At the present disgrace, my lord! ne’er repine,
Since fame thinks of nothing but thy tricks and mine,
And our name shall alike in history shine.
Which nobody can deny.”
Having established his fame as an orator with his speeches on the South Sea question, Wharton gained yet further distinction by his impassioned defence of Bishop Atterbury, but what reputation he gained as a speaker he lost in honour, for he had obtained the material for his oration by a mean trick. The day before he spoke he went to Sir Robert Walpole, told him he was sorry for his opposition to the Government and intended to reinstate himself in favour at Court and with the Ministry by speaking against the Bishop, and he begged the Prime Minister to give him some assistance in preparing his arguments. Walpole went carefully over the ground with his visitor, and showed him the strong and the weak points of the case. The Duke expressed his thanks, spent the night in a drinking bout, and, without going to bed, went to the House of Lords and spoke for the Bishop, making use most effectively of the information he had obtained on the previous day. Then, when sentence of banishment was pronounced on the Bishop, he saw him off, and, returning home, wrote and published some verses on “The Banishment of Cicero,” in which, of course, the Bishop was Cicero, and George I. Clodius, concluding:
“Let Clodius now in grandeur reign,
Let him exert his power,
A short-lived monster in the land,
The monarch of an hour;