Fortunately, the empire was rescued from this most fatal of all catastrophes. A great English minister appeared, on whom were to devolve the defence of England and the restoration of Europe. The sagacity of Pitt saw where the evil lay; his intrepidity instantly struck at its source, and his unrivalled ability completed the saving operation. He broke down the cabinet monopoly.
No man less humiliated himself to the populace, but no man better understood the people. No man paid more practical respect to the peerage, but no man more thoroughly extinguished their exclusive possession of power. He formed his cabinet from men of all ranks, in the peerage and out of the peerage. The great peers chiefly went over to the opposition. He resisted them there, with as much daring, and with as successful a result, as he had expelled them from the stronghold of government. He made new peers. He left his haughty antagonists to graze on the barren field of opposition for successive years; and finally saw almost the whole herd come over for shelter to the ministerial fold.
At this period a remarkable man was brought into public life—the celebrated Dunning, appointed solicitor-general. Walpole calls this "an extraordinary promotion," as Dunning was connected with Lord Shelburne. It was like every thing else, obviously an intrigue; and Dunning would have lost the appointment, but for his remarkable reputation in the courts; Wedderburne being the man of the Bedfords. Walpole's opinion of Dunning in the House, shows, how much even the highest abilities may be influenced by circumstances. He says, "that Dunning immediately and utterly lost character as a speaker, although he had acquired the very highest distinctions as a pleader;" so different, says he, is the oratory of the bar and of parliament. Mansfield and Camden retained an equal rank in both. Wedderburne was most successful in the House. Norton had at first disappointed the expectations that were conceived of him when he came into parliament; yet his strong sense, that glowed through all the coarseness of his language and brutality of his manner, recovered his weight, and he was much distinguished. While Sir Dudley Ryder, attorney-general in the preceding reign, the soundest lawyer, and Charles Yorke, one of the most distinguished pleaders, soon talked themselves out of all consideration in parliament; the former by laying too great a stress on every part of his diffusive knowledge, and the latter by the sterility of his intelligence.
An intelligent Note, however, vindicates the reputation of Dunning. It is observed, that Dunning's having been counsel for Wilkes, and the intimate of Lord Shelburne, it could not be expected that he should take a prominent part in any of the debates which were so largely occupied with Wilkes' misdemeanours. Lord North, too, was hostile to Dunning. Under such conditions it was impossible that any man should exhibit his powers to advantage; but at a later period, when he had got rid of those trammels, his singular abilities vindicated themselves. He became one of the leaders of the opposition, even when that honour was to be shared with Burke. We have heard, that such was the pungency of Dunning's expressions, and the happy dexterity of his conceptions, that when he spoke, (his voice being feeble, and unable to make itself heard at any great distance,) the members used to throng around the bench on which he spoke. Wraxall panegyrizes him, and yet with a tautology of terms, which must have been the very reverse of Dunning's style. Thus, he tells us that when Dunning spoke, "every murmur was hushed, and every ear attentive," two sentences which amount to the same thing. Hannah More is also introduced as one of the panegyrists; for poor Hannah seems to have been one of the most bustling persons possible; to have run every where, and to have given her opinion of every body, however much above her comprehension. She was one of the spectators on the Duchess of Kingston's trial, (a most extraordinary scene for the choice of such a purist;) but Hannah was not at that time quite so sublime as she became afterwards. Hannah describes Dunning's manner as "insufferably bad, coughing and spitting at every word; but his sense and expression pointed to the last degree." But the character which the annotator gives as a model of panegyric, pleases us least of all. It is by Sir William Jones, and consists of one long antithesis. It is a studied toil of language, expressing ideas, a commonplace succession, substituting words for thoughts, and at once leaving the ear palled, and the understanding dissatisfied. What, for instance, could be made of such a passage as
this? Sir William is speaking of Dunning's wit. "This," says he, "relieved the weary, calmed the resentful, and animated the drowsy. This drew smiles even from such as were the object of it, and scattered flowers over a desert, and, like sunbeams sparkling on a lake, gave spirit and vivacity to the dullest and least interesting cause." And this mangling of metaphor is to teach us the qualities of a profound and practical mind. What follows, is the perfection of see-saw. "He was endued with an intellect sedate yet penetrating, clear yet profound, subtle yet strong. His knowledge, too, was equal to his imagination, and his memory to his knowledge." He might have equally added, that the capacity of his boots was equal to the size of his legs, and the length of his purse to the extent of his generosity. This reminds us of one of Sydney Smith's burlesques on the balancing of epithets by that most pedantic of pedants, the late Dr Parr—"profundity without obscurity, perspicuity without prolixity, ornament without glare, terseness without barrenness, penetration without subtlety, comprehensiveness without digression, and a great number of other things without a great number of other things."
