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situation, and the Athenians had done their duty throughout, the case would have been hopeless. The chance of amendment consisted in their having done literally nothing. Then comes the sentence, which is quite in his manner. Νῦν δὲ τῆς μὲν ῥαθυμίας, δε (p. 148.) Which is thus translated. 'Jusqu'à present, Philippe n' "a triomphé que de votre paresse et de votre negligence; il n' a 'triomphé de la republique. Vous n'avez pas été vaincus, puisque 'vous n'avez pas même reculé d'un seul pas.' The first part is right enough; but the conclusion utterly perverts the meaning. Their never having given way one step, obviously implies, that they had been at least keeping up a good fight with Philip; whereas, advantages are admitted, from their inattention, throughout and in the beginning of the sentence itself. The sense is manifestly this. As it is, Philip has conquered your Indolence and 'Negligence, but the country he has not conquered: You have not 'been beaten; far enough from it; you have never been in motion.' That is, so far from having been beaten, they had never got to action, they had never stirred a finger! **

In another instance, which M. Planche himself has selected as a specimen (and we surely must suppose it to be a favourable one) of his being able to give the form and spirit of the original. He gives the passage, and a remarkable one it is, in his preface; and remarks, very properly, upon the failure of Laharpe, who renders it in such a manner that he might as well have said, generally, 'Here the orator said something about going as Ambassador to Thebes. It runs thus— Οὐκ ἔιπον μὲν ταῦτα, οὐκ ἔραψα δὲ &c.a M. Planche translates thus: 'Je ne me contentai pas de proposer mon 'avis sans rediger le decret, ni de rediger le decret sans me charger 'de l'ambassade, ni de me charger de l'ambassade sans persuader 'les Thebans; mais depuis le commencement jusqu'à la conclusion 'de cette affaire, je fis tout ce qui pouvait en assurer le succès, et je 'me livrai sans reserve à tous les perils dont la republique était 'environnée.' And we have no difficulty in admitting, that this is well; si sic omnia! ** We attempt the passage as follows, but, it must be remembered, in homely English, which, of course, cannot vie with the modern Attic in force, clearness, nobleness, harmony,' and so forth. Nor did I propose these measures, and not reduce 'them into the form of a Decree; nor did I reduce them into the from ' of a Decree, and not go as Ambassador; nor did I go as Ambassa'dor, and not convert the Thebans, but from the beginning, through' out the whole, to the very end, I went through, and gave myself

a Pref. p. 2.

b We might have quoted this passage, when we were noticing the advantage of Demosthenes, in having convertible Audiences. He considered this conversion of the Thebans as a great triumph.

up to You, without reserve, against the perils which surrounded 'the country.' We have given through' twice, because in the original, it is so, and is we render' against,' which it must be, or 'as to,' or 'for the purposes of;' for it cannot be in,' as usually translated.

There is one consideration, it seems, which has induced M. Planche to bring forward his present work, which it is impossible to pass over without expressing some interest. The introduction of the Representative System, and, in consequence, of a larger share of popular Influence in the Government, are assigned by him as a reason for attempting to make his countrymen acquainted with these precious remains of Antiquity. Most heartily do we wish M. Planche success in this part of his undertaking; and that our volatile neighbours, by catching some portion of that spirit which blazes out in every page of these immortal works, may acquire and preserve a zealous and steady attachment to genuine and practicable Freedom, which they have hitherto seen dimly and obscurely in long perspective, and of the benefit of which they have begun, of late only, to feel some effects.

[From the Edinburgh Review.-Jan. 1820.]

ART. III. 1. Substance of the Speech of the Rt. Hon. Lord GRENVILLE, in the [British] House of Lords, November, 1819, on the Marquis of Lansdowne's Motion, That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the State of the Country, and, more particularly, into the Distresses and Discontents prevalent in the Manufacturing Districts, and the Execution of the Laws with respect to the numerous Meetings which have taken place. pp. 62. London. 1820.

2. The Substance of the Speech of the Rt. Hon. W. C. PLUNKET, in the House of Commons, November, 1819. pp. 24. Manchester. 1819.

[Substance of the Speech of the Rt. Hon. GEORGE CANNING, in the House of Commons, November 24th, 1819, on the address to the Throne, upon the opening the Session of Parliament. pp. 54. London. 1820.-Reviewed by the Quarterly, as subjoined.]

THESE two Speeches have been, for various reasons, and with very different views, extremely praised, both within and without the walls of the illustrious Assemblies where they were delivered. Lord Grenville's authority is deservedly high, from his great experience of public affairs, long official life, intercourse with many

parties in the State, commanding, statesmanlike talents, indefatigable industry, great information, and unimpeached integrity. Mr. Plunket's reputation as an orator stands justly among the most exalted of the age; and as he rarely takes part in debates, and hardly ever except upon questions connected with Ireland, the fame of his eloquence has been better preserved than that of almost any speaker in Parliament. To obtain the sanction and the active co-operation of two such persons, on any question, was of great importance to the rash but feeble placemen who now rule this country: But infinitely more valuable was this piece of good fortune, upon an occasion when every friend of Liberty-every man whose judgment was neither warped by ambition, or the less noble failing of impatience for promotion, or bewildered by a momentary alarm, was certain to be found in ardent opposition to the pernicious and slavish policy of the Court. The liberal and enlightened views which have hitherto directed both the eminent individuals in question, and their avowed connexion, both in the sunshine of Court favour, and in the less cheering shades of retirement from office, with the great body of the Whig opposition, rendered their unfortunate concurrence in the measures of the Government a consummation, perhaps more devoutly to be wished, than readily to be expected. Unhappily for the country, and, we will add, for the future fame of those distinguished personages themselves, this rare felicity was in store for the Ministers, among many other pieces of good fortune not to be expected in the ordinary course of events: The administration which had subdued France, and sent Bonaparte to St. Helena, was destined, before its close, to invade the most sacred parts of the Bill of Rights, and begin a censorship of the English Press; and the Cabinet of Messrs. Addington and Bragge Bathurst, and Jenkinson and Pole, after marching to Paris, where Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox could only send a spy or a flag of truce, have likewise achieved the glory of frighting two of their stoutest and most contemptuous adversaries, at home, into an alliance for the alteration of that Constitution which had survived all the corruptions of the last age, and the violence and delusions and panics of our own disastrous times.

