reminded him of the ruin which he had brought on his brave and loving followers, of the blood which had been shed, of the souls which had been sent unprepared to the great account, he was touched, and said, in a softened voice, 'I do own that. I am sorry that it ever happened.' They prayed with him long and fervently; and he joined in their petitions till they invoked a blessing on the King. He remained silent. 'Sir,' said one of the assistants, 'do you not pray for the King with us?' Monmouth paused some time, and, after an internal struggle, exclaimed 'Amen.' But it was in vain that the prelates implored him to address to the soldiers and to the people a few words on the duty of obedience to the government. 'I will make no speeches,' he exclaimed. 'Only ten words, my Lord.' He turned away, called his servant, and put into the man's hand a toothpick case, the last token of ill starred love. Give it,' he said, 'to that person.' He then accosted John Ketch the executioner, a wretch who had butchered many brave and noble victims, and whose name has, during a century and a half, been vulgarly given to all that have succeeded him in his odious office. 'Here,' said the Duke, 'are six guineas for you. Do not hack me as you did my Lord Russell. I have heard that you struck him three or four times. My servant will give you some more gold if you do the work well.' He then undressed, felt the edge of the axe, expressed some fear that it was not sharp enough, and laid his head on the block. The divines in the meantime continued to ejaculate with great energy, 'God accept your repentance, God accept your imperfect repentance.'

The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had been disconcerted by what the Duke had said. The first blow inflicted only a slight wound. The Duke struggled, rose from the block, and looked reproachfully at the executioner. The head sank down once more. The stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck was not severed, and the body continued to

move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the crowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a curse. 'I cannot do it,' he said; 'my heart fails me.' 'Take up the axe, man,' cried the sheriff. 'Fling him over the rails,' roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two more blows extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used to separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up to such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being torn in pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong guard.

In the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke's blood; for, by a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a martyr who had died for the Protestant religion. The head and body were placed in a coffin covered with black velvet, and were laid privately under the communion table of St. Peter's Chapel in the Tower. In truth there is no sadder spot on the earth than that little cemetery. Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and with imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame. Thither have been carried, through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne, before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse of Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector of the realm, reposes there by the brother whom he murdered. There has mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Car

dinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better age, and to have died in a better cause. There are laid John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Lord High Treasurer. There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature and fortune had lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour, grace, genius, royal favour, popular applause, conducted to an early and ignominious doom. Not

far off sleep two chiefs of the great house of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh Earl of Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and aspiring statesmen, lie more delicate sufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, the last of the proud name of Plantagenet, and those two fair Queens who perished by the jealous rage of Henry. Such was the dust with which the dust of Monmouth mingled.

W

ON AMERICAN AFFAIRS.

I cannot, my lords, I will not, join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment: it is not a time for adulation; the smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must, if possible, dispel the delusion and darkness which envelop it; and display, in its full danger and genuine colours, the ruin which is brought to our doors. Can ministers still presume to expect support in their infatuation? Can parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty, as to give their support to measures thus obtruded and forced upon them? measures, my lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to scorn and contempt! But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world; now, none so poor as to do her reverence! The people, whom we at first despised as rebels, but whom we now acknowledge as enemies, are abetted

CHATHAM.

a member of the peerage, but still adhered to his former opinions, and relaxed his exertions in no way even until a few weeks before his death, which occurred May 11th 1778, when he had attained his 70th year. His correspondence has been published in four volumes: many of these letters are addressed to his nephew, and show the amiability and at the same time the learning and loftiness of sentiment of the writer.

No

against us, supplied with every military store, their interest consulted, and their ambassadors entertained by our inveterate enemy;-and ministers do not, and dare not, interpose with dignity or effect. The desperate state of our army abroad is in part known. man more highly esteems and honours the English troops than I do: I know their virtues and their valour: I know they can achieve any thing but impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, my lords, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst: but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing, and suffered much. You may swell every expense, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffic to the shambles of every German despot; your attempts will be for ever vain and impotent;doubly so, indeed, from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your adversaries, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and

plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty.

But, my lords, who is the man, that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of the war, has dared to authorise and associate to our arms, the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savage? -to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitants of the woods?-to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the principles of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality; for it is perfectly allowable,' says Lord Suffolk, 'to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands.' I am astonished, I am shocked, to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this house, or in this country. My lords, I did not intend to encroach so much on your attention; but I cannot repress my indignation-I feel myself impelled to speak. My lords, we are called upon as members of this house, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity!-"That God and nature have put into our hands!' What ideas of God and nature that noble lord may entertain, I know not; but I know, that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping knife! to the savage, torturing and murdering his unhappy victims! Such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honour. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend, and this most learned Bench, to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of

To

their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn, upon the judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour of your lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Britain, against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices, are endured among us. send forth the merciless Indian, thirsting for blood! against whom?-your protestant brethren!-to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these ungovernable savages!- Spain can no longer boast preeminence in barbarity. She armed herself with bloodhounds to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico; we, more ruthless, loose those brutal warriors against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that can sanctify humanity. I solemnly call upon your lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly, I call upon the venerable prelates of our religion, to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin.

My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have allowed me to say less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my steadfast abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles.

WILLIAM PITT, second son of the immortal Earl of

Не

Chatham (born 1759, died 1806), became Chancellor of the Exchequer at twenty-three years of age, and continued prime minister until his death. embraced the opinions of the Tories, and displayed his talents against Lord North and the American war. In his speeches he so convinced his hearers, as to make them fancy they were only following the impulse of their

ON THE ABOLITION OF THE

SLAVE-TRADE.

