sonorous cheer. From that instant I was another man; I breathed freely, and, recovering my voice and mind together, I plunged boldly into the boundless subject before me.
After scattering a few of the showy sophisms which the orator of the opposition had constructed into his specious argument, I placed the war on the ground of necessity. "Nations cannot act like individuals — they cannot submit to self-sacrifice — they cannot give up their rights — they cannot affect an indolent disdain or an idle generosity. The reason of the distinction is, that in every instance the nation is a trustee — It has the rights of posterity in its keeping; it has nothing of its own to throw away; it is responsible to every generation to come. If war be essential to the integrity of the empire, war is as much a duty — a terrible duty, I allow — as the protection of our children's property from the grasp of rapine, or the defence of their lives against the midnight robber. But we are advised to peace. No man on earth would do more willing homage than myself to that beneficent genius of nations. But where am I to offer my homage? Am I to kneel on the high-road where the enemy's armies, fierce with the hope of plunder, are rushing along? Am I to build my altar in the midst of contending thousands, or on the ground covered with corpses — in the battle, or on the grave? Or am I to carry my offering to the capital, and there talk the language of national cordiality in the ear of the multitude dragging their king to the scaffold? Am I to appeal to the feelings of human brotherhood in streets smoking with civil massacre; to adjure the nation by the national honour, where revolt is an avowed principle; to press upon them the opinion of Europe, where they have proclaimed war with the world; to invoke them by the faith which they have renounced, the allegiance which they have disdained, the God whom they have blasphemed? Those things are impossible. If we are to have a treaty with this new order of thinking and action, it must be a compact of crime, a solemn agreement of treachery, a formal bond of plunder; it must be a treaty fitter for the cavern of conspiracy than for the chamber of council; its pledge must be like that of Catiline, the cup of human blood! No; the most powerful reprobation which ever shot from the indignant lip of the moralist, would not be too strong for the baseness which stooped to such a treaty, or the folly which entangled itself in its toils. No burning language of prophecy would be too solemn and too stinging for the premeditated wretchedness, and incurable calamity, of such a bond. No; if we must violate the simplicity of our national interests by such degrading, and such desperate involvements — if we should not shrink from this conspiracy against mankind, let it, at least, not be consummated in the face of day; let us at once abandon the hollow pretences of human honesty; let us pledge ourselves to a perpetual league of rapine and revolution; let it be transacted in some lower region of existence, where it shall not disgrace the light of the sun; and let its ceremonial be worthy of the spirit of evil which it embodies, whose power it proclaims, and to whose supremacy it commands all nations to bow down."
In alluding to the menace that our allies would soon desert us, I asked, "Is this the magnanimity of party? Is England to be pronounced so poor, or so pusillanimous, that she must give up all hope unless she can be suffered to lurk in the rear of the battle? What says her prince of poets? —
'England shall never rue,
If England to herself shall be but true.'
Is this 'little body with a mighty heart,' to depend for existence on the decaying strength or the decrepit courage of the Continent? Is she only to borrow the shattered armour which has hung up for ages in the halls of continental royalty, and encumber herself with its broken and rusty panoply for the ridicule of the world? The European governments have undergone the vicissitudes of fortune. Instead of scoffing at the facility of their overthrow, let us raise them on their feet again; or, if that be beyond human means, I shall not join the party-cry which insults their fall — I certainly shall not exult in that melancholy pageant of mixed mirth and scorn, in which, like the old Roman triumph, the soldier with his ruthless jest and song goes before the chariot, and the captive monarch follows behind; wearing the royal robe and the diadem only till he has gratified a barbarous curiosity or a cruel pride, and then exchanging them for the manacle and the dungeon. I deprecate the loss of these alliances; and yet I doubt whether the country will ever be conscious of her true strength until the war of the Continent is at an end. I more than doubt the wisdom of suffering others to take the lead, which belongs to us by the right of superior rank, superior prowess, and superior fame. I shall have but slight regret for the fall of those outworks which — massive, nay, majestic, as they are — waste the power of England by the division of her force, and make us decline the gallant enterprize of the field — ramparts and fosses which reduce us to defence, and which, while they offer a thousand points of entrance to an active assault, shut us in, and disqualify us from victory."
