pacity he had formed a strange misconception, died
young, and he passed his own closing hours, as far as we can judge, with
a sense of failure. But he left one of the great names in English
history. There is no trace of him in the statute book, but he has, it
is safe to say, exercised a profound influence in all succeeding
legislation, both in England and America. He has inspired or suggested
nearly all the juridical changes which distinguish the England of to-day
from the England of the last century, and is probably the only British
politician whose speeches and pamphlets, made for immediate results,
have given him immortality.

[Illustration: Signature: E. L. Godkin]

FROM THE SPEECH ON 'CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA'

Sir,--It is not a pleasant consideration; but nothing in the world can
read so awful and so instructive a lesson as the conduct of the Ministry
in this business, upon the mischief of not having large and liberal
ideas in the management of great affairs. Never have the servants of the
State looked at the whole of your complicated interests in one connected
view. They have taken things by bits and scraps, some at one time and
one pretense and some at another, just as they pressed, without any sort
of regard to their relations or dependencies. They never had any kind of
system, right or wrong; but only invented occasionally some miserable
tale for the day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties into
which they had proudly strutted. And they were put to all these shifts
and devices, full of meanness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer
piecemeal a repeal of an act which they had not the generous courage,
when they found and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim.
By such management, by the irresistible operation of feeble counsels, so
paltry a sum as Threepence in the eyes of a financier, so insignificant
an article as Tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have shaken the pillars
of a commercial empire that circled the whole globe.

Do you forget that in the very last year you stood on the precipice of
general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed great. You were distressed in
the affairs of the East India Company; and you well know what sort of
things are involved in the comprehensive energy of that significant
appellation. I am not called upon to enlarge to you on that danger;
which you thought proper yourselves to aggravate, and to display to
the world with all the parade of indiscreet de