begun but failed. Fox was convinced that the French were ‘playing a false game;’ he ‘insisted that Russia should be made a party to the treaty,’ and was stedfastly resolved to do nothing that could alienate our allies (Life, iii. 371–7; Memorials, iv. 136). Towards the end of May Fox's health became much impaired, but, in spite of increasing weakness, he moved for the abolition of the slave trade on 10 June, declaring that after forty years of political life he should feel that he could retire with contentment if he carried his motion (Speeches, vi. 658). A few days later he was forced to give up attendance in parliament. At the end of June his friends suggested that he should accept a peerage. ‘I will not,’ he said, ‘close my politics in that foolish way, as so many have done before me’ (Memoirs of the Whig Party, i. 249). His disease was found to be dropsy. He was moved from London to the Duke of Devonshire's house at Chiswick, and hoped to go on to St. Anne's, but was unable to do so. During his illness he listened with pleasure to Virgil, Dryden, Johnson's ‘Lives of the Poets,’ and Crabbe's ‘Parish Register.’ He was ‘no believer in religion;’ to content Mrs. Fox he consented to have prayers read, but ‘paid little attention to the ceremony’ (Lord Holland's account of his death in Greville Memoirs, iv. 159, ed. 1888). He died peacefully in the evening of 13 Sept., in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close by the grave of Pitt.
Although Fox's private character was deformed by indulgence in vicious pleasures, it was in the eyes of his contemporaries largely redeemed by the sweetness of his disposition, the buoyancy of his spirits, and the unselfishness of his conduct. As a politician he had liberal sentiments, and hated oppression and religious intolerance. He constantly opposed the influence of the crown, and, although he committed many mistakes, and had in George III an opponent of considerable knowledge of kingcraft and immense resources, the struggle between him and the king, as far as the two men were concerned, was after all a drawn game. While his change of politics in 1772–4, though coincident with private pique, must not, considering his age, be held as a proof of irritability, the coalition of 1783 shows that he failed to appreciate the importance of political principles and was ignorant of political science. An immediate access of numerical strength always seemed to him a sure means of attaining a strong and stable government. Although his speeches are full of common sense, he made serious mistakes on some critical occasions, such as were the struggle of 1783–4, and the dispute about the regency in 1788. The line that he took with reference to the war with France, his idea that the Treason and Sedition bills were destructive of the constitution, and his opinion in 1801 that the House of Commons would soon cease to be of any weight, are instances of his want of political insight. The violence of his language constantly stood in his way; in the earlier period of his career it gave him a character for levity; later on it made his coalition with North appear especially reprehensible, and in his latter years afforded fair cause for the bitterness of his opponents. The circumstances of his private life helped to weaken his position in public estimation. He twice brought his followers to the brink of ruin and utterly broke up the whig party. He constantly shocked the feelings of his countrymen, and ‘failed signally during a long public life in winning the confidence of the nation’ (Lecky, Hist. iii. 465 sq.) With the exception of the Libel Bill of 1792, the credit of which must be shared with others, he left comparatively little mark on the history of national progress. Great as his talents were in debate, he was deficient in statesmanship and in some of the qualities most essential to a good party leader. He occasionally wrote verses, and some lines of his are preserved in his memoirs (Life, iii. 191). His ‘History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II, with an Introductory Chapter,’ 4to, was published by Lord Holland in 1808. It ends with the death of the Duke of Monmouth. It is written in a cold, uninteresting style, and represents the chief aim of James to be the establishment of civil despotism rather than the overthrow of the church of England. The appendix contains the transcripts of Barillon's correspondence made during Fox's visit to Paris in 1802. Mrs. Fox continued to reside at St. Anne's Hill after her husband's death, and died there at the age of ninety-two on 8 July 1842 (Annual Register, pp. 84, 276). Fox had an illegitimate son, who was deaf and dumb, and died at the age of fifteen; he treated him with much affection (Table-talk of S. Rogers, p. 81).
[Earl Russell's Memorials and Correspondence of C. J. Fox, 1853–7, full of information, but awkwardly arranged, and the same writer's Life and Times of C. J. Fox, 1859–66, valuable but dull and with strong whig leanings, cited as Life; Sir G. O. Trevelyan's Early History of C. J. Fox, 1880, interesting though discursive, with some new facts about Fox's gaming, ends at 1774; Fell's Memoirs of Public Life, 1808, poor and now useless; Trotter's Memoirs of the Later Years of C. J. Fox, 1811, by Fox's private secretary, the
