a good judge of Parliamentary speaking. He would probably have wished every speech to have begun with a general statement of the utilitarian theory, to have proceeded to the application of it to legislation in general, and to have concluded with its bearing on the question immediately under discussion. "In his public speeches," says the third Lord Holland, "Lord Shelburne wanted method and perspicuity, and was deficient in justness of reasoning, in judgment and in taste; but he had some imagination, some wit, great animation, and both in sarcasm and invective not unfrequently rose to eloquence. His mind seemed to be full and overflowing, and though his language was incorrect and confused, it was often fanciful, original and happy. There was force and character, if there was not real genius, in his oratory. If he did not convince the impartial, or confirm the wavering, he generally gratified his own party and always provoked his adversaries; he was a great master of irony, and no man ever expressed bitter scorn for his opponents with more art or effect. His speeches were not only animated and entertaining, but embittered the contest and enlivened the whole debate."[1] Sarcasm and invective certainly seem to have been his forte; diffuseness and repetition his weakness. It was the latter faults which were the butt of the satirists of the Rolliad, when, in after years, taking off the speech he made on the first of March 1787 on foreign politics in the House of Lords, they make him come forward and speak as follows:
"Lost and obscur'd in Bowood's humble bow'r,
No party tool—no candidate for pow'r—
I come, my lords, an hermit from my cell,
A few blunt truths in my plain style to tell.
Highly I praise your late commercial plan;
Kingdoms should all unite, like man and man.
The French love peace—ambition they detest;
But Cherburg's frightful works deny me rest.
- ↑ Memoirs of the Whig Party, i. 41.
Murray, and the splendid declamation of Pitt would have been similarly described by the philosopher as vague generalities with nothing at the bottom." (Edinburgh Review for 1875, p. 404.)
