the admiration of foreign powers. It was a fit spot whereon to terminate such a life. The occasion was marked by a renewal of the bitter discussions between the advocates of taxation without representation, and the advocates of the right of colonies to tax themselves, or if taxed by others, to be admitted into an equal position in the body which claimed the right to tax them. A war was raging in the western continent, provoked by a dogged determination of ministers instigated by an arbitrary king, to test the power of the home government to enforce taxation. That struggle had been foreseen by Pitt, and in tones of prophetic warning he had deprecated the rash purpose of the cabinet. He had depicted with glowing language the wickedness of such a step, and turning from the assertion of principle to the consideration of expediency, he had demonstrated the natural advantage, the earnest spirit, and the unanimous sentiment of the trans-Atlantic provinces, proving how useless and how destructive was the attempt to subdue them. On the fatal day, the proud but courteous Richmond, afterward himself a convert to the cause of the colonies, had been sneering at their resistance, and counselling a vigorous prosecution of military subjugation. The last words of the great Commoner sent a thrill of pride through his adherents, and dismay among the ranks of the party in power: 'Do justice to America! Do it to-night! Do it ere you sleep!' Thus were the last moments of this illustrious person employed in stirring appeals to the nobles of England in behalf of a distant and distressed people. He attempted to proceed, but the touch of death was on him, and he sank in an apoplectic fit in the arms of the lords near him. After lingering a short time, he died in the presence of his bereaved wife and children. The scene was not more remarkable for the fitness of the occasion and the place, than for the illustrious array of persons who were present at the downfall of their great cotemporary. It is true that many of the master-minds with whom he had waged a successful warfare, no longer frequented the scenes of their renown and of his victories. Henry Fox, a rival worthy of his metal, whose clear-headed argument and keen logic had proved almost a match for that brilliant diction which despised the restraint of detail and statistics, had preceded him to the great judgment-seat. The courtly Chesterfield no longer entranced coronated beauties by the grace of his bow, and had ceased to lend a searching sarcasm to the cause of deposed sovereignty. The voice of the handsome and impulsive Carteret, who for the beauty of his oratory was only surpassed by Chatham himself, was hushed in the silence of the grave. Murray had retired to the stately seclusion of the King's Bench. Montagu was no longer the patron of letters, the confident of sovereigns, the complete master of finance. But of the generation of great minds then in its zenith, and of that golden age of intellect which was just opening, many lent their presence to the closing scene in the life of their cotemporary and instructor. The gentle and lovable Rockingham and the dignified Shelburne looked with pride upon a deathscene made glorious by the intrepid advocacy of their cherished principles. Lord North, whose bitter Toryism did not obstruct a kind spirit and a winning manner, viewed with regret the declining life of the highest ornament of Great Britain, and forgot partisan antipathy in the grief of friendship. The stately Bedford, the versatile Carlisle, and the generous Devonshire, mourned the death of one whose name had reflected honor on their hereditary order, and to whose genius the most ancient and renowned houses in the land gave a willing and an enthusiastic homage. All alike of those who had been the witnesses of his active career, Tories and Whigs, friends of the King and friends of the colonies, aristocrats, gentlemen, and commoners, were cognizant of the calamity which befel the nation in the departure of so magnanimous and so noble an intellect. There, too, were present that trio of splendid minds who in the succeeding era amazed mankind by their grand conflicts in eloquence and legislation. There Burke, risen so far in the scale of distinction that he began to be talked about as a promising orator, heard with delight the magic words which inspired all his future life with the spirit of political liberty. There the younger Fox, the son of the foremost rival of Chatham, and himself in after years a greater rival of a greater Pitt, heard the passionate tones which had again and again driven his father vanquished from a well-contested field. There the younger Pitt, leaning on the banister which separated the spectators from the Peers, listened with wonder to the marvellous eloquence which was his greatest heritage, and which he of all Englishmen alone surpassed. There Sheridan, just emerging from the affectation of the actor into the dignity of the legislator, and his fervid spirit burning with zeal for liberty, caught the inspiration of the great soul just departing, and consecrated his future efforts to the cause of popular rights. Perhaps, too, the mysterious terror of ministers and the hidden, good right-hand which had lashed corruption on every side, but which had paused with reverence before the name of Chatham; perhaps Junius was there, contemplating the fall of so much greatness, and picturing to himself, with that prolific fancy of his, the future disasters of the empire. Chatham had ceased to hold that magic influence over the masses which had enabled him to sustain himself so long in a suspicious and hostile court. No popular acclamations had lately greeted his