CHARLES JAMES FOX AND HIS TIMES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3006, 12 February 1881, Page 3

CHARLES JAMES FOX AND HIS TIMES.

In August, 1768, Fox waited upon Voltaire at his villa by the lake of Geneva. The old man was very gracious, treated his guest to ohocolate, and did him the easy favor of pointing out some of his own writings which had a tendency to counteract the influence yf religious prejudice." "Voila," said the Patriarch, " dcs livres dont il faut se munir." Charles had just then very little attention to spare for theological controversy, even in the enticing guise which ib assumes in the "Ingenu" and the "Philosophical Dictionary." With his head full of politics, he proceeding homewards to commence the business of his life. The world in which he round himself on his arrival in England differed so essentially from our own that it would be a gross injustice to the memory of Fox if I were to plunge into the narrative of his actions without previously describing, to the best of my power, the society in which he moved, the moral atmosphere which he breathed, and the temptations by which he was assailed. Never was there a man whose faults were so largely those of his time ; ■while his eminent merits, and enormous services to the country, were so peculiarly his own. When we compare the state of public life, as he entered it, and as he left it; and when we reflect how preponderating a Bbare he cheerfully bore in the gigantic labours and sacrifices by which a change for the better: was gradually and painfully secured, we shall confess that, besides his ■unquestioned title to an affection which, after the lapse of three-quarters of a cen.tury, is still rather personal than historical, he has a claim to our unstinted gratitude, and to no scanty measure of esteem . . Wha.fr was peculiar to the period when Charles Fox took his seat in Parliament and

hi 9 place in society consisted in the phonomeuon (for to oui- ideas it is nothing else), that men of ago and standing, of strong mental powers ancl refined cultivation, lived openly, shamelessly, and habitually, in the face of all England, as no one who had any care for his reputation would now live during a single fortnight of the year at Monaco. As a sequel to such home teaching as Lord Holland was qualified to impart, the young fellow, on his entrance into the great world, was called upon to shape his life according to the models that the public opinion of the day held up for hi 3 imitation ; and the examples which he saw around him would have tempted cooler blood than his, and turned even a moro tranquil brain. The Minister who guided the State, whom tho King delighted to honor, who had the charge of public decency and order, who named the fathers of the Church, whose duty it was (to use the words of their monarch) "to prevent any alterations in so essential a part of tho Constitution as everything that relates to religion," were conspicuous for impudent vice, for daily dissipation, for pranks which would have been regarded as childish and unbecoming by the cornets of a crack cavalry regiment in tbe worst days of military licence.—"Trevel yan's Life of Fox."