FOOTNOTES:
[134] A story is current, that Sir Robert, finding it difficult to prevail on Yorke to quit a place for life for the higher but more precarious dignity of Chancellor, worked upon his jealousy, and said, that if he persisted in refusing the Seals, he must offer them to Fazakerley. “Fazakerley!” exclaimed Yorke; “impossible! he is certainly a Tory, perhaps a Jacobite.” “It’s all very true,” replied Sir Robert, taking out his watch, “but if by one o’clock you do not accept my offer, Fazakerley by two becomes Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and one of the staunchest Whigs in all England.” Yorke took the Seals and the Peerage.—E.
[135] Yet, in the course of the work, the author laments Lord Hardwick’s influence in Cabinets, where he would have us believe he was despised, and acknowledges that he exercised a dominion nearly absolute over that House of Parliament, which, he would persuade his readers, laughed at him. The truth is, that wherever that great magistrate is mentioned, Lord Orford’s resentments blind his judgment, and disfigure his narrative.—E.
[136] Sir R. Walpole often said of the Duke of Newcastle, “His name is Perfidy.” ([Vide Appendix.])
[137] He never lay in a room alone; when the Duchess was ill, his footman lay in a pallet by him.
[138] An instance of it: after Sir Robert Walpole was out, he often pressed Mr. Pelham to take care of Sturt, who had been employed in Spain, which he neglecting, Sir Robert said one day to Mr. Pelham, “Here has been poor Sturt with me.” Mr. Pelham could not help interrupting him, and crying out, “G— d— the rascal! what does he come to you for?”
[139] John Carteret, Earl of Granville, was early distinguished in business, and sent Embassador to Denmark, and made Secretary of State when very young; but attempting to undermine Sir Robert Walpole, he was removed to the Lieutenancy of Ireland, and afterwards entirely laid aside. He became the principal speaker against the Court in the House of Lords; but towards the end of that Opposition, he was compelled by his associates, who suspected that he was negotiating a peace for himself, to make the famous motion for removing Sir Robert Walpole, on whose fall he was again made Secretary of State.
[140] In one of his speeches upon the war with Spain, he said, “We were entering upon a war that would be stained with the blood of Kings, and washed with the tears of Queens!” It was in ridicule of this rant, that Sir Charles Williams, in an unfinished poem, called the “Pandemonium,” where he introduced orations in the style of the chief speakers of the Opposition, concluded Lord Granville’s with the following line, at the close of a prophetic view of the ravages of the war,
“And Visiers’ heads came rolling down Constantinople’s streets.”
[141] Sir Robert Walpole used to relate the following passage. When Lord Granville was Secretary of State the first time, the Ministry had made some discoveries into the schemes of the Jacobites, and at a meeting at the Cockpit, determined to take up the Lord North and Grey, who was deeply engaged. The instant the meeting broke up, which was very late at night, Lord Granville rode away post all alone to Epping Forest, where that Lord lived, to give him notice; and when the messengers arrived soon afterwards to apprehend him, he was fled.
[142] George, Earl of Cholmondeley, married Mary, daughter to Sir Robert Walpole. He was Knight of the Bath, and Lord of the Admiralty, and then Master of the Horse to the Prince of Wales; but resigning that post on the rupture between the King and Prince, he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Privy Seal on the resignation of Lord Gower, which place he was forced to give back on the coalition, and was appointed joint Vice-Treasurer of Ireland.
[143] Daniel Finch, Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham.
[144] Thomas Winnington was first made Lord of the Admiralty, then of the Treasury, then Cofferer, and lastly Paymaster of the Forces, when Mr. Pelham was raised to the head of the Treasury.
[145] Dr. Thompson, who blooded and purged him to death in a very few days, for a very slight rheumatism. Several pamphlets were published on this case.
[146] [For an account of this curious transaction, see the author’s Reminiscences in the fourth volume of his printed works.]—E.
It is said that there was a large legacy to his sister, the Queen of Prussia, which was the original cause of the inveteracy between the King and his nephew, the present King of Prussia.
[147] Paul Wells, executed at Oxford, Sept. 1, 1749, for the following, scarce to be called forgery:—Being sued by a Mrs. Crooke for a debt of only nine pounds odd money, he altered the date of the year in the bond to the ensuing year, to evade the suit for twelve months.—Vide an authentic account of his life, by a gentleman of C. C. C. Oxon.
[148] At the battle of Oudenarde.
[149] Soon after his first arrival in England, Mrs. ****, one of the bedchamber women, with whom he was in love, seeing him count his money over very often, said to him, “Sir, I can bear it no longer; if you count your money once more, I will leave the room.”
[150] He was nicknamed by the Jacobites, the Captain.
[151] Henrietta, daughter of Sir Henry Hobart, and sister of John, the first Earl of Buckinghamshire, of that family.—([Vide Appendix.])
[152] A relation of Cheselden the surgeon was condemned to be hanged; Cheselden proposed, if the King would pardon him, to take out the drum of his ear, in order to try what effect it would have; and if it succeeded, the experiment was to be repeated on my Lady Suffolk. The man was pardoned—the operation never tried!
[153] Amelia Sophia, wife of the Baron of Walmoden, created Countess of Yarmouth. She had a son by the King, who went by the name of Monsieur Louis, but he was not owned. The day Lord Chesterfield kissed hands on his being appointed Secretary of State, after so long an absence from Court, he met Sir William Russel, one of the Pages, in the antechamber of St. James’s, and began to make him a thousand compliments and excuses for not having been yet to wait on him and his mamma; the boy heard him with great tranquillity. When the speech was at an end, he said, “My Lord, I believe you scarce designed all these honours for me. I suppose you took me for Monsieur Louis!”
[154] Sir Spencer Compton, son of the Earl of Northampton, was Speaker of the House of Commons and Knight of the Bath in the reign of King George the First. On the accession of the present King, when Sir Robert Walpole went to receive his orders, he bad him go for them to Sir Spencer Compton. This was a plain declaration! The first business was to prepare the new King’s speech to his Privy Council, which the new Minister was so little able to draw, that he was forced to apply for it to the old one, who drew it—willingly, it may be believed; and the Queen knew how to make the request and condescension have their effects. He was then created Baron, and afterwards Earl of Wilmington and Knight of the Garter, and made President of the Council. On the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole, he succeeded him as First Lord of the Treasury, with the new Commissioners, but had so little influence even at that Board, that Sandys, Rushout, and Gybbon, used to put the disposal of places to the vote, and carry them against him and his nephew Compton. He died in about a year and a half after he had been raised to this uneasy situation. He was the most formal solemn man in the world, but a great lover of private debauchery: after missing the first Ministership, he entered into a secret league with Mr. Pulteney, which Sir R. Walpole discovered by the means of Mr. Pulteney’s gentleman, who betrayed to him the letter he was carrying from his master to Lord Wilmington. As this was soon after a treaty between them, Lord Wilmington was much shocked when Sir Robert reproached him with it, and continued so steady for the future, that when the famous motion was made against that Minister, he went to vote in the House of Lords with a blister on his head, after having been confined to his bed for some days with a fever.
