to their daughters, it appears that the fixed yearly income of the Duke, at the height of his favour, was no less than 54,8257., and that the Duchess had, in offices and pensions, an additional sum of 9,5007.*—a sum, I need hardly add, infinitely greater than could now be awarded to the highest favour or the most eminent achievements. There can be no doubt that the former scale was unduly high: but it may be questioned whether we are not at present running into another as dangerous extreme; whether, by diminishing so much the emoluments of public service, we are not deterring men with genius, but without fortune, from entering the career of politics, and forcing them rather to betake themselves to some lucrative profession; whether the greatest abilities may not thereby be diverted from the public service; whether we are not tending to the principle that no man, without a large private property, is fit to be a minister of state; whether we may not, therefore, subject ourselves to the worst of all aristocracies, an aristocracy of money; whether we may not practically lose one of the proudest boasts of the British constitution, under which great talent, however penniless or lowborn, not only may raise, but frequently has raised, itself above the loftiest of our Montagus or Howards! In Queen Anne's time the diplomatic salaries were regulated according to a scale established in 1669. Ambassadors-ordinary in France, Spain, and the Emperor's Court, had 1007. per week, and 15007. for equipage; in Portugal, Holland, Sweden, and the other Courts, 107. per diem and 1000l. for equipage. Ambassadors-extraordinary had everywhere the same allowances as the ambassadersordinary, and differed only in the equipage money, which was to * A statement of the offices and emoluments enjoyed by the Duke of Marlborough: Plenipotentiary to the States General for the English forces on Mr. How's establishment Travelling charges as Master of the Ordnance Colonel of the Foot Guards, being twenty-four companies Per annum. £7,000 5,000 5,000 3,000 1,825 2,000 5,000 From the States of Holland, as General of their Forces 10,000 15,000 1,000 £54,825 (From Somerville, p. 260.)-Lord Dartmouth, probably with party exaggeration, says, "Her Grace and the Duke together had above 90,000l. a year salary." Note to Burnet's Hist., vol. vi. p. 33, ed. 1833. be determined by the Sovereign according to the occasion.* Considering the difference in the value of money, such posts also were undoubtedly more lucrative and advantageous than at present. But, on the other hand, these salaries, and sometimes even those of the civil government at home, were very irregularly paid, and often in arrear. "I neither have received, nor expect to receive," says Bolingbroke, in one of his letters,† "anything on account of the journey which I took last year by her Majesty's order (into France); and, as to my regular appointments, I do assure your Lordship I have heard nothing of them these two years.' Ministerial or parliamentary corruption, at least so far as foreign powers were concerned, did not in this generation, as in the last, sully the annals of England. Thus, for example, shamefully as the English interests were betrayed at the peace of Utrecht by the English ministers, there is yet no reason whatever to suspect that they, like the patriots of Charles the Second's reign, had received presents or "gratifications" from Louis the Fourteenth. Should we ascribe this change to the difference of the periods or of the persons? Was the era of the peace of Utrecht really preferable to that of 1679, hailed by Blackstone as the zenith of our constitutional excellence? Or were Bolingbroke and Oxford more honest statesmen than Littleton and Algernon Sidney? In reviewing the chief characters which we find at this period on the political stage, that of the Queen need not detain us long. She was a very weak woman, full of prejudices, fond of flattery, always governed blindly by some female favourite, and, as Swift bitterly observes, "had not a stock of amity to serve above one object at a time."§ Can it be necessary to waste many words upon the mind of a woman who could give as a reason—a lady's reason!—for dismissing a cabinet minister, that he had appeared before her in a tiewig instead of a full-bottom? Is it not evident that in such a case we must study the advisers and not the character of a sovereignthat we must look to the setting rather than to the stone? Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and at this time Lord Treasurer and Prime Minister, is one of the most remarkable examples in history, how it is possible to attain both popularity and power without either genius or virtue. Born in 1661, and bred in Presbyterian principles, which, however, he was not slow in forsaking, he entered parliament soon after the accession of King William, and was, during four years, Speaker of the House of Commons. On quitting the Chair, in 1704, he was made Secretary of State, through the recommendation of Marlborough. He was, however, an object of * See Bolingbroke's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 114. †To Lord Strafford, Aug. 7, 1713, vol. ii. p. 466. Comment., vol. iv. p. 439, ed. by Coleridge, 1825. Memoirs relating to the