GRENVILLE, the Right Honourable William Wyndham, Lord, one of the most distinguished statesmen of his time, was born on the 25th of October 1759. He was the third son of the Right Honourable George Grenville, prime minister of England in 1763, 1764, and 1765, and of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Wyndham, baronet, by Lady Catherine Seymour, and sister of Charles, first earl of Egremont. He received his early education at Eton, where, it seems, he was concerned in the grand rebellion under Foster, when the boys left the school in a body, threw their books into the Thames, and marched to Salt Hill. The young mutineer was, however, persuaded by his father to return; but in a few weeks, it became evident that this act of insubordination had rendered it inexpedient that he should remain longer at the school where it had occurred, and he was in consequence removed to Christ-Church College, Oxford. Here, however, he soon distinguished himself, and, in 1779, gained the chancellor’s prize for a composition, in Latin verse, on the subject of the Vis Electrica. Having taken his bachelor’s degree, he entered himself at one of the inns of court, with the view of qualifying for the bar; but his attention was quickly diverted from the study of law, which few men prosecute from mere inclination, to the more attractive and exciting business of politics. In February 1782 he was, upon a vacancy, returned to parliament for Buckingham; and in the September following, when his brother Earl Temple, afterwards Marquis of Buckingham, was sent to Ireland as lord lieutenant, Mr Grenville accompanied him as private secretary, and was sworn in as a privy councillor of that kingdom. The period of Earl Temple’s vice-reģal government terminated in June 1783; but in the December ensuing, Mr Grenville accepted office at home, where he was appointed to succeed Mr Burke as paymaster of the army. From this appointment we may date the commencement of his active senatorial career; whilst his industry and acquirements, added to strong natural talents, soon rendered him of consequence in the House of Commons. He became an able coadjutor of Mr Pitt, his cousin-german, who was only a few months his senior. Firm at his post, inflexible in his determination, and retaining in debate the full possession of all his faculties, the youthful minister could scarcely have had a more zealous, active, efficient, and congenial colleague, or one better qualified to perform well the part assigned him, and to promote the views of government, whilst he advanced his own reputation. That he wanted the stately and commanding eloquence of his distinguished relative, may be admitted without any injury to his senatorial character; but, on the other hand, if he could not contend with Mr Pitt in oratorical power and dignity, he far excelled that minister in minuteness of knowledge and accuracy of detail. To Mr Grenville, indeed, the routine of office was almost hereditary: he seemed to have imbibed all the pecuhar ideas and methodical habits of his father, even though he was only a boy at the death of that persevering but not very fortunate or popular statesman.

At the general election of 1784, when Mr Pitt had recourse to the bold expedient of a dissolution, he was chosen one of the representatives of the county of Buckingham, after as vigorous and severe a contest as had ever [7:10:773]been known; and, in 1790, he was re-elected without opposition. Mr Grenville had scarcely completed his thirtieth year when he was appointed to preside over the House of Commons. This event took place on the 5th of January 1789, when he was elected Speaker, on the death of the Right Honourable Charles Wolsran Cornwall. But before four months had elapsed, he was called from the distinguished station to which he had thus been advanced, to fill the more responsible though not more arduous or honourable office of secretary of state for the home department. This was followed by his removal to the House of Lords in virtue of a patent of nobility, dated the 25th of November 1790; and thenceforward he became at once the representative and the echo latter ego) of Mr Pitt in the upper house. But in May 1791, he exchanged the seals of the home for those of the foreign department, which he retained until the resignation of Mr Pitt in February 1801. In the same year, he was also appointed ranger of St James’s and of Hyde Park, a post which he held till 1795, when he exchanged it for the lucrative office, or rather sinecure, of auditor of the exchequer. Lord Grenville filled the important office of foreign secretary with equal talent and industry during one of the most arduous periods of British history. For this situation, indeed, both his natural powers and his acquired knowledge eminently fitted him. He was skilled in the details of European politics; he had studied, though perhaps not very profoundly, the law of nations; he was well acquainted with modern languages; he could endure the fatigue of prolonged application; and the pursuit of pleasure, if at all indulged in, never interrupted his attention to the duties of his office. He loved business, as his father did, for its own sake; it was to him not so much an instrument of ambition, as a source of amusement; his active mind sought, because it required, continual employment; and neither the pleasures of literature nor the gaieties of society could seduce him from his post. In him there was nothing to dissipate his ideas or to divert his attention, and hence he was able to bring his mind to bear in all its force on the subject before him.

