at once enlist on their side an immense mass of moderate opinion. But they must also realise that it is at least as essential to show the determination to fight and win as to prove the moderate use they mean to make of their victory. They must make it absolutely plain beyond all misconception that, whether a makeshift truce is patched up over the Amending Bill or not, whether the Home Rule Bill goes on the Statute Book or not, they refuse absolutely to accept separatist Home Rule for any part of Ireland as an accomplished fact, and are determined that the main issue of union or separation shall be decided by the British people.

How that issue is to be brought before the people it is impossible to say at this moment. What matters is that there should be the determination to force the issue at all hazards, and the consciousness of right and moderation behind it. The decision on great issues like this does not depend on parliamentary conditions, nor even on the provisions of the Parliament Act. It depends on the character and will of the men concerned. Is it conceivable that Mr Asquith, whose whole policy throughout this crisis has been to evade coming to any decision whatever, would really force the issue of civil war if that issue were directly thrust before him, and the Unionist leaders refused to let him evade or postpone it? And, if it were, is it really conceivable that, in such circumstances, the Sovereign would deliberately sign a warrant for civil war among his subjects sooner than infringe the constitutional precedents of normal times? That would indeed be the final reductio ad absurdum of constitutional monarchy. The truth is that what the situation needs to-day is no longer political controversy or manoeuvring but far-seeing moderation linked with unflinching courage. England has just lost one of the rare men who have combined those qualities in their highest form. We can but pray that Mr Chamberlain's death may yet inspire Unionist leadership with something of his constructive statesmanship and of his unconquerable spirit.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 441.-OCTOBER, 1914.

Art. 1.-CHATHAM, NORTH, AND AMERICA.

1. Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. By Basil Williams. Two vols. London: Longmans, 1913. 2. Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. By P. C. Yorke. Three vols. Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1913.

3. Lord North. By Reginald Lucas. Two vols. London: Humphreys, 1913.

THE three works before us represent a noticeable contribution to our knowledge of the fifth and sixth decades of 18th-century politics, though they differ as greatly in treatment as in subject. The biographer of Hardwicke seems to hold the great man in almost as much reverence as his own family did, and his view of the 18th century is that 'whatever was, was right.' The picture of Hardwicke as a benign symbol of justice seems overdrawn. Great Judge as he was, Hardwicke was not as flawless as he appears in this study. Even his present biographer admits that he connived at the suppression of evidence favourable to Byng, when the Admiralty correspondence was published. Again his struggle with juries and his resolute efforts to confine their powers within narrow limits seem hardly to have been in the real interests of the law at that stage of its development. The fact seems to be that Hardwicke's great technical knowledge sometimes actually retarded the development of the law, while his party bias and connexion with politics sometimes injured and deflected the serenity of his judgment. To say this is not to detract from the great services Hardwicke rendered, but to make the qualification needed after the continuous flow of praise from Vol. 221.-No. 441.

X

Mr Yorke. For the rest, the biographer has collected a great deal of material and industriously ransacked the vast collection of Hardwicke MSS at the British Museum. It seems, however, a pity that he should republish much of what has already been printed elsewhere. To take examples-the descriptions of Frederick the Great by Joseph Yorke (iii, 209-213) have already been published by M. Waddington; the Newcastle and Hardwicke minutes of the Cabinet of October 1761 (iii, 278-9), were printed in the English Historical Review' of January and April 1906; some of Hardwicke's famous conversations with the King have been printed in Harris'' Hardwicke' and elsewhere. In none of these instances is the fact of previous publication mentioned; yet, if each historian is to discover his own material without reference to others, there can be no real advance in the subject. This serious omission should not, however, detract from the value of the original materials now first published.

