The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-14 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

LETTERS ILLUSTRATIVE OF TILE
REIGN OF 'WILLIAM HI. 3 VoLs.
Colburn, London, 1841.
Mr. Vernon, the author of these Letters, was
Secretary of State during the latter portion of the
reign of William the Third—a stirring and a
troublous period, when the partizans of the exiled
Stuarts were intriguing both in England and on
the Continent for the re-establishment of their au-
thority, and winning over to their schemes some
of the most eminent statesmen of the day. Even
Marlborough himself was not free from the charge
of maintaining a treasonable correspondence with
the Court of St. Germains ; but among the most
active of the Jacobite agents was Sir John Fen-
wick, who was the life and soul of an extensive
conspiracy having for its primary object the assassi-
nation of King William. Before, however, the
conspirators had time to mature their plans, they
were discovered, and Sir John, after evading the
pursuit of justice for some months, was arrested,
brought to trial before the House of Lords, found
guilty, and beheaded on Tower-hill. Previously
to his trial he basely offered to disclose the whole
plans of the party to which he was attached, on
condition that his life was spared ; and being
pressed to afford distinct information, he formally
charged the Duke of Shrewsbury--at that time
one of King William's principal Ministers—and
several other men of note and influence, with hav-
ing for years acted under the influence of the ex-
iled House of Stuart, while holding office under
the rival one of Nassau. The Duke of Shrews-
bury, though his innocence was soon made appa-
rent, and William never once withdrew his confi-
dence from him, was greatly pained and shocked
by this charge, retired into the country in order
to recruit his health and spirits, leaving his Private
Secretary, Mr. Vernon, to conduct the principal
business of his office. It is with the Letters writ-
ten by Vernon to his Grace at this time, that the cor-
respondence contained in these volumes commences.
The letters are penned, as Mr. James, the editor,
rightly remarks, " by a man evidently of a cold and
cautious temper;" and though they allude to the
passing on flits and political disputes of the day,
and detail the progress of Sir John Fenwick's trial,
the scene of his execution on Tower-hill, and se-
veral other interesting matters ; yet such is their
dry, cold, official style, and so ultra-discreet is the
spirit that pervades them, that it is scarcely pos-
sible to extract the slightest amusement from the n
Had we been his Grace of Shrewsbury, we should
certainly have grudged the postage of such jejune
epistles, whose sole redeeming merit is, that here
and there they give us a sort of faint insight into
characters who have long ranked high in the world's
esteem—such, for instance, as Lord Moninouth,
who cuts a very sorry figure, and is represented as
acting in the most treacherous and unprincipled
manner, with a view to make it appear that Sir
John Fenwick's charge against the Duke was really
a true one. Yet this is the man, afterwards so
well known as the Earl of Peterborough, whom his
contemporaries praised as the soul of chivalry and
honour, and whom Pope and Swift eulogised in the
most extravagant terms I He was, unquestionably,
a very superior character, sagacious, brave even to
temerity, generous to profusion, of refined literary
tastes, a dashing soldier, and who understood war as
a science, and so astonishingly alert in all his move-
ments, as to justify Swift's triplet in his spirited
sketch of his Lordship's character, that—
So wonderful his expedition,
When you have not the least suspicion,
He's with you, like an apparition !
In Mr. Vernon's brief notices, however, this cele-
brated Nobleman exhibits none of these showy, ad
captanduni qualities, but appears in no brighter
light than that of an artful trickster, who does not
hesitate to tamper with witnesses and pervert the
truth—in short, to exert his utmost powers to bring
about the ruin of the Duke of Shrewsbury, of
whom he entertained a jealous, deep-rooted hatred.