Thus happy in their new confederates, like skilful generals, these placemen turned their forces to the best account, by crying up their value in the most extravagant terms. Lord Grenville's name and weight in the country were perpetually in their mouths; he was become the chosen champion of the established order of things -the great saviour of the Constitution in Church and State-he who, a few short years before, had been held up, almost as a mark for persecution, certainly as the object for hatred and alarm to every one who regarded the safety of the Hierarchy, and the good of the Protestant religion. Mr. Plunket, so lately denounced as a

firebrand, and half suspected of being within the statutes of Pramunire for Popish connexions, suddenly became the very oracle to whose decisions, both in policy and law, a final appeal might be made at every stage of the discussion. Men must have something specific to which they can recur themselves, and refer their followers, in the fervour of general admiration. Accordingly, it suited the purposes of the Government to erect the two Speeches now before us into their authorities and models throughout the argument. Whatever might be urged on the other side, received a short and easy answer- Look to the unanswerable Speech of the Noble Baron,' sang the Ministers in the one House.-The excellent, the decisive statement of the member for Dublin College,' responded their colleagues in the other.

Far removed as we are from the scenes of those exalted contentions, and reduced to take our information all in by the trusty eye alone, we confess that if we durst so far adventure an ignorant provincial opinion, we should be disposed to marvel at the same which these two orations have acquired, had we not adverted to the causes of the praise so lavishly bestowed upon them. Nor can we admit the known effects of misreporting to be any solution of the difficulty. Lord Grenville himself publishes his speech. Mr. Plunket's, though apparently not corrected by his own hand, is nevertheless admitted to be given with great accuracy. Neither can it now be urged that the most perfect report, one which should convey to us every word as it was spoken, would give an unfavourable view of the effect of oral eloquence, on the ground that, to use Mr. Fox's just and admirable remark, speeches are made to be spoken, and not to be read: For, admitting the entire truth of this important saying, it is equally true, that a skilful report of a great speech produces a composition full of high beauties, though not of the highest, and certainly not of the same kind with the merits of spoken oratory. And accordingly, we can admire most cordially those inimitable specimens of masculine, chaste, epigrammatic, vehement eloquence, which Mr. Plunket's speeches on the Catholic question present to us, as given in the Parliamentary Debates for 1807 and 1813; and the manly, argumentative, and learned orations of Lord Grenville, upon the same subject, in the same valuable repository of civil history. But, compared with those productions, the pamphlets now before us are poor and degenerate indeed. Lord Grenville's has none of his close reasoning, his large and liberal views of policy, his honest zeal for suffering humanity, his patriotic resistance to slavish principles, his bold, uncompromising contempt for base and courtierlike devices: While Mr. Plunket's presents us only with such a plausible argument as some scores of barristers, in either end of the island, could make from a brief upon the late tumults; and is peculiarly defective in the point for which

its value was most loudly magnified, a clear or definite statement of the legal views of the subject.

We should premise, that the disappointment is considerably greater in the case of Mr. Plunket's than in Lord Grenville's. That Noble person certainly delivers himself with his accustomed force. Strongly impressed with the truth of what he is stating, his language bears the impress of sincere conviction-of conveying the sentiments that come from his heart; and this faithful transcript of cordial feeling, when it proceeds from a man of strong mind, always must produce a high degree of eloquence.- Pectus est quod disertum facit.' (QUINTIL.) But, unhappily, he labours, throughout the whole speech, under the influence of a theory, not to say a panic, which seems wholly to paralyze the natural strength of his understanding. He has fancied that the whole frame of society is about to perish by some moral phrensy of the people, or a large portion of the people; and though he thinks that it may survive the struggle, yet he considers the damage it must undergo in the conflict, to be such as make it likely that a wreck only will be saved. Through so distorting a medium he views every part of the subject, and all that bears any relation to it. Truths which on every other occasion he would have admitted as self-evident, he now overlooks, or passes by as doubtful, or recoils from as peril

Evils in our system of polity, which his profound knowledge of economics must long ago have taught him to regard as incalculably ruinous to the State, he underrates, or palliates, or is willing to bear with, in the dread of encountering some other hazards that have taken hold of his affrighted imagination. Remedies, of which himself has heretofore been the patron, in some instances, and which, in all cases, flow clearly from principles known to be congenial to his philosophy, he now unhappily views with suspicion, and turns from, wildly staring to see if any plot or stratagem lurks beneath them. His alarm all this while impels him onward, so that he cannot look steadily around him. 'Pedibus timor addidit alas.' It whets his ingenuity, however, and sometimes conjures up theories from afar, to confirm his apprehensions; sometimes haunts him with phantoms of unreal things, with which he deals as if they were in actual existence. The sight is at once painful and humiliating: nor could any thing but a sense of duty, in a most important emergency, force us to linger over it. Nay, such is our unfeigned respect for the powerful understanding in which it has made such havock, that we should doubt whether the delusion were not ours, not his, if we had not, to convince us, the unerring evidence of facts, even since the sentiments before us were promulgated.

'The mischief,' says Lord Grenville, against which we are now called upon to defend our country, is not merely of the present 'day; no, nor of the present year.' He then traces it to 1795;

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