Change, Works, vol. iii. p. 227. In his Journal to Stella, he describes Her Majesty's manner at a drawing-room:-"She looked at us round with her fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that were nearest her, and then she was told dinner was ready, and went out." August 8, 1711. Scott's Life of Swift, p. 165. suspicion to his other colleagues. "His humour," says Lord Chancellor Cowper at the time, "is never to deal clearly or openly, but always with reserve, if not dissimulation, and to love tricks when not necessary, but from an inward satisfaction in applauding his own cunning." He had hitherto, in a great measure, skillfully trimmed between the Tories and the Whigs, and secured a great number of adherents from both. But, almost immediately after his junction with the latter, he began to cabal against them; obtained private interviews with the Queen, through the means of Mrs. Masham; gradually worked himself into her Majesty's confidence, and filled her with distrust of her responsible advisers. His letters at that period to Marlborough and Godolphin prove that he knew how to combine the most subtle schemes of malice with the most ardent professions of friendship. His plotting being at length partly brought to light, he was compelled to resign in February, 1708. But he immediately put himself at the head of the Tories; and, retaining his back-stairs influence at Court, and his early friends amongst the Dissenters, he, in little more than two years, undermined and overthrew the great Whig administration. He became chief of that which succeeded, obtained not only the Treasurer's staff, but the Earldom of Oxford, and, next to Mrs. Masham herself, was now the most important subject of the realm. He seems to have possessed in perfection a low sort of management, and all the baser arts of party, which enabled him to cajole and keep together his followers, and to sow divisions amongst his enemies. He spared neither pains nor promises to secure adherents. He affected upon every question a tone of forbearance and candour. But he was one of those inferior spirits who mistake cunning for wisdom. His slender and pliant intellect was well fitted to crawl up to the heights of power through all the crooked mazes and dirty by-paths of in * Private Diary, Jan. 6, 1706. Lord Cowper's Diary was printed, but not published, by the Roxburgh Club, in 1833, and I have received a copy by the kindness of the Rev. E. C. Hawtrey. It had been seen by Coxe in MS. [Of this Diary Lord Campbell gives the following account in his "Lives of the Lord Chancellors." "It begins this very day, (October 11th, 1705,) and continues pretty regularly till the end of January following. There are a few entries in the beginning of February, 1706, but on the 11th of that month there is this notice between brackets, [Here I broke off, wanting time, and eyes being sore,] and there is a hiatus till 23d January, 1709. There is a single entry on that day, and no other is found till 27th August, 1710, about the time when the Whig government was breaking up; and we have this notice: 'My great business, and want of health forced me to interrupt this course in a great measure; but I hope, on quitting my office, to be at leisure to resume it, though in matters of less moment.' Then follow some very interesting details respecting the change of government, and the attempts to retain him in the office of Chancellor. But the entries are very rare during the remainder of the reign of Queen Anne. On the accession of George I. we have an account of his receiving the Great Seal from that sovereign, and there, unfortunately, the Diary closes."-Vol. iv. p. 291, note, chap. cxiv. Again, in the same vol., p. 343, note, ch. cxvi., Lord Campbell adds: "Lord Cowper's Diary ceases at the accession of George I, the last entry being dated 21st Sept. 1714, but fortunately a charming diary of the second Lady Cowper, beginning at this time, is preserved. It remains in MS., but it well deserves to be printed, for it gives a more lively picture of the court of England at the commencement of the Brunswick dynasty, than I have ever met with."] trigue; but having once attained the pinnacle, its smallness and、 meanness were exposed to all the world. From the moment of his triumph, the expert party leader was turned into the most dilatory and helpless of ministers. His best friends were reduced to complain that no business could be done with him. "Lord Treasurer," says Swift, "is the greatest procrastinator in the world. He only says, 'Poh! poh! all will be well.' He told Mr. Lewis it should be determined to-night, and so he will say a hundred nights.”