Of these, by far the most important, both in its immediate results and in its remoter consequences, was the state of the relations between Great Britain and France, and the fearful question of peace or war which at length arose out of the mighty convulsion which had taken place in the latter country. Sternly adverse to the principles of which the French Revolution seemed to be merely the practical expression, and apprehensive of the diffusion of the same spirit in this country which had sapped the foundations of the monarchy in the neighbouring kingdom, Lord Grenville appears to have been early prepared to oppose, not a defensive resistance, but an active and armed hostility, to the new order of kings which the Revolution had established in France. Regarding these changes with more perhaps of passion than of political sagacity, with the feelings of an alarmist rather than the cool dispassionate consideration of a statesman, and scared by the apparent magnitude of the danger, viewed as it was by him through an exaggerating medium, he conceived that the opinions which he dreaded could only be controlled or repressed by force, and he contributed his fidl share to plunge his country into a war which prudence might have avoided, and which no overruling necessity imposed. Hence, in his whole bearing and deportment towards the revolutionary government of France, he displayed a degree of haughtiness, and, in his communications with the French authorities, indulged in a severity of language, which, being marked with all the characters of public defiance and insult, could not fail to provoke hostility in return, and, in fact, accelerated, if they did not actually produce, the war which soon afterwards followed. In his correspondence with Μ. Chauvelin, who had been the French ambassador at the court of London previously to the death of Louis XVI., and who claimed to be still recognised in the same capacity, even after that unfortunate monarch had lost his life, Lord Grenville threw aside the ordinary language of diplomacy, and, in his letters, gave way to a bitterness of retort, unexampled perhaps in the intercourse of great nations, and thus afforded to Μ. de Talleyrand, then acting as the political Mentor of Chauvelin, an opportunity of which he did not fail to take advantage, for throwing upon the government of Britain the discredit of being the first to unsheath the sword in a war of opinion. Of the tone and temper of this extraordinary correspondence some idea may be formed from the following communication, ordering the immediate departure from this realm of the representative of the French government :—

“I am charged to notify to you, sir, that the character with which you had been invested at this court, and the functions of which have been so long suspended, being now entirely terminated by the fatal death of his most Christian majesty, you have no longer any public character here. The king can no longer, after such an event, permit your residence here. His majesty has thought fit to order that you should retire from this kingdom within the term of eight days; and I herewith transmit you a copy of the order which his majesty, in his privy council, has given to this effect. I send you a passport for yourself and your suite; and I shall not fail to take all the other necessary steps in order that you may return to France with all the attentions which are due to the character of minister plenipotentiary from his most Christian majesty, which you have exercised at this court.”

Notwithstanding this insulting dismission os its accredited representative, the French government immediately dispatched Μ. Maret, afterwards (under the imperial regime) Duke ofBassano, to endeavour to resume negotiations, and, if possible, to induce this country to remain neutral; but so determined was Lord Grenville not to allow the least opening towards an accommodation, or, in other words, to push matters to extremity, that he persisted in refusing permission to the French envoy to proceed beyond Dover, contrary, as was generally thought at the time, to the opinion of Mr Pitt. The precise amount of responsibility to his country and to posterity which he incurred, in thus cutting off the last chance of peace, and urging the nations of Europe into a sanguinary contest of twenty years’ duration, it is not for us to determine. He will be judged at the impartial tribunal of history, when the men of this age, who have been more or less influenced by its prevailing opinions, feelings, prejudices, or animosities, shall have been gathered to the countless generations that went before them, and when the verdict cannot be affected by any of those causes of error which insensibly influence and pervert contemporary judgments.

