est statesmen of the eighteenth century, and was better acquainted than any other with the character and resources of those foreign nations with which our own interests were intimately connected.266 To this rare and important knowledge he added a sweetness and an amenity of temper which extorted the praises even of his political opponents.267 But he, too, was the steady supporter of civil and religious liberty; and he, too, was so detested by George III., that the king, with his own hand, struck his name out of the list of privy councillors,268 and declared that he would rather abdicate the throne than admit him to a share in the government.269

While this unfavourable change was taking place in the sovereign and ministers of the country, a change equally unfavourable was being effected in the second branch of the imperial legislature. Until the reign of George III., the House of Lords was decidedly superior to the House of Commons in the liberality and general vol. i. p. 129). Indeed, the sentiments of the king were even displayed in the arrangements at the funeral of the great minister. Note in Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. ii. p. 568; and for other evidence of ill-will, see two notes from the king to Lord North, in Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. vi. appendix, pp. lii. liv.; The Grenville Papers, vol. ii. p. 386; Bancroft's American Revolution, vol. i. p. 438.

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266 Lord Brougham (Sketches of Statesmen, vol. i. p. 219) says: It may be questioned if any politician, in any age, ever knew so thoroughly the various interests and the exact position of all the countries with which his own had dealings to conduct or relations to maintain." See also Parr's Works, vol. iv. pp. 14, 15; Russell's Mem. of Fox, vol. i. pp. 320, 321, vol. ii. pp. 91, 243; Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. i. p. 338.

267 Burke, even after the French revolution, said, that Fox "was of the most artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition, disinterested in the extreme; of a temper mild and placable even to a fault, without one drop of gall in his whole constitution." Speech on the Army Estimates in 1790, in Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 356. For further evidence, compare Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. vii. p. 171; Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. i. pp. 3, 273; Trotter's Mem. of Fox, pp. xi. xii., 24, 178, 415.

26 Adolphus's Hist. of George iÏI. vol. vi. p. 692. A singular circumstance connected with this wanton outrage is related in the Mem. of Holcroft, vol. iii. p. 60.

269 Compare Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. iv. pp. 107, 108, with Russell's Mem. of Fox, vol. i. pp. 191, 287, 288, vol. ii. p. 44. Dutens, who had much intercourse with English politicians, heard of the threat of abdication in 1784. Dutens' Mémoires, vol. iii. p. 104. Lord Holland says, that during the fatal illness of Fox, "the king had watched the progress of Mr. Fox's disorder. He could hardly suppress his indecent exultation at his death." Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. ii. p. 49.

accomplishments of its members. It is true, that in both houses there prevailed a spirit which must be called narrow and superstitious, if tried by the larger standard of the present age. But among the peers such feelings were tempered by an education that raised them far above those country gentlemen and ignorant fox-hunting squires of whom the lower house was then chiefly composed. From this superiority in their knowledge, there naturally followed a larger and more liberal turn of thought than was possessed by those who were called the representatives of the people. The result was, that the old Tory spirit, becoming gradually weaker in the upper house, took refuge in the lower; where, for about sixty years after the Revolution, the high-church party and the friends of the Stuarts formed a dangerous faction.270 Thus, for instance, the two men who rendered the most eminent services to the Hanoverian dynasty, and therefore to the liberties of England, were undoubtedly Somers and Walpole. Both of them were remarkable for their principles of toleration, and both of them owed their safety to the interference of the House of Lords. Somers, early in the eighteenth century, was protected by the peers from the scandalous prosecution instituted against him by the other house of parliament.271 Forty years after this, the Commons, who wished to hunt Walpole to the death, carried up a bill encouraging witnesses to appear against him by remitting to them the penalties to which they might be liable.272 This barbarous measure had been passed through the lower

270 In 1725, the Duke of Wharton, in a letter to the Pretender, after mentioning some proceedings in the Commons, adds, "In the House of Lords our number is so small, that any behaviour there will be immaterial.” Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. ii. appendix, p. xxiii. See also, respecting the greater strength of the Tories in the House of Commons, Somers Tracts, vol. xi. p. 242, vol. xiii. pp. 524, 531; Campbell's Chancellors, vol. iv. p. 158; Campbell's Chief-Justices, vol. ii. p. 156.

271 Compare Vernon Correspond. vol. iii. p. 149, with Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 504. Burnet says, "All the Jacobites joined to support the pretensions of the Commons." The Commons complained that the Lords had shown "such an indulgence to the person accused as is not to be paralleled in any parliamentary proceedings." Parl. Hist. vol. v. p. 1294. See also their angry remonstrance, pp. 1314, 1315.

272 Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. iii. p. 122.

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house without the least difficulty; but in the Lords it was rejected by a preponderance of nearly two to one. In the same way the Schism Act, by which the friends of the church subjected the dissenters to a cruel persecution,274 was hurried through the Commons by a large and eager majority.275 In the Lords, however, the votes were nearly balanced; and although the bill was passed, amendments were added by which the violence of its provisions was in some degree softened.276

This superiority of the upper house over the lower was, on the whole, steadily maintained during the reign of George II.;277 the ministers not being anxious to strengthen the high-church party in the Lords, and the king himself so rarely suggesting fresh creations as to cause a belief that he particularly disliked increasing their numbers.278

It was reserved for George III., by an unsparing use of his prerogative, entirely to change the character of the upper house, and thus lay the foundation for that disrepute into which since then the peers have been constantly falling. The creations he made were numerous beyond all precedent; their object evidently being to neutralize the liberal spirit hitherto prevailing, and thus turn the House of Lords into an engine for resisting the popular wishes,

273 "Content, 47; non-content, 92." Parl. Hist. vol. xii. p. 711. Mr. Phillimore (Mem. of Lyttleton, vol. i. p. 213) ascribes this to the exertions of Lord Hardwicke; but the state of parties in the upper house is sufficient explanation; and even in 1735 it was said that "the Lords were betwixt the devil and the deep sea," the devil being Walpole. Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 59. Compare Bishop Newton's Life of Himself, p. 60.

