Towards the decline of Sir Robert Walpole’s Ministry, the Duke of Newcastle, who feared to fall with him, and hoped to rise upon his ruins, dealt largely with the Opposition, to compass both. The late Duke of Argyle, after that Minister’s defeat, and his own disappointment in not succeeding to a greater portion of power, commissioned his brother, Lord Islay, to tell Sir Robert, that the Duke of Newcastle and the Chancellor had long been in league with himself and Lord Granville to effect his ruin. Lord Granville was scarce warm in power before Newcastle betrayed him to Lord Chesterfield; and the latter having introduced Lord Sandwich, who was sent Minister to the Hague, this young statesman and the Duke of Newcastle kept the secrets of his own office from Lord Harrington, who had been restored to the place of Secretary of State, for the assistance he had lent in overturning Lord Granville. On Lord Harrington’s discovering and resenting this treachery, the Seals were given to Lord Chesterfield; but he being, like his predecessors, excluded from all trust the moment he had a right to be trusted, soon resigned them. The Duke of Newcastle, who had newly entered into connexions with the Duke of Bedford, (as he and his brother did successively with every chief of a faction, till they had taken out their stings by dividing them from their party, and then discarded them) wished to give the Seals to Murray, who was, or to Pitt, who was canvassing to be, his creature; but the Duke of Bedford abruptly and positively insisted on having them—and had [them, together with] their constant perquisites,—the Duke of Newcastle’s suspicions and treachery.
The Duke of Newcastle had no pride, though infinite self-love: jealousy was the great source of all his faults. He always caressed his enemies, to list them against his friends; there was no service he would not do for either, till either was above being served by him: then he would suspect they did not love him enough; for the moment they had every reason to love him, he took every method to obtain their hate, by exerting all his power for their ruin. There was no expense to which he was not addicted, but generosity. His houses, gardens, table, and equipage, swallowed immense treasures: the sums he owed were only exceeded by those he wasted. He loved business immoderately, yet was only always doing it, never did it. His speeches in Council and Parliament were flowing and copious of words, but empty and unmeaning: his professions extravagant, for he would profess intentions of doing more service to many men, than he even did hurt to others. Always inquisitive to know what was said of him, he wasted in curiosity the time in which he might have earned praise. He aimed at everything; endeavoured nothing. Fear,[137] a ridiculous fear, was predominant in him; he would venture the overthrow of the Government, and hazard his life and fortunes rather than dare to open a letter that might discover a plot. He was a Secretary of State without intelligence, a Duke without money, a man of infinite intrigue, without secrecy or policy, and a Minister despised and hated by his master, by all parties and Ministers, without being turned out by any!
It may appear extraordinary that Mr. Pelham, who had not so much levity in his character, should consent to be an accomplice in his brother’s treacheries, especially as upon every interval of rivalship, the Duke grew jealous of him. The truth was, that Mr. Pelham, who had as much envy[138] in his temper, and still more fondness for power, was willing to take advantage of his brother’s fickleness, and reaped all the emolument without incurring the odium of it. He had lived in friendship with Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Chesterfield, and the Duke of Bedford; while his brother was notoriously betraying them shrugged up his shoulders, condemned the Duke, tried to make peace, but never failed to profit of their ruin the moment it was accomplished. The falsehood and frivolousness of their behaviour can never appear in a stronger light than it did in the present instance, and in all the transactions that relate to Lord Granville. That Lord had hurried into power on Sir Robert Walpole’s disgrace, and declared he would be a Page of the Back Stairs rather than ever quit the Court again. He had no sooner quitted his party, who had long suspected him, than he openly declared himself a protector of Sir Robert Walpole; and to give the finishing stroke to his interest with the King, drove deep into all his Majesty’s Hanoverian politics, persuaded, in spite of the recent instance before his eyes, that whoever governed the King, must govern the kingdom.
