Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847

An Irish insurrection would have largely multiplied the hazards of the Brunswick throne; and though we have firm faith in the power of England to extinguish a foreign invader, yet, when the question came to be simply one of the right to the crown, and the decision was to be made by civil conflict, the alienation, or the insurrection, of Ireland might have thrown an irresistible weight into the scale.

It is not our purpose, nor would it be becoming, to more than allude to the private life of this showy personage. His was not the era of either public or private morality. His marriage was contemptible, a connexion equally marked by love of money and neglect of honour; for his choice was the niece of the Duchess of Kendal, the duchess being notoriously the king's mistress, and Chesterfield obviously marrying the niece as being a probable heiress of her aunt, and also of bringing to her husband some share of the royal favour. He was disappointed, as he deserved, in the legacy; and seems to have been not much happier in the wife, who brought him no heir, and was apparently a compound of pride and dulness. He was more fortunate, however, in earning the political favour of the old Duchess of Marlborough, who left him £20,000 in her will.

Still, with all the political chicanery, and all the official squabbles of parliament, those were sportive times; and Walpole records the delay of the debate on the bill for naturalizing the Jews, as arising from the adjournment of the house, to attend private theatricals at Drury Lane, where Delaval had hired the theatre to exhibit himself in Othello! Walpole, in his pleasant exaggeration, says, that "the crowd of people of fashion was so great, that the footman's gallery was hung with blue ribands."

For some reason, which must now sleep with the author, he had an inveterate aversion to Seeker, then Bishop of Oxford, and afterwards translated to Canterbury. "The King," said he, "would not go to chapel because the Bishop of Oxford was to preach before him. The ministers did not insist upon his hearing the sermon, as they had lately upon his making him Dean of St. Paul's."

Character and popularity do not always depend upon the circumstances which alone ought to fix either. He then proceeds to hew the right reverend lord in pieces. "This bishop," says he, "who had been bred a Presbyterian and man-midwife, which sect and profession he had dropt for a season, while he was President of a Free-thinking Club, had been converted by Bishop Talbot, whose relation he married, and his faith settled in a prebend of Durham, whence he was transplanted by the queen, and advanced by her (who had no aversion to a medley of religions, which she always compounded into a scheme of heresy of her own) to the living of St. James's, vacant by the death of her favourite Arian, Dr. Clarke, and afterwards to the bishoprics of Bristol and Oxford."

Then, probably for the purpose of relieving the dark hues of this desperate portrait, he throws in a touch of praise, and tells us that Secker grew surprisingly popular in his parish of St. James's, and was especially approved of in the pulpit.

Secker's discourses, with his charges and lectures, still remain; and it is impossible to conceive any thing more commonplace in style, weaker in conception, or more thoroughly marked with mediocrity of mind. And yet it is perfectly possible to conceive such a man popular. What the multitude call eloquence, in the pulpit, is palpably different from eloquence any where else. At the bar, or in the legislature, it evidently consists in a mixture of strong sense and powerful feeling. It must exhibit some knowledge of the subject, and more knowledge of human nature. But the "sermons" which then achieved a passing popularity were characterised by nothing but by the most shallow notions in the most impotent language. The age of reasoners had passed away with Barrow, South, and Sherlock; and a studied mingling of affected simplicity and deliberate nonsense constituted the sole merits of the pulpit in the middle of the eighteenth century. Then, according to the proverb, that "when things come to the worst, they must mend," came the gentle enthusiasm of Wesley and the fierce declamation of Whitefield, both differing utterly in doctrine, practice, and principle, yet both regarding themselves as missionaries to restore Christianity, and both evidently believed by the multitude to be all but inspired. Their example, however, infused some slight ardour into the established pulpit, and its sermons were no longer dull rechauffes of Epictetus, and substitutes for the Gospel, taken from the schoolboy recollections of Plato. Secker reigned in this middle-age of the pulpit, and his performances are matchless as models of words without thought, doctrines without learning, and language that trickled through the ear without the possibility of reaching the understanding.