In 1795, Lord Grenville had an opportunity of displaying at once his loyalty and his talents as an orator, on the occasion of the attack which had been made upon the king, George III. whilst proceeding to the House of Lords to open the session of parliament. He brought in a bill to provide for the due protection and safety of the royal person; and as this measure gave rise to a protracted and stormy debate, it afforded his lordship ample scope for the most loyal exertion of his rhetorical powers. As the war party were then in the ascendant, Lord Grenville had the satisfaction of finding himself supported by a large majority; and therefore he followed up his success by bringing in another bill to suppress seditious societies, and prevent the formation of any such in future. Associations having it for their object to promote a reform in the representation of the people in parliament were then considered as seditious, and proscribed accordingly. Lord Grenville actively co-operated with Mr Pitt in carrying through the union [7:10:774]with Ireland, and also united with him in giving to the Irish Catholics those assurances which mainly contributed to the success of the measure, and on which the powerful body in question afterwards founded a direct claim to emancipation. But these two ministers soon discovered that they had promised more than they were able to perform. The king entertained religious scruples which it was found impossible to overcome; their colleagues, supported by all the prejudice and bigotry of the time, took the same view of the matter with his majesty; and the public mind was not yet prepared for that great act of national justice which the Irish Catholics had been led to expect at their hands. Besides, it had become indispensably necessary to make peace with revolutionary France, which had triumphed over the coalitions formed against her under the auspices of Mr Pitt, and had established republican institutions on the basis of victory. In these circumstances, the Pitt ministry resigned, and was succeeded by that of Mr Addington, afterwards Lord 8idmouth, which concluded the short-lived peace, or rather armistice, of Amiens. But as the new administration rested on no solid foundation, and moreover occupied an anomalous position, application was soon afterwards made to Mr Pitt to join the parties then in power. He refused to accede to this proposal, however, unless Lord Grenville were included in the arrangement; and as this condition was rejected, the negotiation proved fruitless. Meanwhile, the incapacity and weakness of the Addington administration became every day more-apparent; and as the king entertained the strongest disinclination towards Mτ Fox and his party, no long time elapsed before Mr Pitt found himself obliged to yield to the urgent necessities of the state, and resume office. In May 1804, he again took his seat as first lord of the treasury', but without having stipulated for Catholic emancipation, to which he was understood to have been distinctly pledged. Lord Grenville and Mr Windham accordingly refused to join him; and from this time until Mr Pitt’s death, his lordship took a prominent part in the ranks of opposition.

On the demise of Mr Pitt was formed that short-lived administration which, though intended to combine “all the talents,” and thereby to unite all the means of good government, has been ridiculed by some political writers as anomalous, visionary, impracticable, and stigmatized by others as monstrous and disgraceful. Of this ministry Lord Grenville, who had joined the Whigs in 1804, was placed at the head; whilst Mr Fox, whose thoughts were bent on endeavouring, if possible, to bring about a peace, reserved to himself the situation of foreign secretary, as best suited to the pacific views with which he was animated. The junction of these eminent statesmen in 1804, and afterwards in office, seems to have been dictated by their agreement on some great questions, and their disposition to sacrifice lesser differences of opinion, and all personal considerations, to the important object of advancing those grand principles in which they coincided. But still there were various differences of principle amongst the members of this administration; for not only were Whig and Tory, alarmist and reformer, to coalesce, but during the war, and for the sake of carrying it on towards a better issue, they who were the authors of it were united with its constant and sturdy opponents. Yet some of the wisest men of the time approved of the union, because lesser things should yield to greater; and upon one or two great questions there was a fortunate concurrence of opinion. But there were others who thought differently, and by them its failure was of course ascribed to the heterogeneous and discordant elements included in the attempted union. An important obstacle to its duration, however, was created by the religious prejudices of the monarch, directly opposed as they were to the measure of relief which Lord Grenville considered himself as pledged to bring forward; and, indepen dently of other causes, a party equally zealous with the sovereign in their resistance to the Catholic claims proved too powerful for the continuance in office of a ministry resolved at all hazards to attempt the removal of the disabilities affecting persons of the Roman Catholic persuasion both in Great Britain and in Ireland. The Grenville administration was, accordingly, dismissed, after having been in office only during the short period of thirteen months. We may add here, that Lord Grenville suffered not a little in his popularity by obtaining an act of parliament to enable him to hold, along with the premiership, the profitable but nearly sinecure office of auditor of the exchequer, which had been conferred on him by his kinsman Mr Pitt in 1795, and which he retained until the time of his death.