......I come to Africa. That is the ground on which I rest, and here it is that I say my right honourable friends do not carry their principles to their full extent. Why ought the slave-trade to be abolished? Because it is incurable injustice. How much stronger then is the argument for immediate than gradual abolition! By allowing it to continue even for one hour, do not my right honourable friends weaken, do not they desert their own argument of its injustice? If on the ground of injustice it ought to be abolished at last, why ought it not now? Why is injustice to be suffered to remain for a single hour? From what I hear without doors, it is evident that there is a general conviction entertained of its being far from just; and from that very conviction of its injustice, some men have been led, I fear, to the supposition, that the slave-trade never could have been permitted to begin, but from some strong and irresistible necessity; a necessity, however, which, if it was fancied to exist at first, I have shown cannot be thought by any man whatever to exist now. This plea of necessity thus presumed, and presumed, as I suspect, from the circumstance of injustice itself, has caused a sort of acquiescence in the continuance of this evil. Men have been led to place it among the rank of those necessary evils, which are supposed to be the lot of human creatures, and to be permitted to fall upon some countries or individuals rather than upon others, by that Being, whose ways are inscrutable to us, and whose dispensations, it is conceived, we ought not to look

own reason; while Fox, his rival, exercised his influence upon the heart. Very different opinions exist upon the subject of the policy of Pitt's administration, but of the absence of all selfish views there can be no doubt, for although he had it in his power to accumulate riches at the public expense, he left debts to the amount of L.40,000, which Parliament gratefully paid, besides bestowing upon his remains the honour of a public funeral.

into. The origin of evil is indeed a subject beyond the reach of human understanding; and the permission of it by a Supreme Being, is a subject into which it belongs not to us to inquire. But where the evil in question is a moral evil which a man can scrutinize, and where that moral evil has its origin with ourselves, let us not imagine that we can clear our consciences by this general, not to say irreligious and impious way of laying aside the question. If we reflect at all on this subject, we must see that every necessary evil supposed that some other and greater evil would be incurred were it removed; I therefore desire to ask, what can be that greater evil, which can be stated to overbalance the one in question?-I know of no evil that ever has existed, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the tearing of seventy or eighty thousand persons annually from their native land by a combination of the most civilized nations inhabiting the most enlightened part of the globe, but more especially under the sanction of the laws of that nation which calls herself the most free and the most happy of them all. Even if these miserable beings were proved guilty of every crime before you take them off (of which, however, not a single proof is adduced), ought we to take upon ourselves the office of executioners? And even if we condescend so far, still can we be justified in taking them, unless we have clear proof that they are criminals?

But if we go much further,—if we ourselves tempt them to sell their fellow-creatures to us, we may rest assured, that they will take care to pro

I have shown how great is the enormity of this evil, even on the supposition that we take only convicts and prisoners of war. But take the subject in the other way; take it on the ground stated by the right honourable gentlemen over the way, and how does it stand? Think of eighty thousand persons carried away out of their country by we know not what means! for crimes imputed! for light or inconsiderable faults; for debt perhaps! for the crime of witchcraft! or a thousand other weak and scandalous pretexts; besides all the fraud and kidnapping, the villanies and perfidy, by which the slave-trade is supplied! Reflect on these eighty thousand persons thus annually taken off! There is something in the horror of it that surpasses all the bounds of imagination. Admitting that there exists in Africa something like to courts of justice; yet what an office of humiliation and meanness is it in us, to take upon ourselves to carry into execution the partial, the cruel, iniquitous sentences of such courts, as if we also were strangers to all religion, and to the first principles of justice! But that country, it is said, has been in some degree civilized, and civilized by us. It is said they have gained some knowledge of the principles of justice. What, sir, have they gained principles of justice from us? Their civilization brought about by us! Yes, we give them enough

the means, and to initiate them in the study, of mutual destruction. We give them just enough of the forms of justice to enable them to add the pretext of legal trials to their other modes of perpetrating the most atrocious iniquity. We give them just enough of European improvements to enable them the more effectually to turn Africa into a ravaged wilderness. Some evidences say that the Africans are addicted to the practice of gambling; that they even sell their wives and children, and ultimately themselves. Are these then the legitimate sources of slavery? Shall we pretend that we can thus acquire an honest right to exact the labour of these people? Can we pretend that we have a right to carry away to distant regions men of whom we know nothing by authentic inquiry, and of whom there is every reasonable presumption to think, that those who sell them to us, have no right to do so? But the evil does not stop here. I feel that there is not time for me to make all the remarks which the subject deserves, and I refrain from attempting to enumerate half the dreadful consequences of this system. Do you think nothing of the ruin and the miseries in which so many other individuals, still remaining in Africa, are involved in consequence of carrying off so many myriads of people? Do you think nothing of their families which are left behind? of the connexions which are broken? of the friendships, attachments, and relationships that are burst asunder? Do you think nothing of the miseries in consequence, that are felt from generation to generation? of the privation of that happiness which might be communicated to them by the introduction of civilization, and of mental and moral improvement? A happiness which you withhold from them so long as you permit the slave-trade to continue. What do you know of the internal state of Africa? You have carried on a trade to that quarter of the globe from this civilized and enlightened country; but such a trade, that,