the interference of the House of Lords. Somers, early in the eighteenth century, was protected by the peers from the scandalous prosecution instituted against him by the other house of parliament.271 Forty years after this, the Commons, who wished to hunt Walpole to the death, carried up a bill encouraging witnesses to appear against him by remitting to them the penalties to which they might be liable.272 This barbarous measure had been passed through the lower house without the least difficulty; but in the Lords it was rejected by a preponderance of nearly two to one.273 In the same way, the Schism Act, by which the friends of the church subjected the dissenters to a cruel persecution,274 was hurried through the Commons by a large and eager majority.275 In the Lords, however, the votes were nearly balanced; and although the bill was passed, amendments were added by which the violence of its provisions was in some degree softened.276

This superiority of the upper house over the lower was, on the whole, steadily maintained during the reign of George II.;277 the ministers not being anxious to strengthen the high-church party in the Lords, and the king himself so rarely suggesting fresh creations as to cause a belief that he particularly disliked increasing their numbers.278

It was reserved for George III., by an unsparing use of his prerogative, entirely to change the character of the upper house,

271 Compare Vernon Correspond. vol. iii. p. 149, with Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 504. Burnet says, "All the Jacobites joined to support the pretensions of the Commons." The Commons complained that the Lords had shown "such an indulgence to the person accused as is not to be paralleled in any parliamentary proceedings." Parl. Hist. vol. v. p. 1294. See also their angry remonstrance, pp. 1314,

1315.

272 Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. iii. p. 122.

273 46

Content, 47; non-content, 92." Parl. Hist. vol. xii. p. 711. Mr. Philli more (Mem. of Lyttleton, vol. i. p. 213) ascribes this to the exertions of Lord Hardwicke; but the state of parties in the upper house is sufficient explanation, and even in 1735 it was said that "the Lords were betwixt the devil and the deep sea," the devil being Walpole. Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 59. Compare Bishop Newton's Life of Himself, p. 60.

274 See an account of some of its provisions in Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. pp. 80, 81. The object of the bill is frankly stated in Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 1349, where we are informed that, "as the farther discouragement and even ruin of the dissenters was thought necessary for accomplishing this scheme, it was begun with the famous Schism Bill."

275

By 237 to 126. Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 1351.

276 Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 83; Bunbury's Correspond. of Hanmer, p. 48. The bill was carried in the Lords by 77 against 72.

277 "If we scrutinize the votes of the peers from the period of the revolution to the death of George II., we shall find a very great majority of the old English nobility to have been the advocates of Whig principles." Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 363.

278 Compare Harris's Life of Hardwicke, vol. iii. p. 519, with the conversation between Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Hervey, in Hervey's Mem. of George II. vol. ii. p. 251, edit. 1848.

and thus lay the foundation for that disrepute into which since then the peers have been constantly falling. The creations he made were numerous beyond all precedent; their object evidently being to neutralize the liberal spirit hitherto prevailing, and thus turn the House of Lords into an engine for resisting the popular wishes, and stopping the progress of reform.279 How completely this plan succeeded, is well known to the readers of our history; indeed, it was sure to be successful, considering the character of the men who were promoted. They consisted almost entirely of two classes: of country gentlemen, remarkable for nothing but their wealth, and the number of votes their wealth enabled them to control;280 and of mere lawyers, who had risen to judicial appointments partly from their professional learning, but chiefly from the zeal with which they repressed the popular liberties, and favoured the royal prerogative.281

That this is no exaggerated description, may be ascertained by any one who will consult the lists of the new peers made by George III. Here and there we find an eminent man, whose public services were so notorious that it was impossible to avoid rewarding them; but, putting aside those who were in a manner forced upon the sovereign, it would be idle to deny that the remainder, and of course the overwhelming majority, were marked by a narrowness and illiberality of sentiment, which, more than any thing else, brought the whole order into contempt.282 No great thinkers; no great writers; no great orators; no great

**Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. pp. 363, 364, 365, 463; Parl. Hist. vol. xviii. p. 1418, vol. xxiv. p. 493, vol. xxvii. p. 1069, vol. xxix. pp. 1334, 1494, vol. xxxiii. pp. 90, 602, 1315.

250 This was too notorious to be denied; and in the House of Commons, in 1800, Nicholls taunted the government with "holding out a peerage, or elevation to a higher rank in the peerage, to every man who could procure a nomination to a certain number of seats in Parliament." Parl. Hist. vol. xxxv. p. 762. So too Sheridan, in 1792, said (vol. xxix. p. 1333), "In this country peerages had been bartered for election interest."