After the breaking up of this administration, Lord Grenville did not accept of any prominent office in the state. In 1812, when the resignation of Lord Castlereagh and Mr Canning left Lord Liverpool the only secretary of state, performing the business of the three departments, official letters were addressed to Earl Grey and to his lordship, proposing the immediate formation of a combined administration; but nothing came of this advance towards a coalition of parties. Earl Grey and Lord Grenville were both in the country when these communications reached them. The former at once declined all connection with Mr Percival and Lord Liverpool, and therefore did not proceed to town. The latter, who was in Cornwall, set out for London immediately on receipt of the communication which had been addressed to him; but the day after his arrival he declined the proposed alliance, on the ground of his inability to view it in any other light than that of a dereliction of principle. This appears to have been the last tender of office made to his lordship. He continued in opposition to the government during the war; but upon the final defeat of the French in 1814, he congratulated the country on the prospect of peace, and, in the following year, supported ministers in their resolution to depose, if not to outlaw, Napoleon. From this time he ceased to take so prominent a part as he had previously done in parliamentary discussions; but, on important occasions, he came forth witty all his wonted vigour, and sometimes, we regret to add, threw the whole weight of his talents and authority into the scale in favour of principles which could scarcely have been expected to receive his countenance and support. In a speech which he delivered, in the House of Lords, upon the 30th November 1819, on the Marquis of Lansdowne’s motion for an inquiry into the state of the country, and more particularly into the distress and discontents of the manufacturing districts, he came forth in the character of an alarmist, and, mistaking the discontent arising from severe suffering for the indication of a revolutionary spirit, proposed* as the only fitting remedy for the evil an increased restraint on the liberties of the people. The language employed by Lord Grenville on this occasion is no doubt expressive of sincere conviction; but the natural strength of his understanding was unhappily paralysed by panic, and the arguments of the speech are not grounded on facts, but on what he is pleased to term “universal notoriety,” whilst the documents produced contradict most of his positions. The ministry of the day, however, were fortunate in obtaining the sanction and co-operation of a statesman like Lord Grenville; and, as his speech on Lord Lansdowne’s motion was printed and extensively circulated, they were thereby enabled to reap the full benefit of his support.

Towards the close of the year 1809 Lord Grenville was chosen as chancellor of the university of Oxford. His predecessor, the Duke of Portland, having died on the 30th of October in that year, the candidates who appeared in the field, besides his lordship, were the Duke of [7:10:775]Beaufort and Lord Eldon. The election commenced on the morning of the 13th December; and on the evening of the 14th, when it closed, the numbers declared were, for Lord Grenville 406, for Lord Eldon 303, and for the Duke of Beaufort 238, giving a majority for Lord Grenville of 103. The number of persons entitled to vote amounted to 1282, of whom 1037 polled on this occasion. Some days after his election, his lordship received by diploma the honorary degree of doctor of civil law; and his installation as chancellor took place on the 3d of January 1810.

Lord Grenville was a man of very considerable attainments both in literature and in political science. In 1804 he edited the letters which had been written by the first Earl of Chatham to his nephew, Thomas Pitt, afterwards Lord Camelford, when at Cambridge. He enriched an edition of Homer, privately printed, with valuable annotations; he translated into Latin several pieces from the Greek, the English, and the Italian, which were circulated amongst his friends under the title of Nugtε Metricae ; and, in a pamphlet, he defended his alma mater against the charge of having expelled from her learned precincts the illustrious author of the Essay on Human Understanding. Besides several speeches and other lesser compositions, Lord Grenville also published, 1. A New Plan of Finance, as presented to Parliament, with the Tables, 1806; 2. A Letter to the Earl of Fingal, 1810; 3. On the supposed direct Advantages of the Sinking Fund, 1828. This last publication, forming the first part of a general Essay on the Sinking Fund, which his lordship, however, did not afterwards complete, is in several respects a remarkable production, and in none more than in this, that it contains a manly and statesmanlike avowal of a change of views, on the part of the author, regarding the important subject of which it treats. In the preface, after stating that the portion submitted to the public contains only one part of the essay which had been intended for publication, and that severe illness had stopped the progress and prevented the completion of his design, his lordship goes on to say: “Under these circumstances, it has not been without much hesitation that I have determined to lay before the public this portion of a work in all respects so very imperfect. I should certainly not have done so had I consulted only the feelings of an author. But my original purpose was of a far higher order. It was directed to the hope of contributing what might be practically useful in a discussion of very urgent interest, and great permanent importance to our country