But Secker's faults were those of nature, which alone is to be blamed; unless we are to join in the blame the ministers who placed such a twinkling taper as a "shining light" in the church.

We do not believe in the story of his freethinking, though Walpole strongly repeats it, and gives his authority. Secker's was obviously a commonplace mind, wholly destitute of all pretension to ability, yet as obviously not disinclined to make use of those means which often constitute court favour, but which high minds disdain. He had been made Dean of St. Paul's by the Chancellor's interest, though he had been for some time in the shade at court, from being strongly suspected of cultivating the Prince's connexions at the same time; however, he achieved Canterbury at last, and, once sheltered in Lambeth, he might laugh at the jealousies of courtiers.

Walpole now bursts out into indignant virtue; exclaims that even the church has its renegades in politics, and almost compassionates the king, "who was obliged to fling open his asylum to all kinds of deserters; revenging himself, however, by not speaking to them at his levee, or listening to them in the pulpit."

In the meantime, the great source of all opposition, the dread of the successful, the hope of the defeated, the thorn in the royal side, or, to take a higher emblem, the tree of promise to all that contemptible race who trade in conscience, and live on faction,—disappeared in a moment. The heir-apparent died! The Prince of Wales had suffered from a pleurisy, but was so much recovered as to attend the king to the House of Lords. After being much heated in the atmosphere of the house, he returned to Carlton House to unrobe, put on only a light frock, went to Kew, where he walked some time, returned to Carlton House, and lay down upon a couch for three hours on a ground floor next the garden. The consequence of this rashness or obstinacy was, that he caught a fresh cold, and relapsed that night.

After struggling with this illness for a week, he was suddenly seized with an increase of his distemper. Three years before, he had received a blow on the breast from a tennis ball, from which, or from a subsequent fall, he often felt great pain. Exhausted by the cough, he cried, "Je sens la mort," and died in the arms of his valet.

The character of this prince, who was chiefly memorable as the father of George III., had in it nothing to eclipse the past age, conciliate the present, or attract honour from the future. Walpole, in his keen way, says, "that he resembled the Black Prince in nothing, but in dying before his father." "Indeed," he contemptuously adds, "it was not his fault if he had not distinguished himself by warlike achievements." He had solicited the command of the army in Scotland in the rebellion of 1745, which was of course given to his brother; "a hard judgment," says Walpole, "for what he could do, he did." When the royal army lay before Carlisle, the prince, at a great supper which he gave his court and favourites, had ordered for the dessert a model of the citadel of Carlisle, in paste, which he in person, and the maids of honour, bombarded with sugar plumbs!

The Prince had disagreed with the king and queen early after his coming to England, "not entirely," says Walpole, "by his own fault." The king had refused to pay his debts in Hanover, and "it ran a little in the blood of the family to hate the eldest son!" The queen exerted more authority than he liked, and "the Princess Emily, who had been admitted into his greatest confidence, had not," the historian bitterly observes, "forfeited her duty to the queen, by concealing any of his secrets that might do him prejudice."

Gaming was one of his passions; "but his style of play did him less honour than even the amusement." He carried this dexterity into practice in more essential points, and was vain of it. "One day at Kensington that he had just borrowed £5000 of Doddington, seeing him pass under his window, he said to Hedges, his secretary, 'that man is reckoned one of the most sensible men in England; yet, with all his parts, I have just tricked him out of £5000!'" A line from Earl Stanhope summed up his character,—"He has his father's head and his mother's heart."