21 On this great influx of lawyers into the House of Lords, most of whom zealously advocated arbitrary principles, see Belsham's Hist. of Great Britain, vol. vii. pp. 266, 267; Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. iii. p. 363; Parl. Hist. vol. xxxv. p. 1523.

It was foretold at the time, that the effect of the numerous creations made during Pitt's power would be to lower the House of Lords. Compare Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 76, with Erskine's speech, in Parl. Hist. vol. xxix. p. 1330; and see Sheridan's speech, vol. xxxiii. p. 1197. But their language, indignant as it is, was restrained by a desire of not wholly breaking with the court. Other men, who were more independent in their position, and cared nothing for the chance of future office, expressed themselves in terms such as had never before been heard within the walls of Parliament. Rolle, for instance, declared that "there had been persons created peers during the present minister's power, who were not fit to be his grooms." Parl. Hist. vol. xxvii. p. 1198. Out of doors, the feeling of contempt was equally strong: see Life of Cartwright, vol. i. p. 278; and see the remark even of the courtly Sir W. Jones on the increasing disregard for learning shown by "the nobles of our days." Preface to Persian Grammar, in Jones's Works, vol. ii. p. 125.

statesmen; none of the true nobility of the land,-were to be found among these spurious nobles created by George III. Nor were the material interests of the country better represented in this strange composition. Among the most important men in England, those engaged in banking and commerce held a high place since the end of the seventeenth century their influence had rapidly increased; while their intelligence, their clear, methodical habits, and their general knowledge of affairs, made them every way superior to those classes from whom the upper house was now recruited. But in the reign of George III. claims of this sort were little heeded; and we are assured by Burke, whose authority on such a subject no one will dispute, that there never had been a time in which so few persons connected with commerce were raised to the peerage.2

283

It would be endless to collect all the symptoms which mark the political degeneracy of England during this period; a degeneracy the more striking, because it was opposed to the spirit of the time, and because it took place in spite of a great progress, both social and intellectual. How that progress eventually stopped the political reaction, and even forced it to retrace its own steps, will appear in another part of this work; but there is one circumstance which I cannot refrain from noticing at some length, since it affords a most interesting illustration of the tendency of public affairs, while at the same time it exhibits the character of one of the greatest men, and, Bacon alone excepted, the greatest thinker, who has ever devoted himself to the practice of English politics.

The slightest sketch of the reign of George III. would indeed be miserably imperfect, if it were to omit the name of Edmund Burke. The studies of this extraordinary man not only covered the whole field of political inquiry,284 but extended to an immense variety of subjects, which, though apparently unconnected with politics, do in reality bear upon them as important adjuncts; since, to a philosophic mind, every branch of knowledge lights up even those that seem most remote from it. The eulogy passed upon him by one who was no mean judge of men,285 might

283 In his Thoughts on French Affairs, written in 1791, he says, “At no period in the history of England have so few peers been taken out of trade, or from families newly created by commerce." Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 566. Indeed, according to Sir Nathaniel Wraxall (Posthumous Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 66, 67, Lond. 1836), the only instance when George III. broke this rule was when Smith the banker was made Lord Carrington. Wraxall is an indifferent authority, and there may be other cases; but they were certainly very few, and I cannot call any to mind.

24 Nicholls, who knew him, says, "The political knowledge of Mr. Burke might be considered almost as an encyclopædia; every man who approached him received instruction from his stores." Nicholls's Recollections, vol. i. p. 20.

283

"The excursions of his genius are immense. His imperial fancy has laid all

be justified, and more than justified, by passages from his works, as well as by the opinions of the most eminent of his contemporaries. 266 Thus it is, that while his insight into the philosophy of jurisprudence has gained the applause of lawyers, 287 his acquaintance with the whole range and theory of the fine arts has won the admiration of artists;268 a striking combination of two pursuits, often, though erroneously, held to be incompatible with each other. At the same time, and notwithstanding the occupations of political life, we know, on good authority, that he had paid great attention to the history and filiation of languages;289 a vast subject, which within the last thirty years has become an important resource for the study of the human mind, but the very idea of which had, in its large sense, only begun to dawn upon a few solitary thinkers. And, what is even more remarkable, when Adam Smith came to London full of those discoveries which have immortalized his name, he found to his amazement that Burke had anticipated conclusions the maturing of which cost Smith himself many years of anxious and unremitting labour.290

nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation, and every walk of art." Works of Robert Hall, London, 1846, p. 196. So too Wilberforce says of him, "He had come late into Parliament, and had had time to lay in vast stores of knowledge. The field from which he drew his illustrations was magnificent. Like the fabled object of the fairy's favours, whenever he opened his mouth pearls and diamonds dropped from him." Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. p. 159.

