g importance
of the middle class; and foresaw in its future power a bulwark for the
throne against "the Great Revolution families." Of his qualities
in council we have no record; there is reason to believe that his
administrative ability was conspicuous: his speeches prove that, if not
supreme, he was eminent, in the art of parliamentary disputation, while
they show on all the questions discussed a richness and variety of
information with which the speeches of no statesman of that age except
Mr Burke can compare.

Such was the man selected by George the Third as his champion against
the Venetian party after the termination of the American war. The
prosecution of that war they had violently opposed, though it had
originated in their own policy. First minister in the House of Lords,
Shelburne entrusted the lead in the House of Commons to his Chancellor
of the Exchequer, the youthful Pitt. The administration was brief, but
it was not inglorious. It obtained peace, and for the first time since
the Revolution introduced into modern debate the legitimate principles
on which commerce should be conducted. It fell before the famous
Coalition with which "the Great Revolution families" commenced their
fiercest and their last contention for the patrician government of royal
England.

In the heat of that great strife, the king in the second hazardous
exercise of his prerogative entrusted the perilous command to Pitt.
Why Lord Shelburne on that occasion was set aside, will perhaps always
remain a mysterious passage of our political history, nor have we space
on the present occasion to attempt to penetrate its motives. Perhaps
the monarch, with a sense of the rising sympathies of his people, was
prescient of the magic power of youth in touching the heart of a nation.
Yet it would not be an unprofitable speculation if for a moment we
paused to consider what might have been the consequences to our country
if Mr Pitt had been content for a season again to lead the Commons under
Lord Shelburne, and have secured for England the unrivalled knowledge
and dexterity of that statesman in the conduct of our affairs during the
confounding fortunes of the French revolution. Lord Shelburne was the
only English minister competent to the task; he was the only public man
who had the previous knowledge requisite to form accurate conclusions
on such a conjuncture: his remaining speeches on the subject attest the
amplitude of his knowledge and the accu