[155] She always affected, if anybody was present, to act (and he liked she should) the humble ignorant wife, that never meddled with politics. Even if Sir Robert Walpole came in to talk of business, which she had previously settled with him, she would rise up, curtsey, and offer to retire; the King generally bad her stay, sometimes not. She and Sir Robert played him into one another’s hands. He would refuse to take the advice of the one, and then when the other talked to him again upon the same point, he would give the reasons for it which had been suggested to him: nay, he would sometimes produce as his own, at another conversation to the same person, the reasons which he had refused to listen to when given him. He has said to Sir Robert, on the curtseys of the Queen, “There, you see how much I am governed by my wife, as they say I am! Hoh! hoh! it is a fine thing indeed to be governed by one’s wife!” “Oh! sir,” replied the Queen, “I must be vain indeed to pretend to govern your Majesty!”
[156] Charles Fitzroy, the second Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain and Knight of the Garter, grandson to Charles the Second. He died May 6, 1757, aged 78.
[157] All his three sons died before him.
[158] It was the Duke of Saxe Gotha, father of the Princess of Wales.
[159] It is scarce credible what sums he spent on doctors and apothecaries, besides other emoluments bestowed on them. Mr. Graham’s foreman was taken into the family, with the grant of an ample place in the revenue; Dr. Shaw had an annuity of £400 per annum, till another place of £700 per annum should fall in, with the reversion of the latter for his son.
[160] It was generally in pawn, and only fetched out on festival occasions. On its return from this journey to Hanover, it was landed in Yorkshire, whither a party of Dragoons were sent to convoy it to London.
[161] Gertrude Leveson Gower, eldest daughter of Earl Gower, second wife of this John Duke of Bedford.
[162] John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, made a Lord of the Admiralty on the coalition, and First Lord, on the Duke of Bedford’s being appointed Secretary of State. He signed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. [He was First Lord during Lord North’s administration, and died 1792. Our author disparages his abilities. He was a lively, sensible man, attentive to business, and not a bad speaker in Parliament.]—E.
[163] On the Debate in the House of Lords on the Hanover troops, he made a comparison between taking the Hanoverians into the pay of England, and the French taking the troops of the Duke John Frederic into their pay in 1672; and used these words,—“That little Prince would have duped Lewis Fourteenth; but he treated him like a little Prince, and would not accept his troops but upon his own terms.”
[164] Lady Elizabeth Leveson Gower, Lady of the Bedchamber to Princess Emily, married to John Waldegrave, brother to Earl Waldegrave, and Groom of the Bedchamber to the King.
[165] John Leveson Gower, Baron Gower, was elected President of the Board (the Jacobite meeting) in 1742, on the death of the Earl of Lichfield, while he was Lord Privy Seal, which he resigned soon after; but came into the same place again on the coalition, and was some time after created an Earl.
[CHAPTER VII.]
Change of the Ministry—Character of Mr. Legge—The Duke of Bedford has an audience—He declines office—Further appointments—Lord Anson—The Duke of Devonshire and Lord Hartington—The Whigs satisfied—Character of Lord Holderness—Murray released—The Princess delivered of a posthumous child—Discovery of Lyttelton’s letter—Foreign affairs—The Marquis de Mirepoix—Character of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams—Death of the Prince of Orange—Princess of Orange—Debates on Privilege—Illness of the Duke of Cumberland—Debate on the army estimates—Affairs of France—Death of Lord Bolingbroke—The characters of Sir Robert Walpole and Bolingbroke—Death of the Queen of Denmark—Walpole and Pelham.
June 13th.—The Duke of Newcastle wrote to Lord Sandwich, that the King had no farther occasion for his service; and in the evening sent Mr. Legge to acquaint the Duke of Bedford with the dismission of his friend. Legge was a younger son of Lord Dartmouth, who had early turned him into the world to make his fortune, which he pursued with an uncommon assiduity of duty. Avarice or flattery, application or ingratitude, nothing came amiss that might raise him on the ruins of either friends or enemies; indeed, neither were so to him, but by the proportion of their power. He had been introduced to Sir Robert Walpole by his second son, and soon grew an immeasurable favourite, till endeavouring to steal his patron’s daughter,[166] at which in truth Sir Robert’s partiality for him had seemed to connive, he was discarded entirely; yet taken care[167] of in the very last hours of that Minister’s power; and though removed from the Secretaryship of the Treasury, being particularly obnoxious to Lord Bath, he obtained a profitable employment[168] by the grossest supplications[169] to the Duke of Bedford; and was soon after admitted into the Admiralty by as gross court paid to Lord Winchelsea, whom he used ill the moment he found it necessary to worship that less intense but more surely-rising sun, Mr. Pelham. He had a peculiarity of wit and very shrewd parts, but was a dry and generally an indifferent speaker. On a chosen embassy to the King of Prussia, Legge was duped and ill-treated by him. Having shuffled for some time between Mr. Pelham, Pitt, the Duke of Bedford, and Lord Sandwich, and wriggled through the interest of all into the Treasury, and then to the Treasurership of the Navy, he submitted to break his connexions with the two latter by being the indecent messenger of Lord Sandwich’s disgrace. The Duke met him on the steps of Bedford-house (as he was going to Lord Gower to know what part he would take on this crisis) and would scarce give him audience; but even that short interview could not save Legge from the confusion he felt at his own policy; and with the awkwardness that conscience will give even to an ambassador, he said, he had happened, as he was just going out of town, to visit the Duke of Newcastle, where he had not been in two months before, and had been requested by him to be the bearer of this notification.
The Duke of Bedford, who carried Lord Trentham with him, found Lord Gower in no humour to resign with him; on the contrary, enraged at his son, who told him he could not serve under Lord Anson, the new head of the Admiralty. “Sir,” said his father, “he is your superior; he is a Peer.” “Who made him so?” replied Lord Trentham. Lord Gower told the Duke of Bedford that he had listed all his children against him; and threatened Lord Trentham to disinherit him of all that was in his power; who told him in pretty plain terms, how much he was a dupe to the Pelhams; and after many high words, they both left him.
When the Duke of Bedford arrived at Kensington, he found none of the opposite faction but Lord Lincoln, whom he desired to acquaint the Duke of Newcastle with what he was going to say to the King. “Tell him, my Lord, because perhaps he would not like to come in and hear it; I shall neither say more or less for his presence or absence. If he comes into the closet and begins to dispute, I will not altercate with him there; I will afterwards wherever he pleases.” When he went in to the King, he spoke above an hour warmly and sensibly on his own grievances, particularly on the Duke of Dorset being designed Lord Lieutenant for six months before he was made acquainted with it; on his relation, Lord Hartington, being named in the same manner for the Master of the Horse, and called up to the House of Peers, for which he had that very morning kissed hands; on the dismission of his friend Lord Sandwich; and on all the treacheries of the Duke of Newcastle, which he recapitulated, and the scenes of mischief which Mr. Pelham had been acting in Lord Gower’s family: and he concluded with telling the King, that their persecution of him and Lord Sandwich arose solely from their attachment to his son the Duke; and then desired leave to resign the Seals. The King was struck and pleased with this remonstrance; agreed to all he had said of the Duke of Newcastle; doubted of the facts charged on Mr. Pelham; and with regard to Lord Sandwich, only said, “I don’t know how it is, but he has very few friends.” He told the Duke of Bedford, that if he was uneasy in his present post, he would give him that of President; but the Duke said it was impossible for him to act with the two brothers. He begged three reversions in the Secretary’s office for his two secretaries, Mr. Leveson and Mr. Aldworth, and his steward Butcher; to which the King deferred giving an answer till next day, but then granted them; and parted with him with particular marks of favour and approbation.
