It was natural that his rare knowledge of Continental affairs should have invested them in his eyes with an interest and an attraction they did not possess in the eyes of ordinary politicians, and that he should have found in them a field peculiarly congenial to his daring and adventurous nature. 'I want to instil a nobler ambition into you,' he said to Fox in later years, 'to make you knock the heads of the kings of Europe together, and jumble something out of it which may be of service to this country.' As minister of a despotic sovereign he might have risen to great eminence, but he was not suited for the conditions of Parliamentary government, and he usually inclined towards unpopular opinions. Thus he was one of the most powerful opponents of the Militia Bill at a time when the creation of a great militia had almost become a national craze. He was accustomed to assert strongly the dignity of the House of Lords in opposition to the House of Commons. He ruined his political prospects by his bold advocacy of Hanoverian measures. The last public words he is recorded to have uttered were a stern rebuke to Pitt for having spoken of himself rather as the minister of the people than of the Crown, and for having thus introduced the language of the House of Commons into the discussions of the Cabinet; and his last recorded political judgment was an approbation of the unpopular Peace of Paris. His ambition, like his other qualities, was very spasmodic. He could cast aside its prizes with a frank and laughing carelessness that few could rival, but when heated with the contest he was accused of being equally capable of a policy of the most reckless daring and of the most paltry intrigue. Queen Caroline, reviewing the leaders of the Opposition, said that Bolingbroke would tell great lies, Chesterfield small ones, Carteret both kinds.'

The principal materials for describing Carteret are to be found in Horace Walpole's Letters and Histories, Lord Hervey's Memoirs, Chesterfield's Characters, Lady Hervey's Letters, Sir Hanbury Williams' Songs, and the recently published Auto

biography of Shelburne. Many volumes and papers belonging to him are in the British Museum. It appears from Lord Hervey's Memoirs that Carteret was at one time occupied with a history of his own time, but it has unfortunately never appeared.

Of Chesterfield it is not necessary to say much, for his part in the overthrow of Walpole was much less prominent. He was naturally most fitted to shine in a drawing-room, and though a graceful and accomplished, if somewhat laboured, speaker, his political talents, like those of Sir W. Temple in the preceding generation, were more adapted for diplomacy than for parliamentary life. He was twice ambassador to Holland and discharged his duties with great ability and success. During his short viceroyalty in Ireland he showed very remarkable administrative talents, and his letters to his illegitimate son, which were published contrary to his desire, furnish ample evidence of his delicate but fastidious taste, of his low moral principle, and of his hard, keen, and worldly wisdom. His life was darkened by much private sorrow, which he bore with great courage; and his political prospects were blasted by the hostility of the Queen, who never forgave him for having made his court to the mistress of her husband. Lord Hervey, comparing him to Carteret, says that Carteret had the better public and Court understanding, Chesterfield the better private and social one. His hostility to Walpole dates from his dismissal from office after the Excise scheme. On the fall of that minister he pressed on the measures against him much more violently than either Pulteney or Carteret.

In addition to these older politicians, the ranks of the opponents of Walpole contained a small group of young men who did not altogether coalesce with either party, and who were much ridiculed under the name of Boy Patriots,' but who reckoned in their number several men of credit and ability, and one man of the most splendid and majestic genius. The principal members of this party were Lord Cobham, Lyttleton, George Grenville, and, above all, William Pitt. This last politician had entered Parliament for Old Sarum in 1735. He was still a very young and very poor man, holding the post of cornet in a regiment of dragoons, entirely destitute of the influence which springs from rank, experience, or Parliamentary connection, but already distinguished for the lofty purity of his

character and for an eloquence which, in its full maturity, has, probably, never been equalled in England and never been surpassed among mankind.

The Tory wing of the Opposition appears to have been. numerically about equal to the Whig one. It consisted of about 110 members, but it was far from unanimous. One sec

tion was distinctly Jacobite, and it was the policy of Government to attribute Jacobitism to the whole; but with many, Toryism was, probably, mainly a matter of family tradition, and consisted chiefly of attachment to the Established Church, and dislike to Hanoverian politics, to the moneyed interests, and to septennial parliaments. The party had for many years a skilful and eloquent leader in Sir W. Windham-the son-in-law of the Duke of Somerset-who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer under Queen Anne, and who in that capacity had brought forward and carried the Schism Act. His death in 1740 was a great blow to the Opposition, and his successor, Lord Gower, afterwards abandoned the party. Among the Members who usually acted with the Tories was Sir John Barnard, a retired merchant, who had acquired great influence in the House as the only man capable of coping with Walpole on questions of finance, and the party included Shippen, the able and honest leader of the Jacobites. It consisted, for the most part, of country squires of little education and strong prejudices, but in general superior to their allies in rectitude of purpose and sincerity of conviction.

