the great champion
of the treasury bench to the field, he was driven from it with wounds
which, if they did not teach him a sense of his weakness, at least
taught him a sense of his danger. Mr Grey's credit, says Addington in a
letter, "as a man of discretion and temper, remains to be established.
His reputation for abilities has not increased within the last two
months, while he has in all respects enhanced that of the person (Pitt)
to whom he ventured to oppose himself."

In alluding to the intercourse of Addington with Wilberforce, the
biographer, we think very justly, complains of the sillinesses which
have transpired in the latter's diary. Addington took higher views on
ecclesiastical subjects; and was less _rapid_ in his movements for the
abolition of the slave-trade; being of opinion that precipitate measures
would only increase the traffic to an enormous extent, deprive England
of all power of restraining the frightful atrocities of the middle
passage; and, by throwing the whole trade into the hands of foreigners,
leave it open to all the reckless abominations of mankind.

The result was, unfortunately, all that rational men anticipated. The
trade carried on by the foreigner has been tripled, or even quadrupled;
the horrors of the middle passage are without restraint; and the
sufferings of the victims, on their march to the coast, by fatigue, want
of food, and the cruelty of their treatment, are estimated to destroy
nearly twice the number of those who ever cross the Atlantic. The very
powers with whom we have already made treaties for the purpose of
extinguishing this infernal traffic, are deepest in its commerce; and
its extinction now seems hopeless, except through some of those
tremendous visitations, by which Providence scourges crimes which have
grown too large for the jurisdiction of man.

Lord Sidmouth, then far advanced in life, when he saw those remarks in
the diary, naturally felt offended, but he bore the offence with
dignity, merely saying, as he closed the volume, "Well, Wilberforce does
not speak of me as he spoke to me, I am sorry to say." Of Wilberforce,
no one can desire to doubt the general honesty; but that he was
singularly trifling and inconstant, was evidently the opinion of his
contemporaries in the House. The following anecdote is given from the
author's notes on this point. "Lord Sidmouth told us, that one morning,
at a cabinet meeting, after an important debate in the House of Common