Walpole was not a man to endure such a colleague as Carteret. The King was induced to give up his favourite. Carteret joined the Opposition, and signalised himself at the head of that party till, after the retire ment of his old rival, he again became Secretary of State. gious. The privy council, when he | the mysterious gutturals which might was present, needed no interpreter. possibly convey suggestions very little He spoke and wrote French, Italian, in unison with their wishes. Spanish, Portuguese, German, even Swedish. He had pushed his researches into the most obscure nooks of literature. He was as familiar with Canonists and Schoolmen as with orators and poets. He had read all that the universities of Saxony and Holland had produced on the most intricate questions of public law. Harte, in the preface to the second edition of his History of Gustavus Adolphus, bears a remarkable testimony to the extent and accuracy of Lord Carteret's knowledge. "It was my good fortune or prudence to keep the main body of iny army (or in other words my matters of fact) safe and entire. The late Earl of Granville was pleased to declare himself of this opinion; especially when he found that I had made Chemnitius one of my principal guides; for his Lordship was apprehensive I might not have seen that valuable and authentic book, which is extremely scarce. I thought myself happy to have contented his Lordship even in the lowest degree: for he understood the German and Swedish histories to the highest perfection." During some months he was chief Minister, indeed sole Minister. He gained the confidence and regard of George the Second. He was at the same time in high favour with the Prince of Wales. As a debater in the House of Lords, he had no equal among his colleagues. Among his opponents, Chesterfield alone could be considered as his match. Confident in his talents, and in the royal favour, he neglected all those means by which the power of Walpole had been created and maintained. His head was full of treaties and expeditions, of schemes for supporting the Queen of Hungary and for humbling the House of Bourbon. He contemptuously abandoned to others all the drudgery, and, with the drudgery, all the fruits of corruption. The patronage of the Church With all this learning, Carteret was and of the Bar he left to the Pelhams far from being a pedant. His was not as a trifle unworthy of his care. one of those cold spirits of which the of the judges, Chief Justice Willes, if fire is put out by the fuel. In council, we remember rightly, went to him to in debate, in society, he was all life beg some ecclesiastical preferment for and energy. His measures were strong, a friend. Carteret said, that he was prompt, and daring, his oratory ani- too much occupied with continental mated and glowing. His spirits were politics to think about the disposal of constantly high. No misfortune, pub-places and benefices. "You may rely lic or private, could depress him. He on it, then," said the Chief Justice, was at once the most unlucky and the happiest public man of his time. He had been Secretary of State in Walpole's Administration, and had acquired considerable influence over the mind of George the First. The other ministers could speak no German. The King could speak no English. All the communication that Walpole held with his master was in very bad Latin. Carteret dismayed his colleagues by the volubility with which he addressed his Majesty in German. They listened with envy and terror to One "that people who want places and benefices will go to those who have more leisure." The prediction was accomplished. It would have been a busy time indeed in which the Pelhams had wanted leisure for jobbing; and to the Pelhams the whole cry of placehunters and pension-hunters resorted. The parliamentary influence of the two brothers became stronger every day, till at length they were at the head of a decided majority in the House of Commons. Their rival, meanwhile, conscious of his powers, sanguine in 66 his hopes, and proud of the storm which | exaggerated, about Lord Carteret ; he had conjured up on the Continent, how, in the height of his greatness, he would brook neither superior nor equal. fell in love at first sight on a birthday "His rants," 22 says Horace Walpole, with Lady Sophia Fermor, the handare amazing; so are his parts and some daughter of Lord Pomfret; how his spirits." He encountered the op-he plagued the Cabinet every day with position of his colleagues, not with the reading to them her ladyship's letters; fierce haughtiness of the first Pitt, or how strangely he brought home his the cold unbending arrogance of the bride; what fine jewels he gave her; second, but with a gay vehemence, a how he fondled her at Ranelagh; and good-humoured imperiousness, that what queen-like state she kept in bore everything down before it. The Arlington Street. Horace Walpole has period of his ascendency was known spoken less bitterly of Carteret than of by the name of the "Drunken Admi- any public man of that time, Fox nistration;" and the expression was perhaps, excepted; and this is the not altogether figurative. His habits more remarkable, because Carteret was were extremely convivial; and cham- one of the most inveterate enemies of pagne probably lent its aid to keep Sir Robert. In the Memoirs, Horace him in that state of joyous excitement Walpole, after passing in review all in which his life was passed. the great men whom England had proThat a rash and impetuous man of duced within his memory, concludes genius like Carteret should not have by saying, that in genius none of them been able to maintain his ground in equalled Lord Granville. Smollett, in Parliament against the crafty and sel- Humphrey Clinker, pronounces a simifish Pelhams is not strange. But it is lar judgment in coarser language. less easy to understand why he should" Since Granville was turned out, there have been generally unpopular through- has been no minister in this nation out the country. His brilliant talents, worth the meal that whitened his his bold and open temper, ought, it periwig." Carteret fell; and the reign of the Pelhams commenced. It was Carteret's misfortune to be raised to power when the public mind was