A smart hit is mentioned of Pelham, who, however, was not remarkable for humour. One Ayscough, who had been preceptor to Prince George, and who had "not taught him to read English, though eleven years old," was about to be removed from the preceptorship. Lyttleton, whose sister he had married, applied to Pelham to save him. Pelham answered, "I know nothing of Dr. Ayscough—Oh, yes, I recollect, a very worthy man told me in this room, two years ago, that he was a great rogue." This very worthy man happened to be Lyttleton himself, who had then quarrelled with Ayscough about election affairs. Walpole abounds in sketches of character, and they are generally capital. Here is a kit-cat of Lord Albemarle, then ambassador in Paris. "It was convenient to him to be any where but in England. His debts were excessive, though he was ambassador, groom of the stole, governor of Virginia, and colonel of a regiment of guards. His figure was genteel, his manner noble and agreeable. The rest of his merit was the interest Lady Albemarle had with the king through Lady Yarmouth. He had all his life imitated the French manners since he came to Paris, where he never conversed with a Frenchman. If good breeding is not different from good sense, Lord Albemarle at least knew how to distinguish it from good nature. He would bow to his postilion, while he was ruining his tailor."

The prince's death had all the effect of the last act of a melo-drama. It had blown up more castles in the air, than any explosion in the history of paint and pasteboard. All the rejected of the court had naturally flocked round the heir-apparent, and never was worship of the rising sun more mortified by its sudden eclipse. Peerages in embryo never came to the birth, and all sorts of ministerial appointments, from the premier downwards, which had been looked upon as solid and sure, were scattered by this one event into thin air. Drax, the prince's secretary, who "could not write his own name;" Lord Baltimore, who, "with a great deal of mistaken knowledge, could not spell;" and Sir William Irby, the princesses' Polonius, were to be barons; Doddington, it was said, had actually kissed hands for the reversion of a dukedom!

The whole work is a picture gallery. Doddington, whose "Diary" has placed him among those authors whose happiest fate would have been to have been prohibited the use of pen, ink, and paper, is sketched to the life in a few keen and graphic lines.

"This man, with great knowledge of business and much wit, had, by mere absurdity of judgment and a disposition to finesse, thrown himself out of all estimation, and out of all the views which his large fortune and abilities could not have failed to promote, if he had preserved but the least shadow of steadiness. He had two or three times gone all lengths of flattery, alternately with Sir Robert Walpole and the prince. The latter keenly said, 'that they had met again, at last, in a necessary connexion, for no party would have any thing to do with either.'"

Why has not some biographer, curious in the dissection of human vanity, written the real life of Doddington? There could be no richer subject for a pen contemptuous of the follies of high life and capable of dissecting that compound of worldly passion and infirm principle which, in nine instances out of ten, figures in the front ranks of mankind.

Doddington had begun public life with higher advantages than most men of his time. He had figure, fortune, and fashion; he was employed early in Spain, with Sir Paul Methuen, our ambassador; where he signed the treaty of Madrid. He then clung to Walpole, whom he panegyrised in verse and adulated in prose. But Walpole thwarted his longing for a peerage, and the refusal produced his revolt. He then went over to the Opposition, and flattered the prince. But the prince had a favourite already; and Doddington failed again. He then returned to Walpole, who made him a lord of the treasury. But Walpole himself was soon to feel the chances of power; and Doddington, who was never inclined to prop a sinking cause, crossed the House again. There he was left for a while, to suffer the penalties of a placeman's purgatory, but without being purified; and, after some continuance in opposition, a state for which he was as unfitted as a shark upon the sea-shore, he crossed over again to the court, and was made treasurer of the navy. But he was now rapidly falling into ridicule; and, determining to obtain power at all risks, he bowed down before the prince. At this mimic court he obtained a mimic office, was endured without respect, and consulted without confidence. Even there he had not secured a final refuge.

The prince suddenly died; and Doddington's hopes, though not his follies, were extinguished in his grave. Such was the fate of a man of ability, of indefatigable labour, of affluent means, and confessedly accomplished in all the habits and knowledge of public life. He wanted, as Walpole observes, "nothing for power but constancy." Under a foreign government he might have been minister for life. But in the free spirit and restless parties of an English legislature, though such a man might float, he must be at the mercy of every wave.