It is, however, just that I should here distinctly avow, that I have availed myself, without reserve, of the lights which have been thrown upon this subject by many writers of the present age, to whose praise nothing could be added by my enumeration of them. And I am particularly bound to acknowledge, that it was by the well-known treatise of Dr Hamilton that my thoughts on this matter were, I believe, first directed into their present channel. But I am not aware that the question has ever yet been placed before the public exactly in the same point of view in which I have here considered it; and with respect to the distinguished writer whom I have named, there are not a few of the topics on which I have most dwelt, and some others which I have not had occasion particularly to notice, respecting which his opinions, if I rightly apprehend them, differ, 1 regret to say it, very much from mine.” He adds, that, throughout the inquiry, he has not scrupled to question many long-established and deeply-rooted prepossessions; that truth alone is his object; and that without the free examination of previously received opinion, no branch of human knowledge can ever be advanced. In short, his lordship surrenders as unfounded and fallacious the principle upon which the act of 1786, establishing the sinking fund, was established; and, though he is anxious to guard himself against any imputation of injustice towards the authors of that measure, he nevertheless shows that the views by which they were guided are erroneous, that the only real sinking fund is that which is supported by a surplus revenue, that the effective operations of Mr Pitt’s fund were supported only by surplus taxation, that the reductions of debt thus effected are mere exchanges of equivalents, and that these results were in no degree varied by the application of compound interest to the operations of this fund.

Although Lord Grenville was the contemporary of some of the greatest men that have ever adorned this country, yet his talents were not eclipsed in their presence. As a statesman he was remarkable for boldness and perseverance, two qualities which are rarely united; and, though on some subjects he entertained narrow or prejudiced notions, on others he displayed enlarged conceptions combined with sound practical views. As a speaker, he was perhaps one of the most powerful debaters that ever appeared in the House of Lords. There was a commanding energy in his delivery, as well as in his style, which never failed to arrest the attention, and often succeeded in gaining the admiration, even of those who differed from him in opinion. It has been said of him that no orator, perhaps, ever produced so strong an impression by his manner during the first ten minutes of his speech; but the want of variety was a defect which, after a time, began to be perceived, and which in the course of a long address seldom failed to impress itself rather painfully on his hearers. As he always took care to prepare himself on every subject on which he spoke, his speeches were full of matter, and, if deficient in flexibility, he never wanted information. He possessed not the animation, the acuteness, and the indignant sarcasm of Lord Grey; but during a long period he was considered as second only to that noble person as an effective speaker in the Upper House; and, after the year 1804, they were associated as the heads of the opposition, with whom negotiations were carried on during several emergencies, when it became either necessary or politic to make overtures with a view to the formation of a new ministry.

On withdrawing from his parliamentary duties, Lord Grenville spent the evening of a long and active life at his seat of Dropmore, in Buckinghamshire, where he solaced his retirement with the pursuits of elegant literature, and died on the 12th of January 1834, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. Lord Grenville married, on the 18th of July 1792, the Honourable Anne Pitt, only daughter of Thomas, the first Lord Gamelford, and sister and sole heiress of the second lord, who was killed in a duel with Mr Best in 1804; but as he left no issue, the barony of Grenville has in consequence become extinct.^[1. It has often been said that the secret of the authorship of Juni*ι, which is supposed to have been deposited in the shelves of the library at stowe, would be disclosed after the death of Lord Grenville, when, as was alleged, there would no longer be any reason for withholding the revelation from the world; and it has further been presumed, that to his nephew, Lord Nugent, would probably be confided the agreeable task of satisfying the public curiosity on this much-agitated question. AV r e understand from good authority, however, that there is no foundation for this surmise, and that the authorship of the celebrated letters bearing the signature of Juniũa is likely to remain as great a mystery as ever. ] (a.)