* Even his taste for literature was numbered amongst his faults; for in him (if I may borrow a phrase from Tillotson) it was only a specious and ingenious sort of idleness. In personal intercourse he was mild, courteous, and conciliatory; but in public affairs, whenever he could temporize no longer, and was driven to some decision, he had a bias to prerogative and arbitrary measures, as being most easy and convenient to himself. With all his indolence in business, he was so jealous of its possession as to claim from his colleagues a larger share of it than even the greatest genius and activity could have satisfactorily transacted. Such was the new Prime Minister of England. His principal colleague, Henry St. John, was born in 1678. He was an only son by his father's first marriage, the heir to a good estate in Wiltshire, and sprung from a younger branch of the Lords St. John of Bletsoe, one of the most ancient and illustrious houses in the kingdom. His early education was directed by a puritanical mother, whose imprudent zeal compelled him painfully to peruse huge tomes of controversial divinity when far too young to understand their value, and thus, perhaps, implanted in his mind the first seeds of his aversion to the truths of Revelation. "I resolve," he says himself, writing to Swift in 1721, "to make my letter at least as long as one of your sermons; and, if you do not mend, my next shall be as long as one of Dr. Manton's, who taught my youth to yawn, and prepared me to be a High Churchman, that I might never hear him read, nor read him more." It is, in fact, not a little remarkable, that the two great champions of High Church at this time-Oxford and Bolingbroke-should both have been bred up amongst the Dissenters. Manton, whom Bolingbroke thus alludes to, was a non-conforming and most voluminous divine, very worthy, but a little tedious, who, being impressed with some fanciful idea as to the analogy of numbers, wrote 119 sermons upon the 119th Psalm! Young St. John pursued his studies at Eton and Oxford, and at the dissolution of Parliament, in 1700, was elected Member for * Journal to Stella, Nov. 2, 1711; Dec. 19, 1711; and April 15, 1712. Another Tory, Lockhart, says of him:-"He was, indeed, very civil to all who addressed him, but he generally either spoke so low in their ear, or so mysteriously, that few knew what to make of his replies, and it would appear he took a secret pleasure in making people hang on, and disappointing them." Comment. p. 370. "Doubtless," says Blackstone, "all arbitrary measures, well executed, are the most convenient." Comment. vol. 4. p. 350, ed. 1825. From thence, how often are indolent men the greatest tyrants! Wotton Basset. He entered public life endowed with every gift of nature, of fortune, and of education, except the most important of all-fixed principle. A handsome person, a strong constitution, a most engaging, yet most dignified, manner, were his external recommendations; and were supported by a rich fund of reading, deep powers of thought, and boundless ambition. He looked through the characters of others with a keen and searching eye. His eloquence, both commanding and rewarding the attention of his hearers, was ready, full, and gushing; according to his own beautiful illustration, it flowed like a stream that is fed by an abundant spring, and did not merely spout forth, like a frothy water, on some gaudy day. His genius was vast and lofty, yet able to contract itself at will-scarcely any thing too great for its grasp, and scarcely any thing too minute for its care. With such splendid abilities, such active ambition, he might have been the greatest and most useful statesman of his, or, perhaps, of any age. But he utterly wanted virtue. He was no believer in revealed religion, whose tenets he attempted to sap in his writings, and disregarded in his life. He had early rushed into pleasure with an eagerness and excess that might have been forgiven his youth and his ardent passions, had he not afterwards continued them from a miserable personal vanity. He aimed at being the modern Alcibiades-a man of pleasure at the same time as a man of business; sitting up one night to reel at a drunken orgy,-sitting up the next to compose a despatch on which the fate of Europe might hang; at one hour dealing forth his thunderbolts of eloquence to the awe-struck senate, at another whispering soft words at the ear of yielding beauty! In this unworthy combination he lost all dignity of mind. There ceased to be any consistency between his conduct and his language. No man ever spoke more persuasively of the fatigues of business, yet no man was ever more fretful and uneasy in retirement. For him, activity was as necessary as air for others. When excluded from public life, there were no intrigues, however low and grovelling, to which he did not stoop in order to return to it. Yet all his writings breathe the noblest principles of independence. "Upon the whole of this extraordinary character," says his intimate friend, Lord Chesterfield, "what can we say but, Alas! poor human nature!" As a writer, Lord Bolingbroke is, I think, far too little admired in the present day. Nor is this surprising. His works naturally fail to please us from the false end which they always have in view, and from the sophistical arguments which they are, therefore, com See the letter on the Spirit of Patriotism. † Voltaire, in one of his letters, relates or invents, "ce que disait à ses compagnes la plus fameuse catin de Londres: Mes sœurs, Bolingbroke est déclaré, aujourd'hui, Secrétaire d'Etat! Sept mille guinées de rente, mes sœurs, et tout pour nous!" See a note to Swift's Works, vol. xvii. p. 291. Lord Bolingbroke's beautiful lines to one of these ladies, "Dear, thoughtless Ciara," &c., seem to prove, that, had he applied himself to poetry, he would have excelled in it. |