Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 437, March 1852

by Various

But this panegyric was rather lowered by its peroration. Burke was fond of looking at every subject in a variety of lights, and it became the habit of even his vigorous mind to fill up the background of his portraits with picturesque shade. He then closed his character of the deceased statesman by observing that his having been a barrister "narrowed the extent and freedom of his political views."

"He was bred to the law, a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all the other kinds of learning put together. But it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and liberalise the mind exactly in the same proportion." Having flung this passing sarcasm at the profession, he let fall a drop of contempt on the system of public employment.

"From that study, he did not go very largely into the world, but plunged into the business of office, and the limited and fixed forms established there. These forms are adapted to ordinary occasions, and therefore persons who are nurtured in office do admirably well so long as things go on in their common order; but when the highroads are broken up, and the waters are out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of things, is requisite than ever office gave, or than office ever can give. Mr Grenville thought better of the wisdom and power of human legislation than, in truth, it deserves."

The fact evidently is, that the fiery and soaring spirit of Burke despised the heavy uniformity and dull routine of the whole tribe of which Grenville was the representative; that he disdained the substitution of heavy regularity for brilliant enterprise, of precedent for principle, and of taking shelter under obsolete forms, instead of adopting those lofty innovations which alone can guide a government through new perils, deserve the name of statesmanship, and elevate politics into the dignity of a science.

But this attempt to qualify his panegyric, by laying the weight of Grenville's failure on his profession, was keenly retorted by Wedderburn, (then Solicitor-General, and afterwards Chancellor and Earl of Rosslyn,) declaring that he had no intention of taking a part in the debate, but that he had been called up by Burke's character of Grenville. He observed, "that the gentleman had neither done him that justice with which posterity might treat his memory, nor had he spoken of him as the general voice of a grateful people would even at that moment express itself of his person, his conduct, and his acts." After alluding to the remark, that his mind was narrowed by the bar, and that he had plunged into office before he mingled in the world, Wedderburn (who might have observed that he came into Parliament and politics at twenty-nine, consequently had practised but little in his profession, and that at thirty-three he held the office of a Lord of the Admiralty) said cleverly—

"Going into the world is a term too large for my narrow comprehension. If it means that he neither played, nor dressed, nor was a member of any of the fashionable clubs, I believe it may be true. But his birth and his talents introduced him to an early intimacy with the first men of the age. He passed, by regular gradations, from one office to another. Whatever related to the Marine of this country, he had learned during his attendance at the Admiralty. The Finance he had studied under a very able master at the Treasury. The Foreign Department was for a time intrusted to him. The proper business of the House was for several years his particular study. In almost every various office of the state he had acquired a practical knowledge, improved by theory; and, from the general course of his observation and researches, he had adopted principles and habits which the firm temper of his mind would not stoop to abandon or unlearn, in complaisance to the opinions of any man. Such were the disqualifications under which Mr Grenville was called forth to the first situation of administration, at a time when ancient prejudices were still respected, and before it was understood that parts were spoiled by application, that ignorance was preferable to knowledge, and that any lively man of imagination, without practice in office, and without experience, might start up at once, a self-taught minister, and undertake the management of a great country in difficult times."

We have given these extracts, as displaying both sides of the character, and by comparison enabling the student of history to form an estimate of a man who for twenty-one years had been exercised in the various administrations of the empire, and who finally rose to the highest official rank in the country.

But it is still more to the advantage of his character, and it may have constituted the chief secret of his success, that he was a man of integrity; that the corruptions universally charged upon Walpole were never fixed on him; that, in an age when the highest rank in the realm often startled the nation, by following foreign fashions of morality, he was a good father, a faithful husband, and a firm friend.

One of the observations which these volumes force upon us, is the agreeable evidence of the improvement in the public health. Every man in high station seems to have been the victim of a perpetual tendency to disease. Ministers seem universally to have been tortured by gout, or some painful disorder, which drove them to the country, the Continent, or the Bath waters. The women of rank had some unaccountable and indescribable malady of their own, which they called the Vapours; every judge had some excruciating disorder, which he could alleviate only by opium; every man of letters had some ailment of the same kind. The common people, living in the unventilated and obscure haunts of cities, had, of course, all the diseases which we are now so slowly striving to prevent; and the ploughman appeared to enjoy the only health in the land. How far the improvement in this all-important matter may be owing to improved medical science, to the drainage of the soil, to more extended agriculture, or to some fortunate change in the atmosphere, or even to the adoption of more temperate habits, and the substitution of lighter food, we cannot precisely say; but there can be scarcely a doubt of the change in the general state of health, in the duration of life, in the proportion of those who grow up to maturity to those who die in infancy, and even in the continued vigour of the frame and faculties to a more advanced age.

The first letter in the correspondence is from Lord Cornbury, recommending Mr Grenville to travel for his recovery from a sickness which apparently enfeebled all his earlier years. His lordship suggests the south of France as a supplement to Bath, where he had gone to drink the waters, then a panacea for the distempers of high life, and where his residence is mentioned in a lively epistle from Lyttleton to Pope. "George Grenville is in a fair way of recovery; the waters agree with him. Cheyne (the physician) says he is a giant, a son of Anak, made like Gilbert, the Lord Bishop of Sarum, and may, therefore, if he pleases, live for ever; his present sickness being nothing but a fillip given for his good, to make him temperate, and put him under the care of Dr Cheyne."