We then have the most extraordinary man in England in his day, under review, the well-known Duke of Newcastle, minister, or possessing ministerial influence, for nearly a quarter of a century! Of all the public characters of his time, or perhaps of any other, the Duke of Newcastle was the most ridiculed. Every act of his life, every speech which he uttered, nay, almost every look and gesture, became instantly food for burlesque. All the scribblers of the empire, with some of the higher class, as Smollett, were pecking at him day by day; yet, in a Parliament where Chatham, with his powerful eloquence, Bedford with his subtle argument, Townshend with his wit, and the elder Fox with his indefatigable intrigue, were all contending for the mastery; this man, who seemed sometimes half-frenzied, and at other times half-idiotic, retained power, as if it belonged to him by right, and resigned it, as if he had given it away.

Walpole thus describes his appearance. "A constant hurry in his walk, a restlessness of place, a borrowed importance, gave him the perpetual air of a solicitor. His habit of never finishing, which proceeded from his beginning every thing twenty times over, gave rise to the famous bon-mot of Lord Wilmington: 'The Duke of Newcastle always loses half an hour in the morning, which he is running after for the rest of the day.' But he began the world with advantages:—an estate of £30,000 a-year, great borough and county interest, the heirship of his uncle, the old Duke of Newcastle, and a new creation of the title in his person." Walpole curiously describes the temperament of this singular man. "The Duke of Newcastle had no pride, though infinite self-love. He always caressed his enemies, to enlist them against his friends. There was no service that he would not do for either, till either was above being served by him.

"There was no expense to which he was not addicted, but generosity. His houses, gardens, table, and equipage, swallowed immense treasures. The sums which he owed were exceeded only by those which he wasted. He loved business immoderately, yet was always only doing it, never did it. His speeches in council and parliament were copious of words, but unmeaning. He aimed at every thing, yet endeavoured nothing. A ridiculous fear was predominant in him; he would venture the overthrow of the government, rather than dare to open a letter that might discover a plot. He was a secretary of state without intelligence, a man of infinite intrigue without secrecy or policy, and a minister despised and hated by his master, by all parties and ministers, without being turned out by any." This faculty of retaining office is evidently the chief problem in Walpole's eyes, and was as evidently the chief source of wrath, in the eyes of his crowd of clever opponents.

But the duke must have had some qualities, for which his caricaturists will not give him credit. He must have been shrewd, with all his oddity, and well acquainted with the science of the world, with all his trifling. He must have known the art of pulling the strings of parliament, before he could have managed the puppet show of power with such unfailing success. He must also have been dexterous in dealing with wayward tempers, while he had to manage the suspicious spirit, stubborn prejudices, and arrogant obstinacy of George II. It may be admitted that he had great assistance in the skill and subtlety of his brother Pelham; but there were so many occasions on which he must have trusted to himself alone, that it may well be doubted, whether to be, constantly successful, he must not have been singularly skilful, and that the personal dexterity of the minister was the true secret of his prolonged power.

We now come to Walpole's summary of the career of the two most celebrated men of his early life—his father and Bolingbroke.

Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Bolingbroke had begun, as rivals at school, lived a life of competition, and died much in the same manner, "provoked at being killed by empirics, but with the same difference in their manner of dying as had appeared in the temper of their lives,—the first with a calmness which was habitual philosophy, the other with a rage which his affected philosophy could not disguise. The one had seen his early ambition dashed with imprisonment, from which he had shot into the sphere of his rival. The other was exiled, recalled, and ruined. Walpole rose gradually to the height of power, maintained it by his single talents against Bolingbroke, assisted by all the considerable men of England; and when driven from it at last, resigned it without a stain or a censure; retiring to private life without an attempt to re-establish himself, and almost without a regret for what he had lost."

Though this was the tribute of a son to a father, it is, in all its essentials, the tribute of truth; for Walpole was, beyond all doubt, a man of great administrative abilities, remarkably temperate in the use of power, and, though violently assailed both within and without the house, neither insolent in the one instance, nor vindictive in the other. It was equally beyond a doubt, that to him was in a great degree owing the establishment of the Hanover succession. The peaceful extinction of Jacobitism, whose success would have been the renewal of despotism and popery; and that system of finance and nurture of the national resources, which prepared the country for the signal triumphs of the reign, were the work of Walpole.

