[126] "Our immemorial Cabinet Dinner was at Lord Lonsdale's," writes Lord Malmesbury, on March 17, 1852. "Each of us gives one on a Wednesday."—"Memoirs of an Ex-Minister," vol. i. p. 321.
[127] Wraxall's "Memoirs," vol. i. p. 527.
[128] "Granville dined at the Lord Chancellor's yesterday," wrote Lady Granville to the Duke of Devonshire, on November 8, 1830, when the question of the postponement of the King's visit to the city was filling the minds of Ministers. "The Chancellor came in after they were all seated from a Cabinet that had lasted five hours, returned to be at it again till two, and the result you see in the papers."—Lady Granville's "Letters," vol. ii. p. 63.
[129] See Speaker Onslow's "Essay on Opposition," "Hist. MSS. Commission" (1895), App. ix. p. 460.
[130] Coxe's "Pelham Administration," vol. i. p. 486.
[131] Ashley's "Life of Palmerston," vol. ii. p. 233.
[132] Walpole was First Lord of the Treasury for more than twenty-one years, but Macaulay says that he cannot be called Prime Minister until some time after he had been First Lord.—"Miscellaneous Writings," p. 359.
[133] Walpole distributed government patronage freely among the members of his own family. His relations held offices worth nearly £15,000 a year, and, two years after he relinquished office, his own places brought him in an annual income of £2000. He made his eldest son Auditor of the Exchequer, and his second son Clerk of the Pells. He gave his son Horace two posts, as Clerk of the Estreats and Comptroller of the Pipe, when the boy was still an infant. Later on he gave him a position in the Customs, and lastly made him Usher of the Exchequer, an office worth about £1000 a year. See "Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole," vol. i. p. 730; Cunningham's "Letters of Horace Walpole," vol. i. pp. lxxxiv. and 314.
[134] "My father would be a very able man—if he knew anything," Lord Stanley is supposed to have said of him. Hutton's "Studies," p. 48.
[135] "He evidently attempts to imitate Mr. Pitt in his manner and rhetorick; but the clumsy attempts of a heavy domestic fowl to take wing are very different from the vivid and lofty soaring of the lark." Courtney's "Characteristics," p. 42.