As soon as the Duke of Bedford had resigned, Lord Trentham sent his resignation in a very explicit letter to Mr. Pelham, in which he spoke warmly on malicious people who had prejudiced his father against him. Mr. Pelham, who could neither avoid doing wrong nor bear to be told of it, was inconceivably stung with this reproach; and as if shifting off the consequence would clear him from being the cause, he would have waved accepting the resignation, sending Lord Trentham word that he was misinstructed in sending it to him, who had no authority to receive it, but yet was sorry for what he was doing.
17th.—Lord Granville was appointed President of the Council, Lord Hartington Master of the Horse, Lord Albemarle Groom of the Stole, Lord Anson First Lord, and the Admirals Boscawen and Rowley Commissioners of the Admiralty; the latter attached to Lord Granville, the other to nothing but his own opinion. He was on the worst terms with Anson, who had carried off all the glory of the victory at Cape Finisterre, though Boscawen had done the service, and whom he suspected of having sent him on the impracticable expedition to Pondicherry on purpose to ruin him. Lord Anson was reserved and proud, and so ignorant of the world, that Sir Charles Williams said he had been round it, but never in it. He had been strictly united with the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich, but not having the same command of his ambition that he had of his other passions, he had not been able to refuse the offer of the Chancellor’s daughter, nor the direction of the Admiralty.
Lord Hartington, and his father, the Duke of Devonshire,[170] were the fashionable models of goodness, though their chief merit was a habit of caution. The Duke’s outside was unpolished, his inside unpolishable. The Marquis was more fashioned, but with an impatience to do everything, and a fear to do nothing. Sir Robert Walpole had set up the father as the standard of Whiggism; in gratitude, he was constantly bigoted to whoever passed for head of the Whigs: but the dexterity of raising his son to so eminent a post as Master of the Horse during his own life, and obtaining a Peerage for his own son-in-law,[171] by retiring from power himself, extremely lessened the value of the rough diamond[172] that he had hitherto contrived to be thought.[173]
However, the Whigs were so satisfied with the promotion of Lord Hartington, that they overlooked the conjunction of Lord Granville, though so little time had passed since they had been enrolled in a crusade against him; and it would have been difficult for the Pelhams to have told what they had done to give Lord Granville a higher opinion of them, or what he had done to give them a lower opinion of him: what had happened to make him feel less contempt for them; or they to see less danger in him. So little reason had they to expect better union with him, that when he was wished joy on their reconciliation, he replied, “I am the King’s President; I know nothing of the Pelhams; I have nothing to do with them.” The very day he kissed hands, he told Lord D ****, one of the dirtiest of their creatures, “Well, my Lord, here is the common enemy returned!” Nugent, the Sancho Pança of this Quixote, began to beat up for volunteers for him; and himself made large overtures to Fox, desired to have some private conversation with him at Holland House, and told him he would reconcile himself to the Duke. Fox replied, “They have paved your way.” Lord Granville the next day repeated this conversation to Mr. Pelham, with the only difference of inverting the persons of the speakers, and ascribing to Fox all the overtures that had come from himself. Two or three of his inferior dependents were promoted, but no mention made of his fellow martyrs.
On the 18th appeared the last and greatest phenomenon, Lord Holderness,[174] who had been fetched from his Embassy in Holland to be Secretary of State. In reality, he did justice to himself and his patrons, for he seemed ashamed of being made so considerable, for no reason but because he was so inconsiderable. He had a formality in his manner that would have given an air of truth to what he said, if he would but have assisted it with the least regard to probability; but this made his narrations harmless, for they were totally incredible. His passion for directing operas and masquerades was rather thought a contradiction to his gravity, than below his understanding, which was so very moderate, that no relation of his own exploits would, not a little time before, have been sooner credited, than his being made Secretary of State. What contributed a little to make the King consent to this wonderful promotion was his mother, Lady Fitzwalter, being distantly related to the Royal Family. The Queen and Princesses always talked to her in French, though she had never been out of England, because her ancestors came originally from Germany.
When the King delivered the Seals to Lord Holderness in the presence of the Duke of Newcastle, he charged him to mind only the business of his province; telling him that of late the Secretary’s office had been turned into a mere office of faction. The Duke of Newcastle, who understood the reprimand, and Lord Holderness, who did not, complained equally of the lecture. The former could not well complain of any direct chiding; for the King, who had parted with the Duke of Bedford, to quiet his wayward humour, to revenge the Duke of Bedford would not speak to the Duke of Newcastle for some weeks; an excuse he made advantage of pleading to the Duke of Marlborough, who had solicited for a Prebend of Windsor; and to Lord Halifax, who was pushing to get the West Indies entirely subjected to the Board of Trade, and to be nominated a third Secretary of State for that quarter of the world. As Lord Halifax persisted in this demand, and the Duke of Newcastle did not care to push the King any further, especially in the tender article of new appointments, Lord Holderness was made to taste of the servile uses for which he was introduced, and ordered to solicit the King to take so fair a feather from his own command as the direction of the West Indies; but for this time the Monarch would not, and Lord Halifax, after many vain threats, was forced to yield. He was[175] a man of moderate sense, and of great application to raise the credit of his employment; but warm, overbearing, and ignorant of the world.[176]
25th.—The King put an end to the Session. The Speaker touched but gently and artfully on the Regency Bill; enough to show his disapprobation, and not enough to reflect on the decision of the House; praying for the King’s life, because of the difficulties in which the Princess would be involved in a Regency without Sovereignty.
The instant the Parliament was prorogued, the two Sheriffs of London—I forget their names—accompanied by Lord Carpenter and Sir George Vandeput, went to Newgate, released Murray, and conducted him in paltry triumph to his own house. On the 28th, his case, scurrilously written by one Whitehead,[177] a factious poet, was published, for which the printer was taken into custody.
In July, the posthumous child of which the Princess was delivered was christened. The Prince had affected to baptize all his children by popular names; but his wife being more prolific than the English history, in heroes and heroines, the Edwards and Elizabeths were exhausted, and he had been forced to go back as far as the Conqueror’s daughter. The King would not suffer the last Princess to be called Matilda,[178] but now, out of regard to his son’s memory, indulged it.
