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.