Little tricks, or rather large ones, now and then diversify the narrative. On the same day that Conway resigned the seals, Lord Weymouth was declared secretary of state. At the same time, Lord Hilsborough kissed hands for the American department, but nominally retaining the post-office, the salary of which he paid to Lord Sandwich, till the elections should be over; there being so strict a disqualifying clause in the bill for prohibiting the postmasters for interfering in elections, which Sandwich was determined to do to the utmost, that he did not dare to accept the office in his own name, till he had incurred the guilt. Another trick of a very dishonourable nature, though ultimately defeated, may supply a moral for our share-trafficking days in high quarters. Lord Bottetort, one of the bedchamber, and a kind of second-hand favourite, had engaged in an adventure with a company of copper-workers at Warmley. They broke, and his lordship, in order to cover his estate from the creditors, begged a privy seal to incorporate the company, by which means private estates would not be answerable. The king ignorantly granted the request; but Lord Chatham, aware of the deception, refused to affix the seal to the patent, pleading that he was not able. Lord Bottetort, outrageous at the disappointment, threatened to petition the lords to remove Lord Chatham, on the ground of inability. The annotator justly observes, that the proposal was absolutely monstrous, being nothing but a gross fraud on his lordship's creditors. It, however, does not seem to have attracted the attention of the attorney-general, or the home-office; but, for some cause or other, the patent did not pass, the result being, that Lord Bottetort, unable to retrieve his losses, obtained the government of Virginia in the following summer, where he subsequently died.
A curious instance of parliamentary corruption next attracted the notice of the public. It came out, that the city of Oxford had offered their representation to two gentlemen, if they would pay £7500 towards the debts of the corporation. They refused the bargain, and Oxford sold itself to the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Abingdon. The matter was brought before the House, and the mayor of Oxford and ten of the corporation appeared at the bar, confessing their crime, and asking pardon. It ended with committing them to prison for five days. A note describes the whole affair as being treated with great ridicule, (there being probably not a few who looked upon things of this nature as a matter of course;) and the story being, that the aldermen completed their bargain with the Duke of Marlborough, during their imprisonment in Newgate.
On the 11th of March 1768, the parliament was dissolved. Walpole says, "that its only characteristic was servility to the government; while our ancestors, we presume, from the shamelessness of its servility, might have called it the Impudent Parliament."
After wearying himself in the dusty field of politics, Walpole retired, like Homer's gods from Troy, to rest in the more flowery region of literature. His habits led him to the enjoyment
of bitter political poetry, which, in fact, is not poetry at all; while they evidently disqualified him from feeling the power and beauty of the imaginative, the only poetry that deserves the name. Thus, he describes Goldsmith as the "correct author of The Traveller," one of the most beautiful poems in the language; while he panegyrizes, with a whole catalogue of plaudits, Anstey's Bath Guide—a very scandalous, though undoubtedly a lively and ingenious, caricature of the habits of the time. An ultra-heavy poem by Bentley, the son of the critic, enjoys a similar panegyric. We give, as an evidence of its dulness, a fragment of its praise of Lord Bute:—