His person[139] was handsome, open, and engaging; his eloquence at once rapid and pompous, and by the mixture, a little bombast.[140] He was an extensive scholar, master of classic criticism, and of all modern politics. He was precipitate in his manner, and rash in his projects; but, though there was nothing he would not attempt, he scarce ever took any measures necessary to the accomplishment. He would profess amply, provoke indiscriminately, oblige seldom. It is difficult to say whether he was oftener intoxicated by wine or ambition: in fits of the former, he showed contempt for every body; in rants of the latter, for truth. His genius was magnificent and lofty; his heart without gall or friendship, for he never tried to be revenged on his enemies, or to serve his friends. One of the latter, Lord Chief-Justice Willes, being complimented on Lord Granville’s return to Court, replied, “He my friend! He is nobody’s friend: I will give you a proof. Sir Robert Walpole had promised me to make my friend Clive one of the King’s Council; but too late! I asked him to request it of Mr. Pelham, who promised, but did not perform. When Lord Granville was in the height of his power, I one day said to him, ‘My Lord, you are going to the King; do ask him to make poor Clive one of his Council.’ He replied, ‘What is it to me who is a Judge, or who a Bishop? It is my business to make Kings and Emperors, and to maintain the balance of Europe.’ Willes replied, ‘Then they who want to be Bishops and Judges will apply to those who will submit to make it their business.’” I will mention one other short instance of his style. When, during his power, he had a mind to turn out the Chancellor, and prefer Willes, he said to Mr. Pelham, “I made Willes Chief Justice.” “You may make him more if you please, and perhaps will,” replied Mr. Pelham, “but I thought Sir Robert Walpole made him Chief Justice.” “No, it was I: I will tell you how: I knew him at Oxford; Queen Anne’s Ministry had caught him scribbling libels: I had even then an interest with men in power—I saved him from the pillory—now, you know, if he had stood in the pillory, Sir Robert Walpole could never have made him a Judge.”
He carried this extravagance into his whole behaviour: divided Europe, portioned out the spoils of the King of Prussia, conquered France—and all these visionary victories, without deigning to cultivate the least interest in the House of Commons, where the Pelhams were undermining like moles, and thinking as little of Europe—as ever they did afterwards. Pitt, who was building fame by attacking this Quixote Minister, received profuse incense from Mr. Pelham; while Lord Granville kept no measures of decency with his new associates. He treated the Duke of Newcastle, the Chancellor, and Lord Harrington, with unmeasurable contempt, and would not suffer their patience to be, what their tempers inclined them to be, the humblest of his slaves. These men, who, if they had any talents, had the greatest art that ever I knew at decrying those they wanted to undo, soon kindled such a flame in the nation, that the King was forced to part with his favourite, and all his airy schemes of German glory. Lord Granville had endeavoured early, by the intervention of Lord Hervey, to unite with Sir Robert Walpole, but he absolutely declined it, being persuaded that Lord Granville had connexions with the Pretender,[141] which, if he ever had, he now and long since had undoubtedly broken off. In their distress to get rid of their great antagonist, the Pelhams had recourse to Sir Robert Walpole. I don’t know whether the Duke of Newcastle, like another King-making Warwick, would not even have offered to raise him again to the height from which he had tumbled him, had he stipulated for any terms. Lord Orford, who the year before had by his single interest prevented the rejection of the Hanover troops, now came again to town, and having been instructed by John Selwyn, who was dispatched to meet him upon the road, wrote a letter to the King, which prevailed upon him to dismiss his Minister.
The Pelhams then entered into a coalition with the Duke of Bedford, Lord Chesterfield, Pitt, and that faction, which went on tolerably smooth, till Pitt’s impatience to be Secretary at War opened the door to a new scene. Lord Bath and Lord Granville, who still preserved connexions with the King, through the intervention of my Lady Yarmouth, persuaded him not to admit that incendiary into his closet. The Pelhams discovered from whence the rub came; and growing apprehensive that as soon as the session should be closed, and the Supplies completed, they should be discarded, not only determined to resign their own places, but engaged the whole body of the King’s Ministers and servants, down to the lowest clerks in offices, in a league of throwing up their employments in order to distress their master: and the whole nation, which for four years together had seemed possessed with a madness of seizing places, now ran into the opposite phrensy of quitting them—and must not it be told:—or will it be credited, if it is told?—The period they chose for this unwarrantable insult, was the height of a Rebellion; the King was to be forced into compliance with their views, or their allegiance was in a manner ready to be offered to the competitor for his Crown, then actually wrestling for it in the heart of his kingdom! A flagrancy of ingratitude and treachery not to be paralleled, but by the behaviour of the Parliament at the beginning of the Civil War, who connived at the Irish Rebellion, in order to charge King Charles with fomenting it. What attention they had already exerted for suppressing the Rebellion, appears from Sir John Cope’s trial, where, in answer to his repeated memorials for succours, and representations of the young Pretender being actually in Scotland and in arms, the Council tell him, “That they are unwilling to send him supplies, for fear of alarming people.”
