then communicated to him the existence of a most fearful
plot against the Government, which, with his newly-awakened
feelings, he longed to frustrate by immediately informing the
authorities, if he who had convinced would also accompany and
support him.

"They went to the Chief Magistrate, Sir Richard Ford; who
attached so much importance to the communication, that the
three were at once ushered into the presence of Pitt and his
colleagues, assembled with Macdonald and Scott, the Attorney
and Solicitor-General. The singular history was duly narrated
in detail; the arguments carried on by the young Mentor, the
misgivings of the Republican, and then the details of the
impending danger. The countenance of Pitt was turned with
interest on the young lawyer, who seemed not only to share
that horror of revolutionary movements with which he was
himself so strongly imbued, but who had so gallantly acted
upon it. 'What was your motive, young gentleman,' he inquired,
'for thus entering the shop?' 'I, Sir,' answered young Ward,
'am not long returned from France, and have there seen in
practice what sounds so fine in theory.'"

Though, according to report, Pitt was not the man to overlook rising
talent or lose sight of a useful adherent, eight years elapsed before
much came of this singular introduction; during which the young
barrister published two books or pamphlets on the Laws of Nations,
married a sister of Lady Mulgrave, and was slowly working his way
at the bar. In 1802, Pitt, in a stiff enough letter, offered Mr.
Ward a seat for Cockermouth, one of the Lowther boroughs; and when
he returned to power, his protege became Under-Secretary of State
for the Foreign Department, (his brother-in-law, Lord Mulgrave,
being Principal Secretary,) _after_ he had published a pamphlet
in justification of Pitt's highhanded seizure of the Spanish
treasure-ships. Of course he went out on the accession of All the
Talents after Pitt's death; and came in again on their expulsion,
as a Lord of the Admiralty, still under Lord Mulgrave. In 1812, he
was moved to the Ordnance, as "Clerk." In 1823, he quitted office,
withdrew from Parliament, and began novel-writing as an amusement, at
fifty-eight. He died in 1846, in his eighty-second year; having lived
long enough to see his son, the present Lord High Commissioner of the
Ionian Islands, Secretary to the Admiralty under