Landor.—Not one.
North.—Mr. Pitt.
Landor.—Your pilot that weathered the storm. Ha, ha! He was the most insidious republican that England ever produced.
North.—You should like him if he was a Republican.
Landor.—But he was a debaser of the people as well as of the peerage. By the most wasteful prodigality both in finance and war, he was enabled to distribute more wealth among his friends and partisans than has been squandered by the uncontrolled profusion of French monarchs from the first Louis to the last. [86] Yet he was more short-sighted than the meanest insect that can see an inch before it. You should have added those equally enlightened and prudent leaders of our Parliament, Lord Castlereagh and his successors. Pitt, indeed! whose requisites for a successful minister were three—to speak like an honest man, to act like a scoundrel, and to be indifferent which he is called. But you have forgotten my dialogue between him and that wretched fellow Canning. [87] I have there given Pitt his quietus. As to Castlereagh and Canning, I have crushed them to powder, spit upon them, kneaded them into dough again; and pulverized them once more. Canning is the man who deserted his party, supplanted his patrons, and abandoned every principle he protested he would uphold. [88] Castlereagh is the statesman who was found richer one day, by a million of zecchins, than he was the day before, and this from having signed a treaty! The only life he ever personally aimed at was the vilest in existence, and none complains that he succeeded in his attempt. [89] I forgot: he aimed at another so like it, (you remember his duel with Canning,) that it is a pity it did not form a part of it.
[Footnote 86: Vol. ii. p. 240, 241, 242.]
[Footnote 87: Vol. iii. p. 66.]
[Footnote 88: Vol. iii. p. 134.]
[Footnote 89: Vol. iii. p. 172, and that there should be no mistake as to the person indicated, Lord Castlereagh is again accused by name at p. 187. The same charge occurs also in the dialogue between Aristotle and Calisthenes! p 334, 335, 336; where Prince Metternich, (Metanyctius,) the briber, is himself represented as a traitor to his country. Aristotle is the teller of this cock-and-bull story!]
North.—Horrible! most horrible!