the Colonies under Fox and Lord Grenville. On the dismissal of the "Talents" ministry Windham returned to the Opposition benches, which had been his original, and, indeed, his natural place. He died in 1810. Many very amusing stories of his oratory and manners are given by Lord Brougham in the memoir of him, contained in his Lordship's well-known collection; and Sir James Mackintosh has left us this elegantly drawn portrait of Windham:

"He was a man of very high order, spoiled by faults apparently small he had acuteness, wit, variety of knowledge, and fertility of illustration, in a degree probably superior to any man now alive. He had not the least approach to meanness,-on the contrary, he was distinguished by honour and loftiness of sentiment. But he was an indiscreet debater, who sacrificed his interest as a statesman to his momentary feelings as an orator. For the sake of a new subtlety or a forcible phrase, he was content to utter what loaded him with permanent unpopularity; his logical propensity led him always to extreme consequences; and he expressed his opinions so strongly, that they seemed to furnish the most striking examples of political inconsistency; though, if prudence had limited his logic and mitigated his expressions, they would have been acknowledged to be no more than those views of different sides of an object, which, in the changes of politics, must present themselves to the mind of a statesman. Singular as it may sound, he often opposed novelties for a love of paradox. These novelties had long been almost established opinions among men of speculation; and this sort of establishment had roused his mind to resist them, before they were proposed to be reduced to practice. The mitigation of penal law had, for example, been the system of every philosopher in Europe for the last half century, but Paley. The principles generally received by enlightened men on that subject had long almost disgusted him as common places, and he was opposing the established creed of minds of his own class when he appeared to be supporting the established code of law. But he was a scholar, a man of genius, and a gentleman of high spirit and dignified manners.”

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SAMUEL WHITBREAD.

SAMUEL WHITBREAD was born in 1758: he was the only son of Mr. Whitbread, a brewer of great wealth, by his second wife Mary, third daughter of Earl Cornwallis. He was sent to Eton at a very early age, where he had Mr. Charles Grey (since Earl Grey) and many others who afterwards filled high stations, among his young contemporaries.

After leaving Eton he went to Oxford, and then he made a continental tour of more than usual extent; on returning from which, in 1790, he succeeded in obtaining a seat in Parliament as a member for the borough of Bedford.

He at once joined the party of Mr. Fox, and continued to be one of his most devoted adherents until that statesman's death in 1806; and after the death of Fox he still zealously advocated the same line of politics.

He was a prominent speaker soon after he entered into parliament; for we find him, on the 28th February, 1792, moving for a committee of the whole house respecting the Ockazow armament, and his name from this time is of frequent occurrence in the parliamentary debates.

The most prominent event in Mr. Whitbread's career is the impeachment of Lord Melville for imputed misconduct in the administration of the naval department.

On the 8th of April, 1805, Mr. Whitbread moved twelve resolutions on this subject. These resolutions were strenuously opposed by Mr. Pitt, who was supported by Mr. Canning, the AttorneyGeneral, and the Master of the Rolls; while Tierney, Lord Henry Petty, Wilberforce, &c. spoke against the previous question. On a division the members proved exactly equal, there being two hundred and sixteen on each side; but the minister's motion-by which it had been intended to put an end to all inquiry-was negatived by the Speaker's vote. A few days after, Mr. Whitbread moved that an humble address should be presented to his Majesty, praying that he would be graciously pleased to dismiss Lord Melville from all offices held by him during pleasure, and also from his council and presence for ever." This motion, however, was withdrawn; but a vote having been passed "that the former resolutions

be laid before his Majesty," and also "that they be carried up by the whole house," the name of Viscount Melville was struck from the list of privy-councillors. On the 11th of June Viscount Melville himself, having been admitted within the body of the house, entered into an elaborate defence; but on his retiring, Mr. Whitbread, after an able speech, moved "That Henry Lord Viscount Melville be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors." This proposition was baffled by various intervening debates till the 25th, when it was finally carried by a majority of one hundred and sixtysix against one hundred and forty-three. On the 26th Mr. Whitbread moved that the house should nominate twenty-one members to prepare and manage the articles, and was himself placed at the head of this list as manager, on the nomination of Lord Temple.

On the 4th of July Mr. Whitbread brought up the report of this committee, which was followed by eight articles of impeachment. The trial accordingly commenced in Westminster-hall on Tuesday, April 29th, 1806. Mr. Whitbread, as soon as the charges and answer had been read, rose and opened the accusations in a speech of great power. The trial then proceeded through fourteen days, and on the fifteenth day Mr. Whitbread closed the proceedings by a rejoinder to the counsel for Lord Melville. On the sixteenth and last day Lord Erskine pronounced a verdict of acquittal.

