And her Navies in Port are the terror of Spain.
[16] Admiral Vernon's ship.
THE NEW MINISTERS (1742).
I.
Hervey's Account of the Ministry
Source.—Hervey's Memoirs. Vol. ii., p. 581.
Their sanctum sanctorum is composed of my Lord Carteret, Lord Winchilsea his adherent, the Duke of Newcastle and his quibbling friend my Lord Chancellor [Hardwicke], Mr. Pulteney, and Harry Pelham. Lord Carteret, Duke of Newcastle, and Mr. Pulteney, while they act seemingly in concert at this juncture, having distinct views and different interests of their own to pursue, are all striving to deceive and overreach one another; and each separately relating to their own private friends what passes at these conferences conducive to their own points, the whole of the conference, through different channels, flows into the world. Lord Carteret, feeling he has the strength of the closet and the confidence and favour of the King, whilst he is making his court by foreign politics,[17] hates and detests Mr. Pulteney for all the trouble he gives him in pursuing his points at home; and knowing that the moment Mr. Pulteney goes into the House of Lords, he will become an absolute nullity, he is ready to feed the exorbitant appetite of his demands with any morsels it craves for at present, provided in return he can gain that one point of Mr. Pulteney's going into the House of Lords. On the other hand, Mr. Pulteney, knowing he has at present the House of Commons in his hands, and seeing too plainly that though he has the power of the closet, he has none of the favour, and that every point he carries there is extorted, not granted—carried by force, not by persuasion—hates my Lord Carteret for engrossing that favour which he proposed at least to share, if not to engross himself; and whilst he is forcing seven or eight of his followers into employment, proposes to remain himself in the House of Commons in order to retain the same power, in order to force a new batch of his friends, three or four months hence, in the same manner upon the King, which reduces the struggle between Lord Carteret and him to this short point, that if Mr. Pulteney goes into the House of Lords, Lord Carteret dupes him; if he does not, he dupes my Lord Carteret. The Duke of Newcastle, whose envy is so strong that he is jealous of everybody, and whose understanding is so weak that nobody is jealous of him, is reciprocally made use of by these two men to promote their different ends; and being jealous of Lord Carteret from feeling his superior interest with the King, and jealous of Mr. Pulteney from his superior interest to his brother [Mr. Pelham] in the House of Commons, is like the hungry ass in the fable between the two bundles of hay, and allured by both without knowing which to go to, tastes neither, and will starve between them. He wants Mr. Pulteney's power in the House of Commons to be kept as a check and bridle upon Lord Carteret, who has outrun him so far in the palace, and yet wants Mr. Pulteney out of the House of Commons to strengthen his own power there by the proxy medium of his brother. Thus stands the private contest and seeming union among these present rulers, or rather combatants for rule.
II.
On the Ministry of Lord Carteret, Feb., 1742.
Source.—Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, quoted by Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, Sept. 11, 1742; and also to be found in Williams' Collected Poems.
O my poor country! is this all
You've gain'd by the long-labour'd fall