286 Lord Thurlow is said to have declared, what I suppose is now the general opinion of competent judges, that the fame of Burke would survive that of Pitt and Fox. Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 169. But the noblest eulogy on Burke was pronounced by a man far greater than Thurlow. In 1790, Fox stated in the House of Commons, "that if he were to put all the political information which he had learnt from books, all which he had gained from science, and all which any knowledge of the world and its affairs had taught him, into one scale, and the improvement which he had derived from his right hon. friend's instruction and conversation were placed in the other, he should be at a loss to decide to which to give the preference." Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 363.

267 Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chief-Justices, vol. ii. p. 443) says, "Burke, a philosophic statesman, deeply imbued with the scientific principles of jurisprudence." See also, on his knowledge of law, Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 131; and Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. i. p. 230.

288

Barry, in his celebrated Letter to the Dilettanti Society, regrets that Burke should have been diverted from the study of the fine arts into the pursuit of politics, because he had one of those "minds of an admirable expansion and catholicity, so as to embrace the whole concerns of art, ancient as well as modern, domestic as well as foreign." Barry's Works, vol. ii. p. 538, 4to, 1809. In the Annual Register for 1798, p. 329, 2d edit., it is stated, that Sir Joshua Reynolds "deemed Burke the best judge of pictures that he ever knew." See further Works of Sir J. Reynolds, Lond. 1846, vol. i. p. 185; and Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 257. A somewhat curious conversation between Burke and Reynolds, on a point of art, is preserved in Holcroft's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 276, 277.

289 See a letter from Winstanley, the Camden Professor of Ancient History, in Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. pp. 390, 391, and in Prior's Life of Burke, p. 427. Winstanley writes, "It would have been exceedingly difficult to have met with a person who knew more of the philosophy, the history, and filiation of languages, or of the principles of etymological deduction, than Mr. Burke."

200 Adam Smith told Burke, "after they had conversed on subjects of political

To these great inquiries, which touch the basis of social philosophy, Burke added a considerable acquaintance with physical science, and even with the practice and routine of mechanical trades. All this was so digested and worked into his mind, that it was ready on every occasion; not, like the knowledge of ordinary politicians, broken and wasted in fragments, but blended into a complete whole, fused by a genius that gave life even to the dullest pursuits. This, indeed, was the characteristic of Burke, that in his hands nothing was barren. Such was the strength and exuberance of his intellect, that it bore fruit in all directions, and could confer dignity upon the meanest subjects, by showing their connexion with general principles, and the part they have to play in the great scheme of human affairs.

But what has always appeared to me still more remarkable in the character of Burke, is the singular sobriety with which he employed his extraordinary acquirements. During the best part of his life, his political principles, so far from being speculative, were altogether practical. This is particularly striking, because he had every temptation to adopt an opposite course. He possessed materials for generalization far more ample than any politician of his time, and he had a mind eminently prone to take large views. On many occasions, and indeed whenever an opportunity occurred, he showed his capacity as an original and speculative thinker. But the moment he set forth on political ground, he changed his method. In questions connected with the accumulation and distribution of wealth, he saw that it was possible, by proceeding from a few simple principles, to construct a deductive science available for the commercial and financial interests of the country. Further than this he refused to advance, because he knew that, with this single exception, every department of politics was purely empirical, and was likely long to remain so. Hence it was, that he recognized in all its bearings that great doctrine, which even in our own days is too often forgotten, that the aim of the legislator should be, not truth, but expediency. Looking at the actual state of knowledge, he was forced to admit, that all political principles have been raised by hasty induction from limited facts; and that, therefore, it is the part of a wise man, when he adds to the facts, to revise the induction, and, instead of sacrificing practice to principles, modify the principles that he may change the practice. Or, to put this in another way, he lays it down that political principles are at

economy, that he was the only man who, without communication, thought on these topics exactly as he did." Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 429; and see Prior's Life of Burke, p. 58; and on his knowledge of political economy, Brougham's Sketches of Statesmen, vol. i. p. 205.