But, with regard to those whom I have offended, I am of opinion that, if I had acted a borrowed part, I should have avoided their censure:  the heat that offended them was the ardor of conviction, and that zeal for the service of my country which neither hope nor fear shall influence me to suppress.  I will not sit unconcerned while my liberty is invaded, nor look in silence upon public robbery.  I will exert my endeavors, at whatever hazard, to repel the aggressor, and drag the thief to justice, whoever may protect him in his villainies, and whoever may partake of his plunder.

XXXIII.  CHARACTER OF MR. PITT. (154)

Henry Grattan, 1750-1820, an Irish orator and statesman, was born at Dublin, and graduated from Trinity College, in his native city.  By his admiration of Mr. Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, he was led to turn his attention to oratory.  In personal appearance, he was unprepossessing; but his private character was without a blemish. ###

The secretary stood alone.  Modern degeneracy had not reached him.  Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity.  His august mind overawed majesty itself.  No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, no idle contest for ministerial victories, sank him to the vulgar level of the great; but overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was fame.

Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous.  France sunk beneath him.  With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England.  The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to effect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity.  Wonderful were the means by which those schemes were accomplished; always seasonable, always adequate, the suggestion of an understanding animated by ardor and enlightened by prophecy.

The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent, were unknown to him.  No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness, reached him; but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and decide.  A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the name of Pitt, through all classes of venality.  Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political his only talents.  His eloquence was an era in the senate; peculiar and spontaneous; familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instructive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres.  He did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation, nor was he ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of the eye, were felt, but could not be followed.