bills of mortality, exclusive of London and Southwark, every fixth house retailed them. The bill, under the influence of the duke of Newcastle, lord Carteret, Mr. Sandys and others, the then ministry, passed the commons with little or no oppofition, and money was immediately raised on the tax thereby imposed. In the house of lords it was vehemently oppofed by the bishops and many of the lay lords, with great force of reasoning, and by lord Chesterfield in the above speech, which has little of argument in it, though it goes to prove, that the practice ought to have been fuppreffed rather than tolerated. It however paffed, and notwithstanding the fubfequent laws fince made to palliate it, the evil to a great degree fubfifts at this day. In the perusal of these debates, as written, we cannot but wonder at the powers that produced them. The author had never paffed those gradations that lead to the knowledge of men and business: born to a narrow fortune, of no profeffion, converfant chiefly with books, and, if we believe some, so deficient in the formalities of discourse, and the practices of ceremony, as in conversation to be scarce tolerable; unacquainted with the stile of any other than academical difputation, and so great a stranger to fenatorial manners, that he never was within the walls of either house of parliament. That a man, under these difadvantages, should be able to frame a system of debate, to compose speeches of fuch excellence, both in matter and form, as scarcely to be equalled by those of the most able and experienced statesmen, is, I say, matter of astonishment, and a proof of talents that qualified him for a speaker in the most august assembly on earth. Cave, Cave, who had no idea of the powers of eloquence over the human mind, became sensible of its effects in the profits it brought him: he had long thought that the fuccess of his Magazine proceeded from those parts of it that were conducted by himself, which were the abridgement of weekly papers written against the miniftry, such as the Craftsman, Fog's Journal, Common Senfe, the Weekly Mifcellany, the Westminster Journal, and others, and alfo marshalling the paftorals, the elegies, and the songs, the epigrams, and the rebuses that were fent him by various correfpondents, and was scarcely able to fee the causes that at this time increased the fale of his pamphlet from ten to fifteen thousand copies a month. But if he saw not, he felt them, and manifested his good fortune by buying an old coach and a pair of older horfes; and, that he might avoid the fufpicion of pride in setting up an equipage, he displayed to the world the fource of his affluence, by a representation of St. John's gate, instead of his arms, on the door-pannel. This he told me himself was the reason of diftinguishing his carriage from others, by what fome might think a whimfical device, and also for caufing it to be engraven on all his plate. Johnfon had his reward, over and above the pecuniary recompence vouchsafed him by Cave, in the general applause of his labours, which the increased demand for the Magazine implied; but this, as his performances fell short of his powers, gratified him but little; on the contrary, he disapproved the deceit he was compelled to practice; his notions of morality were fo strict, that he would scarcely allow the violation of truth in the most trivial instances, and saw, in falfhood of of all kinds, a turpitude that he could never be thoroughly reconciled to: and though the fraud was perhaps not greater than the fictitious relations in Sir Thomas More's Utopia, lord Bacon's Nova Atlantis, and bishop Hall's Mundus alter et idem, Johnson was not easy till he had disclosed the deception. In the mean time it was curious to observe how the deceit operated. It has above been remarked, that Johnson had the art to give different colours to the several speeches, so that fome appear to be declamatory and energetic, resembling the orations of Demofthenes; others like those of Cicero, calm, perfuasive; others, more particularly those attributed to fuch country-gentlemen, merchants, and seamen as had seats in parliament, bear the characteristic of plainness, bluntness, and an affected honesty as opposed to the plausibility of such as were understood or suspected to be courtiers: the artifice had its effect; Voltaire was betrayed by it into a declaration, that the eloquence of ancient Greece and Rome was revived in the British senate, and a speech of the late earl of Chatham when Mr. Pitt, in opposition to one of Mr. Horatio Walpole, received the highest applause, and was by all that red it taken for genuine; * and we are further told * The speech here alluded to, taking it to have been spoken as it is printed, was uttered in a debate on a bill for the encouragement and encrease of feamen, containing a claufe for a regifter of seamen, and was intended to take away the neceffity of impressing for the fea-service, which bill, as being a ministerial measure, was vehemently opposed. It is a reply, void of argument and loaded with abuse, to a fober reproof of a grave and experienced senator. To judge of its merits, and as a specimen of the speaker's method of debating at that early period of his life, it is necessary to compare it with that to 1 told of a person in a high office under the government, who being at breakfast at a gentleman's chambers in Gray's inn, to which it pretends to be an answer, and for that purpose both are here inserted, and first that of Mr. Walpole. • SIR, • I was unwilling to interrupt the course of this debate while ⚫ it was carried on with calmness and decency by men who do not • fuffer the ardour of opposition to cloud their reason, or transport ⚫ them to such expressions as the dignity of this assembly does not • admit. I have hitherto 'deferred to answer the gentleman who • declaimed against the bill with fuch fluency of rhetoric, and such • vehemence of gesture, who charged the advocates for the ex pedients now proposed, with having no regard to any intereft but ⚫ their own, and with making laws only to confume paper, and ⚫ threatened them with the defection of their adherents, and the • loss of their influence, upon this new discovery of their folly and ⚫ their ignorance. • Nor, Sir, do I now answer him for any other purpose than to ⚫ remind him how little the clamours of rage, and petulancy of • invectives contribute to the purposes for which this assembly is • called together; how little the discovery of truth is promoted, ⚫ and the security of the nation established by pompous diction and theatrical emotions. • Formidable founds and furious declamations, confident affer⚫tions, and lofty periods, may affect the young and unexperienced, ⚫ and perhaps the gentleman may have contracted his habits of ، oratory by converfing more with those of his own age than • with fuch as have had more opportunities of acquiring know• ledge, and more successful methods of communicating their • fentiments. • If the heat of his temper, Sir, would fuffer him to attend to those whose age and long acquaintance with business give ⚫ them an indisputable right to deference and superiority, he * would learn, in time, to reason rather than declaim, and ⚫ to prefer justness of argument, and an accurate knowledge of • facts, Gray's inn, Johnson being also there, declared, that by the style alone of the speeches in the debates, he could • facts, to founding epithets and splendid superlatives, which ، may disturb the imagination for a moment, but leave no lafting ⚫ impression on the mind. • He will learn, Sir, that to accuse and prove are very different, ⚫ and that reproaches, unsupported by evidence, affect only the • character of him that utters them. Excursions of fancy and flights of oratory are indeed pardonable in young men, but in no other, and it would furely contribute more, even to the pur• pose for which some gentlemen appear to speak, that of depre⚫ ciating the conduct of the administration, to prove the incon• veniences and injustice of this bill, than barely to affert them, • with whatever magnificence of language or appearance of zeal, honesty or compaffion.' To this fober and temperate speech uttered by a grave senator, who had ferved his country in various capacities, and whose moral character was irreproachable, the following was the answer of Mr. William Pitt: • SIR, • The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the • honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but con • tent myself with wishing, that I may be one of those whose • follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. • Whether youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach, I • will not, Sir, assume the province of determining; but surely age may become justly contemptible, if the opportunities which • it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have fubfided. The wretch that, • after having feen the consequences of a thousand errors, con⚫ tinues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy ، to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deferves not that his grey head should fecure him • from infults. • Much |