I now repeat this language of the moment, merely from later and long experience of its truth. I fully believe, that if England had come forward to the front of the battle in the early years of the war, she would have crushed all resistance; or if she had found, by the chance of things, the Continent impenetrable to her arms, she would have surrounded it with a wall of fire, until its factions had left nothing of themselves but their ashes.
I was now fully engaged in public life. The effort which I had made in Parliament had received the approval of Pitt, who, without stooping to notice things so trivial as style and manner on questions of national life and death, highly applauded the courage which had dared to face so distinguished a Parliamentary favourite as Sheridan, and had taken a view of affairs so accordant with his own. From this period, I was constantly occupied in debate; and, taking the premier for my model, I made rapid proficiency in the difficult art of addressing a British House of Commons. Of course, I have no idea of giving myself the praise on this subject, which no man can give to himself on any, without offence. But I felt that this was an art which might escape, and which had often escaped, men of distinguished ability, and which might be possessed by men of powers altogether inferior. I must acknowledge, that a portion of my success was owing to the advice of that shrewdest, and at the same time most friendly, of human beings, the secretary. "You must be a man of business," said he, "or you will be nothing; for praise is nothing — popularity is nothing — even the applause of the House is nothing. These matters pass away, and the orators pass away with them. John Bull is a solid animal, and likes reality. This is the true secret of the successes of hundreds of men of mediocrity, and of the failures of almost every man of brilliant faculties. The latter fly too high, and thus make no way along the ground. They always alight on the same spot; while the weaker, but wiser, have put one foot before another, and have pushed on. Sheridan, at this moment, has no more weight in the House than he had within a twelvemonth after taking his seat. Fox, with the most powerful abilities, is looked on simply as a magnificent speechmaker. His only weight is in his following. If his party fell from him to-morrow, all his eloquence would find its only echo in bare walls, and its only panegyric in street-placards. Pitt is a man of business, complete, profound, indefatigable. If you have his talents, copy his prudence; if you have not, still copy his prudence — make it the interest of men to consult you, and you must be ultimately successful."
I laughingly observed, that the "Nullum numen abest" had been honoured with an unexpected illustration.
"Sir," said the minister, fixing his keen grey eye upon me, "if Eton had never taught any other maxim, it would have been well worth all the tail of its longs and shorts. It is the concentration of wisdom, personal, private, and public; the polar star of politics, as probably you would say; or, as in my matter-of-fact style should express it, the fingerpost of the road to fortune."
But there never was a time when all the maxims of political wisdom were more required. A long succession of disasters had already broken down the outworks of the continental thrones. The renown of the great armies of Germany was lost; the discipline of the Prussian, and the steady intrepidity of the Austrian, had been swept before the wild disorder of the French. Men began to believe that the art of war had been hitherto unknown, and that the enemy had at length mastered the exclusive secret. Monarchy came to be regarded as only another name for weakness; and civilized order for national decrepitude. A kind of superstition stole over the minds of men; the signs of European overthrow were discovered in every change; calculations were calmly raised on the chances of existence to the most powerful dynasties; the age of crowns was in the move, the age of republics was in the ascendant; and while the feebler minds looked with quiescent awe on what they regarded as the inevitable tide of events, the more daring regarded the prospect as a summons to prepare for their part of the spoil. The struggles of Opposition grew more resolute as the hope of success came nearer, and the Government began to feel the effects of this perpetual assault, in the sudden neutrality of some of its most ostentatious champions, and in the general reserve of its supporters in the House. Even the superb perseverance of Pitt was beginning to be weary of a contest, in which victory lost its fruits on the one side, while defeat seemed only to give fresh vigour on the other. But a new triumph was to cheer the face of things.