man was ever more jealous of power, he was yet content to be a mere cipher under the brother Ministers, and to fold his wings until he could expand them for a bolder flight.

No man, as I have said, loved power more, and certainly no man held it longer. For nearly thirty years was he Secretary of State; for nearly ten years First Lord of the Treasury. His character during that period has been, of course, observed and described by writers of every rank and every party; and it may well astonish us to find how much they agree in their accounts. His peculiarities were so glaring and ridiculous, that the most careless glance could not mistake, nor the most bitter enmity exaggerate them. There could be no caricature where the original was always more laughable than the likeness. Ever in a hurry, yet seldom punctual, he seems, said Lord Wilmington, as if he had lost half an hour in the morning which he is running after the rest of the day without being able to overtake it! He never walked, but constantly ran; 'insomuch," writes Chesterfield, 66 that I have sometimes told him, that by "his fleetness one should rather take him for the courier "than the author of the letters." His conversation was a sort of quick stammer- a strange mixture of slowness and rapidity; and his ideas sometimes were in scarcely less confusion:-"Annapolis! Annapolis! oh yes, An"napolis must be defended; to be sure Annapolis should "be defended! Pray where is Annapolis?"* Extremely timorous, and moved to tears on even the slightest occasions, he abounded in childish caresses and in empty protestations. At his levees he accosted, hugged, clasped, and promised every body with a seeming cordiality so universal, that it failed to please any in particular. Fretful and peevish with his dependents; always distrusting his friends, and always ready to betray them, he lived in a continual turmoil of harassing affairs, vexatious opposition, and burning jealousies. In business, Lord Hervey thus contrasts him to Sir Robert Walpole:- "We have 66 one Minister that does every thing with the same seem"ing ease and tranquillity as if he was doing nothing;

* Horace Walpole's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 344.

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we have another that does nothing in the same hurry "and agitation as if he did every thing!"

Yet in some points Newcastle might bear a more favourable parallel with Walpole. He built no palace at Houghton. He formed no splendid collection of paintings. He won no fortune in the South Sea speculations. In noticing his decease, Lord Chesterfield gives him this high testimony:-"My old kinsman and contemporary "is at last dead, and, for the first time, quiet. After "all the great offices which he had held for fifty years, "he died 300,000l. poorer than he was when he came "into them. A very unministerial proceeding!"†

Nor was disinterestedness the only merit of Newcastle. In private life, though a bundle of weaknesses, his character was excellent. He had very great Parliamentary interest, both of his own and through his friends; and his brother, Henry Pelham, now Secretary at War, was rising into high reputation as a speaker and a statesman. Newcastle himself was useful and ready in debate; always prepared for an answer, and with the same quality which the French have ascribed to his countrymen in battle-he never knew when he was beat! The same confident fluency is displayed in his dispatches. But what chiefly maintained him in power was his court-craft, his indefatigable perseverance, his devoting every faculty of his mind to discover and attach himself to the winning side; and we might admire his skill and success in these respects, had he ever shown the least hesitation in emergencies to renounce or betray his friends. "His name," said Sir Robert Walpole, "is Perfidy."

The Opposition at this time was very weak in the House of Commons, and seemed still weaker from the slack attendance of its members. There appeared so little prospect of success, that the Tories, losing spirit, could seldom be induced to remain in town, or appear in full force on any question. In fact, even at the present day, it may be observed, that many gentlemen of fortune seem to have two great objects in life. the first, to become Members of Parliament at any cost or exertion;

*Lord Hervey to Horace Walpole, Oct. 31. 1735. Coxe's Walpole.

† To Colonel Irvine, November 21. 1768.

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the second, to stay away from the House of Commons as often and as long as possible! In 1730 Newcastle writes, "We look upon the enemy to be quite demolished in the "House of Commons."* They were, in truth, at a low ebb. They could not deny that the Ministers had been very successful in their foreign negotiations; and were reduced to argue that this advantage had accrued by chance, or might have been attained a shorter way. According to Pulteney, "It is something like a pilot, who, "though he has a clear, a safe, and a straight passage for "going into port, yet takes it in his head to carry the ship a great way about, through sands, rocks and shallows, and thereby loses a great many of the seamen, destroys a great deal of the tackle and rigging, and 66 puts the owners to a vast expense; however, at last, "by chance, he hits the port, and then triumphs in his good conduct." According to Wyndham, "We have "been like a man in a room, who wants to get out, and though the door be open, and a clear way to it, yet "he stalks round the room, breaks his shins over a stool, "tumbles over a chair, and at last, rumbling over every thing in his way, by chance finds the door and gets out, "after abundance of needless trouble and danger."†

