Mr. Shippen was member for Saltash. He was one of the most vehement and vigorous opposers of the measures of government through the whole of this reign; and, no doubt, had imbibed a very strong tincture of Jacobitism. But he was a man of great firmness and independence of mind, a manly, vigorous, and correct speaker; and whatever his personal motives or sentiments might have been, the principles which he uniformly avowed and maintained, were sound and constitutional.
Sir W. Wyndham, (Member for Somersetshire,) was born 1687. In 1710 he was made secretary at war, and in 1713 chancellor of the exchequer. He was dismissed from his place on the accession of George I. and being suspected of having a concern in the rebellion in 1715, was committed to the Tower, but liberated without being brought to a trial. He died 1740. It was to him that Lord Bolingbroke addressed that celebrated letter in defence of himself, which is the best of all his works.
Earl of Strafford. I can find no particular account of the author of this speech, though I suppose he was a descendant of the great lord Strafford. A noble line seldom furnishes more than one great name. The succeeding branches seldom add any thing to the illustriousness of the stock, and are so far from keeping up the name, that they are lost in it. However I do not discover any marks of degeneracy in the present instance: one may trace a sort of family likeness in the sentiments; the pedigree of the mind seems to have been well kept up. There is a nobility of soul as well as of blood; and the feelings of humanity so closely and beautifully expressed in the conclusion of this speech, are such as we should expect from the cultivated descendant of ‘a man of honour and a cavalier.’
Horace Walpole, (Brother to Sir Robert,) was member for Yarmouth. He seems to have been little inferior to the minister in facility of speaking, and a certain ambidexterity of political logic. He had the art to make the question assume at will whatever shape he pleased, and to make ‘the worse appear the better reason.’ But this seems to have been more a trick, or an habitual readiness in the common-place forms of trivial argument, and less owing to natural capacity and quickness of mind, than it was in his brother. There is also less ease and more slovenliness, less grace and more of the affectation of it, than are to be found in his brother’s speeches. He appears more desirous of shewing his art than of concealing it, and to be proud of the trappings of ministerial authority which excite the spleen and envy of his opponents.
William Pulteney, (afterwards Earl of Bath,) was born 1682, and died 1764. He was the bitterest opponent Sir Robert Walpole ever had, (which is said to have arisen from some difference between them at the outset of their political career) and he at length succeeded in driving him from his situation. He was member for Heydon, in Yorkshire. He lost all the popularity he had gained by his long opposition to the ministerial party, when he was made a peer, and sunk into obscurity and contempt. I think the following is the best of his speeches. He was, however, in general, a very able speaker. The stile of his speeches is particularly good, and exactly fitted to produce an effect on a mixed audience. His sentences are short, direct, pointed; yet full and explicit, abounding in repetitions of the same leading phrase or idea, whenever this had a tendency to rivet the impression more strongly in the mind of the hearer, or to prevent the slightest obscurity or doubt. He also knew perfectly well how to avail himself of the resources contained in the stately significance, and gross familiarity of the dialect of the house of commons. To talk in the character of a great parliamentary leader, to assume the sense of the house, to affect the extensive views and disinterested feelings that belong to a great permanent body, and to descend in a moment to all the pertness and scurrility, the conceit and self-importance of a factious bully, are among the great arts of parliamentary speaking. Dogmatical assumptions, consequential airs, and big words, are what convince and overawe the generality of hearers, who always judge of others by their pretensions, and feel the greatest confidence in those who have the least doubt about themselves. There is also in this gentleman’s speeches, a character, which indeed they had in common with most of the speeches of the time; that is, they discover a general knowledge of the affairs of Europe, and of the intrigues, interests, and engagements of the different courts on the continent; they shew the statesman, and the man of business, as well as the orator. These minute details render the speeches of this period long and uninteresting, which prevented me from giving so many of them as the ability displayed in them would otherwise have required. This diplomatic eloquence seems to have been gaining ground from the time of the revolution. We may see from Lord Bolingbroke’s writings how much the study of such subjects was in fashion in his time.
Sir Gilbert Heathcote was an alderman of London. He spoke frequently in the house about this period, and always in a plain, sensible manner.
