and approbation of the great body of the midile class. A hundred years ago it would not dave been enough to have both crown and people on his side. The Parliament had shaken off the control of the royal prerogative. It had not yet fallen under the control of public opinion. A large proportion of the members had absolutely no motive to support any administration except their own interest, and in the lowest sense of the word. Under these circumstances, the country could be governed only by corruption. Bolingbroke, who was the ablest and the most vehement of those who raised the cry of corruption, had no better remedy to propose than that the royal prerogative should be strengthened. The remedy would no doubt have been efficient. The only question is, whether it would not have been worse than the disease. The fault was in the constitution of the legislature; and to blame those ministers who managed the legislature in the only way in which it could be managed, is gross injustice. They submitted to extortion because they could not help themselves. We might as well accuse the poor Lowland farmers who paid "black mail" to Rob Roy, of corrupting the virtue of the Highlanders, as Sir Robert Walpole of corrupting the virtue of Parliament. His crime was merely this; that he employed his money more dexterously, and got more support in return for it, than any of those who preceded or followed him.

He was himself incorruptible by money. His dominant passion was the love of power; and the heaviest charge which can be brought against him is, that to this passion he never scrupled to sacrifice the interests of his country.

turbulent, he would probably have relieved them; but while he apprehended no danger from them, he would not run the slightest risk for their sake. He acted in the same manner with respect to other questions. He knew the state of the Scotch Highlands. He was con stantly predicting another insurrection in that part of the empire. Yet during his long tenure of power, he never attempted to perform what was then the most obvious and pressing duty of a British statesman-to break the power of the chiefs, and to establish the authority of law through the farthest corners of the island. Nobody knew better than he that, if this were not done, great mischiefs would follow. But the Highlands were tolerably quiet at this time He was content to meet daily emergencies by daily expedients; and he left the rest to his successors. They had to conquer the High lands in the midst of a war with France and Spain, because he had not regulated the Highlands in a time of profound peace.

Sometimes, in spite of all his caution, he found that measures, which he had hoped to carry through quietly, had caused great agitation. When this was the case, he generally modified or withdrew them. It was thus that he cancelled Wood's patent in compliance with the absurd outcry of the Irish. It was thus that he frittered away the Porteous Bill to nothing, for fear of exasperating the Scotch. It was thus that he abandoned the Excise Bili, as soon as he found that it was offensive to all the great towns of England. The language which he held about that measure in a subsequent session is eminently characteristic. Pulteney had insinuated that the scheme would be again brought forward. "As to the wicked scheme," said Walpole, "as the gentleman is pleased to call it, which he would persuade gentlemen is not yet laid aside, I, for my part, assure this House, I am not so mad as ever again to engage in any thing that looks like an excise; though, in my private opinion, I still think it was a scheme that would have tended very much to the interest of the nation."

The conduct of Walpole with regard to the Spanish War is the great blemish of his public life. Archdeacon Coxe imagined that he had discovered one grand principle of action to which the whole public conduct of his hero ought to be referred. "Did the administration of Walpole," says the biographer, "present any uniform principle which may be traced in every part, and which gave combination and consistency to the whole? Yes, and that principle was, THE LOVE OF PEACE." It would be difficult, we think, to bestow a higher eulogium on any statesman. But the eulogium is far too high for the merits of Walpole. The great ruling principle of his public conduct was in

One of the maxims which, as his son tells us, he was most in the habit of repeating was, quieta non movere. It was indeed the maxim by which he generally regulated his public conduct. It is the maxim of a man more solicitous to hold power long than to use it well. It is remarkable that, though he was at the head of affairs during more than twenty years, not one great measure, not one important change for the better or for the worse in any part of our institutions, marks the period of his supremacy. Nor was this because he did not clearly see that many changes were very desirable. He had been brought up in the school of toleration at the feet of Somers and of Burnet. He disliked the shameful laws against Dissenters. But he never could be induced to bring forward a proposition for repealing them. The sufferers represented to him the injustice with which they were treated, boasted of their firm attachment to the house of Brunswick and to the Whig party, and reminded him of his own repeated declarations of good-will to their cause. He listened, assented, promised, and did no-deed a love of peace, but not in the sense in thing. At length the question was brought forward by others; and the minister, after a hesitating and evasive speech, voted against it. The truth was, that he remembered to the latest day of his life that terrible explosion of highchurch feeling which the foolish prosecution of a foolish parson had occasioned in the days of Queen Anne. If the Dissenters had been