still smarting from recent disappointment. The nation had been duped, and was eager for revenge. A victim was necessary, and on such occasions the victims of popular rage are selected like the victim of Jephthah. The first person who comes in the way is made the He was driven from his office. He sacrifice. The wrath of the people had shortly after made a bold, indeed a now spent itself; and the unnatural desperate, attempt to recover power. excitement was succeeded by an unThe attempt failed. From that time natural calm. To an irrational eagerhe relinquished all ambitious hopes, ness for something new, succeeded an and retired laughing to his books and equally irrational disposition to achis bottle. No statesman ever enjoyed quiesce in every thing established. A success with so exquisite a relish, or few months back the people had been submitted to defeat with so genuine disposed to impute every crime to men and unforced a cheerfulness. Ill as he in power, and to lend a ready ear to had been used, he did not seem, says the high professions of men in oppoHorace Walpole, to have any resent-sition. They were now disposed to ment, or indeed any feeling except surrender themselves implicitly to the management of Ministers, and to look with suspicion and contempt on all who pretended to public spirit. The thirst. These letters contain many good stories, some of them no doubt grossly name of patriot had become a by-word in the Government durst wag a finger of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely against him. Almost all the opposition exaggerated when he said that, in which Pelham had to encounter was those times, the most popular declara- from members of the Government of tion which a candidate could make on which he was the head. His own paythe hustings was that he had never master spoke against his estimates. been and never would be a patriot. His own secretary-at-war spoke against At this conjuncture took place the his Regency Bill. In one day Walpole rebellion of the Highland clans. The turned Lord Chesterfield, Lord Buralarm produced by that event quieted lington, and Lord Clinton out of the strife of internal factions. The the royal household, dismissed the suppression of the insurrection crushed highest dignitaries of Scotland from for ever the spirit of the Jacobite their posts, and took away the regiparty. Room was made in the Governments of the Duke of Bolton and Lord ment for a few Tories. Peace was Cobham, because he suspected them patched up with France and Spain. of having encouraged the resistance to Death removed the Prince of Wales, his Excise Bill. He would far rather who had contrived to keep together a have contended with the strongest small portion of that formidable oppo- minority, under the ablest leaders, sition of which he had been the leader than have tolerated mutiny in his own in the time of Sir Robert Walpole. party. It would have gone hard with Almost every man of weight in the any of his colleagues, who had venIlouse of Commons was officially con- tured, on a Government question, to nected with the Government. The divide the House of Commons against even tenor of the session of Parliament him. Pelham, on the other hand, was vas ruffled only by an occasional disposed to bear anything rather than harangue from Lord Egmont on the drive from office any man round whom irmy estimates. For the first time a new opposition could form. He since the accession of the Stuarts there therefore endured with fretful patience vas no opposition. This singular good the insubordination of Pitt and Fox. fortune, denied to the ablest states- He thought it far better to connive at men, to Salisbury, to Strafford, to their occasional infractions of disciClarendon, to Somers, to Walpole, had pline than to hear them, night after been reserved for the Pelhams. night, thundering against corruption and wicked ministers from the other side of the House. Henry Pelham, it is true, was by no means a contemptible person. His understanding was that of Walpole on a somewhat smaller scale. Though not a brilliant orator, he was, like his master, a good debater, a good parliamentary tactician, a good man of business. Like his master, he distinguished himself by the neatness and clearness of his financial expositions. Here the resemblance ceased. Their characters were altogether dissimilar. Walpole was good-humoured, but would have his way: his spirits were high, and his manners frank even to coarseness. The temper of Pelham was yielding, but peevish: his habits were regular, and his deportment strictly decorous. Walpole was constitutionally fearless, Pelham constitutionally timid. Walpole had to face a strong opposition; but no man We wonder that Sir Walter Scott never tried his hand on the Duke of Newcastle. An interview between his Grace and Jeanie Deans would have been delightful, and by no means unnatural. There is scarcely any public man in our history of whose manners and conversation so many particulars have been preserved. Single stories may be unfounded or exaggerated. But all the stories about him, whether told by people who were perpetually seeing him in Parliament and attending his levee in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or by Grub Street writers who never had more than a glimpse of his star through the windows of his gilded coach, are of the same character. Horace Walpole and Smollett differed in their tastes and opinions as much as father," says Marth to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard as he is, he will make an ass of you." It was as dangerous to have any political connection with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a greediness all his own. He was jealous of all his colleagues, and even of his own brother. Under the disguise of levity he was false beyond all example of political falsehood. All the able men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child who never knew his own mind for an hour together; and he overreached them all round. two hunan beings could differ. They and authority resembled the avarice kept quite different society. Walpole of the old usurer in the Fortunes of played at cards with countesses, and Nigel. It was so intense a passion