274 See an account of some of its provisions in Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. pp. 80, 81. The object of the bill is frankly stated in Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 1349, where we are informed that, "as the farther discouragement and even ruin of the dissenters was thought necessary for accomplishing this scheme, it was begun with the famous Schism Bill."

275 By 237 to 126. Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 1351.

276 Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 83; Bunbury's Correspond. of Hanmer, p. 48. The bill was carried in the Lords by 77 against 72.

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277 If we scrutinize the votes of the peers from the period of the revolution to the death of George II., we shall find a very great majority of the old English nobility to have been the advocates of Whig principles." Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 363.

278 Compare Harris's Life of Hardwicke, vol. iii. p. 519, with the conversation between Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Hervey, in Hervey's Mem. of George II. vol. ii. p. 251, edit. 1848.

and stopping the progress of reform. 279 How completely this plan succeeded, is well known to the readers of our history; indeed, it was sure to be successful, considering the character of the men who were promoted. They consisted almost entirely of two classes: of country gentlemen, remarkable for nothing but their wealth, and the number of votes their wealth enabled them to control;280 and of mere lawyers, who had risen to judicial appointments partly from their professional learning, but chiefly from the zeal with which they repressed the popular liberties, and favoured the royal prerogative.281

That this is no exaggerated description, may be ascertained by any one who will consult the lists of the new peers made by George III. Here and there we find an eminent man, whose public services were so notorious that it was impossible to avoid rewarding them; but, putting aside those who were in a manner forced upon the sovereign, it would be idle to deny that the remainder, and of course the overwhelming majority, were marked by a narrowness and illiberality of sentiment, which, more than any thing else, brought the whole order into contempt.282 No

27 Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. pp. 363, 364, 365, 463; Parl. Hist. vol. xviii. p. 1418, vol. xxiv. p. 493, vol. xxvii. p. 1069, vol. xxix. pp. 1334, 1494, vol. xxxiii. pp. 90, 602, 1315.

290 This was too notorious to be denied; and in the House of Commons, in 1800, Nicholls taunted the government with "holding out a peerage, or elevation to a higher rank in the peerage, to every man who could procure a nomination to a certain number of seats in parliament." Parl. Hist. vol. xxxv. p. 762. So too Sheridan, in 1792, said (vol. xxix. p. 1333), “In this country peerages had been bartered for election interest.

28 On this great influx of lawyers into the House of Lords, most of whom zealously advocated arbitrary principles, see Belsham's Hist. of Great Britain, vol. vii. pp. 266, 267; Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. iii. p. 363; Parl. Hist. vol. xxxv. p. 1523.

282 It was foretold at the time, that the effect of the numerous creations made during Pitt's power would be to lower the House of Lords. Compare Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 76, with Erskine's speech in Parl. Hist. vol. xxix. p. 1330; and see Sheridan's speech, vol. xxxiii. p. 1197. But their language, indignant as it is, was restrained by a desire of not wholly breaking with the court. Other men, who were more independent in their position, and cared nothing for the chance of future office, expressed themselves in terms such as had never before been heard within the walls of Parliament. Rolle, for instance, declared that "there had been persons created peers during the present minister's power, who were not fit to be his grooms." Parl. Hist. vol. xxvii. p. 1198. Out of doors, the feeling of contempt was equally strong: see Life of Cartwright, vol. i. p. 278; and see the

great thinkers; no great writers; no great orators; no great statesmen; none of the true nobility of the land,were to be found among these spurious nobles created by George III. Nor were the material interests of the country better represented in this strange composition. Among the most important men in England, those engaged in banking and commerce held a high place: since the end of the seventeenth century their influence had rapidly increased; while their intelligence, their clear, methodical habits, and their general knowledge of affairs, made them every way superior to those classes from whom the upper house was now recruited. But in the reign of George III. claims of this sort were little heeded; and we are assured by Burke, whose authority on such a subject no one will dispute, that there never had been a time in which so few persons connected with commerce were raised to the peerage.283

It would be endless to collect all the symptoms which mark the political degeneracy of England during this period; a degeneracy the more striking, because it was opposed to the spirit of the time, and because it took place in spite of a great progress, both social and intellectual. How that progress eventually stopped the political reaction, and even forced it to retrace its own steps, will appear in another part of this work; but there is one circumstance which I cannot refrain from noticing at some length, since it affords a most interesting illustration of the tendency of public affairs, while at the same time it exhibits the character of one of the greatest men, and, Bacon alone excepted, the greatest thinker, who has ever devoted himself to the practice of English politics.

remark even of the courtly Sir W. Jones on the increasing disregard for learning shown by "the nobles of our days." Preface to Persian Grammar, in Jones's Works, vol. ii. p. 125.

283 In his Thoughts on French Affairs, written in 1791, he says, "At no period in the history of England have so few peers been taken out of trade, or from families newly created by commerce." Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 566. Indeed, according to Sir Nathaniel Wraxall (Posthumous Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 66, 67, Lond. 1836), the only instance when George III. broke this rule was when Smith the banker was made Lord Carrington. Wraxall is an indifferent authority, and there may be other cases; but they were certainly very few, and I cannot call any to mind.