Soon after the Prince died, an unlucky discovery had been made. George Lyttelton had written a lamentation, on that occasion, to his father,[179] an antiquated Baronet in Worcestershire, telling him that he and his friends had just renewed their connexions with the Prince of Wales, by the mediation of Dr. Ayscough, which, though not ripe for discovery, was the true secret of their oblique behaviour this session in Parliament. This letter he had delivered to a gentleman’s servant, who was going into that county; but the fellow having some other letters for the post, had by mistake given in the private negotiation, which was only subscribed To Sir Thomas Lyttelton. It was opened at the Post-office, and carried to Mr. Pelham. Had it been seen by no other person, the secret had been safe, and the treachery concealed, as carefully as if he had been in the conspiracy himself, instead of being the object of it; but it was talked of from the Post-office, though obscurely for some time, till at last it was nursed up somehow or other, and arrived at the King’s ears, who grew outrageous, and could not be hindered from examining Shelvocke, the Secretary of the Post-office, himself. Here he got very little further light; for Shelvocke had been instructed to affirm that the letter was sent back to Mr. Lyttelton, unopened; but Lyttelton, who had not been so well instructed in his own secret, avowed it; and as if there were nothing to be ashamed of but the discovery, he took pains to palliate no other part of the story.
Absurdity was predominant in Lyttelton’s composition: it entered equally into his politics, his apologies, his public pretences, his private conversations. With the figure of a spectre, and the gesticulations of a puppet, he talked heroics through his nose, made declamations at a visit, and played at cards with scraps of history, or sentences of Pindar. He had set out on a poetical love plan, though with nothing of a lover but absence of mind, and nothing of poet but absence of meaning; yet he was far from wanting parts; spoke well when he had studied his speeches; and loved to reward and promote merit in others. His political apostasy was as flagrant as Pitt’s: the latter gloried in it: but Lyttelton, when he had been forced to quit virtue, took up religion, and endeavoured to persuade mankind that he had just fixed his views on heaven, when he had gone the greatest lengths to promote his earthly interest; and so finished was his absurdity, that he was capable of believing himself honest and agreeable.
In the beginning of September came news of the birth of a Duke of Burgundy; an event of the greatest moment to France, but not received with their usual transports. The Court had disgusted the clergy, by demanding an account of their revenues. The priests, equally ready at contriving or imputing an imposture, persuaded half the nation that the child was spurious; and to drive off the war from their own quarters, endeavoured to light up or to lay the foundation of a general war in the kingdom. The English Prelates sent Harry the Fifth to the conquest of France, to prevent a scrutiny of the same nature.
The same courier brought the Marquis de Mirepoix a patent of Duke. He was much esteemed in England, having little of the manners of his country, where he had seldom lived; and except a passion which he retained for dancing, and for the gracefulness of his own figure, there was nothing in his character that did not fall in naturally enough with the seriousness of the English and German Courts,[180] where he had been Ambassador; nor any quickness of parts that could have made him offensive, if our Ministry had been inclined to take exceptions. Their suspicions seldom ascended to enemies really formidable. They bore with General Wall,[181] an artful Irishman, Ambassador from Spain, and who but last year had clandestinely sent thither several of our woollen manufacturers. Greater insults were shown to us at Paris and Berlin, where Marshal Keith and Lord Tyrconnel, two outlawed Jacobites, were reciprocally Ambassadors. Indeed, it was a constant war of piques and affronts between the King and his nephew of Prussia. The latter had insisted upon the recall of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, who had sacrificed to the ruling passion of the uncle, by treating the character of the Prussian King, in his public dispatches and private letters, in the strongest terms of satire.[182] He returned to Dresden, where, about this time, he concluded a subsidiary treaty with the King of Poland, to engage his vote for the Archduke Joseph to be King of the Romans—the darling object of the ambition of the Court of Vienna, and the common gulph of our profuse politics. The King of Prussia openly, the French underhand, opposed the election. The very opposition of the latter had a politic effect, as the longer it remained in suspense, the longer would be the duration of our extravagance. In one of the King of Prussia’s rescripts, he taxed the King, whom he called the last and youngest of the Electors, with violating both his oath and the Golden Bull.
Sir Charles Hanbury Williams had been attached to Mr. Winnington, and was the particular friend of Fox. Towards the end of Sir Robert Walpole’s power, they, Lord Hervey and Lord Ilchester, had forced the last into the Secretaryship of the Treasury, against the inclination of the Minister; an instance at that time unparalleled; much copied since, as the Government has fallen into weaker hands. Sir Charles remained a steady friend to Walpole, and persecuted his rival, Lord Bath, in a succession of satiric odes, that did more execution in six months, than the Craftsman had done in twice the number of years; for the Minister only lost his power, but the patriot his character. If Sir Charles had many superiors in poetry, he had none in the wit of his poetry. In conversation he was less natural, and overbearing: hated with the greatest good-nature, and the most disinterested generosity; for fools dreaded his satire—few forgave his vanity. He had thrown up his place on some disgusts; the loss of Mr. Winnington, and a quarrel with the Irish, occasioned by an ode[183] he wrote on the marriage of the Duchess of Manchester and Mr. Hussey, fomented by Lord Bath and his enemies, and supported with too little spirit, had driven him to shelter his discontents in a Foreign Embassy, where he displayed great talents for negotiation, and pleased as much by his letters, as he had formerly by his poetry.[184]
On the 13th of the following month, an express arrived of the death of the Prince of Orange, who, having been at Aix la Chapelle, caught a fever on his return, and died in five days.
He had long been kept out of all share in the government, like his predecessor, King William; like him, lifted to it in a tumultuous manner, on his country being overrun by the French; and the Stad-holdership made hereditary in his family before they had time to experience how little he was qualified to re-establish their affairs. Not that he wanted genius, but he was vain and positive, a trifling lover of show, and not master of the great lights in which he stood. The Princess Royal was more positive, and, though passionately imperious, had dashed all opportunities that presented for the Prince’s distinguishing himself, from immoderate jealousy and fondness for his person. Yet the Mars who was locked in the arms of this Venus, was a monster so deformed, that when the King had chosen him for his son-in-law, he could not help, in the honesty of his heart, and the coarseness of his expression, telling the Princess how hideous a bridegroom she was to expect, and even gave her permission to refuse. She replied, she would marry him if he was a baboon. Well then, said the King, there is baboon enough for you!
The Princess immediately took the oaths as Gouvernante to her son, and all orders of men submitted to her as quietly as in a monarchy of the most established duration; though the opposite faction was numerous, and she herself lethargic and in a very precarious state of health. Lord Holderness was sent to condole and advise her. She, who had long been on ill terms with, and now dreaded the appearance of being governed by her father, received the Ambassador and three letters written with the King’s own hand, in the haughtiest and most slighting manner. Lord Holderness was recalled in anger. The Princess, equally unfit to govern, or to be governed, threw herself into the arms of France, by the management of one Dubacq, a little Secretary, who had long been instilling advice into her, to draw her husband from the influence of Monsieur Bentinck and the Greffier, the known partizans of England; the former of whom, immediately after the death of the Prince, refused to admit Dubacq to a Council, to which she had called him, with the chiefs of the Republic, at the House in the Wood.
The Princess Royal was accomplished in languages, painting, and particularly music; the Queen, and the King too, before their rupture, had great opinion of her understanding; but the pride of her race, and the violence of her passions[185] had left but a scanty sphere for her judgment to exert itself.
