If this speech does not contain good sound English sense, I do not know where we shall look for it.
Sir Richard Steele was born at Dublin, though the year in which he was born is not known, and died in 1729. He was member for Boroughbridge in Yorkshire. I have made the following extract less for the sake of the speech than the speaker; for I could not pass by the name of an author to whom we owe two of the most delightful books that ever were written, the Spectator and Tatler. As a party man he was a most furious Whig.
Mr. (afterwards Sir) Robert Walpole was born at Houghton, in Norfolk, in 1674, and died 1745. In 1700, he was chosen member of parliament for Lynn. In 1705, he was appointed secretary at war; and in 1709, treasurer of the navy; but, on the change of ministers, he was voted guilty of corruption, and expelled the house. The whig party strenuously supported him; and he was re-elected for Lynn, though the election was declared void. At the accession of George I. he was made paymaster of the forces; but two years after he resigned, and joined the opposition. Another change taking place in 1725, he took the lead in administration, being chosen first lord of the treasury, and chancellor of the exchequer. He maintained himself in this situation till 1742, when he resigned, and was created earl of Oxford, with a pension of 4,000 l. a year.
We may form as good an idea of the talents of this celebrated man as a speaker in the house of commons, from the following speech as from any that he has left behind him. He may be considered as the first who (if the similitude be not too low to be admitted, I confess nothing can be lower) threw the house of commons into the form of a regular debating society. In his time debate was organized; all the common-place topics of political controversy were familiar in the mouths of both parties. The combatants on each side, in this political warfare, were regularly drawn up in opposition to each other, and had their several parts assigned them with the greatest exactitude.
‘The popular harangue, the tart reply,
‘The logic, and the wisdom, and the wit,’
appeared in all their combined lustre. The effect of this system could not be different from what it has turned out. The house of commons, instead of being the representative and depository of the collective sense of the nation, has become a theatre for wrangling disputants to declaim in the scene of noisy impertinence and pedantic folly. An empty shew of reason, a set of words has been substituted for the silent operation of general feeling and good sense; and ministers referring every thing to this flimsy standard have been no longer taken up in planning wise measures, but in studying how to defend their blunders. It has been usual to draw a sort of parallel between the person of whom we are speaking, and the late Mr. Pitt. For this perhaps there is little more foundation than the great length of their administrations, and their general ability as leaders of the debates in parliament. If I were disposed to make a comparison of this kind, I should attempt to describe them by their differences rather than their resemblances. They had both perhaps equal plausibility, equal facility, and equal presence of mind; but it was of an entirely different kind, and arose from different causes in each of them. Walpole’s manner was more natural and less artificial; his resources were more the result of spontaneous vigour and quickness of mind, and less the growth of cultivation and industry. If the late minister was superior to his predecessor in office in logical precision, in the comprehensive arrangement of his subject, and a perfect acquaintance with the topics of common-place declamation, he was certainly at the same time very much his inferior in acuteness of understanding, in original observation, and knowledge of human nature, and in lively, unexpected turns of thought. Pitt’s readiness was not owing to the quickness or elasticity of his understanding, but to a perfect self-command, a steadiness and inflexibility of mind, which never lost sight of the knowledge which it had in its possession, nor was ever distracted in the use of it. Nothing ever assumed a new shape in passing through his mind: he recalled his ideas just as they were originally impressed, and they neither received nor ever threw a sparkling light on any subject with which he connected them, either by felicity of combination, or ingenuity of argument. They were of that loose, general, unconnected kind, as just to fill the places they were brought out to occupy in the rank and file of an oration, and then returned mechanically back to their several stations, to be ready to appear again whenever they were called for. Walpole’s eloquence, on the other hand, was less an affair of reminiscence, and more owing to present invention. He seems to have spoken constantly on the spur of the occasion; without pretending to exhaust his subject, he often put it in a striking point of view; and the arguments into which he was led in following the doublings and windings of a question, were such as do not appear to have occurred to himself before nor to have been made use of by others. When he had to obviate any objection, he did not do it so much by ambiguity or evasion, as by immediately starting some other difficulty on the opposite side of the question, which blunted the edge of the former, and staggered the opinion of his hearers. The stile of their speeches is also marked by the same differences as their mode of reasoning. In the one you discover the ease and vivacity of the gentleman, of the man of the world; in the other the studied correctness of the scholar. The one has the variety, simplicity, and smartness of conversation; the other has all the fulness, the pomp, the premeditated involutions and measured periods of a book, but of a book not written in the best stile. The one is more agreeable and insinuating; the other more imposing and majestic. Not to spin out this comparison to an unnecessary length I should think that Walpole was less completely armed for entering the lists with his antagonists, but that his weapons were keener, and more difficult to manage; that Pitt had more art, and Walpole more strength and activity; that the display of controversial dexterity was in Walpole more a trial of wit, and in Pitt more an affair of science; that Walpole had more imagination, and Pitt more understanding; if, indeed, any thing can entitle a man to the praise of understanding, which is neither valuable, nor his own.
Francis Atterbury, (Bishop of Rochester,) was born in 1662. His eloquence brought him early into notice. His political principles were very violent, and engaged him in several controversies. He assisted Dr. Sacheverel in drawing up his defence. When the rebellion broke out in 1715, he and bishop Smalridge refused to sign the Declaration of the bishops; and in 1722 he was apprehended and committed to the Tower, on suspicion of being concerned in some plot to bring in the Pretender. He was sentenced to be banished for life, and left the kingdom in 1723. He died at Paris in 1732. He is now chiefly remembered as an elegant writer, and as the intimate friend of Pope and Swift. The following is the conclusion of his defence before the house of lords.
Allen (afterwards Lord) Bathurst, (The Son of Sir Benjamin Bathurst,) was born in 1684, and educated at Oxford. In 1705 he was chosen member for Cirencester in Gloucestershire. He joined the tory party, and was one of the opposers of Walpole’s administration. He was created a peer in 1711. He died in 1775, aged 91. He lived on terms of the greatest intimacy with Swift, Pope, and other literary men. He was one of the ablest speakers of the house of lords; and I think, that at the time when most of his speeches were made, the house of lords contained more excellent speakers, and divided the palm of eloquence more equally with the house of commons, than at any other period. One reason why it is morally impossible that the house of peers should ever be able to rival the house of commons in the display of splendid talents, is, that all questions of importance are first debated in the house of commons. Even if the members of the upper house had any thing of their own to say, the words are fairly taken out of their mouths.
Philip, Duke of Wharton, was born about 1699. He first attached himself to the Pretender, when he was abroad and quite a young man. He then returned home and made his peace with government. After this he became a violent oppositionist; and having at length reduced his fortune by his extravagance, he went abroad again, where he once more attached himself to the Pretender, and died 1731. He is represented as a man of talents by Pope, who has given him a niche in one of his satires.