corresponded with ambassadors. that it supplied the place of talents, that Smollett passed his life surrounded by it inspired even fatuity with cunning. printers' devils and famished scribblers." Have no money dealings with my Yet Walpole's Duke and Smollett's Duke are as like as if they were both from one hand. Smollett's Newcastle runs out of his dressing-room, with his face covered with soap-suds, to embrace the Moorish envoy. Walpole's Newcastle pushes his way into the Duke of Grafton's sick room to kiss the old nobleman's plasters. No man was so unmercifully satirised. But in truth he was himself a satire ready made. All that the art of the satirist does for other men, nature had done for him. Whatever was absurd about him stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest of the character. He was a living, moving, talking If the country had remained at caricature. His gait was a shuffling peace, it is not impossible that this trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he man would have continued at the head was always in a hurry; he was never of affairs without admitting any other in time; he abounded in fulsome person to a share of his authority caresses and in hysterical tears. His until the throne was filled by a new oratory resembled that of Justice Prince, who brought with him new Shallow. It was nonsense effervescent maxims of government, new favourites, with animal spirits and impertinence. and a strong will. But the inauspiOf his ignorance many anecdotes re- cious commencement of the Seven main, some well authenticated, some Years' War brought on a crisis to probably invented at coffee-houses, but which Newcastle was altogether unall exquisitely characteristic. Oh-equal. After a calm of fifteen years yes-yes-to be sure-Annapolis must the spirit of the nation was again be defended-troops must be sent to stirred to its inmost depths. In a few Annapolis-Pray where is Annapo- days the whole aspect of the political lis ?"—"Cape Breton an island! world was changed. wonderful!-show it me in the map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. must go and tell the King that Cape Breton is an island." I And this man was, during near thirty years, Secretary of State, and, during near ten years, First Lord of the Treasury! His large fortune, his strong hereditary connection, his great parliamentary interest, will not alone explain this extraordinary fact. His success is a signal instance of what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence But that change is too remarkable an event to be discussed at the end of an article already more than sufficiently long. It is probable that we may, at no remote time, resume the subject. THOUGH several years have elapsed since the publication of this work, it is still, we believe, a new publication to most of our readers. Nor are we surprised at this. The book is large, and the style heavy. The information which Mr. Thackeray has obtained from the State Paper Office is new; but much of it is very uninteresting. The rest of his narrative is very little better than Gifford's or Tomline's Life of the second Pitt, and tells us little or nothing that may not be found quite as well told in the Parliamentary History, the Annual Register, and other works equally common. Almost every mechanical employment, it is said, has a tendency to injure some one or other of the bodily organs of the artisan. Grinders of cutlery die of consumption; weavers are stunted in their growth; smiths become blear-eyed. In the same manner almost every intellectual employment has a tendency to produce some intellectual malady. Biographers, translators, editors, all, in short, who employ themselves in illustrating the lives or the writings of others, are peculiarly exposed to the Lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration. But we scarcely remember ever to have seen a patient so far gone in this distemper as Mr. Thackeray. He is not satisfied with forcing us to confess that Pitt was a great orator, a vigorous minister, an honourable and high-spirited gentleman. He will have it that all virtues and all accomplishments met in his hero. In spite of Gods, men, and columns, Pitt must be a poet, a poet capable of producing a heroic poem of the first order; and we are assured that we ought to find many charms in such lines as these: "Midst all the tumults of the warring sphere, My light-charged bark may haply glide; Some gale may waft, some conscious thought shall cheer, And the small freight unanxious glide.” * Pitt was in the army for a few Mr. months in time of peace. Thackeray accordingly insists on our confessing that, if the young cornet had remained in the service, he would have been one of the ablest commanders that ever lived. But this is not all. Pitt, it seems, was not merely a great poet in esse, and a great general in posse, but a finished example of moral excellence, the just man made perfect. He was in the right when he attempted to establish an inquisition, and to give bounties for perjury, in order to get Walpole's head. He was in the right when he declared Walpole to have been an excellent minister. He was in the right when, being in opposition, he maintained that no peace ought to be made with Spain, till she should formally renounce the right of search. He was in the right when, being in office, he silently acquiesced in a treaty by which Spain did not renounce the right of search. When he left the Duke of Newcastle, when he coalesced with the Duke of Newcastle, when he thundered against subsidies, when he lavished subsidies with unexampled profusion, when he execrated the Hanoverian connection, when he declared that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire, he was still invariably speaking the language of a virtuous and enlightened statesman. The truth is that there scarcely ever lived a person who had so little claim to this sort of praise as Pitt. He was undoubtedly a great man. But his was not a complete and well-proportioned greatness. The public life of Hampden or of Somers resembles a regular drama, which can be criticized as a whole, and every scene of The quotation is faithfully made from Mr. Thackeray. Perhaps Pitt wrote guide in the fourth line. |