November 14.—The Parliament met. Lord Coventry, and Lord Willoughby, of Parham, moved the Address in the House of Lords; Lord Downe and Sir William Beauchamp Proctor in the Commons. Sir John Cotton objected to the words our flourishing condition; but that was the only breath of opposition.
On the 18th, there was a meeting at the Speaker’s, to consult on punishing the Sheriffs for their insolent behaviour on the delivery of Murray; but they came to no resolution, except on remanding Murray to his imprisonment. Accordingly, on the 20th, Lord Coke moved to have the former votes on him read, and then to revive them. He spoke well, and treated Murray and the Sheriffs with great contempt. Lord Coke[186] had ready parts, a great memory, great Whig zeal. There was too much pomp in his turn, and vehemence in the expression of his dislikes, which were chiefly now directed against the Scotch, who had persecuted him bitterly, on a quarrel with his wife, a daughter of the late Duke of Argyle. He was on ill terms too with Mr. Pelham, and had intended to have opened on the neglect shown to the old Whigs; but his friend, Lord Hartington, the officious tool to Mr. Pelham’s ingratitude, had been with him that morning, and persuaded him to drop so general an attack. Lord Duplin seconded him. Sydenham opposed, and Lord Egmont,[187] who spoke with great caution, and apologized for undertaking the cause, was against unnecessary asperity; [he] said, “This man had demonstrated the insufficiency of the power of the House; that his imprisonment would not put a stop to pamphlets; that the public, who cannot judge as the House of Commons does, would think the whole an election matter—a point in which they are most jealous; that Murray had already suffered greatly; that to revive the sentence would be inflicting banishment, which will be no further voluntary, than as he will prefer it to imprisonment. That the sentence must be renewed every session; and that the Commons, though but a third part of the Legislature, would be exerting the power of banishment, which is unknown to the Crown itself. That such a stretch of authority would be doubly unpopular, after enacting a continuation of the Parliament by the Regency Bill last session. That in one point you had set yourselves a precedent of moderation by slighting the second set of Queries, after censuring the first, though the second attacked both King and Parliament; the first only the Duke. That contempt had stopped the progress of those libels; that contempt such as Lord Coke’s would be the properest treatment of Murray. That this prosecution can’t be pursued without some injustice, as it must be stopped somewhere, and it will be unjust not to proceed as far hereafter on any election complaint:” and then after a definition of true and false honour, he moved to adjourn.
Lord Coke replied in few but masterly words; defined true and false moderation, and said, “That true moderation is becoming when the culprit submits, but that it is parvi animique pusilli not to persecute a criminal who plumes himself on his defiance, and is the patron of a lost, fallen, unanimated cause!” Mr. Pelham commended both speeches, and added, “If the House has not all the authority it wishes, it ought at least to exert all it has.” The Motion for adjournment was rejected, and the resumption of the sentence agreed to without a division. Lord Coke then moved, that Murray should receive the sentence on his knees; and that the pamphlet called his Case might be read, which was unanimously voted a false, scandalous, and seditious libel; and then Lord Coke moved to address the King to order the Attorney-General to prosecute the author, printer, and publishers; adding, that he would not move any censure on the Sheriffs, but hoped it would be a warning to the City what Magistrates they choose. Sir John Barnard was to have made their submission, if any vote had been proposed against them.
The 22nd, Lord Barrington moved that the number of seamen for the ensuing year should be increased to ten thousand, and said archly, “That he did not intend to defend the change of his own opinion, but of those who ought to preserve a political steadiness in their conduct; that he did not think so large a number always necessary, but circumstances made them so now.” The Bedfords and Sandwichs were removed; the Pitts and the Lytteltons were to be cajoled, and so ten thousand became necessary. They were voted.
The 25th, Lord Coke moved to call the Serjeant-at-Arms, who reported that Murray was absconded. Lord Coke moved for a proclamation and reward for apprehending him, which Vyner and Sydenham opposed, and the latter made a speech worthy the ages of fanaticism, comparing Murray to Prophet Daniel, who would not kneel to Nebuchadnezzar’s Idol, and alleged the example of the Dissenters, who do not kneel at the Sacrament. Alderman Jansen defended the City, on which Lord Coke had reflected, and said, “That to have touched the Sheriffs would have raised a tumult.” A reward of five hundred pounds for apprehending Murray was voted on a division of 98 to 26.
The Duke had a fall as he was hunting at Windsor, was taken up speechless, and refusing to be blooded, grew dangerously ill with a pain in his side, and was given over by the physicians; but recovered. The King was inexpressibly alarmed, wept over him, and told everybody that was in his confidence, that the nation would be undone, left to nothing but a woman and children! He said to Mr. Fox of the Duke, “He has a head to guide, to rule, and to direct;” and always talked as if the Duke was to be sole Regent. Mr. Fox repeated this to him, who said, the King had talked to him himself in the same strain. “Why then, sir,” replied Mr. Fox, “don’t you just put him in mind, in those fits of tenderness, of what he has done to prevent your being so?” He replied, “That it was now too late to remedy; that the Regency Bill could not be repealed, and that even if it could, he had rather bear the ignominy that had been laid upon him, than venture giving the King the uneasiness of reflecting, if it were but for two hours in his own room, on the injury he had done him.”
Mr. Pelham was uneasy at Mr. Fox’s being admitted to the Duke in his illness, when he was excluded. The Duke asked Fox afterwards how the brothers had behaved during that crisis. He replied, “Both cried: the Duke of Newcastle over-acted it, but Mr. Pelham seemed really concerned.”—“Ay,” said the Duke, “I know they both cried; for the Duke of Newcastle, he cried, because he had not been in the morning to know how I did—but for Mr. Pelham, he is such a fellow, that I can believe he was in earnest!”
The 27th, Mr. Fox in the committee proposed the same army as last year, as there was no alteration of circumstances; Sir John Cotton to reduce it to fifteen thousand; and was seconded by Northey, Beckford, Prowse, Thornton, Norris, Bertie, and Robinson. Cotton was answered by William Lyttelton; as Beckford (who had wished that the Army had committed outrages, in order to have the nation sensible of the dangers from it) was by Dr. Lee, who, to palliate the change of his style, was so injudicious as to insist that the situation of affairs was highly altered by the deaths of the Prince and the Prince of Orange, and the birth of the Duke of Burgundy. Lord Egmont, who found himself almost alone in opposition, made a very artful speech; said, “He had hoped to have heard some answer from the Ministry to Sir John Cotton’s arguments; that for his own part, he should be very gentle, as it was not a time to provoke a power that nothing could resist, but should coolly ask for an answer. He ridiculed Dr. Lee with great delicacy and compliments; knew that he had reason for what he did; and that he had great views, and overlooked small ones, and that such principles would justify little deviations. Yet if the dreaded event of a possible minority should come to pass, it would always be easy to call troops from Ireland, where, and by the number of officers, you always have the root of an Army. That to facilitate the assembly of one, the Parliament will be sitting: that the Ministry ought to affect to show the good disposition of Government, now everything is so quiet; and that such a display of tenderness to the subject would produce real security. He made a strong panegyric on the King, but said those good principles of his Majesty were prevented from being exerted by his Ministers, who govern by force in a reign that has given no pretence for it. That if any one of them would act constitutionally, he would support that man in spite of little reflections; and would extend his hand in defence, where he had never extended it, if once the Government would quit this road of rigour. That the death of the Prince of Orange could be no argument for maintaining so large an Army; we cannot govern Holland; that indeed were the Dutch strong, and in a more flourishing situation, it might be a reason, when we might give and receive mutual assistance. But for the pretence of the birth of a Duke of Burgundy, nothing could be more ridiculous; no argument more absurd than the birth of Foreign Princes; or than our increasing our Army whenever there is an heir to the Crown of France.”
