To George Grenville we owe the "Act for securing purity of Election," which was once regarded as a model of legislative wisdom, adequate to preserve the hustings from contamination and the House from influence for ever. But the dexterities of modern corruption have proved too subtle for the provisions of our ancestors. How many hundred elections have been driven through the Grenville Act, is not for us to say, and it would perhaps be difficult to calculate. But the constant lowering of the franchise has shown the weakness of all defences against a bribe; and as the expedient of every new candidate for popularity is to put the elections into hands lower still, we may safely predict the growing inefficiency of all laws against the temptation to corrupting of the populace. The celebrated Burke, in his speech on American Taxation, a masterpiece of eloquence, and a masterpiece of that sophistry in which Party involved his illustrious spirit _for the time_, relieved the House from the dryness of statistics, by a striking sketch of Grenville, almost ten years after his retirement from public life, and nearly five years after he was in his tomb. "Mr Grenville undoubtedly was a first-rate figure in the country. With a masculine understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business, not as a duty he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy, and he seemed to have no delight out of the House, except in such things as in some way related to the business that was to be done within it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low politics of a court, but to win his way to power through the laborious gradations of public service, and to secure himself a well-earned rank in Parliament, by a thorough knowledge of its constitution, and a perfect practice in all its business." But this panegyric was rather lowered by its peroration. Burke was fond of looking at every subject in a variety of lights, and it became the habit of even his vigorous mind to fill up the background of his portraits with picturesque _shade_. He then closed his character of the deceased statesman by observing that his having been a barrister "narrowed the extent and freedom of his political views." "He was bred to the law, a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all the other kinds of learning put together. But it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and liberalise the mind exactly in the same proportion." Having flung this passing sarcasm at the profession, he let fall a drop of contempt on the system of public employment.