It may be added, too, that in allowing themselves to be persuaded by Burke, that the extinction of the ancient Noblesse of France portended necessarily any danger to the English Aristocracy, these Noble persons did injustice to the strength of their own order, and to the characteristics by which it is proudly distinguished from every other race of Nobility in Europe. Placed, as a sort of break-water, between the People and the Throne, in a state of double responsibility to liberty on one side, and authority on the other, the Aristocracy of England hold a station which is dignified by its own great duties, and of which the titles transmitted by their ancestors form the least important ornament. Unlike the Nobility of other countries, where the rank and privileges of the father are multiplied through his offspring, and equally elevate them all above the level of the community, the very highest English Nobleman must consent to be the father but of commoners. Thus, connected with the class below him by private as well as public sympathies, he gives his children to the People as hostages for the sincerity of his zeal in their cause—while on the other hand, the People, in return for these pledges of the Aristocracy, sends a portion of its own elements aloft into that higher region, to mingle with its glories and assert their claim to a share in its power. By this mutual transfusion an equilibrium is preserved, like that which similar processes maintain in the natural world, and while a healthy, popular feeling circulates through the Aristocracy, a sense of their own station in the scale elevates the People.
To tremble for the safety of a Nobility so constituted, without much stronger grounds for alarm than appear to have existed in 1793, was an injustice not only to that class itself, but the whole nation. The world has never yet afforded an example, where this artificial distinction between mankind has been turned to such beneficial account; and as no monarchy can exist without such an order, so, in any other shape than this, such an order is a burden and a nuisance. In England, so happy a conformation of her Aristocracy is one of those fortuitous results which time and circumstances have brought out in the long-tried experiment of her Constitution; and, while there is no chance of its being ever again attained in the Old World, there is but little, probability of its being attempted in the New,—where the youthful nations now springing into life, will, if they are wise, make the most of the free career before them, and unencumbered with the costly trappings of feudalism, adopt, like their northern neighbors, that form of government, whose simplicity and cheapness are the best guarantees for its efficacy and purity.
In judging of the policy of Mr. Pitt, during the Revolutionary war, his partisans, we know, laud it as having been the means of salvation to England, while his opponents assert that it was only prevented by chance from being her ruin—and though the event gives an appearance of triumph to the former opinion, it by no means removes or even weakens the grounds of the latter. During the first nine years of his administration, Mr. Pitt was, in every respect, an able and most useful minister, and, "while the sea was calm, showed mastership in floating." But the great events that happened afterwards took him by surprise. When he came to look abroad from his cabinet into the storm that was brewing through Europe, the clear and enlarged view of the higher order of statesman was wanting. Instead of elevating himself above the influence of the agitation and alarm that prevailed, he gave way to it with the crowd of ordinary minds, and even took counsel from the panic of others. The consequence was a series of measures, violent at home and inefficient abroad—far short of the mark where vigor was wanting, and beyond it, as often, where vigor was mischievous.
When we are told to regard his policy as the salvation of the country—when, (to use a figure of Mr. Dundas,) a claim of salvage is made for him—it may be allowed us to consider a little the nature of the measures by which this alleged salvation was achieved. If entering into a great war without either consistency of plan, or preparation of means, and with a total ignorance of the financial resources of the enemy [Footnote: Into his erroneous calculations upon this point he is supposed to have been led by Sir Francis D'Ivernois.]—if allowing one part of the Cabinet to flatter the French Royalists, with the hope of seeing the Bourbons restored to undiminished power, while the other part acted, whenever an opportunity offered, upon the plan of dismembering France for the aggrandizement of Austria, and thus, at once, alienated Prussia at the very moment of subsidizing him, and lost the confidence of all the Royalist party in France, [Footnote: Among other instances, the Abbé Maury is reported to have said at Rome in a large company of his countrymen—"Still we have one remedy—let us not allow France to be divided—we have seen the partition of Poland we must all turn Jacobins to preserve our country.">[ except the few who were ruined by English assistance at Quiberon—if going to war in 1793 for the right of the Dutch to a river, and so managing it that in 1794 the Dutch lost their whole Seven Provinces—if lavishing more money upon failures than the successes of a century had cost, and supporting this profusion by schemes of finance, either hollow and delusive, like the Sinking Fund, or desperately regardless of the future, like the paper issues—if driving Ireland into rebellion by the perfidious recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and reducing England to two of the most, fearful trials, that a nation, depending upon Credit and a navy, could encounter, the stoppage of her Bank and a mutiny in her fleet—if, finally, floundering on from effort to effort against France, and then dying upon the ruins of the last Coalition he could muster against her—if all this betokens a wise and able minister, then is Mr. Pitt most amply entitled to that name;—then are the lessons of wisdom to be read, like Hebrew, backward, and waste and rashness and systematic failure to be held the only true means of saving a country.
Had even success, by one of those anomalous accidents, which sometimes baffle the best founded calculations of wisdom, been the immediate result of this long monotony of error, it could not, except with those to whom the event is every thing—"Eventus, stultorum magister" [Footnote: A saying of the wise Fabius.]—reflect back merit upon the means by which it was achieved, or, by a retrospective miracle, convert that into wisdom, which chance had only saved from the worst consequences of folly. Just as well might we be called upon to pronounce Alchemy a wise art, because a perseverance in its failures and reveries had led by accident to the discoveries of Chemistry. But even this sanction of good-luck was wanting to the unredeemed mistakes of Mr. Pitt. During the eight years that intervened between his death and the termination of the contest, the adoption of a far wiser policy was forced upon his more tractable pupils; and the only share that his measures can claim in the successful issue of the war, is that of having produced the grievance that was then abated—of having raised up the power opposed to him to the portentous and dizzy height, from which it then fell by the giddiness of its own elevation, [Footnote:
—"summisque negatum Stare din."
LUCAN.] and by the reaction, not of the Princes, but the People of Europe against its yoke.
What would have been the course of affairs, both foreign and domestic, had Mr. Fox—as was, at one time, not improbable—been the Minister during this period, must be left to that superhuman knowledge, which the schoolmen call "media scientia," and which consists in knowing all that would have happened, had events been otherwise than they have been. It is probable that some of the results would not have been so different as the respective principles of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox might naturally lead us, on the first thought, to assert. If left to himself, there is little doubt that the latter, from the simple and fearless magnanimity of his nature, would have consulted for the public safety with that moderation which true courage inspires; and that, even had it been necessary to suspend the Constitution for a season, he would have known how to veil the statue of Liberty, [Footnote: "Il y a des cas ou il faut mettre pour un moment un voile sur la Liberté, comme l'on cache les statues des dieux."—MONTESQUIEU, liv. xii. chap. 20.] without leaving like his rival, such marks of mutilation on its limbs. But it is to be recollected that he would have had to encounter, in his own ranks, the very same patrician alarm, which could even to Mr. Pitt give an increase of momentum against liberty, and which the possession of power would have rendered but more sensitive and arbitrary. Accustomed, too, as he had long been, to yield to the influence of Burke, it would have required more firmness than habitually belonged to Mr. Fox, to withstand the persevering impetuosity of such a counsellor, or keep the balance of his mind unshaken by those stupendous powers, which, like the horses of the Sun breaking out of the ecliptic, carried every thing they seized upon, so splendidly astray:—
"quaque impetus egit,
Hac sine lege ruunt, altoque sub aethere fixis
Incursant stellis, rapiuntque per avia currum."
Where'er the impulse drives, they burst away
In lawless grandeur;—break into the array
Of the fix'd stars, and bound and blaze along
Their devious course, magnificently wrong!