In addition to the parliamentary combatants there is another influence to be mentioned. Bolingbroke, though excluded from the parliamentary arena, had, as I have said, devoted his great experience and his brilliant pen to the service of the Opposition, and in one respect at least his policy was now the exact opposite to that which he had pursued under Anne. He had then, in opposition to Oxford, endeavoured to make the lines of party division as clear and strong as possible, to put an end to the system of divided administrations, and to expel all Whigs from the Government. Now, however, when his party

was apparently hopelessly shattered, he employed all his talents in the task of effecting a union between the Tories and a large section of the Whigs. In his Dissertation on Parties' and in his private letters, he maintained strongly that the old demarcation of parties had lost all meaning; that the question of dynasty was virtually settled; that the Whig enthusiasm for the House of Hanover was chiefly a party pretext for monopolising all the offices of the State and excluding the Tories as enemies to the establishment; and that this monopoly and this exclusion had necessarily led to an aggrandisement of corrupt influence on the side of those in power, which was fatal to the purity and might easily prove incompatible with the existence of the constitution.' Corruption, he was accustomed to maintain, is much more dangerous to English liberty than prerogative, because it is slow and insensible in its operation, because it arouses no feeling of opposition in the country like that which follows an unconstitutional act, and because its influence is especially felt in the very House which is the appointed guardian of the interests of the people. A warm and affectionate friendship with Windham gave Bolingbroke for a considerable time an ascendancy over those Tories who had abandoned Jacobitism, while his position as coeditor with Pulteney of the Craftsman,' and his confidential relations with many of the discontented Whigs gave him influence with the other section of the Opposition. Bolingbroke, however, was unpopular in the country; he was wearied of the secondary place he was compelled to occupy in party warfare, and owing to this and perhaps to other causes which we are not able to unravel, he retired to France in 1735, and did not again visit England till after the downfall of Walpole. Before his departure, however, he had obtained a great ascendency over the mind of Frederick, Prince of Wales, who soon became the leading opponent of the Government. It is natural in a government like that of England, that a party in opposition should turn their hopes to the successor of the

See among other letters a very remarkable one to Lord Polwarth, Marchmont Papers, ii. 177–191.

throne, and it is equally natural that an ambitious Prince should lean towards a course of policy which alone during his father's lifetime enables him to take an independent and a foremost place. Many private causes conspired to inflame the jealousy. The Prince desired to marry a Prussian Princess, and the King refused his request. After the marriage of the Prince with the Princess of Saxe Gotha, the King only granted him an allowance of 50,000l. a year, though the King himself when Prince of Wales. had received an allowance of 100,000l. Besides this, the Prince's affable manners rendered him more popular in the country than the King, and his tastes inclined him to the brilliant literary and social circle which was in opposition to the ministry. From 1734 there was an open breach, and in 1737 the Prince took the extraordinary step of inducing the Opposition to bring forward a motion in Parliament urging the King to allow his son out of the Civil List 100,000l. a year. The Court was naturally furious, and Walpole succeeded with some difficulty in defeating the motion. Lord Hervey has left us a curious picture of the feelings of the royal family at this time-the Queen a hundred times a day saying she wished her son would fall dead with apoplexy, cursing the hour of his birth, and describing him as ‘a nauseous beast,' 'the greatest liar that ever spoke,' while his sister declared that she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe, and the King regarded him with a steady though somewhat calmer hatred. The Prince, on the other hand, seems to have lost no opportunity of irritating his father and his mother; and when his wife was in labour he hurried her, in the midst of her pains and at the imminent danger of her life, from Hampton Court to St. James's, for the sole purpose of insulting the King, who had given orders that the lying-in should take place at the former palace. With the same motive he made his Court the special centre of opposition to the Government, and he exerted all his influence for the ruin of Walpole.1

While all these elements of strength were combining against

1 Hervey's Memoirs. Walpole's Reminiscences.