overthrow it, and was very unpopular in the country, Fox and his colleagues had no misgivings as to their continuance in office. The recess of 1783 was spent in digesting the famous East India bill of Fox, which proposed to vest the government of India for a period of five years in a commission of seven persons, to be named by parliament, and not to be appointed or removable by the crown. It has been said that this overture was planned by Burke, who, since it proved exceedingly disastrous, has been visited with the responsibility; but it is almost certain that it was the conception of Fox, whose ideas upon the predominance of parliament are evident in its principal features. As for its merits as a piece of statesmanship, it was probably an improvement on the regulating act of Lord North, which had left far too much power to the company, and exposed India to a wasteful diminution; but it has been condemned by Mr. Mill and Lord Macaulay as establishing an imperium in imperio abroad, and as making India completely dependent on the caprice of an assembly in which she was not represented. It is certain, however, that it was very ill timed, for it gave full opportunity to the cry that Fox and the coalition aimed at governing India without the intervention of the sovereign, and solely by their majority in parliament; and it exasperated the king and the nation against it to a degree that now seems strange and incredible. Caricatures, lampoons, and violent speeches, were now in common use against the coalition; Dr. Johnson described the measure as a contest between Fox and George III.; and the public mind was strongly excited by an eager desire to put out the ministry. At first Fox triumphed in the house of commons, but the king seizing the opportunity, and resolved to make an appeal to the nation, defeated him in the house of lords; the bill was thrown out on the 17th December, 1783, by ninety-five votes to seventy-six; and the coalition having been driven from office, Mr. Pitt became prime minister of England, with an understanding that he was to try the chance of a dissolution.
For the next sixteen years the public life of Fox was a struggle against the first administration of Mr. Pitt, which triumphed at the general election of 1784. His views occasionally were in error, but on the whole his opposition was on the side of justice and good government. During this period his great natural powers developed into complete fulness, and he became the best debater, if not the foremost orator, of an age distinguished for gifts of eloquence. His speeches on the Westminster scrutiny, on the slave trade, and the Russian armament, are fine specimens of the logical force, and of the grand and simple energy which gained for him from a good judge the title of the English Demosthenes. He was clearly wrong in advocating a war of tariffs with France against the commercial views of Pitt, and also in depreciating the principles of free trade, and few will agree with his opinions on the regency; but his amendment of the law of libel, his assisting in the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and his protests against a war with Russia, were, before the period of the French revolution, no small advantages gained for the empire. Upon the occurrence of that event, he viewed with much satisfaction the efforts of the constituent and legislative assemblies; and he did not think that even the reign of jacobinism was a sufficient ground for a war with the French people. As is well known Burke differed from him On these points. The difference led to an open rupture, and the result was that the opposition was rent asunder, the majority of the whigs seceding towards Pitt and war, and a small minority remaining with their former leader. Here begins the sphere in the life of Fox which shows most fully his great qualities, and, on the whole, it deserves much commendation. The government of Pitt was enormously strengthened by the whig secession and the popular feeling, which ran wildly towards war with France. It was also terrified by the French revolution, which threatened to carry its poison into England; and in consequence it adopted measures of arbitrary power which seriously endangered the constitution. On the other hand. Fox and the whig remnant were generally unpopular. They were thought to be infected with French principles, and their steady opposition to the war was characterized as factious and unpatriotic. Fox, however, still devoted his powers and those of his diminished party to contending for peace and the constitution of England; and there is little doubt that his steady efforts in that cause conduced to the shortlived peace of Amiens, and checked the violence and domination which were fast becoming the rule of the country. It would be idle to deny that his personal animosity towards Pitt, and the accident of his being in opposition, contributed to urge him upon this course; but it is no less certain that he was impelled to adopt it by really patriotic and disinterested motives. It is only a matter of regret that he abandoned it from 1797 to 1799, and that for that period he should have seceded from parliament, thinking apparently that the struggle was hopeless. Pitt's first ministry fell in 1801, on account of the refusal by George III. to make further concessions to the Roman catholics. It was succeeded by that of Mr. Addington, and his first measure, with the concurrence of Pitt, was to make peace with France and Napoleon. Fox, of course, supported this peace warmly, and observed, in a debate on the subject, that "the joy now manifested by the public proved that they had been so goaded by the war as to accept peace on any terms." During the brief tenure of office by Addington, Fox remained in his old place in opposition; but although he denounced the rapture of the peace of Amiens, which again committed England to war, it is noticeable that he assented to the address to the crown, which treated war as actually impending. In 1804, when the Addington cabinet was dissolved, he was not unwilling to join Pitt in a coalition, which would have included the chiefs of all parties, for the express purpose of carrying on the war; but George III. interposed, and made it a sine qua non with Pitt that Fox should be excluded from the government. On the death of Pitt, however, in 1805, the king was compelled to accept Fox as secretary of state, with Lord Grenville as premier; and thus, after a lapse of twenty eventful years, Fox and the whigs were again in office. The chief measures of the Grenville cabinet at home were the bill for limiting the period of service in the army, the abolition of the slave-trade, a plan of finance different from that of Pitt, a proposal to remove the Roman catholic disabilities, and an alteration in the recruiting system. Abroad, they abandoned Pitt's system of foreign subsidies and extensive continental alliances; but although most of them originally had condemned the war, they now felt that the empire was pledged to it. In particular, Fox, who so long had advocated peace, now concurred in the necessity of the struggle, and sadly admitted that the ambition of Napoleon and the military passion of the French people precluded the possibility of negotiating successfully. Hence, although in 1806 some pacificatory messages were interchanged between the French and English governments, it is probable that on neither side were they sincere, and the year 1807 found the empire under the whigs still holding at bay her great antagonist. Before that time, however. Fox had expired, having died at Chiswick on 13th September, 1806, in the fifty-eighth year of a life, which, though marked with several errors and failings, will not lightly fade from the memory of England.
Looking back upon the career of Fox, we may see that his course of action in politics was determined rather by accident and associations than by any fixed political ideas. Thus he not only changed his party in 1774, but he took opposite views of the same subjects, although events had not considerably altered them. He was hostile to the Bourbons in 1783 as being dynastic foes of England; yet he opposed war with France in 1793 as if the jacobins were less dangerous enemies. He supported the arbitrary measures of Lord North which caused the unhappy war with America; and yet he assailed that war with all the power of his strong will and fine eloquence. So he was averse to war with France, and yet maintained that a treaty of commerce with her was an error, because she was our "natural antagonist." The one idea which he seems to have clung to tenaciously was that the house of commons was omnipotent in the state; and we see it guiding his conduct in the struggle with Wilkes in the events of 1783 and 1784, in his real dread of parliamentary reform, and in his secession of 1797, as though the people were not a tribunal to appeal to. Thus he was not a philosophic or an advanced statesman; but his sound sense, his penetrating sagacity, his love of justice, and his benevolent character, enabled him to accomplish several measures which were real benefits to the empire. Nor can there be a doubt that his struggle with Pitt from 1793 to 1797 was of great use, as maintaining a standard of constitutional freedom and government when the nation was oscillating between anarchy and despotism. As an orator, the reputation of Fox is pre-eminent for close reasoning, rapid declamation, indignant sarcasm, and manly invective. Without the poetic splendour of Chatham, the philosophic depth and gorgeousness of Burke, the majestic ease and fluency of Pitt, or the brilliant and glittering