More interesting and more important, not only in choice of subject, but as a criticism of sources and as an ordered pageant of political biography, is Mr Basil Williams' study of the Great Commoner. No other study of Chatham has ever displayed the same knowledge, grasp of materials, judgment and achievement. Mr Williams seems master of almost all the MS. sources now known; and, until extensive new materials are discovered, his work can hardly be superseded. His pictures of Pitt as the friend of Ireland and the enemy of his colleagues, as at once the ardent champion of Habeas Corpus and the issuer of general warrants, as the advocate of pastoral simplicity with servants in silver-lace thronging his terraces and gardeners laying out his grounds by torchlight, come as a revelation even to the closest student of Pitt. Long reflection and the closest intimacy with the period, as well as unrivalled firsthand knowledge, have made this biography possible; and it seems likely to remain final for the present generation. In one direction only does it seem that a closer examination would have yielded more results, that is in a more detailed tracing of Chatham's relation to the American Revolution, a gap which this article is partially designed to fill.

Mr Lucas volumes on North skirt the perilous

borderland between high narrative and pleasant prattle, between history proper and history improper. On the whole he lands on the right side of the debatable ground, but his work is somewhat flimsy in structure and narration. It is based on a few manuscripts, and much study of contemporary memoirs and the publications of the Historical MSS Commission. But there is a good deal of repetition in the narrative, and a good deal of triviality in the substance. The judgment is sound, though not always deep; and the general result seems to be a genial condemnation of North, whose errors are not glossed over and whose weaknesses are not concealed.

The historical value, then, of these three 18th-century studies is considerable. They illustrate, from different points of view, the public life of Great Britain during a very important period, first of success and expansion, then of failure and contraction. But the chief interest, at least of those which deal with North and Chatham, is the light they throw upon the American question; and before this can be understood the principles of the English parties must be made clear.

It may well be asked, how far was Lord North a representative of Toryism or how far could a Tory of his time be representative? Even at its worst, Whiggism in the 18th century stood always for something more than the chase of the sinecure and the pursuit of the pension. It had its Bible in Locke, the defence of revolution for its creed, and the wickedness of kings for its Commination Service. This philosophy of revolution bound together the scattered strands of Whig policy, as by a crimson thread, and made it indestructible. Whiggism contained within itself elements both of liberty and authority; and the arguments for the overthrow of kings or for the defence of private property could be used equally to justify American rebels or to exterminate Irish revolutionists. There was in that creed a smouldering fire, which warmed even the hearts of triflers like Horace Walpole, and burst into tempestuous flame in men like Burke or Fox. Toryism had no such kindling enthusiasm, for its original doctrine of the Divine monarchical right was hopelessly dead. Bolingbroke, who had served the last monarch who

believed in it, himself had slain it, but had demonstrated in the ablest of his writings that, while a king must cease to be a God, he need not cease to be a patriot. Parliamentary parties had abused the powers they had taken from the King, and their corruption could only be checked by the strong-handed personal ruler, indifferent to the spoils of office, but alive to the wishes of the nation. Bolingbroke sees a new national ruler, like Elizabeth, extending his sway as far as the waters roll and winds can waft them.' George III and Bute inaugurated this new era of 'patriotic kingship,' which was to end in the loss of the largest part of the British Empire, by letting loose a torrent of corruption which far excelled in volume the streams that Walpole and even Newcastle had poured forth. The decade between 1760 and 1770, when North finally came into power, was as politically corrupt as it was legislatively barren. The conclusion of a peace in 1763, on terms which the Great Commoner denounced, was indeed a measure which a young king, who boasted of being a Briton, might believe to be in the interests of a suffering people. But the tyrannical attacks upon Wilkes, the shifts and the wiles, the intrigues, the betrayals, by which George III sought to make the royal power personal and effective, seemed conceived in no popular interest.

The great monarchs of this age stood for large legislative programmes or policies of reform or alleviations of existing conditions; but George III stood for none of these. While Frederick, Catherine and Joseph promoted the emancipation of serfs, the abolition of torture, the establishment of religious toleration, their subjects acquiesced in despotisms which were progressive, and in despots whose personal abilities were dazzling. But George, with no striking qualities except those of vigour, chastity and obstinacy, demanded an effective personal monarchy without a popular reforming policy in a State which had always accomplished its reforms through a Parliament. That was why the Patriot King had not won widespread support. Under him, kingly government meant the rule of a not too distinguished personality, who had repudiated Divine Right but had proscribed political opponents with unexampled severity, and had trafficked in places like a broker. Bute, the representative