power and authority in the nation, at the time he started in the career of life; Charles his grandfather having married the sister of the great Duke of Newcastle, and soon after her death, paid his addresses, and was united to the sister of Sir Robert Walpole, first Earl of Orford, the celebrated prime minister of England.

Lord Townshend, at an early period, betook himself to the profession of arms, and there are few men of the present day who have seen a greater variety of service. Connected, as we have already remarked, with the first whig families in the kingdom, and being a youth of talents and enterprize, there is but little wonder that his military career should be at once brilliant and rapid.

It was previously and wisely determined,however,that he should enjoy the advantages resulting from a good education: he and his brother Charles* were accord

ingly

*The following is the description of this extraordinary man by Mr. Burke:

"In truth he was the delight and ornament of this house, and the charm of every private society which he honoured with his presence. Perhaps there never arose in this or any other country, a man of more pointed and finished wit; and where his passions were not concerned, of a more refined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment. If he had not had so great a share as some have had who flourished formerly, of knowledge long treasured up, he knew better by far than any other man I ever was acquainted with, how to bring together, within a short time, all that was necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate, that side of the question he supported. He stated his matter skilfully and powerfully; he

particularly

ingly placed under the tuition of Mr. Lowe, formerly master of Lichfield school, a seminary which has re

particularly excelled in a most luminous explanation and display of his subject; his stile of argument was neither trite nor vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse; he hit the house just between wind and water; and not being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in question, was never more tedious or more earnest than the pre-conceived opinions and present temper of his hearers required, to whom he was always in perfect unison; he conformed exactly to the temper of the house, and seemed to guide, because he was always sure to follow it.

"There are many young members, such of late has been the rapid succession of public men, who never saw that prodigy, Charles Townshend, nor, of course, know what a ferment he was able to excite in every thing by the violent ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings, for failings he undoubtedly had: many of us remember them. But he had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion, a passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls. He worshipped that goddess wheresoever she appeared, but he paid his particular devotions to her in her favourite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House of Commons. He was truly the child of the house; he never did, thought, or said any thing but with a view to it; he every day adapted himself to your disposition, and adjusted himself before it as at a looking glass.

He had observed, indeed it did not escape him, that several persons, infinitely his inferiors in all respects, had formerly rendered themselves considerable in this house by one method alone. They were a race of men, who, when they rose in their place, no man living could divine, from any known adherence to parties, to opinions, or to principles-from any order or system in their politics, or from any sequel or connection in their ideas, what part they were going to take in any debate. It is astonishing how much this uncertainty, especially at critical times, called the attention of all parties on such men all eyes were fixed on them, all ears open to hear them, each party gaped and looked alternately

for

ceived no little additional celebrity, by affording the rudiments of his education to Dr. Samuel Johnson. There is every reason to suppose that Mr. Lowe discharged his duty as tutor to the younger branches of this noble family with equal fidelity and success; and there can be no doubt that he was indebted in return to their gratitude for the honourable asylum in which he afterwards spent the remainder of his days as Canon of Windsor.

Lord Townshend early in life entered into the guards, having obtained a commission immediately on finishing his education, and at a period when he did not exceed eighteen years of age. Great Britain happened then, as at this moment, to be at war with France; a fair prospect therefore presented itself of combining theory with practice, and acquiring both knowledge and preferment. George II. a warlike Sovereign, commanded in person against the enemy on the continent, and the hon. Mr. Townshend had an opportunity of making a campaign under the eye of

for their vote, almost to the end of their speeches. While the house hung in this uncertainty, now the hear-hims rose from this side, now they rebellowed from the other; and that party to whom they fell at length from their tremulous and dancing balance, always received them in a tempest of applause.

The fortune of such men was a temptation too great to be resisted by one, to whom a single whiff of incense withheld gave much greater pain than he received delight in the clouds of it which daily rose about him from the prodigal superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a candidate for contradictory honours, and his great aim was to make those agree in admiration of him who never agreed in any thing else."

that

that monarch.

He served with the rank of a subaltern

at the memorable battle of Dettingen,* where the Duke of Cumberland commanded the English, and the Marshal de Noailles the French army; but he soon after obtained a company in the first regiment of foot guards, which of course gave him the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the army.

It appears, however, notwithstanding this promotion, that Colonel Townshend's advancement did not seem sufficiently rapid for the gratification of his ambition, and that he retired at the close of the campaign, retaining only the scar which he had received in consequence of a wound in the heat of action. His merits and pretensions however, like his interest, must have been very high in the public estimation; at least appears to us even at the present day, that in point of promotion he had but little to complain of, as he obtained a company in the guards before he was of age.

it

Having now in some measure resigned all ideas of a military life, the views of Mr. Townshend were directed towards another channel, no less favourable to the expectations he had formed of advancement in the state; and as his family possessed a large property and considerable influence in Norfolk, he became a candidate to represent that county in parliament, at

This battle was fought in June 1743, and we have been given to understand, that Lieutenant Townshend received a wound towards the latter end of the engagement. He was then but nineteen years of age.

the

the general election in 1747, and was returned accordingly.

No sooner had he obtained his seat than he began to display those principles of Whiggism which he had imbibed in his early youth, and which it had ever been the pride of his family to cultivate and support. Nor did he now forget or desist from the attempt of remedying those petty abuses which he had witnessed while in the army. He had beheld the halbert snatched from the veteran serjeant, and the well-earned knot torn from the shoulders of the deserving corporal, at the arbitrary will and caprice of a superior officer; and in one memorable instance he had seen government itself stoop to the baseness and injustice of wresting a pair of colours from the hand of a young cornet*, calculated by nature to preside in the councils of his country, and fated soon after to wield her thunders with irresistible success against the ambitious house of Bourbon.

With such instances as these fresh in his recollection, we need not be surprised that, on the third reading of the mutiny bill, in 1749, Colonel Townshend should have distinguished himself by his humanity, and, towards the conclusion of a very able speech, should have moved to add the following clause by way of rider to this annual recognition of the novelty and danger of a standing army in time of peace: " that no non-commissioned officer should be liable to be broken without the sentence of a court-martial."

Mr. Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham.

On