which Archdeacon Coxe uses the phrase. The peace which Walpole sought was not the peace of the country, but the peace of his own administration. During the greater part of his public life, indeed, the two objects were inse parably connected. At length he was reduced to the necessity of choosing between them-of plunging the state into hostilities for which

there was no just ground, and by which no- father, who had charged with Rupert at Mars thing was to be got; or of facing a violent ton, who had held out the old manor-house opposition in the country, in Parliament, and against Fairfax, and who, after the king's re even in the royal closet. No person was more turn, had been set down for a Knight of the thoroughly convinced than he of the absurdity Royal Oak, flew to that section of the opposi of the cry against Spain. But his darling tion which, under pretence of assailing the power was at stake, and his choice was soon existing administration, was in truth assailing made. He preferred an unjust war to a stormy the reigning dynasty. The young republican, session. It is impossible to say of a ininister fresh from his Livy and his Lucan, and flowing who acted thus, that the love of peace was the with admiration of Hampden, of Russell, and one grand principle to which all his conduct is of Sydney, hastened with equal eagerness to to be referred. The governing principle of his those benches from which eloquent voices conduct was neither love of peace nor love of thundered nightly against the tyranny and perwar, but love of power. fidy of courts. So many young politicians were caught by these declarations, that Sir Ro bert, in one of his best speeches, observed, that the opposition against him consisted of three bodies-the Tories, the discontented Whigs, who were known by the name of the patriots, and the boys. In fact, every young man of warm temper and lively imagination, whatever his political bias might be, was drawn into the party adverse to the government; and some of the most distinguished among themPitt, for example, among public men, and Johnson, among men of letters-afterwards openly acknowledged their mistake.

The praise to which he is fairly entitled is this, that he understood the true interest of his country better than any of his contemporaries, and that he pursued that interest whenever it was not incompatible with the interest of his own intense and grasping ambition. It was only in matters of public moment that he shrunk from agitation, and had recourse to compromise. In his contest for personal influence there was no timidity, nor flinching. He would have all or none. Every member of the government who would not submit to his ascendency was turned out or forced to resign. Liberal of every thing else, he was avaricious of nothing but power. Cautious everywhere else, when power was at stake, he had all the boldness of Wolsey or Chatham. He might easily have secured his authority if he could have been induced to divide it with others. But he would not part with one fragment of it to purchase defenders for all the rest. The effect of this policy was, that he had able enemies and feeble allies. His most distinguished coadjutors left him one by one, and joined the ranks of the opposition. He faced the increasing array of his enemies with unbroken spirit, and thought it far better that they should inveigh against his power than that they should share it.

The aspect of the opposition, even while it was still a minority in the House of Commons, was very imposing. Among those who, in Parliament or out of Parliament, assailed the administration of Walpole, were Bolingbroke, Carteret, Chesterfield, Argyle, Pulteney, Wynd ham, Doddington, Pitt, Lyttleton, Barnard, Pope, Swift, Gay, Arbuthnot, Fielding, Johnson, Thomson, Akenside, Glover.

The circumstance that the opposition was divided into two parties, diametrically opposed to each other in political opinions, was long the safety of Walpole. It was at last his ruin. The leaders of the minority knew that it would be difficult for them to bring forward any imThe opposition was in every sense formida-portant measure, without producing an imme. ble. At its head were two royal personages,diate schism in their party. It was with very the exiled head of the house of Stuart, the great difficulty that the Whigs in opposition disgraced heir of the house of Brunswick. had been induced to give a sullen and silent One set of members received directions from Avignon. Another set held their consultations and banquets at Norfolk House. The majority of the landed gentry, the majority of the parochial clergy, one of the universities, and a strong party in the city of London, and in the other great towns, were decidedly averse to the government. Of the men of letters, some were exasperated by the neglect with which the minister treated them-a neglect which was the more remarkable, because his predecessors, both Whig and Tory, had paid court, with emulous munificence, to the wits and the poets; others were honestly inflamed by party zeal; almost all lent their aid to the opposition. In truth, all that was alluring to ardent and imaginative minds was on that side:-old associations, new visions of political improvement, high-flown theories of loyalty, high-flown theories of liberty, the enthusiasm of the Cavalier, the enthusiasm of the Roundhead. The Tory gentleman, fed in the common-rooms of Oxford with the doctrines of Filmer and Sacheverell, and proud of the exploits of his great-grand

