DEATH OF LORD CHATHAM, AND POSTHUMOUS HONOURS TO HIS MEMORY.
Lord Chatham so far recovered as to be able to be carried down to his favourite villa of Hayes, in Kent. These appearances of recovery, however, were soon found to be delusive. He expired on the 11th of May, in the seventieth year of his age. His death was announced in the house of commons late in the evening of that day by his friend Colonel Barré, who moved for an address to the king that his remains should be interred at the public expense in Westminster Abbey. The motion was seconded by Mr. T. Townshend, and seemed to meet with general approbation; but Mr. Rigby, who apprehended that a public funeral would not be agreeable to his majesty, as Chatham had not recently been looked upon with much favour at court, suggested that a public monument to his memory would be a better testimony of the public admiration and gratitude. The result of this suggestion, however, was very different from that which Townshend intended. Mr. Dunning said it would be better to have both the public funeral and the monument, and he combined both in a resolution, which was carried without one dissentient voice; Lord North giving it his warmest support. A funeral and a monument were therefore secured to the great orator, and as, notwithstanding his places, pensions, and legacies left him, Chatham had died in debt, on the recommendation of Lord John Cavendish, £20,000 was voted for the payment of his debts, and £4000 a-year was settled upon-his heirs. No opposition was made to these grants in the commons; but a motion made by the Earl of Shelburne in the lords, that the peers should attend his funeral was lost by a majority of one vote. The annuity bill was also opposed in the lords; but it was carried by a majority of forty-two to eleven. In all these votes his majesty concurred, although during the noble earl’s life he had opposed an application made to him to settle the pension he enjoyed in reversion to his second son, William Pitt, until, at least, decrepitude or death had put an end to him “as a trumpet of sedition.” His majesty, however, could not carry his resentment beyond the grave, and perhaps pleased with the last noble sounds of his trumpet, he gave his warm assent to the honours and rewards which parliament had voted to the great orator and his heirs. And the posthumous honours paid to Chatham were not confined to the king and the parliament. The Common-council petitioned to have his remains interred in the noblest edifice of Great Britain, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and when this was refused, they erected a monument in Guildhall to his memory. He was one of the greatest orators England ever produced; greater even than the garbled and defective reports of his speeches would denote him to have been. In his private life his character was both exemplary and amiable—his public character is defined in the preceding pages.