rivalled potency, avowedly for or against the Administration of the day. It would be an interesting speculation to consider what Swift's influence would have been had he, like some of his modern clerical brethren, been able to speak from the vastly extended platform of a modern newspaper press. Parliament carried on its own work, but the details of its business were subject to no fierce light of publicity, and even of that scanty publicity the House of Commons had by no means the preponderating share as compared with the other House. The next age was that of avowed and almost universal corruption, which might well have shaken the fabric of the Constitution had that not been firmly planted in the genius of our people. It is in the second half of the 18th century that we begin to become intimate with the daily life of Parliament, and can trace more distinctly the steps by which its forms and traditions became developed. Fortunately, we have abundance of authorities in the recorded reminiscences of those whose story we are compelled to accept, however much their motives and their sincerity have been impugned.

It may, perhaps, truly be said that at no period in its history has Parliament boasted of a more distinguished collection of men amongst its members than in the last quarter of the 18th century; and the most marked characteristic of these men of outstanding ability was their common devotion to the House to which they belonged, and the keenness and zeal which they brought to its service-a devotion and a zeal which self-interest no doubt largely prompted in them as in their successors. Pitt and Fox, Sheridan, Dundas, and Burke-to name some without any comparison of merits, and with no regard to affinity of principles-were only a conspicuous handful in a galaxy of men eminently qualified for Parliamentary life. But that galaxy had certain advantages which they did not owe to any merit of their own. They belonged to a privileged class, and owed their seats, in the first instance, only to patronage. They were accustomed to the same shibboleths, and were all alike drilled to the same general code of manners. They had to regard, not so much the judgment of their constituents as their personal allegiance to those to whom they owed their position, and also, it must be remembered, those selfish con

siderations which demanded careful attention to the best means of securing places of emolument. Such considerations are never absent; but, without claiming any very high standard for our own time, it may safely be said that they weigh for comparatively little in the motives which actuate the vast majority of the House of Commons of to-day, who are not on the perpetual outlook for place or emolument. The greater proportion, however keen about their political opinions, are interested in objects quite different from political office, and official prizes would have little attraction for them. Of course they know of the existence of such ambitions-necessary, and almost avowed, amongst a section of the most prominent members. But they regard these as spectators rather than as participators; and they are glad to know that there are those amongst their leaders to whom they are matters of supreme indifference.

Another advantage which belonged to the giants of that day, was that they had far more ample opportunities of holding the stage for themselves. For the most part, the debates were left entirely in their hands. They found few competitors for intervention amongst the rank and file. The rules of the House gave them full licence to occupy the time at inordinate length, and of that licence they made full use. Closure in any form never entered into the imagination of any member of the House, which would, as a whole, have regarded it as a blow at its fundamental privileges. A small minority of the House, divided between the two sides, were entire masters of the domain; and their responsibilities were all the greater. To these responsibilities they brought abundant talents, and great power of domination. Let us see how they used that power and those responsibilities.

It may be convenient here to say something as to the successive chroniclers of Parliamentary life during this and the following periods. Wraxall is our chief authority for the age of Pitt and Fox. He was followed by one who had some of the basest qualities of the political gossip. This was Creevey, who saw Pitt's latest years, and continued his reminiscences for a generation longer. He had many advantages as a narrator, because he was himself for many years a member, and lived at the centre of things until the accession of Queen Victoria. He was

in the confidence of many leading men, and although without any resources of his own, he managed to live in the most select society, and to enjoy abundant advantages of hospitality which he was utterly unable to return. But his narrative is spoiled by venomous party spirit, which blinded him to any redeeming feature except in those with whom he was politically connected. To him, Pitt is the enemy of mankind'; 'quite incapable of the elevated views of Fox.' Such utterances taint his evidence; and their tone is repeated in many passages through his journals. These do not form congenial reading. His search for some unworthy motive is too persistent.

A similar narrative is attempted by Charles Greville, whose journals were published in 1875, and who claimed the advantage, as a chronicler, of being entirely superior to any party feeling. But such superiority was purchased by the grievous defect that he knew Parliament only from the outside, and that the confidences which he picked up as an official were of a kind which he had no legitimate right to use, and which involved him in some of the baseness of an eavesdropper. He was a careful observer, but he had the faults of the rôle which he chose to play, and there was little wonder that the posthumous publication of his memoirs provoked much ill-feeling, and surrounded his name with no pleasant halo.