vote for the repeal of the Septennial Act. The Tories, on the other hand, could not be induced to support Pulteney's motion for an addition to the income of Prince Frederic. The two parties had cordially joined in calling out for a war with Spain: but they had now their war. Hatred of Walpole was almost the only feeling which was common to them. On this one point, therefore, they concentrated their whole strength. With gross ignorance, or gross dishonesty, they represented the minister as the main grievance of the state. His dismissal, his punishment, would prove the certain cure for all the evils which the nation suffered. What was to be done after his fall, how misgovernment was to be prevented in future, were questions to which there were as many answers as there were noisy and ill-informed members of the opposition. The only cry in which all could join was, "Down with Walpole!" So much did they narrow the disputed grounds, so purely personal did they make the question, that they threw out friendly hints to the other members of the administration, and

declared hat they refused quarter to the prime | Walpole was to be the beginning of a politica minister alone. His tools might keep their millennium; and every enthusiast had figured heads, their fortunes, even their places, if only to himself that millennium according to the the great father of corruption were given up to fashion of his own wishes. The republican the just vengeance of the nation. expected that the power of the crown would be reduced to a mere shadow; the high Tory that the Stuarts would be restored; the mode rate Tory that the golden days which the church and the landed interest had enjoyed during the last years of Queen Anne, would immediately return. It would have been im possible to satisfy everybody. The conquerors satisfied nobody.

If the fate of Walpole's colleagues had been inseparably bound up with his, he probably would, even after the unfavourable elections of 1741, have been able to weather the storm. But as soon as it was understood that the attack was directed against him alone, and that, if he were sacrificed, his associates might expect advantageous and honourable terms, the ministerial ranks began to waver, and the murmur of sauve qui peut was heard. That Walpole had foul play is almost certain: but to what extent it is difficult to say. Lord Islay was suspected; the Duke of Newcastle some thing more than suspected. It would have been strange, indeed, if his grace had been idle when treason was hatching.

"Che Gan fu traditor prima che nato." "His name," said Sir Robert, "is perfidy."

Never was a battle more manfully fought out than the last struggle of the old statesman. His clear judgment, his long experience, and his fearless spirit, enabled him to maintain a defensive war through half a session. To the last his heart never failed him; and, when at length he yielded, he yielded, not to the threats of his enemies, but to the entreaties of his dispirited and refractory followers. When he could no longer retain his power, he compounded for honour and security, and retired to his garden and his paintings, leaving to those who had overthrown him-shame, discord, and

ruin.

We have no reverence for the memory of those who were then called the patriots. We are for the principles of good government against Walpole; and for Walpole against the opposition. It was most desirable that a purer system should be introduced; but if the old system was to be retained, no man was so fit as Walpole to be at the head of affairs. There were frightful abuses in the government, abuses more than sufficient to justify a strong opposition; but the party opposed to Walpole, while they stimulated the popular fury to the highest point, were at no pains to direct it aright. Indeed, they studiously misdirected it. They misrepresented the evil. They prescribed inefficient and pernicious remedies. They held up a single man as the sole cause of all the vices of a bad system, which had been in full operation before his entrance into public life, and which continued to be in full operation when some of these very bawlers had succeeded to his power. They thwarted his best measures. They drove him into an unjustifiable war against his will. Constantly talking in magnificent language about tyranny, corruption, wicked ministers, servile courtiers, the liberties of Englishmen, the Great Charter, the rights for which our fathers bled-Timo leon, Brutus, Hampden, Sydney—they had absolutely nothing to propose which would have been an improvement on our institutions. Instead of directing the public mind to definite

work of the Revolution, which might have brought the legislature into harmony with the nation, and which might have prevented the crown from doing by influence what it could no longer do by prerogative, they excited a vague craving for change, by which they profited for a single moment, and of which, as they well deserved, they were soon the victims.

Every thing was in confusion. It has been said that the confusion was produced by the dexterous policy of Walpole; and undoubtedly, he did his best to sow dissensions amongst his triumphant enemies. But there was little for him to do. Victory had completely dissolved the hollow truce which the two sections of the opposition had but imperfectly observed, even while the event of the contest was still doubt-reforms, which might have completed the ful. A thousand questions were opened in a moment. A thousand conflicting claims were preferred. It was impossible to follow any line of policy, which would not have been offensive to a large portion of the successful party. It was impossible to find places for a tenth part of those who thought that they had a right to be considered. While the parliamentary leaders were preaching patience and confidence, while their followers were clamoring for reward, a still louder voice was heard from without-the terrible cry of a people angry, they hardly knew with whom, and impatient, they hardly knew for what. The day of retribution had arrived. The opposition reaped what they had sown: inflamed with hatred and cupidity, despairing of success by any ordinary mode of political warfare, and blind to consequences which, though remote, were certain, they had conjured up a devil which they could not lay. They had made the public mind drunk with calumny and declamation. They had raised expectations which it was impossible tr satisfy. The downfall of