Of the celebrated Wharton, immortalized by Pope,
under the name of Clodio, and whose incurable
passion for intrigue and dissipation neutralized the
influence which otherwise his great political talents
could not fail to have obtained him—to this bril-
liant meteor there are several passing allusions in
the present volume ; but they tell us nothing new
respecting him ; nor, though Prior's name is also
frequentiv mentioned, do we gather one single fact
of moment respecting this sprightly poet and dex-
terous politician. We subjoin an extract, from
a note attached to one of the volumes, giving an
account of a curious proposal for establishing a
Land Bank
The enormous expenses of the war, the tempo-
rary shock given to public credit by the revolution, and
the long tolerated nuisance of clipping and otherwise
debasing the coin, had combined with other causes, to
reduce the revenue of the State, and diminish the circu-
lation in a degree almost inconceivable, and the wisely
devised measure of recoining the silver money, and is-
suing it of just weight, while severe punishments were
employed to check future debasement of the coin, was
so unwisely executed, that the evil was doubled by the
immense mass of silver taken out of the circulation at
once. Under these circumstances, a person of the
name of Chamberlain drew up the project of an esta-
blishment to lar. called the Land Bank. The proposal
was seized by the Tory party, and the House of Com-
mons resolved on this subject, that a fund, redeemable
by Parliament, should be raised by subscriptions to
amount in all to two millions four hundred and sixty-four
thousand pounds ; that this bank should be restrained
from lending money except upon landed security, or to
the Government in the Exchequer ; that no person con-
cerned in the Bank of England could be a subscriber
to the Land Bank, and vice versa. The interest was
to be provided for by the settlement of certain taxes,
and the subscription was to be complete before the Ist
of August, 1696, or else the whole to determine and be
void. Great expectations were raised, but the Bank of
England of course opposed the measure ; the subscrip-
tions were not paid, and the Land Bank proved a
signal failure, adding to the previous embarrassments o
the country."

MEMOIRS OF WARREN HASTINGS, 2 VoLs.
Bentley, London, 1840.
Gleig, the editor of these volumes, states
modestly in his preface that he iv conscious of having
done but imperfect justice to his task, chiefly in
consequence of the scantiness of his materials, which
often failed him, at times when it was most neces-
sary that he should have full and authentic data to
go upon. Considering that his means of obtain-
ing information were thus meagre, we think that
the Rev. Editor has acquitted himself with great
judgment and adroitness, and furnished us with a.
work which may, on the whole, be pronounced sa-
tisfactory, inasmuch as it gives a distinct, spirited
outline of the public and private character of
Warren Hastings ; and more than this we scarcely
desire to have, for though he was an able, enter-
prising, experienced statesman, thoroughly fami-
liar with the wily Oriental tactics, and in conse-
quence, remarkably successful in his policy, yet
Hastings was by no means one of those command-
ing spirits whose names are destined to be handed
down with undiminished honour to posterity. He
was a man well suited to his time, and the circum-
stances of the distant realms over which he long
held arbitrary sway ; and will always occupy a dis-
tinguished place in the history of British India,
second, however, to that occupied by the Marquis
of 'Wellesley, whose system of policy, to equal sa-
gacity and comprehensiveness,added far more straight-
forwardness and beneficence. In Europe, Hastings
is principally known by the celebrated trial to
which he was subjected before the Lords, and all
the assembled dignitaries of the kingdom, in West-
minster Hall, when articles of impeachment were
preferred against him, by Burke, Sheridan, Fox,
and several others of high political influence, with
reference to his Indian administration, which trial,
after having been protracted for nearly ten years,
terminated in his acquittal. Of this singular event
in his life, however, Mr. Gleig takes no notice,
observing, in justification of his silence, that " as
the issues of the trial were, as far as character was
affected by them, altogether satisfactory, I cannot
conceive that to follow the course of its progress,
could excite the interest or gratify the tastes of any
one." Warren Hastings was, it seems, born in the
year 1732 ; his family was of old English extrac-
tion—so old, that his grandfather—" an antiquary
of no mean reputation," observes the Editor—stated
that he could trace back his pedigree to Hastings
the Dane. In the great civil war, one of hi 3
an-
cestors, " expended the value of four large manors
in the service of Charles the First ;" and owing to
this and other pecuniary misfortunes, the family
was reduced gradually to such distress, that at the
period of the birth of Warren Hastings, his parents
could with difficulty find the meats of (lady
tance. At an early age young Hastings was seat
to a charity school in the village of Churchill,
where he distinguished himself by his love of study,