To have obtained a majority in the House of Commons against Pitt on this subject, was considered such a triumph for Whitbread, that he rose greatly in public estimation, which was not materially diminished by his not obtaining a verdict from the House of Lords.

Whitbread declined to accept any office from the Fox ministry in 1806, as he thought it would shackle his senatorial independence: and he is one of the few violent Opposition statesmen to whom the desire of place for themselves cannot be imputed as having acted as an incentive to their efforts to eject others from it.

Whitbread was an energetic and unremitting opponent of the slave trade; he was zealous in whatever concerned the diffusion of knowledge and the extension of education, and in every measure connected with the amelioration of the condition of the people, the mitigation of the penal laws, and the management of the poor. His thorough and well-known honesty, his fearlessness of incurring dislikes or of making enemies by denouncing what he thought to be wrong, and his steady resolution in following out a purpose, combined to give him weight in the House, and procured for him

a degree of respect and influence which his mere oratorical powers could scarcely have acquired for him; for though always fluent, and frequently forcible, he was deficient in all the arts and graces of elocution. Byron, who was a somewhat fastidious judge of eloquence, says, in a passage in his letters in which he reviews the various great speakers whom he had heard, "Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence, but strong and English."

He attended with honourable regularity to the large and flourishing business which his father had left to him, and which he had the good sense not to be ashamed to carry on. His private life was most exemplary.

A few years before his death he was induced, partly from motives of friendship and partly from a taste for the drama, to undertake to re-organise the chaos of the Drury-lane property, and to rebuild the theatre, which had been two seasons in ruins. The rogueries and annoyances which he encountered in theatrical affairs are said to have preyed much on his mind, and to have aggravated a natural tendency to disease of the brain. He was in vain recommended by his physicians to withdraw for a time from every kind of business and avoid all mental exertion. He persevered in attempting to fulfil his accustomed round of active duties, and the consciousness of his growing incapacity aggravated the disease which caused it. At length the intellect totally failed, and he died by his own hand on the 6th of July, 1815. The diseased state of the brain, as it appeared on a post mortem examination, showed conclusively that he must have been deprived of reason at the time when this melancholy act was committed.

Few men have been so universally regretted after death, by their political adversaries as well as by their friends, as was Whitbread. Out of many eulogiums that were pronounced on him in Parliament at the time of the motion being made for a new writ for the place which he had represented, that of Mr. Wilberforce deserves most respect.

"Mr. Wilberforce wished to add his testimony to the excellent qualities of the lamented individual whose death had rendered the present motion necessary; and, in doing so, he could with truth declare that he was only one of many thousands, rich as well as poor, by whom his character had been highly estimated. Well had it been termed by the noble marquis, 'a truly English character.'

Even its defects, trifling as they were,-and what character was altogether without defects?—were those which belonged to the English character. Never had there existed a more complete Englishman. All who knew him must recollect the indefatigable earnestness and perseverance with which, during his life, he directed his talents and the whole of his time to the public interest; and although he, Mr. W., differed from him on many occasions, yet he always did full justice to his public spirit and love of his country. For himself, he could never forget the important assistance which he derived from his zeal and ability in the great cause which he had so long advocated in that house. On every occasion, indeed, in which the condition of human beings was concerned,-and the lower their state, the stronger their recommendation to his favour,-no one was more anxious to apply his great powers to increase the happiness of mankind." (Cunningham's British Biography.)

SIR JAMES MANSFIELD.

THIS able and upright judge was educated on the foundation at Eton, and succeeded to a scholarship at King's in 1750. He applied himself, on leaving Cambridge, to the study of the law, and obtained great eminence in that profession. He attained, in succession, the rank of King's Counsel, and that of SolicitorGeneral, and had the distinction of being one of the representatives in Parliament of the university of Cambridge.

In Easter Term, 1804, he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, to succeed Lord Alvanley, who had died on the spring circuit. The new Chief Justice was knighted on his appointment.

Sir James Mansfield presided in the Court of Common Pleas until Hilary vacation, 1814. During this period he earned, and retained, the respect both of the profession and the public in general. His decisions, as they are preserved in the reports of Bosanquet and Pullen, and those of Taunton, are much esteemed for the clearness and the fulness with which they frequently expound the principles, and define the practice, of our law.

Sir James Mansfield on his retirement was succeeded by another Etonian and King's-man.