e portion of our empire,
at least a useful and valuable part of England's greatness among the
nations. Queen Elizabeth's Minister, Lord Burleigh, in the presence of
the 'Irish difficulty' in his day, wished Ireland at the bottom of
the sea, and doubtless many at the present time wish the same; but Fox
endeavoured to grapple with it manfully and honestly, and it was not his
fault that he did not settle it. The vices of Fox were those of the age
in which he lived; had he been reserved for the present epoch, what a
different biography should we have to write of him! What a helmsman he
might be at the present time, when the ship of Old England is at sea and
in peril!

It appears from a letter addressed by Lord Carlisle to Lady Holland
(Fox's mother) in 1773, that he had become security for Fox to the
amount of fifteen or sixteen thousand pounds; and a letter to Selwyn
in 1777, puts the ruinous character of their gaming transactions in
the strongest light. Lord Ilchester (Fox's cousin) had lost thirteen
thousand pounds at one sitting to Lord Carlisle, who offered to take
three thousand pounds down. Nothing was paid. But ten years afterwards,
when Lord Carlisle pressed for his money, he complained that an attempt
was made to construe the offer into a _remission_ of the ten thousand
pounds:--'The only way, in honour, that Lord Ilchester could have
accepted my offer, would have been by taking some steps to pay the
L3000. I remained in a state of uncertainty, I think, for nearly three
years; but his taking no notice of it during that time, convinced me
that he had no intention of availing himself of it. Charles Fox was also
at a much earlier period clear that he never meant to accept it. There
is also great injustice in the behaviour of the family in passing by the
instantaneous payment of, I believe, five thousand pounds, to Charles,
won at the same sitting, without any observations. _At one period of the
play I remember there was a balance in favour of one of these gentlemen
(but which I protest I do not remember) of about fifty thousand_.'

At the time in question Fox was hardly eighteen. The following letter
from Lord Carlisle, written in 1771, contains highly interesting
information respecting the youthful habits and already vast intellectual
pre-eminence of this memorable statesman:--'It gives me great pain to
hear that Charles begins to be unreasonably impatient at losing. I fear
it is the prologue to much fretfulness of