carriage as it rolled from Hayes to Westminster Hall. Mayors and corporations no longer presented him the freedom of cities in gold boxes. His power as a statesman fled when his empty grandeur as a peer began. He left that body in which all his triumphs had been won, and in which, had he continued there, many would have yet been in store for him, and seated himself among the hereditary nobles, shorn of the strength he had retained so long. Obsequious even to servility, he had allowed himself to be cajoled by the crown in his old age, which he had disdained in the pride of his early days.. Nevertheless, his death was mourned with one accord throughout the entire nation. All felt that the country had lost its brightest ornament. Parliament hastened to vote a public funeral and a monument, the payment of his debts, and a provision for his family. Not a word of remonstrance or opposition was heard in either house. It was a matter of course that he should be borne with the greatest pomp and state to the final home of so many illustrious Englishmen, and that he should be laid in Westminster Abbey, beside Bacon and Newton, Milton and Shakspeare, Rus sell and Locke. On the day of burial, the great metropolis was as hushed as on the Sabbath. Business was abandoned and pleasure suspended, while the great living were paying their final tribute to the great dead. The proudest nobles and the first minds of both houses vied with each other for prominence in the melancholy pageant. The descendant of the Cavendishes and the excellent Rockingham supported the shield emblazoned with the arms of the noble house of Chatham. Edmund Burke, Lord George Savile, and Lord Ashburton bore the pall upon which rested the remains of the great deceased. Thus, attended by the first of the land, was the great Commoner laid by the side of those who had gone before him, having died amid the applause of their countrymen. No one of all that splendid array, whose praises were recorded on the magnificent shafts which had been reared above them, had left a more virtuous or a more exalted reputation than did their new companion in that stately solitude. While his cotemporaries were not ashamed to use the arts of corruption and intrigue to gain a majority of the Lower House, and while Henry Fox was so base as to insist on having the privilege of bribing the members, the pure spirit of Chatham had proudly disdained to degrade himself by such an artifice, and had left to the cunning Newcastle and the unprincipled Legge the application of secret service-money and pensions. Ambitious to a fault, imperious to his equals and inferiors, neglecting the courtesies which distinguished the elegant society around him, and too proud to compromise even for the national good, his career compensated for these venial deficiencies by the purity and integrity which were never once violated.. Consistent to the last in his hatred of tyranny, in his opposition to Jacobitical treachery, and in a dignified and earnest assertion of the just rights of the governed, he was yet so ingenuous as to change his principles, when persuaded that to change them was to do right. The pertinacity with which he adhered to a remorseless war policy, in which, no doubt, ambition for glory got the mastery over wise patriotism, and which is indefensible, is the greatest stain on this great man's public character; and is ill-balanced by the splendid victories he achieved in military projects. He lived an enthusiast for the extension of freedom; not like some modern fanatics, looking forward with morbid zeal to a period of Utopian bliss, and attempting to destroy every social barrier to attain impossible ends; but, like Webster, zealous for the preservation of rational restraint, and devoted to the attainment of intelligent liberty. And he died universally revered by his enemies for his candor and his constant manly bearing; by his friends for his generosity, his devotion to their cause, his steady friendship; by other nations for his zeal in behalf of all oppressed mankind; and he has been revered by succeeding generations, for the great example of patriotism which he has left, and which constitutes the crowning glory of his life. THE CRY OF THE MOTHERS. THERE'S a voice abroad of wailing, A cry of weeping and woe, And day after day, and year after year, I hear it wherever I go. 'Tis a wail prolonged and dismal, And deep as the voice of the sea, And it rises from mansion and cottage and hut, And what is this terrible wailing, They are crying for their daughters, Some sit by pleasant hearth-stones, In lone, secluded spots, And some in mansions lordly, And some in lowly cots: But all, in wealth or poverty, Have eyes as sad as the tomb, And ever and ever refuse to receive And their first thought in the morning, And the thought that comes betwixt them and GOD, Is a thought of terrible anguish, Of terrible, terrible woe, The thought of a maid who from their arms To a life of shame did go. And so they wail the mothers A sad and a tearful host, For their daughters who are lost. And the sound is sad and dreadful, The cry of lost, lost, lost. VOL. LIX. And who hears this voice of wailing, This cry that seems to rise, To the far-off heaven, till the stars lean out, Who led the child astray, Feel the deep force of the mother's curse, Hear and pause ere 't is too late? And haunt them wherever they go? No, this weary, weary wailing, Nor knows the woe his triumph cost Through dark and dismal years. And the daughters never know it, To touch their hearts, they drown it quick In deeper cups of sin. And the tempted do not hear it, For their love drowns every cry, But this terrible, terrible wailing, 28 HATTIE TYNG. |