grant subsidies to foreign princes for keeping up a number of troops for the service of the common cause of Europe, than by keeping up such numerous armies of our own here at home, as might be of the most dangerous consequence to our constitution.'[197] This must have seemed strange doctrine to those who remembered his former harangues. But in this speech he was to exceed himself in superfluous candour. He had said that there was a good prospect of a firm and lasting peace, and then strangely wandered off to the consequent prospect of economy at home, 'perhaps by a different method of collecting the revenue. I am not afraid to mention the word Excise.[198] I was not in the House when the famous Excise scheme was brought upon the carpet. If I had I should probably have been induced by the general but groundless clamour to have joined with those who opposed it. But I have seen so much of the deceit of popular clamours, and the artful surmises upon which they are founded, and I am so fully convinced of the benefits we should reap by preventing all sorts of unfair trade, that if ever any such scheme be again offered whilst I have a seat in this assembly, I believe I shall be as heartily for it as I am for the motion now under our consideration.'[199] It is scarcely possible to conceive a more deliberate and scornful repudiation of responsibility for any previous opinions that he may have maintained than is expressed in this passage. He goes out of his way to tender an unnecessary support to the detested Excise scheme, which at the same time he declares that he should certainly have opposed had he been in the House when it was introduced. The middle-aged Pitt seemed never to tire of trampling savagely on the young Pitt, even wantonly, as on this occasion. There is, indeed, more justice than is usual in Horace Walpole's taunts when he says of Pitt, 'Where he chiefly shone was in exposing his own conduct; having waded through the most notorious apostasy in politics, he treated it with an impudent confidence that made all reflections upon him poor and spiritless when worded by any other men.' This is one way of putting it. A preferable and, in our judgment, a truer way is that Pitt deliberately chose this method of public atonement for past recklessness, and as an avowal that he had learned and ripened by experience. He recanted at large, so as to obliterate every vestige of his heedless and censorious youth. It is better for the country and for themselves that statesmen should thus do penance than that they should continue to offer sacrifices of what they see to be right to the somewhat egotistical pagod of their personal consistency. Honourable consistency is necessary to retain the confidence of the country; but there is also a dishonourable consistency in concealing and suppressing conscientious changes of judgment.