in everything by the violent ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings.  For failings he had undoubtedly,—­many of us remember them; we are this day considering the effect of them.  But he had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause,—­to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame:  a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.  He worshipped that goddess, wheresoever she appeared; but he paid his particular devotions to her in her favorite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House of Commons.  Besides the characters of the individuals that compose our body, it is impossible, Mr. Speaker, not to observe that this House has a collective character of its own.  That character, too, however imperfect, is not unamiable.  Like all great public collections of men, you possess a marked love of virtue and an abhorrence of vice.  But among vices there is none which the House abhors in the same degree with obstinacy.  Obstinacy, Sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief.  It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues, constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness, are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence; and, in their excess, all these virtues very easily fall into it.  He who paid such a punctilious attention to all your feelings certainly took care not to shock them by that vice which is the most disgustful to you.

That fear of displeasing those who ought most to be pleased betrayed him sometimes into the other extreme.  He had voted, and, in the year 1765, had been an advocate for the Stamp Act.  Things and the disposition of men’s minds were changed.  In short, the Stamp Act began to be no favorite in this House.  He therefore attended at the private meeting in which the resolutions moved by a right honorable gentleman were settled:  resolutions leading to the repeal.  The next day he voted for that repeal; and he would have spoken for it, too, if an illness (not, as was then given out, a political, but, to my knowledge, a very real illness) had not prevented it.

The very next session, as the fashion of this world passeth away, the repeal began to be in as bad an odor in this House as the Stamp Act had been in the session before.  To conform to the temper which began to prevail, and to prevail mostly amongst those most in power, he declared, very early in the winter, that a revenue must be had out of America.  Instantly he was tied down to his engagements by some, who had no objection to such experiments, when made at the cost of persons for whom they had no particular regard.  The whole body of courtiers drove him onward.  They always talked as if the king stood in a sort of humiliated state, until something of the kind should be done.