Among the reforms which the state then required, there were two of paramount importance, two which would alone have reme. died almost every abuse, and without which all other remedies would have been unavailing-the publicity of parliamentary proceed. ings, and the abolition of the rotten boroughs. Neither of these was thought of. It seems t us clear, that if these were not adopted, ali other measures would have been illusory, Some of the patriots suggested changes which would, beyond all doubt, have increased the existing evils a hundredfold. These men wished to transfer the disposal of employ ments, and the command of the army, from the crown to the Parliament; and this on the

very ground that the Parliament had long uncompromising of the young patriots out of been a grossly corrupt body. The security Parliament. When he found that the change against corruption was to be, that the mem- of administration had produced no change of bers, instead of having a portion of the public system, he gave vent to his indignation in the plunder doled out to them by a minister, were Epistle to Curio," the best poem that he ever to help themselves. wrote; a poem, indeed, which seems to indicate, that, if he had left lyric composition to Gray and Collins, and had employed his pow ers in grave and elevated satire, he might have disputed the pre-eminence of Dryden. But whatever be the literary merits of the epistle, we can say nothing in praise of the political doctrines which it inculcates. The poet, in a rapturous apostrophe to the Spirits of the Great Men of Antiquity, tells us what he expected from Pulteney at the moment of the fall of the tyrant.

"See private life by wisest arts reclaimed,
See ardent youth to noblest manners framed,
See us achieve whate'er was sought by you,
If Curio, only Curio, will be true."

It was Pulteney's business, it seems, to abolish faro and masquerades, to stint the young Duke of Marlborough to a bottle of brandy a dav, and to prevail on Lady Vane to be content with three lovers at a time.

Whatever the people wanted, they certainly got nothing. Walpole retired in safety, and the multitude were defrauded of the expected show on Tower Hill. The Septennial Act was not repealed. The placemen were not turned out of the House of Commons. Wool, we believe, was still exported. "Private life" afforded as much scandal as if the reign of Walpole and corruption had continued; and "ardent youth" fought with watchmen, and betted with blacklegs as much as ever.

The other schemes, of which the public mind was full, were less dangerous than this. Some of them were in themselves harmless. But none of them would have done much good, and most of them were extravagantly absurd. What they were we may learn from the instructions which many constituent bodies, immediately after the change of administration, sent up to their representatives. A more deplorable collection of follies can hardly be imagined. There is, in the first place, a general cry for Walpole's head. Then there are bitter complaints of the decay of trade-decay which, in the judgment of those enlightened politicians, was all brought about by Walpole and corruption. They would have been nearer to the truth, if they had attributed their sufferings to the war into which they had driven Walpole against his better judgment. He had foretold the effects of his unwilling concession. On the day when hostilities against Spain were proclaimed, when the heralds were attended into the city by the chiefs of the opposition, when the Prince of Wales himself stopped at Temple-Bar to drink success to the English arms, the minister heard all the steeples of the city jingling with a merry peal, and muttered: "They may ring the bells now: they will be wringing their hands before long." Another grievance, for which of cours Walpole and corruption were answerable, was the great exportation of English wool. In the judgment of the sagacious electors of several large towns, the remedying of this evil was a matter second only in importance to the hang-sition into the government. They soon found ing of Sir Robert. There are also earnest themselves compelled to submit to the ascendinjunctions on the members to veto against ency of one of their new allies. This was standing armies in time of peace; injunctions Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville. No which were, to say the least, ridiculously un- public man of that age had greater courage, reasonable in the midst of a war which was greater ambition, greater activity, greater likely to last, and which did actually last, as long talents for debate or for declamation. No as the Parliament. The repeal of the Septen- public man had such profound and extensive nial Act, as was to be expected, was strongly learning. He was familiar with the ancient ressed. Nothing was more natural than that writers. His knowledge of modern languages the voters should wish for a triennial recur- was prodigious. The Privy Council, when he rence of their bribes and their ale. We feel was present, needed no interpreter. He spoke firmly convinced that the repeal of the Sep- and wrote French, Italian, Spanish, Portu tennial Act, unaccompanied by a complete guese, German, even Swedish. He had pushed reform of the constitution of the elective body, his researches into the most obscure nooks of would have been an unmixed curse to the literature. He was as familiar with canonists country. The only rational recommendation and schoolmen as with orators and poets. He which we can find in all these instructions is, had read all that the universities of Saxony that the number of placemen in Parliament and Holland had produced on the most intri should be limited, and that pensioners should cate questions of public law. Harte, in the not be allowed to sit there. It is plain, how-preface to the second edition of the "History ever, that this reform was far from going to the root of the evil; and that, if it had been adopted, the consequence would probably have been, that secret bribery would have been nore practised than ever.