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In proportion, however, as the Opposition flagged in argument, they (as usual in such cases) increased in virulence. The Craftsman still continued his weekly attacks with unabated spirit and with growing effect. Other pamphlets also appeared from the same quarter, under the name of Caleb Danvers; and one of these lashed the character of Lord Hervey with such asperity, that Hervey called on Pulteney to declare whether he was the author of the libel. After some altercation, Pulteney replied, that whether he were or not, he was ready to justify and stand by its truth: a duel ensued, and both combatants were slightly wounded. Hervey was a young man of considerable wit and ability, but most in

* To Lord Harrington, March 16. 1730.

† Speeches on the Address, January 13. 1732.

Mr. Thomas Pelham to Lord Waldegrave, January 28. 1731. Pulteney suspected Lord Hervey of having written a scurrilous pamphlet against him and Bolingbroke, called "Sedition and Defamation Displayed." The real author was Sir William Yonge.

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firm health, insomuch that he found it necessary to live only on asses milk and biscuits. Once a week he indulged himself with an apple; emetics he used daily.* He attracted ridicule by the contrast between his pompous solemn manner and his puny effeminate appearance; and still more unhappily for himself, he attacked Pope, who, in return, has sent down his name to posterity as a monster of profligacy, and a "mere white curd of asses' "milk!"

Another pamphlet which Pulteney published in the same year, and in which he did not conceal his name, brought down upon him the full tide of Ministerial resentment. He had disclosed some former private conversation between him and Walpole, in which Sir Robert had not spared the character of George the Second as Prince of Wales. However blamable this breach of confidence, Walpole ought not to have mixed the King in the quarrel; but he now prevailed upon His Majesty to strike Pulteney's name out of the list of Privy Councillors, and to order that the several Lords Lieutenant who had granted him commissions of the peace should revoke them.† It should be observed also, that Pulteney's breach of confidence was not without justification. For the libel which he was answering contained a like disclosure of other conversations between him and Walpole; and as the former declares in his preliminary address, "these passages of secret history, however, falsely "stated and misrepresented, could come from nobody but "yourself."

The year 1733 was marked by two great financial measures of Walpole, the first certainly wrong, but carried by large majorities; the latter as certainly just and wise, but repelled by the overpowering force of public indignation. The first was his proposal to take half a million from the Sinking Fund for the service of the current year. The Sinking Fund, established by Stanhope and Walpole himself in 1717, had been kept sacred during the whole reign of George the First. Since 1727, however, various encroachments had been made upon this surplus, and now in 1733, it received an open See a note to Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 362. Tindal's Hist. vol. viii. p. 104.

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attack. It was truly urged by the Opposition, and especially by Sir John Barnard, member for London, a man of the greatest weight on all financial questions, that this precious fund ought never to be applied to any other purpose than that of discharging debts, except in the case of some extreme emergency; that to ease ourselves by loading our posterity is a poor, short-sighted expedient; and the author of such an expedient," emphatically added Barnard, "must expect the curses of "posterity." "The Right Honourable Gentleman," said Pulteney, "had once the vanity to call himself "the Father of the Sinking Fund; but if Solomon's "judgment was right, he who is thus for splitting and dividing the child can never be deemed to be the real "father." But Walpole had a most irresistible argument for the country gentlemen: he declared that if his proposal were not carried, he must move for a land-tax of two shillings in the pound-and his proposal was carried by a majority of 110! His biographer and warm admirer admits, on this occasion, a dark speck in his "financial administration.". For the example once set was too tempting not to follow. Next year 1,200,000l., the whole produce of the fund, was taken from it; in 1735 and 1736 it was mortgaged and alienated. Our debts were always augmented in moments of difficulty, never diminished in a period of peace, until the Sinking Fund was restored, in a different era and on a new foundation, by the genius and integrity of Pitt.

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It may be observed, however, in justice to Walpole, that many persons in the reign of the two first Georges entertained an idea, however erroneously, that the public debt was a main pillar of the established Government by interesting so many persons in its support, and were therefore extremely unwilling to take any measures for an effectual reduction.† This idea was founded on the fear of the Pretender, who it was thought if once enthroned in the kingdom would never acknowledge the debts contracted mainly to keep him out of it. In an

* Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 371. See also Sinclair's Public Revenue, part ii. p. 108.

† Sinclair's History of the Revenue, part ii. p. 75.