compelled the withdrawal of England from a war of which the burden had become ruinous, and which had reached a phase in which it only served Continental interests. Albion is always perfide when she is not a simpleton, and this naturally vexed the Imperial Chancellor and Prince Eugène, who would doubtless have been better content with a statesman of our modern breed. The recently discovered letters of Prior have a high value,' not historical only, but as a pleasant sign of the footing of intimacy and cordiality on which Matt stood with his patron. They show, moreover, that he was a diplomatist in fact as well as in name, and that in momentous discussion his was a real and independent influence. The letters as a whole should be read side by side with those addressed to Harley on the same subject by John Drummond, published in the fifth volume of the Commissioners' Report.

The long letter from Swift in Case V was published in Scott's "Life"; but as there are few specimens more characteristic of the writer's sinister genius, it seemed worth while to print an amended text with the answer of the second Earl of Oxford. Prior's Diary is a new discovery. It is unfortunately very incomplete; but even so it sheds not a few sidelights upon history, while the episode of his quarrel with the Duchess of Marlborough is a lively and finished picture.

It was a disappointment to the compiler to find that the correspondence of Mrs. Delany's Duchess had almost entirely disappeared. None of the immense mass of letters that must have been addressed to her seem to have survived, while of her own composition there are only a few of no great general interest addressed to her son, afterwards the third Duke, when a boy at Westminster School.

On the other hand, one of the most important of the discoveries that have recently been made at Welbeck, is that of the political correspondence of the third Duke, which until quite recently was supposed and asserted to have been destroyed. The remaining Cases are devoted to a selection from this correspondence. The papers are exclusively political. There is nothing, for example, from Dr. Burney, who was often at Bulstrode, where he could freely 1 [These were discovered by Mr. Strong, along with the "Diary," in the muniment room of the Duke of Portland's solicitors in London.-ED.]

2 [Re-discovered by Mr. Strong.-ED.]

discuss his favourite topic, not excepting the most recent developments of Haydn, with the Duke who was an accomplished amateur.

The Duke took his first steps in public life as a Rockingham Whig, under the fussy but benevolent supervision of the old Duke of Newcastle, out of the abundance of whose almost daily effusions it was embarrassing to choose, and with the gigantic figure of the elder Pitt in full view on the opposite side.

The grant of the Forest of Inglewood is illustrated in detail. Its consequence seriously affected the Duke's financial situation; it concentrated the opposition of the Rockingham group to the otherwise and essentially objectionable Lord Bute; and it furnished some of his most resounding thunderbolts to Junius. In fact, so markedly did Junius make the Duke's cause his own, that the Duke himself, "one of the best letter-writers in England," was at one time suspected of being the substantial figure behind the nominis umbra.

The American war runs its inglorious course down to the death and funeral of Chatham, and the Rockingham Whigs, as becomes true friends to the enemy, mourn in concert over the ruins of their country.

Case VIII contains a few letters of naval heroes that are shown as autographs and what may seem to be a needlessly copious selection from the correspondence of George III. It seemed, however, worth while to show the extent and variety of the business which passed through the Duke's hands, and the cordiality and confidence with which he was regarded by the King. It will be noticed that it was the King's habit to date his letters to the minute; but readers of Wraxall will remember a psychological moment when this punctilio was omitted.

In Case IX there are some autographs of the ladies-with the beautiful Duchess and another at the two extremes-who lend so much of its uniquely picturesque character to the stage of eighteenth-century politics. Mrs. Crewe's letter shows that no strength of attachment to the person of Fox prevented her from freely criticising his public conduct. Of the letters of Burke, the longest and weightiest has long since found its own place in the orator's published works; still as an autograph relic it seemed too important to omit. The long letter of condolence is conspicuous for the defects of Burke's qualities. He said, and said truly, of Reynolds, that he

seemed to have descended upon portraiture from a higher plane. He himself might be said to have descended upon his topics from the empyrean, but with results that as literature and logic are not always so happy as the splendid conventions of the painter. In the present case it is set forth with all the abundance of that "perpetual stream" that Providence, determined to chastise a backsliding and perverse generation, began by removing Lord Richard Cavendish!