The colleagues of Walpole had, after his re treat, admitted some of the chiefs of the oppo

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 my army (or in other words my matters of We will give one more instance of the ab-fact) safe and entire. The late Earl of Gransurd expectations which the declamations of the opposition had raised in the country. Akenside was one of the fiercest and most

ville was pleased to declare himself of this opinion; especially when he found that I had made Chemnitius one of ny principal guides;

or 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."

With all this learning, Carteret was far from being a pedant. He was not one of those cold spirits, of which the fire is put out by the fuel. In council, in debate, in society, he was all life and energy. His measures were strong, prompt, and daring; his oratory animated and glowing. His spirits were constantly high. No misfortune, public or private, could depress him. He 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 the mysterious gutturals, which might possibly convey suggestions very little in unison with their wishes.

they were at the head of a decided majority in the House of Commons. Their rival, mean while, conscious of his powers, sanguine in his hopes, and proud of the storm which he had conjured up on the Continent, would brook neither superior nor equal. "His rants," says Horace Walpole, "are amazing: so are his parts and his spirits." He encountered the opposition of his colleagues, not with the fierce haughtiness of the first Pitt, or the cold un bending arrogance of the second, but with a gay vehemence, a good-humoured imperious ness that bore every thing down before it The period of his ascendency was known by the name of the "Drunken Administration; and the expression was not altogether figurative. His habits were extremely convivial, and champagne probably lent its aid to keep him in that state of joyous excitement in which his life was passed.

That a rash and impetuous man of genius like Carteret should not have been able to maintain his ground in Parliament against the crafty and selfish Pelhams, is not strange. But it is less easy to understand why he should have been generally unpopular throughout the country. His brilliant talents, his bold and open temper, ought, it should seem, to have made him a favourite with the public. But the people had been bitterly disappointed; and he had to face the first burst of their rage His close connection with Pulteney, now the most detested man in the nation, was an unfortunate circumstance. He had, indeed, only three partisans, Pulteney, the King, and the Prince of Wales-a most singular assem blage.

He was driven from his office. He shortly after made a bold, indeed a desperate attempt to recover power. The attempt failed. From that time he relinquished all ambitious hopes: and retired laughing to his books and his bot tle. No statesman ever enjoyed success with so exquisite a zest, or submitted to a defeat with so genuine and unforced a cheerfulness. Ill as he had been used, he did not seem, says Horace Walpole, to have any resentment, or indeed any feeling except thirst.

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 signalized himself at the head of that party, till, after the retirement of his old rival, he again became Secretary of State. 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 Hun- These letters contain many good stories, gary, and humbling the house of Bourbon. some of them no doubt grossly exaggerated, He contemptuously abandoned to others all the about Lord Carteret; how, in the height of his drudgery, and with the drudgery, all the fruits greatness, he fell in love at first sight on a of corruption. The patronage of the church birth-day with Lady Sophia Fermor, the handand the bar he left to the Pelhams as a trifle some daughter of Lord Pomfret; how he unworthy of his care. One of the judges, plagued the cabinet every day with reading to Chief Justice Willis, if we remember rightly, them her ladyship's letters; how strangely he went to him to beg some ecclesiastical prefer- brought home his bride; what fine jewels he ment for a friend. Carteret said, that he was gave her; how he fondled her at Ranelagh; too much occupied with continental politics and what queen-like state she kept in Arling to think about the disposal of places and bene-ton street. Horace Walpole has spoken less fices. "You may rely on it, then," said the Chief Justice, "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 place-hunters and pension-hunters resorted. The parliamentary influence of the two brothers becare stronger every day, till at length

bitterly of Carteret than of any public man of that time, Fox, perhaps, excepted; and this is the more remarkable, because Carteret was one of the most inveterate enemies of Sir Ro bert. In the "Memoirs," Horace Walpole. after passing in review all the great men whom England had produced within his me mory, concludes by saying, that in genius none of them equalled Lord Granville. Smollett, .n "Humphry Clinker," pronounces a similar