Bolingbroke, with talents of the highest brilliancy, wanted that strength of judgment without which the most brilliant talents are only dangerous to their possessor. After tasting of power, only to feel the bitterness of disappointment—after rising to the height of ambition, only to be cast into the lowest depths of disgrace, after being driven into exile, and returning from it only in the humiliation of a pardon under the hand of his rival,—Bolingbroke died in retirement, without respect, and in the obscurity, without the peace of a private station. It must be acknowledged that, in his instance, ill-fortune was only another name for justice; that the philosopher, whose pen was employed in defaming religion, was punished in the politician, who felt the uncertainty of human power; and that a life expended in treachery to the religion in which he was born, was well punished by his being forced in public life to drink the bitterest dregs of political shame, live with an extinguished reputation, and be buried in national scorn, long before his body was consigned to the tomb.

At this period, the king, far advanced in years, was destined to feel the heaviest pressure of domestic calamity. His queen, a woman of sense and virtue, to whom, notwithstanding the grossness of his vices, he could not help paying public respect, died from the effects of an accident, which had grown into a confirmed disease. Her death was followed by that of his youngest daughter, the Queen of Denmark, a woman "of great spirit and sense," who died of an accident resembling her mother's. She, too, like the Queen of England, had led an unhappy life,—for like her, she had the vice and scandal of royal mistresses to contend with.

The king, on the news of this death, broke into unusual expressions of sorrow and fondness. "This," said he, "has been a fatal year to my family; I lost my eldest son, but I was glad of it. Then the Prince of Orange died, and left every thing in confusion. Poor little Edward has been cut open, (for an imposthume in his side,) and now the Queen of Denmark is gone. I know I did not love my children when they were young, I hated to have them running about my room; but now I love them as well as most fathers."

The contrast between the Walpole and the Pelham administrations, is sketched with great force and fidelity. In our days the character of a cabinet depends upon the party. In those days the character of the cabinet depended upon the premier. Walpole was bold, open, steady, and never dejected: Pelham was timorous, reserved, fickle, and apt to despair. Presumption made Walpole many enemies: want of confidence in himself estranged from Pelham many friends. Walpole was content to have one great view, and would overlook or trample on the intermediate degrees: Pelham could never reach a great view, through stumbling at little ones. Walpole loved power so much, that he would not endure a rival: Pelham loved it so much that he would endure any thing. Walpole would risk his administration by driving every considerable man from court, rather than venture their rivalry: Pelham would employ any means to take able men out of the opposition, though he ventured their engrossing his authority and outshining his capacity; but he dreaded abuse more than competition, and always bought off his enemies, to avoid their satire, rather than to acquire their support.

The historian, on the whole, regards Pelham's conduct on this point, though the less bold, as the more prudential. He acknowledges that the result of Sir Robert's driving away all able men from him was, to gain for himself but weak and uncertain assistance, while he always kept up a formidable opposition. But he might have grounded Sir Robert's failure, on insulted justice, as well as on mistaken policy; for, by depriving able men of their natural right to official distinction, he did more than enfeeble himself,—he deprived the country of their services. Walpole's was the more daring plan, and Pelham's was palpably and abjectly pusillanimous; but the result of the one was, to reduce the government to a solitary minister, while the result of the other was always to form an effective cabinet. The former plan may subsist, during a period of national peril; but the return of public tranquillity, which, in England, is always the severest trial of governments, invariably shows the superior stability of the other.

Both were valued in private life. "Walpole was fond of magnificence, and was generous to a fault: the other had neither ostentation nor avarice, and yet had but little generosity. The one was profuse to his family and friends, liberal indiscriminately, and unbounded to his tools and spies: the other loved his family and his friends, and enriched them as often as he could steal an opportunity from his extravagant bounty to his enemies and antagonists." Walpole was "forgiving to a fault, if forgiveness be a fault. Pelham never forgave, but when he durst not resent! The one was most appreciated while he was minister; the other most, when he ceased to be minister. All men thought Pelham honest, until he was in power. Walpole was never thought so, until he was out." Such is the lecture which this dexterous operator gives, knife in hand, over the corpses of the two most powerful men of their age.