He asked, “in what period of our history the Crown had so much power? That in 1646, when the Army had conquered King and Parliament, they voted but 6000 men necessary. Yet, treble as the present Army is desired, he would offer a composition, which, if accepted, he would vote for the present plan within 900 men: he would offer it to one (Mr. Pelham) not used to negotiate in public; would make a treaty, without one secret article; and would promise peace for one year,—a term as long as any modern treaty is likely to last. The condition was, that the Ministry should consent to reduce the Cavalry, and omit the Staff, which would create a saving of 143,000l. He urged that the King had shown by a former reduction, that, though he ought not to be without Guards and marks of sovereignty, he despises show. That the Grenadiers may still be kept up to attend on the King’s person; but he wished to break the Guards and the regiment of Blues. And he concluded with saying, that though he had no hopes of delivering the nation from the danger, yet he wished to rescue it from the expense of the Army, which cost very near as much as that immense one of the King of Prussia.”
Mr. Pelham replied in a very dull speech, “That he had seen no force exerted by the Administration; and attempted to defend Dr. Lee: that if the King dies, you have already provided for the strength of the Government: will you now weaken it? that, whenever the Army has been much reduced, tumults have immediately arisen. France may be tempted to disturb you, without meaning to fix the Pretender here: that she might even mean that; and that some who heard him knew that there had been Jacobite meetings within the last six months. That his fears from that quarter made him always more earnest on the question of the Army, than upon any other; and that he desired no overt act to convince him of the still real existence of Jacobitism. That the reduction proposed was a poor pittance if meant for economy. That, indeed, if it were worth while, the Blues might be changed; he had not much objection to it, though they had always had the title of Guards. That seventy men are as much as one officer can command; that the Army had already been reformed; a further reduction would be useless or dangerous, and will be a heavier burthen where quartered, from want of more officers.” The House divided at five, and voted the same Army by 180 to 43. Only Lord Middlesex and Martyn, of the late Prince’s faction, voting with Lord Egmont and the Speaker.
About this time, France seemed threatened with a cloud of intestine troubles. Louis the well-beloved had outlived the flattery of even French subjects. Verses,[188] recommending the assassination of him, were pasted up on the Louvre and the Pont-Neuf. Yet, though marked for destruction by his priests, it was with great difficulty that Madame de Pompadour, his mistress, could divert the melancholy cast of his mind from sinking into a habit of devotion. She perpetually varied his pleasures, and carried him from one palace and hunting seat to another,—journeys which cost immense sums, and made the people join in the clamour which the Clergy had conjured up. Gunpowder and some treasonable papers were found in the cradle of the Duke of Burgundy. The Dauphin, a dull, bigoted Prince, was zealously attached to his mother, and had hazarded brutalities to the mistress, which the King bore with great indulgence. It did not break out into factions, as the domestic quarrels of the Royal Family had done for two generations here in England, but appeared in little marks and distinctions, such as different manners of wearing the Cordon, &c. among the creatures of either Court. In the midst of these uneasinesses, a new flame broke out. The Archbishop of Paris was a favourite, having made his court even at the expense of his brethren the clergy. The hospitals had always been managed with so much integrity as to become the most creditable fund for charity; the Parliament directed them. The Archbishop endeavoured to arrogate the sole command of them to himself: the King supported his pretensions. The Parliament having in vain remonstrated, concurred to throw up their employments; and though they submitted to resume their functions, it was not without having inspired the Court with a temper of moderation, which is as seldom learnt by despotic Kings, as such firmness is seldom practised by Parliaments renowned for far greater liberties.
December 4th.—Mr. Pelham opened the Land Tax of three shillings in the pound; and recommended as his maxim to preserve and improve our situation, seldom to gain, and then our enemies will not be offended. Lord Harley and Beckford, with Vyner, Oglethorpe, Robinson, Admiral Vernon, Sydenham, Thornton, and Cooke, (the sad refuse of all the last Oppositions,) opposed it. So did Sir John Barnard, who said, “He had declared two years ago, that, if the peace continued, he would vote no more for three shillings; that the peace was made because our Allies had not contributed equally to the expense of the war; and he proposed a wild scheme of tying down 600,000l. a year, out of the Sinking Fund, to pay the National Debt, by which means, in fifty years, we should be able to carry on as extensive a war as ever we ought to wage.” A scheme by which, if strictly pursued, and a new war should intervene, we should be paying off money borrowed at three per cent., while obliged to borrow other money at five, six, or whatever interest extortion should find it a proper season to demand. Lord Strange spoke for the question. Sir John Cotton answered, “That country gentlemen would indeed have very little ease,[189] if three shillings land tax was thought necessary till our debts were paid, as Lord Strange had said, and nobody had contradicted.” Mr. Pelham said, “Lands sell better now than ever they had done, and that luxury and election contests between neighbouring gentlemen occasion the change of property.” Cotton replied, “The country gentlemen had learnt from the report of the Secret Committee, that the Court supports one side, and therefore they would grow more wary.” They divided for two shillings, but it was carried for three, by 176 to 50.
The next day, on the report, Sydenham made a lamentable speech, affected to cry, and asked pardon for quoting a ludicrous epitaph on so melancholy an occasion, but which he could not help thinking applicable to the great Minister of these times, who has so burthened land:—
Lie heavy on him, Land; for he
Laid many a heavy load on thee.
The 10th, the Mutiny Bill was read in the Committee. Lord Egmont made some faint opposition on the old points; but not finding himself supported, went away before the division, which was but 19 to 118. Sir Harry Erskine voted for the Bill, without mentioning the clauses he had last year promised to bring in.
Lord Halifax had stayed in the country out of humour, having in vain demanded to be made a Cabinet-Counsellor, as an introduction to the Regency, and the Secretaryship for the West Indies. His friend, Lord Barrington, was now sent to acquaint him that the King persisted in a refusal, but might be brought to acquiesce in more moderate demands. Lord Halifax came to town, protesting he would resign, but was pacified with a promise of the West Indies being in a great measure subjected to the Board of Trade.
The 12th died Lord Bolingbroke;[190] a man who will not be seen in less extraordinary lights by posterity than he was by his contemporaries, though for very different reasons. His own age regarded him either as the greatest statesman, oppressed by faction, and the greatest genius persecuted by envy; or as the most consummate villain, preserved by clemency, and the most treacherous politician, abandoned by all parties whom he had successively betrayed. Posterity will look on him as the greatest philosopher from Pope’s writings; or as an author of a bounded genius from his own. To see him in a true light, they must neither regard all the incense offered to him by Tories, nor credit all the opprobrium cast on him by Whigs. They must see him compounded of all those vices and virtues that so often enter into the nature of a great genius, who is not one of the greatest.