This general banding of the King’s servants against him, joined to Lord Granville’s neglect of all precaution to strengthen himself by a party, had the desired effect. He had offered the Seals to Willes but the very day of the execution of their scheme, who prudently declined them. Winnington, though far from being a friend to Mr. Pelham, and wishing well to Lord Granville, yet understood his own interest too well to undertake the management of the House of Commons, and was at last forced to mediate the parley between the King and the mutineers. Lord Granville took the Seals, which Lord Harrington had been the first to resign, and sent for Lord Cholmondeley from Chester to take the others. This was[142] a vain empty man, shoved up too high by his father-in-law, Sir Robert Walpole, and fallen into contempt and obscurity by his own extravagance and insufficiency. Lord Winchelsea,[143] who had been at the head of the Admiralty on the first change, and the only man who had raised his character (by his conduct at that Board) when the rest of his friends had sunk theirs, was again named to that dignity; and Lord Bath at last obtained that object of his every passion, the government of the Treasury. The other employments they had not time to fill up, for on the third day of this meteor-like Ministry, no volunteers coming in, business at a stand, the nation in astonishment, and the Parliament in indignation, the two Lords were forced to tell the King, that he must once more part with them, and submit to his old governors. Lord Granville left St. James’s laughing; Lord Bath slipped down the back stairs, leaving Lord Carlisle in the outward room, expecting to be called in to kiss hands for the Privy Seal.
The King sent for Winnington, and commissioned him to invite the deserters to return to their posts. Winnington[144] had been bred a Tory, but had left them in the height of Sir Robert Walpole’s power: when that Minister sunk, he had injudiciously, and to please my Lady Townshend, who had then the greatest influence over him, declined visiting him in a manner to offend the steady old Whigs; and his jolly way of laughing at his own want of principles had revolted all the graver sort, who thought deficiency of honesty too sacred and profitable a commodity to be profaned and turned into ridicule. He had infinitely more wit than any man I ever knew, and it was as ready and quick as it was constant and unmeditated. His style was a little brutal; his courage not at all so; his good-humour inexhaustible: it was impossible to hate or to trust him. He died soon after by the ignorance of a quack,[145] when he stood in the fairest point of rising, to the great satisfaction of Mr. Pelham, whom he rivalled and despised.
The ligue, who had retired for no other end, did not make the King expect them long. Lord Harrington alone, when Mr. Pelham announced to him the summons for their return, said, “Go back!—yes, but not without conditions.” One was, that Lord Granville should give up the promise of the Garter; which he did—but got while out of place, and saw Lord Harrington sacrificed to the King’s resentments.
The King had fewer sensations of revenge, or at least knew how to hoard them better than any man who ever sat upon a Throne. The insults he experienced from his own, and those obliged servants, never provoked him enough to make him venture the repose of his people, or his own. If any object of his hate fell in his way, he did not pique himself upon heroic forgiveness, but would indulge it at the expence of his integrity, though not of his safety. He was reckoned strictly honest; but the burning his father’s will[146] must be an indelible blot upon his memory; as a much later instance of his refusing to pardon a young man[147] who had been condemned at Oxford for a most trifling forgery, contrary to all example when recommended to mercy by the Judge; merely because Willes, who was attached to the Prince of Wales, had tried him, and assured him his pardon, will stamp his name with cruelty, though in general his disposition was merciful, if the offence was not murder. His avarice was much less equivocal than his courage: he had distinguished the latter early;[148] it grew more doubtful afterwards: the former he distinguished very near as soon,[149] and never deviated from it. His understanding was not near so deficient, as it was imagined; but though his character changed extremely in the world, it was without foundation; for [whether] he deserved to be so much ridiculed as he had been in the former part of his reign, or so respected as in the latter, he was consistent in himself, and uniformly meritorious or absurd.