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    Sir , Lyons * August 1 < 3 , 1819-t I ^ HB following portraits of two of JL our distinguished senators are drawn by the hand of a master . J . B .

    Impetuous impulses ; a fervent love and absolute need of strong sensations ; an ardent but generoUs ambition ; a patriotism too enlightened to exclude philanthropy ; a deep and genuine sensibility ; fidelity in friendship ; a constancy in affection , too

    firm to be shaken by the hates or the interests of party ; an artlessness delightfully blended with intellectual superiority ; a spirit keen and discerning , tempered with goodness , even when sharpened by irony , and then directed only against dangerous opinions , or used to second the

    movements of a noble imagination ; an attractive eloquence , though often overflowing and precipitous , as if burthened with superabundant riches ; a beautiful instinct to discern whatever interested the cause of liberty ; a taste for every thing that is elegant in art or lovely in nature ; a confidence in the substantial excellence of the

    human character , till misconduct justified suspicion ; such were the qualities which have ranked Mr . Fox among the greatest and the best of those men of whom England has a right to be proud .

    The character of Mr . Pitt was altogether different . His oratory was powerful ; his diction pure and often exalted ; his ambition ( though cairn ) was unbounded : in this all his passions were concentrated . No affection , no taste , no fondness for the arts , for

    pleasure , for woman , ever distracted his attention . It is said he sometimes abandoned himself to vulgar enjoyments ; but he finished his career without knowing even the charm of love . If in his youth he sometimes gave himself up , with those he called his friends , to the delirium and

    distraction of wine , he was proud even in his excesses . They established no union between him and his companions , for no sympathy existed between his soul and them . Ere he

    reached the summit of influence ,. he professed , as most ( of the ) candidates for power have done , the principles of freedom ; but if his speeches on this subject ( they are but few , for he was minister from the age of twenty-three ) ,

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    be compared with those he consecrated to the maintenance and extension of the kingly authority , it will be seen Low little friendly the defence of thfc

    people was to the temper of his mind , or the display of his powers . These shone most brightly forth when he declaimed against the popular cause . He breathed the atmosphere of authority—Mr . Fox lived in that of liberty .

    I have spoken of the constancy of Mr . Fox in his affections : he wept in the presence of the House of Com * mons at the time of bis rupture with Mr . Burke . I know not if Mr . Pitt

    ever shed a tear ; but certainly he never shed one over broken friend ships . Fox had many a friend , Pitt had only associates , or rather dependants .

    A minister , with more of general and less of national patriotism than Mr . Pitt , would have hailed the great movement in France in 1789 > and have directed it to the benefit of humanity . He welcomed it as the crisis which promised the downfall of a rival nation—he sought to augment the evil instead of seconding the goodhe succeeded in plunging France into a horrid chaos ; but Providence is equitable , France has sprung forth improved and strengthened by the trial , and England I

    Had Mr . Fox been in power , how different might have been the results ! He would have cherished the mutual affection which had begun to develop itself between the two nations ; he would have offered a noble and generous alliance to agitated France ,

    afflicted then by hunger , by internal divisions' and external intrigues , instead of exciting the sovereigns of Europe to raise their standard against a nation that wished to respect the independence of their neighbours , and

    only required that theirs should be respected ;—he would have told the first coalition how dangerous it was to irritate twenty-five millions of men , enthusiasts for liberty ; he might have saved Louis and the victims who preceded and followed him . BENJAMIN CONSTANT .

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    538 Characters of Fox and Pitt , by M . Constant ,

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    Sir , 1 AM a convert , though not of very recent date , to the doctrines of Unitarianism : fully convinced that they are uniformly and plainly deli-

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1819, page 538, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1776/page/14/