Was it being master of no talents to have acted the second part, when little more than a youth, in overturning such a Ministry, and stemming such a tide of glory, as Lord Godolphin’s and the Duke of Marlborough’s? Were there no abilities, after his return from banishment, in holding such a power as Sir Robert Walpole’s at bay for so many years, even when excluded from the favourable opportunity of exerting his eloquence in either House of Parliament? Was there no triumph in having chiefly contributed to the fall of that Minister? Was there no glory in directing the councils and operations of such men as Sir William Windham, Lord Bath, and Lord Granville? And was there no art in persuading the self-fondest and greatest of poets, that the writer of the Craftsman was a more exalted genius than the author of the Dunciad? Has he shown no address in palliating the exploded treaty of Utrecht? Has he not, in his letters[191] on that event, contrived to make assertions and hypothesis almost balance stubborn facts?[192] To cover his own guilt, has he not diverted our attention towards pity for the great enemy, in whose service he betrayed his own country?
On the other hand, what infamy to have sold the conqueror to the conquered! What ingratitude in labouring the ruin of a Minister, who had repealed his sentence of banishment! What repeated treasons to the Queen, whom he served; to the Pretender,[193] who had received and countenanced him; to the late King, who had recalled him! What ineffectual arts to acquire the confidence of the late King, by means of the Duchess of Kendal, and of the present King, by Lady Suffolk! What unwearied ambition, even at seventy years of age, in laying a plan of future power[194] in the favour of the Prince of Wales! What deficiency in the very parts that had given success to the Opposition, to have left him alone excluded from reaping the harvest of so many labours! What blackness in disclosing the dirtiness of Pope,[195] who had deified him! And what philosophy was that which had been initiated in the ruin of the Catalans; had employed its meridian in labouring the restoration of Popery and arbitrary power; and busied the end of its career, first in planning factions in the Pretender’s Court, by the scheme of the father’s resigning his claim to the son; and then in sowing the seeds of division between a King and a Prince, who had pardoned all his treasons!
Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Bolingbroke had set out rivals at school, lived a life of competition,[196] and died much in the same manner, provoked at being killed by empirics;[197] but with the same difference in their manner of dying as had appeared in the temper of their lives: the first with a calmness that was habitual philosophy; the other with a rage that his affected philosophy could not disguise. The one had seen his early ambition dashed with imprisonment, from which he had shot into the sphere of his rival, who was exiled, sentenced, recalled; while Walpole rose gradually to the height of temperate power, maintained it by the force of his single talents against Bolingbroke, assisted by all the considerable geniuses of England; and when driven from it at last, resigned it without a stain or a censure, and retired to a private life, without an attempt to re-establish himself—almost without a regret for what he had lost. The other, unquiet, unsteady, shocked to owe his return to his enemy, more shocked to find his return was not to power, incapable of tasting the retirement which he made delightful to all who partook it, died at last with the mortification of owing his greatest reputation to the studies he had cultivated to distress his antagonist. Both were beloved in private life; Sir Robert from the humanity and frankness of his nature; Bolingbroke from his politeness of turn and elegance of understanding. Both were fond of women; Walpole with little delicacy; Bolingbroke to enjoy the delicacy of pleasure. Both were extravagant; and the Patriot who accused, and the Minister who had been accused of rapine, died poor or in debt. Walpole was more amiable in his virtues; Bolingbroke more agreeable in his vices.[198]
Cresset was made Treasurer to the Prince of Wales, in the room of Mr. Selwyn, who died. Nich. Herbert succeeded him as Treasurer, and Mr. Harding as Auditor to Princess Emily, who had wished to give those places to William Leveson, Lord Gower’s brother, but attached to the Duke of Bedford. Mr. Leveson applied to Mr. Pelham, who insisted on his asking Lord Gower’s interest, which he refused to do. Oswald, who, by the consent of Pitt, and the faction of cousins, was to have kissed hands for Clerk of the Green Cloth to the Prince of Wales, but two days before the Prince’s death, was now made a Lord of Trade.
About the middle of this month, died his Majesty’s youngest daughter, the Queen of Denmark, a Princess of great spirit and sense, and in the flower of her age. Her death, which was terrible, and after an operation which lasted an hour, resembled her mother’s—a slight rupture which she concealed, and had been occasioned by stooping when she was seven months gone with her first child. The Queen had in a manner prophesied to her when she was expiring herself: “Louisa, remember I die by being giddy, and obstinate in having kept my disorder a secret!” Her fate, too, had borne a resemblance to her mother’s; for the King of Denmark, though passionately fond of her, to prevent the appearance of being governed, had kept a mistress, and given her great uneasiness: yet she never mentioned it in her confidential letters to her own family. The Duke said, she had always told them, that if she was unhappy, they should never know it. In her last moments, she wrote a moving letter to the King, the Duke, and her sisters, to take leave of them. This letter, and the similitude of hers and her mother’s death, struck the King in the sharpest manner, and made him break out into warm expressions of passion and tenderness. He said, “This has been a fatal year to my family! I lost my eldest son—but I am glad of it;—then the Prince of Orange died, and left everything in confusion. Poor little Edward has been cut open (for an imposthume in his side), and now the Queen of Denmark is gone! I know I did not love my children when they were young; I hated to have them running into my room; but now I love them as well as most fathers.”
The 19th.—The Parliament adjourned; an era for ever remarkable in English annals! Opposition, which had lasted from the days of Queen Elizabeth, and even the distinctions of parties having in a manner ceased at this period! Popery, which had harassed the reign of that heroine; the spirit of liberty which had struggled against four Stuarts; the spirit of slavery which had wrestled to restore their descendants; all the factions which had distracted King William, possessed Queen Anne, and ridiculed the House of Hanover; and the Babel of parties that had united to demolish Walpole, and separated again to pursue their private interests; all were now sunk into a dull mercenary subjection to two brothers, whose administration resembled that of King James for timidity, of King William for change of Ministers, and of Queen Anne for an ignominious peace! Buckingham had been attacked in the arms of King James; Laud and Strafford beheaded; Hyde banished, though allied to the Crown; the virtuous Somers impeached; the victorious Marlborough disgraced; the favourite Walpole removed. Pelham alone could teach servility to a Parliament, whose privileges were yet untouched!
In Sweden there seems the same indifference for liberty. Count Tessin, the pattern of the British Minister, always affecting to resign, always entreated by his creatures to retain his power, is known to be meditating the restoration of absolute power. In France, where the Crown is despotic, and the people bigoted to whatever phantom is their King, there is a set of men, whose remonstrances, steadiness, and patriotism would figure with any senate, that Greece, Rome, or former Britain knew. But it is time to conclude the history of this extraordinary year, all the chief events of which having terminated in confirming the power of Mr. Pelham, it will be proper, before I take leave of the reader, to add this person’s portrait to those of the under-actors; and the better to illustrate it, I shall take the liberty of examining his and his master Sir Robert Walpole’s characters together, though it is difficult to compare two Ministers, when on one side genius must be entirely left out of the question: nor could anything draw on a parallel between a man of genius and a man of none, but the singular case of the latter having affected what the former could not—I mean power without unpopularity.