John Lord Carteret, (afterwards Earl of Granville,) succeeded his father George lord Carteret when very young. He was educated at Oxford, and took his seat in the house of lords in 1711, where he distinguished himself by his zeal for the Hanover succession. In 1719, he went ambassador to Sweden, and in 1724, was appointed viceroy of Ireland, where his administration, at a very trying period, was generally applauded for its wisdom and moderation. He died in 1763. He was a man of abilities, an highly amiable character, and a great encourager of learned men. To him it was that the celebrated Hutcheson dedicated his elegant treatise on beauty and virtue.
Mr. Campbell, (Member for Pembrokeshire).—He seems in this debate to have steered clear of any thing like common sense, with such dexterity, that it would be no difficult matter to pronounce him more knave than fool. A man cannot be so ingeniously in the wrong by accident. There is a striking resemblance between the arguments here used, and some that have been brought forward on more recent occasions. Change the form, the names, and the date, and in reading this, and the following speech, you would suppose yourself to be reading the contents of a modern newspaper. It is astonishing how trite, how thread-bare this subject of politics is worn; how completely every topic relating to it is exhausted; how little is left for the invention of low cunning to plume itself upon, or for honest ambition to boast of! Those who have it in their power may very wisely devote themselves to politics, either to serve their own ends, or to serve the public; but it is too late to think of acquiring distinction in this way. A man can at present only be a retail dealer in politics: he can only keep a sort of huckster’s shop of ready made goods. Do what he can, he can only repeat what has already been said a thousand times, and make a vain display of borrowed wisdom or folly. “’Twas mine, ’tis his, and may be any man’s.” What gratification there can be in this to any one, who does not live entirely in the echo of his own name, I do not understand. I should as soon think of being proud of wearing a suit of second hand clothes, or marrying another man’s cast-off mistress. In the beaten path of vulgar ambition, the dull, the mechanical, the superficial, and the forward press on, and are successful, while the man of genius, ashamed of his competitors, shrinks from the contest and is soon lost in the crowd.
Samuel Sandys, (Member for Worcester,) was one of the most frequent and able speakers of this period. What his principles were I do not know: for the side which any person took at this time, was a very equivocal test of his real sentiments; toryism, through this and the preceding reign, generally assuming the shape of resistance to the encroachments of the prerogative, and attachment to the liberties of the people.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, (Earl of Chesterfield,) was born in 1694. He was educated at Cambridge, after which he went abroad, and on his return to England, became a member of the house of commons. In 1726 he succeeded his father in the house of peers. He was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, where he continued till 1748. He died 1773. I have given a greater number of his speeches than of any person’s about this time, because I found them more ingenious, and amusing, and elegant, than any others. They are steeped in classical allusion; and he seems always anxious to adjust the dress, and regulate the forms of the English constitution, by the looking-glass of the Roman commonwealth. There may be a little sprinkling of academic affectation in this, but it is much more agreeable than the diplomatic impertinence and official dulness, which were at that time so much in vogue. His speeches are, in this respect, a striking contrast to those of Pulteney, Pitt, Pelham, &c. It has been said that they want force and dignity. If it be meant that they are not pompous and extravagant, I shall admit the truth of the objection. But I cannot see why ease is inconsistent with vigour, or that it is a sign of wisdom to be dull. If his speeches contain as much good sense, and acute discrimination as those of his rivals, as clearly expressed, and seasoned with more liveliness of fancy, I should be disposed to listen to them more attentively, or to read them oftener, than if, as is often the case, their strength consisted in mere violence and turbulence, and their only pretensions to wisdom arose from their want of wit. There is something very peculiar in the form of his sentences. He perpetually takes up the former part of a sentence, and by throwing it into the next clause, gives a distinctness and pointedness to every separate branch of it. His sentences look like a succession of little smart climaxes. ‘And, therefore, an administration without esteem—without authority among the people, let their power be never so great—let their power be never so arbitrary, will be ridiculed. The severest edicts—the most terrible punishments, cannot prevent it. If any man, therefore, thinks that he has been censured—if any man thinks he has been ridiculed, upon any of our public theatres,’ &c. ‘As no man is perfect, as no man is infallible,’ &c. See his speech on the theatres. This method, is, I suspect, borrowed from the French: where it suits with the turn of a man’s mind, it is agreeable enough, and must have a very good effect in speaking. It is, at least, better than our modern style of rhetorical architecture, where the nominative case is mounted up at the top of the page, and the verb fixed at the bottom; than those circular ladders, and winding-staircases in language, where the whole hangs suspended in an airy round, and the meaning drops down through the middle. The late Mr. Pitt was a master of this involved style.