APPENDIX TO CHRONICLE. 



391 



then presided. On this arrange- 

 ment Mr. Windham was appointed 

 secretary at war, with a seat in 

 the cabinet, an honourabledistinc- 

 tion which had never before been 

 annexed to that office. This sta- 

 tion he continued to fill with the 

 highest reputation from that time 

 (1794) till 1801, when he, lord 

 Spencer, lord Grenviile, and Mr. 

 Pitt, resigned their offices ; and 

 shortly afterwards Mr. Addington 

 (now lord viscount Sidmoutii) 

 was appointed chancellor of the 

 exchequer and first lord of the 

 treasury. On the preliminaries of 

 peace with France being acceded 

 to by that statesman and his coad- 

 jutors, in 1801, Mr. Windham 

 made his celebrated speech in 

 parliament, which was afterwards 

 (April, 1802) published, withan ap- 

 pendix, containing a character of 

 the present usurper of the French 

 throne, which will transmit to pos- 

 terity the principal flagitious pas- 

 sages of his life up to that period, 

 in the most lively colours. On 

 Mr. Addington being driven from 

 the helm, in 1805, principally by 

 the battery of Mr. Windham's 

 eloquence, a new administration 

 was again formed by Mr. Pitt, 

 which was dissolved by his death, 

 in 1806; and shortly afterwards, 

 on lord Grenville's accepting the 

 office of first lord of the treasur)', 

 Mr. Windham was appointed 

 secretary of state for the war 

 department, which he held till 

 his majesty in the following year, 

 thought fit to constitute a new 

 administration. Duringthis period 

 he carried into a law his bill for 

 the limited service of those who 

 enlist in our regular army ; a 

 measure which will ever endear 

 his name to the English soldiery. 

 The genius and talents of this 

 illustrious statesman are well 



known and universally acknow- 

 ledged. He was unquestionably 

 the most distinguished man of the 

 present time, and not inferior, in 

 many respects, to the most ad- 

 mired characters of the age that 

 is just gone b)\ He had been 

 in his earlier years a very diligent 

 student, and was an excellent 

 Greek and Latin scholar. In his 

 latter years, like Burke and John- 

 son, he was an excursive reader, 

 but gathered a great variety of 

 knowledge from different books, 

 and from occasionally mixing, like 

 them, with very various classes and 

 descriptions of men. His memory 

 was most tenacious. In his par- 

 liamentary speeches his principal 

 object always was, to convince 

 the understanding by irrefragable 

 argument, which he at the same 

 time enlivened by a profusion of 

 imagery, drawn sometimes from 

 the most abstruse parts of science, 

 but oftener from the most familiar 

 objects of common life. But 

 what gave a peculiar lustre to 

 whatever he urged, was his known 

 and uniform integrity, and a firm 

 conviction in the breasts of his 

 hearers, that he always uttered 

 the genuine and disinterested 

 sentiments of hisheart. His stile, 

 both in writing and speaking, 

 was always simple, and he was ex- 

 tremely fond of idiomatic phrases, 

 which he thought greatly contri- 

 buted to preserve the purity of our 

 language. He surveyed every sub- 

 ject of importance with a philoso- 

 phic eye, and was thence enabled 

 to discover and detect latent mis- 

 chief, concealed under the plausi- 

 ble appearance of public advan- 

 tage. Hence all the clamourers 

 for undefined and imagmary li- 

 berty, and all those who meditate 

 the subversion of tlie constitution, 

 under the pretext of reform, 



