"Ne'er yet in vain did Heaven its omen send;
Some dreadful ills unusual signs portend!
When Pitt resign'd, a nation's tears will own,
'Then fell the brightest jewel in the crown.'"
[156] Besides the lampooners attached to each side there were various unscrupulous journalistic free-lances, whose object was only to make money, which they extorted by a method since imitated by certain editors of low-class society and financial papers. Thus a writer went with a column of panegyric and a column of condemnation of the character of Alderman Beckford, and attempted to levy blackmail for the destruction of the objectionable article. Only too often in such cases, both appreciation and attack were sold and duly appeared in antagonistic publications.
[157] William Beckford (1709-1770), Lord Mayor of London 1762 and 1769.
[158] Chatham Correspondence.
[159] "My old friend was once a skilful courtier; but, since he himself has attained a kind of royalty, he seems more attentive to support his own majesty than to pay the necessary regard to that of his sovereign."—Lord Lyttelton.
[160] "The day the King went to the House [of Lords] I was three quarters of an hour getting through Whitehall. There were subjects enough to set up half-a-dozen petty kings; the Pretender would be proud to reign over the footmen alone, and indeed, unless he acquires some of them, he will have no subjects left; all their masters flock to St. James's."—Horace Walpole.
[161] Hardwicke Papers, Bedford Correspondence.
[162] Sir Francis Dashwood, afterwards fifteenth Baron le Despencer (1708-1781).
Dashwood was under no misapprehension as to his unsuitability for the post. "People will point at me in the streets and cry, 'There goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever appeared,'" he said; and he wrote to Sir Andrew Mitchell on March 23, 1761: "The same strange fortune which made me Secretary-at-war five years and a half ago, has made me Chancellor of the Exchequer. It may, perhaps, at last make me Pope. I think I am equally fit to be the head of the Church as of the Exchequer."
[163] George Montague Dunk, second Earl of Halifax (1716-1771).