We have help from many other sources; but it comes often from books written with different objects. One of the chief of these is Disraeli's 'Life of Lord George Bentinck,' which is no mere storehouse of recollections, but which, incidentally, gives us a picture of the inner working of Party divisions within Parliament, which can scarcely be rivalled by any other. It has the convincing fidelity of a narrative by one whose hand was on the helm; and it shows on every page that the currents of party controversy have the same essential twists and eddies in every succeeding generation.

We are inclined to think that the most discriminating and the most faithful description of the debates of the Parliamentary life of his own day, is that supplied by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall. We have said that in more recent days a somewhat similar attempt was made in the

Greville Memoirs, but for the reasons given their attempt failed. The records of an official, however much liberated from any restraints of taste and propriety must be told, after all, from the outside and not from the inside. His most laboured efforts to liberate himself from these restraints often excite nothing but amusement, mixed with disgust. Something of contempt cannot be absent from our contemplation of the eavesdropper. We regret that such records have had even more recent imitators. To any one who enters the political arena and partakes of its struggles, the field of political strategy is free, and he may take part in its combats and onslaughts, according to his own judgment. That field is not equally free to those who gain access to political confidences from the accident of being cognisant of them as paid servants and attendants.

Sir Nathaniel Wraxall has been the object of much envenomed attack from the most opposite quarters. The pen of Macaulay was dipped in bitter ink when he alluded to him; and Macaulay's inveterate foe, Croker, was equally furious in his denunciation. But the agreement of two such hardened partisans from opposite sides need not perhaps compel us to condemn Wraxall without examination. He does not, indeed, attract by any very amiable traits in his character. He was withheld by no scrupulous delicacy from prying into the secrets of domestic scandals. He dwelt with somewhat unfastidious gusto upon rather disgusting personal details. His political ideals never rose above the level of expediency, and he neither felt nor professed any lofty unselfishness, although he is hard upon the selfishness of others, and betrays an almost exaggerated respect for some abstentions from pecuniary gain, which would not be held to be entitled in our own day to more than moderate praise for conduct which would, and ought to, be considered as a matter of course. Pitt's scrupulous refusal of all pensions and endowments which patronage placed at his disposal, is certainly a thing of which his party might be proud, and which the nation might well hold in honour, especially when such scruples were at that time rare, and the lack of them often smirched the names of those who reckoned their own patriotism very high. But we need not forget that the most vague sus

picion of any effort after personal pecuniary gains, except such as was avowed, and legally sanctioned, would go far to ruin the career of any British statesman in our day.

Wraxall, we must admit, does not attract feelings of admiration, or enable us to form any very exalted estimate of his heart. But it does not follow that he is, therefore, the less valuable as a limner of his time and above all of the House of which he was so long a member. It is true that he did not exhibit the phenomenon of absolute consistency-rarely possible to the leading combatants of any age, and certainly conspicuously lacking in the age which Wraxall described. But early in his career he joined the party which adhered to Pitt, and it is difficult to trace in his subsequent career any breaks in his support of his leader which did not rather redound to his honour, or were at least defensible on sound grounds of argument. His party consistency, however, did not prevent him, sometimes with ruthless severity, pointing out flaws in the armour of his leaders, any more than it made him grudging of praise of those of the other party. He saw with full force, and opposed with ceaseless energy, the grievous faults in Fox. He denounced the scandals of his life with no lack of severity. But he is never insensible to the genius of Fox, and never fails to pay what from a less obnoxious critic would have been held a generous testimony to his kindness of heart. To the present writer, who yields to few in his admiration of Pitt, it may be permitted to say that he has frequently found it impossible to refuse assent to some of the condemnations which Wraxall passes on some of Pitt's political acts. We refer most especially to the course pursued by Pitt in regard to the prosecution of Hastings. That prosecution was pressed by Burke with all the acrimony of an embittered temper, and all the spleen stirred by his own unsuccessful career; and by Sheridan with all the unrestrained wit and unbridled fancy which were the peculiar properties of that political libertine. But, after all, these avowed enemies of Hastings, who were determined to build new careers for themselves upon his ruin, never disguised their motives or their aims. The desertion of those who ought to have been his chief friends, such as Pitt and Dundas, who did not rival the