The letters of William Pitt touch the main points of policy, but in the common style of business, and with no personal quality of thought or phrase.

In 1808 we take leave of the Duke of Portland, for the second time Prime Minister, but nominally rather than effectually at the head of affairs. The old Whig, who with Rockingham and Burke had lamented the eclipse of England's glory through the independence of America, is now the colleague of the man who was to call the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.

The portrait of the first Earl of Portland, given as frontispiece to this Catalogue, was identified by the compiler in the Louvre, where it is called simply "portrait of a man." It is the sketch, probably all that the artist did from life, for the imposing full-dress portrait of the Earl at Welbeck, in which the peace envoy is represented in full armour, holding the bâton of command, with scarf blown out by fame, and invincible wig.

WARREN HASTINGS'S OWN ACCOUNT OF

HIS IMPEACHMENT1

[1903: AET. 40]

URKE and Warren Hastings stand out in English history as the two most complete and imposing embodiments of opposite principles of politicsthe principle of morality, with or without a basis in some sort of resounding philosophy of history

Mand man, the principle, in short, that the State has

a conscience like any Nonconformist; and the opposite persuasion that statecraft is the application and balance of forces that are more akin to natural causes than to the specifically human impulses and emotions-forces which it is possible to adjust within limits, but impossible to initiate or to destroy.

Recent events have disclosed once more and excited the old antagonism of ideal and outlook which is summed up and symbolized in Hastings and Burke. Are we to think first of humanity or of ourselves? Are we to gather up our resources ubiquitous and heterogeneous into a unity and a system; or are men reserved to proclaim from a new text the old lesson of Greek history that Democracy is incompatible with Empire?

But as usual no problem, not even that of an expansion or subsidence, is acute enough or urgent enough to combine all sides in one view. The very word Empire, so inspiring to one sort, in others provokes the opposite feelings of disgust and dismay. It must be admitted, however, that the results of the second-the positive as distinct from the ideal-type of policy, have hitherto been the more solid and enduring. Politicians eddying or floundering in the sphere of dogmatic morality are often valued either for what they meant well or for what they might have accomplished if only facts had not been so stiff and stubborn the other way. And when they do achieve 1 "Harper's Monthly Magazine," December, 1904. This article, written by Strong in October, 1903, was his last.

Warren Hastings's own Account of his Impeachment 219

anything, recognition and gratitude are apt to come, if they come at all, from any other country than their own. Napoleon III, for example, with his amiable belief in large agglomerations and the curative virtue of congresses did more for Italy and Prussia than for France.

In the same way Burke as a practical influence is remembered for what he might have prevented in America, for what he fruitlessly endeavoured to fortify and restore in France, and lastly in the present case for the attempt to discredit and destroy one of the greatest constructive powers in English history. And if politicians of this stamp loom large in English history, that is mainly due to the accidental fact that the custom of government by debate tends to exalt the talker, and the historians naturally follow suit. Now and then a discordant note makes itself heard; but the exceptions are not more than suffice to prove the rule. To employ Mr. Gladstone's contrast, the voice of Metternich has certainly been less audible than the bark without bite, the très bien of Lord John Russell. If only for its rarity the following utterance of D'Israeli is worth preserving; but it is in the strange tongue of the alien who from without saw most of the game: "I have had some experience of public life, and during that time I have seen a great deal done and more pretended by what are called 'moral' means; and, being naturally of a thoughtful temperament, I have been induced to analyze what moral means are. I will tell you what I have found them to consist of. I have found them to consist of three qualities-enormous lying, inexhaustible boasting, intense selfishness." Applying this formula: Burke's charges against Warren Hastings were certainly enormous, and in the end the accused man was acquitted. As for boasting, the managers one and all placed themselves upon a pedestal such as in the case of most men is left to be built up by the action of time. Where human nature enters, and that is everywhere, selfishness is difficult to exclude; and it is in point to remember that the attempt of Burke and his friends to capture the whole patronage of India for their party was frustrated largely by the influence of Warren Hastings.

The impeachment of Warren Hastings has been illuminated by genius, and it has not suffered either in tone or in bulk for the absence of competing partialities. There is no occasion to re-enter the ground of details well known through the gossip of Miss Burney