When Elijah was hurried to heaven, he left his cloak to Elisha with a double portion of his spirit: but that legacy[199] in no sense happened to Mr. Pelham, who was as much inferior to Sir Robert Walpole in political courage as in abilities. Sir Robert Walpole was bold, open, steady, never dejected; he would attempt for honest ends where strict morality did not countenance his opinion; he always disclosed his arts after they had effected his purpose; and sometimes defeated them by too early discovery. He never gave up his party to serve himself, though he has departed from his own opinion to please his friends, who were serving themselves; nor did he ever lose his cheerfulness, though he had hurt himself against his opinion.
Mr. Pelham was timorous, reserved, fickle, apt to despair. He would often not attempt when he was convinced it would be right; would sooner hurt himself by not telling his mind, than attain his aim by being communicative; and often gave up his party, indeed not to serve himself, but his enemies, and frequently disappointed himself of success, by never expecting to succeed. Presumption made Sir Robert Walpole many enemies; want of confidence in himself kept from Mr. Pelham many friends. Sir Robert Walpole was content to have one great honest view, and would overlook or trample upon the intermediate degrees. Mr. Pelham could never reach a great view, by stumbling at little ones; he would scruple to give an hundred pound to one opponent, and to buy off another would give up a question[200] that might endanger the nation. Sir Robert Walpole loved power so much, that he would not endure a rival; Mr. Pelham loved it so well, that he would endure anything. The one would risk his administration, by driving every considerable man from Court, rather than venture their being well there; the other would employ any means to take able men out of the Opposition, though he ventured their engrossing his authority and outshining his capacity; but he dreaded abuse more than competition, and always bought off his enemies to avoid their satire, rather than to acquire their support: whereas, Sir Robert Walpole never trading but for members, and despising invectives, and dreading rivals, gained but weak, uncertain assistance, and always kept up a formidable Opposition. His apprehension of competitors was founded on prudence, because great part of his authority depended upon the King’s favour: Mr. Pelham owing nothing to that, had the less reason to fear losing it; as he maintained himself in the Ministry in spite of the King’s partiality to abler men, he had no reason to be jealous of their getting interest at Court.
Sir Robert Walpole raised himself to the head of the Administration, without interest, without fortune, without alliances, and in defiance of the chiefs of his own party:[201] he rose by the House of Commons—he fell by it. Mr. Pelham found himself next upon the list, and was recommended to a strong party by their leader. He would never have risen, had he had no other foundation than the House of Commons, and would fall to-morrow if he had no other support; for he must be undone whenever his safety depends upon himself. Sir Robert Walpole’s eloquence was made for use, and he never could shine but when it was necessary[202] he should. He wanted art when he had no occasion for it; and never pleased, but when he did more than please. I am not going to contrast this part of their characters, nor to say that Mr. Pelham only shone upon trifling and unnecessary occasions, for he did not do even that; he was obscure upon the most trivial occurrences, perplexed even when he had but one idea, and whenever he spoke well, it was owing to his being heated; he must lose his temper before he could exert his reason. Sir Robert Walpole palliated too little, Mr. Pelham too much. The one would defend his errors by a majority; the other with a greater majority would excuse his merit, and would sooner obscure and depreciate his meaning when right and clear of itself, than not apologize for it. Sir Robert Walpole could not deviate but with openness and sincerity; the other degraded truth by timidity, sense by mystery, and right by asking pardon for it.
The one was honoured by his enemies, the other at best pitied by his friends. His most prejudiced opponents[203] often grew convinced that the former was in the right: the heartiest friends of the latter knew he meant to be so, but never found stronger reasons to confirm them in their opinion. The one durst do right and durst do wrong too; the other dared either so little, that it generally ended in his doing the latter. Sir Robert Walpole never professed honesty, but followed it; Mr. Pelham always professed it, and kept his word, when nothing happened to make him break it; and then he broke it for some other honest end, though perhaps far from being equally cogent.
Sir Robert Walpole’s mastery was understanding his own country, and his foible, inattention to every other country, by which it was impossible he could thoroughly understand his own. Mr. Pelham understood more of his own country than of others, though he would have made a better Minister for any other nation; for as he would not have met with opposition or contradiction, two things his nature could not bear, and as he meant exceedingly well, he would have served the country that employed him to the best of his understanding, and that might have cleared up as well as his temper, when he had nothing to perplex it. In the knowledge of the Revenue, he and all other men must yield to Sir R. Walpole, though he and all other men make the same use of that knowledge, which is to find new funds for the necessities of the Government, and for the occasions of the Administration: by those occasions, I mean corruption, in which I believe Mr. Pelham would never have wet his finger, if Sir Robert Walpole had not dipped up to the elbow; but as he did dip, and as Mr. Pelham was persuaded that it was as necessary for him to be Minister as it was for Sir Robert Walpole, he plunged as deep. The difference was, that Mr. Pelham always bribed more largely as he had more power; for whenever it tottered, he the less ventured to prop it by those means, as he was the more afraid of being called to account for putting them in practice.
Sir Robert Walpole, with the greatest confidence of himself, had no pride; Mr. Pelham had the most, with the least self-sufficience. Both were loved in private life. Sir Robert Walpole loved magnificence, and was generous to a fault: the other had neither ostentation nor avarice, and yet had little generosity. The one was profuse to his family and his friends, liberal indiscriminately, unbounded to his tools and spies: the other loved his family and his friends, and enriched them as often as he could steal an opportunity from his extravagant bounty to his enemies and antagonists. Indifferent people were too indifferent to him; and for intelligence, it was one of the greatest blemishes of his Administration, he wanted it so entirely—not resolution more! Sir Robert Walpole’s friendships were chiefly confined to persons much below him; Mr. Pelham’s were almost all founded on birth and rank: the one was too familiar, the other never so. Sir Robert Walpole was forgiving to a fault, if forgiveness can be faulty; Mr. Pelham never forgave, but when he durst not resent. Sir Robert Walpole met with much ingratitude; Mr. Pelham was guilty of much. Both were frequently betrayed: Sir Robert Walpole without being deceived; Mr. Pelham not half so often as he suspected it. The one was most depreciated while he was Minister; the other will be most when he ceases to be Minister. All men thought Mr. Pelham honest till he was in power; the other never was thought so till he was out.
Both were fortunate in themselves, unhappy in their brothers. With unbounded thirst for politics, the Duke of Newcastle and Horace Walpole were wretched politicians: each inferior to their brothers in everything laudable; each assuming and jealous of their own credit, though [neither] the Duke nor Horace could ever have been considerable, but by the fortune of their brothers. The one childish and extravagant, the other a buffoon and avaricious; Horace sunk into contempt when his brother fell with honour; the Duke was often on the point of dragging his brother down, and was the object of all contempt, even where his brother had still power and honour. Mr. Pelham maintained his inferiority to Sir Robert Walpole even in the worthlessness of his brother.
“J’aye dict le mot, pour ne frustrer la postérité.”
H. Etienne, Apologie d’Herodote.