try Mouse," written in ridicule of Dryden's Hind and Panther. There is some doubt as to the precise facts and dates of Montague's entrance into the political arena, and it is certain that, even after he had acquired celebrity and the patronage of Lord Dorset, his views were fixed on the church, as affording a settled income. We find him first distinctly emerging in politics as member for Malden in the convention parliament, when, with the whig zeal which never forsook him, he voted for the declaration that James had abdicated, and that the throne was vacant. He had purchased a clerkship of the council when his earliest patron, Lord Dorset, who became William's lord chamberlain, introduced him to the king; his own talents did the rest. Re-elected member for Maiden, in William's first parliament, he took a leading part in the keen discussion of 1692, on the bill for regulating trials in cases of high treason, which produced an important controversy between the upper and lower houses of parliament. So great was the impression which he made, that he was included in the ministerial rearrangements of the same year; and to the general satisfaction of the whigs, who began to look upon him as only second to Somers, he was appointed a commissioner of the treasury. Very soon after the commencement of his political career, be it noted, he had abandoned the cultivation of poetry and literature, although he remained to the last a patron of men of letters; and he whose first fame was earned by a parody on Dryden, is now chiefly remembered as a financier, as the author of the national debt, of the bank of England, and of exchequer bills. It was towards the close of the year in which he was appointed a commissioner of the treasury, that Montague produced the germ of the greatest debt ever known. William's wars required money; but there was a deficit in the revenue, and taxation seemed to have reached its utmost limit. Yet capital was plentiful out of proportion to the means for readily investing it, and bubble companies reaped the benefits which the sagacious genius of Montague saw might accrue to the country by the creation of a national debt. It was on the 15th of December, 1672, that in committee of ways and means, with Somers in the chair, Montague proposed to the house of commons to raise a million sterling by way of loan. "The details of the scheme," says Lord Macaulay, "were much discussed and modified, but its principle appears to have been popular with all parties. The moneyed men were glad to have a good opportunity of investing what they had hoarded. The landed men, hard pressed by the load of taxation, were ready to consent to anything for the sake of ease. No member ventured to divide the house," and the national debt was begun. Montague's next great financial stroke was made in the spring of 1694. Again money was wanting to supply the insatiable cravings of war. It was now that he resolved to adopt the scheme for the creation of a national bank, laid before the government three years previously by that unwearied Scotch projector, William Paterson. It was Montague who carried through the house of commons the bill for a loan of £1,200,000, the subscribers to which were to be incorporated by the name of "the governor and company of the bank of England." After considerable opposition in the house of lords, and a storm of controversy out of doors, the bill received the royal assent. The plan was immediately successful, and Montague was rewarded with the chancellorship of the exchequer. His next great achievement was the recoinage of 1695, rendered necessary at a time when the currency was so depreciated by clipping and other dishonest manipulations, that industry was menaced with suspension. Montague, co-operating with Somers, called to his aid Locke and Newton, and his own resolute will. He had to combat, on the one hand, those who wished the coinage to remain as it was till the peace, and on the other the advocates of the little shilling delusion. To meet the expense of the recoinage, instead of resuscitating the old obnoxious tax of hearth-money, which pressed heavily on the poor and required for its settlement domiciliary visits, he proposed to lay a tax on windows which could be counted from the outside, and from which the inhabitants of cottages should be exempted—the first appearance of the window-tax in our fiscal history. The measure was passed; but in the interval between the last day on which the clipped money was receivable in payment of taxes and the issue of the new coin, a great pressure was felt, and much distress was caused by the absence of a circulating medium in sufficient quantities. Here again the ingenuity of Montague was triumphant. It was to him that was due the provision empowering the government to issue negotiable paper, bearing interest daily, and ranging in amount from five to a hundred pounds; the first form of exchequer bills. The immediate relief given was great, and Montague procuring for Isaac Newton the vacant appointment of the wardenship of the mint, the weekly issue of the new coin was doubled by the discoverer of gravitation, and national prosperity returned. The popularity of Montague and his influence in parliament and with the cabinet culminated, and on the resignation of Godolphin in 1677, he was appointed first lord of the treasury. He did not long enjoy his elevation. People grew tired of his success; his own arrogance and display helped to rob him of popularity; and resigning his higher offices, he bestowed on himself the auditorship of the exchequer. Harley insisted on his withdrawal from the house of commons, which he exchanged for the lords, with the title of Baron Halifax. Two impeachments followed the establishment of tory ascendancy. In one for malversation and other offences, at the instance of the house of commons of 1701, he was associated with Somers; but the house of lords saved him from the malice of the lower house then, and again in 1703, when he was accused by the house of commons of breach of trust. During the reign of Queen Anne he remained out of office, but took an active part in the debates of the house of lords, advocating and promoting the union with Scotland, supporting Marlborough and the cause of the Hanoverian succession. On the death of Queen Anne, so notable and consistent a whig was naturally appointed one of the council of regency, and on the arrival of George I. he was created an earl, and made once more first lord of the treasury. Again his occupancy of the high post was of brief duration. He enjoyed it little more than nine months, dying suddenly on the 19th of May 1715. Interesting notices of him will be found in the History of England by Lord Macaulay, who, while warmly admiring his talents and munificence, blames his later arrogance and vanity. He has been panegyrized by Addison, who was buried beside his patron in Westminster abbey. Steele dedicated to him the fourth volume of the Spectator and the second of the Tatler, and in the preface to the Iliad he is lauded by Pope, although lashed as "full-blown Bufo" in the prologue to the Satires. His "Miscellanies," with memoirs of his life, were published in 1716. The biography of him in Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets is little more than an abridgment (with a slight infusion of ill-nature) of the elaborate memoir in the Biographia Britannica. In our own sketch of the earlier portion of his political career, we have omitted, we may add, two anecdotes of very doubtful authenticity.—F. E.
HALIFAX, George Savile, Marquis of, the leading English statesman of the period of the Revolution, was the son of Sir William Savile, a Yorkshire baronet of old family, and was born about 1630. In the first years of Charles II.'s reign, he distinguished himself by his zeal in the ranks of opposition, which of course brought him into disfavour with the court; but his calm and subtle intellect, his oratory, and his wit, made him the delight of the house of peers, to which he had been elevated as Viscount Halifax after the restoration. It is in the political crisis consequent on the frenzy of the Popish Plot, that Halifax first distinctly emerges. With parliament and the nation united against him, Charles II. had recourse to Sir William Temple, and in the new ministry, formed on rather a fantastic plan by the advice of that experienced statesman, Halifax was included. It was his favourite theory that a trimmer, instead of being the most contemptible, was the most sensible and sagacious of politicians—a thesis expounded with great ingenuity in the celebrated character of a trimmer, in the authorship of which, although the piece passed for a time as the work of his relative. Sir William Coventry, Lord Macaulay believed Halifax to have had a share. He discerned so clearly the wrong as well as the right in the creed of each political party, that he could serve none with enthusiasm, and his dislike of exaggeration and fanaticism generally led him to support the side weaker for the moment, but which he saw or suspected would in the long run be the stronger. When he was admitted into the councils' of Charles, the fascination of his manner made him a favourite. His first prominent action was a characteristic one. Although he owed office to the anti-popish temper of the nation, he opposed with all his might and main, in the stormy parliament of 1679, the famous exclusion bill which was to deprive the duke of York, afterwards James II., of his hereditary right to the throne. He was deserted by the chief of his