Is it to be supposed that Ireland was doing nothing during this bustling period of English faction? Quite the contrary. It was in a flame, yet the subject was as insignificant as the indignation was profuse. One Jones, the court architect, was charged by the opposition with irregularities in his conduct, and was defended by the ministry. On the first division ministers had a majority, but it was almost a defeat, the majority amounting to but three. All Ireland resounded with acclamation. The "national cause" was to live, only with the expulsion of Jones from his office; and to perish irrecoverably, if he should draw another quarter's salary. His protectors were anathematised, his assailants were the models of patriotism. The populace made "bonfires of reproach" before the primate's house, a tolerably significant sign of what might happen to himself; and stopped the coaches in the streets, demanding of their passengers a pledge "whether they were for Ireland, or England." Even the hackney coachmen exhibited their patriotic self-denial by the heroism of refusing to carry any fare to the Castle, the residence of the viceroy. The passion became even more powerful than duelling. A Dr. Andrews, of the Castle party, challenging Lambert, a member, at the door of the Commons, on some election squabble, Lambert said, "I shall go first into the house, and vote against that rascal Neville Jones." Andrews repeating the insult, and, as it seems, not allowing time for this patriotic vote, Lambert went in and complained; in consequence of which Andrews was ordered into custody; Carter, the Master of the Rolls,—for even the lawyers had caught fire on the occasion,—exclaiming of Andrews, "What! would that man force himself into a seat here, and for what? only to prostitute his vote to a man, the sworn enemy of his country," (Lord George Sackville, then Secretary for Ireland.) The Speaker, too, was equally hostile. The government were finally defeated by 124 to 116. Never was ridiculous triumph more ridiculously triumphant. The strangers in the gallery huzzaed, the mob in the streets huzzaed. When Lord Kildare returned to his house (he had been the leader of the debate,) there was a procession of some hours. All the world was rejoicing, Neville Jones was prostrated, Ireland had cast aside her sackcloth, and was thenceforth to be rich, loyal, and happy. The triumph lasted during the night, and was forgotten in the morning. Jones covered his retreat with a pleasantry, saying—"So, after all, I am not to be In—igo, but Out—igo Jones," a piece of wit, which disposed many in that wit-loving land to believe, that he was not so very much a demon after all. But the revenge of government was longer lived than the popular rejoicing. Their first intention was a general casting out of all who had foiled them in the debate: a two-handed slaughter of officials—a massacre of the innocents. But the wrath cooled, and was satisfied with turning off Carter, master of the rolls; Malone, prime serjeant; Dilks, the quarter-master general; and abolishing the pension of Boyle, a near relative of the obnoxious speaker.

But a powerful man was now to be snatched away from the scene: Pelham died. He had been for some time suffering under the great disease of high life, high living. His health had given way to many feasts, many physicians, and the Scarborough waters. He died on the 8th of March, 1754.

France next supplies the historian with another display. The two countries differ, even in the nineteenth century, by characteristics wholly irreconcilable; and they are both of a sterner order as time advances with both. But, in the eighteenth century, each country in its public transactions approached nearer to the propensities and passions of the drama. The rapid changes of the English cabinet—the clever circumventions of courtiers—the bold developments of political talent, and the dexterous intrigues of office—bore some resemblance to the graver comedy. On the other hand, the Court life of France was all a ballet, of which Versailles was the patent theatre. There all was show and scene-shifting the tinsel of high life, and the frolic, of brilliant frivolity.—The minister was eclipsed by the mistress; the king was a buffoon in the hands of the courtier; and the government of a powerful nation was disposed of in the style of a flirtation behind the scenes.

Louis XV. had at this period grown weary of the faded graces of Madame de Pompadour, and selected for his favourite a woman of Irish extraction, of the name of Murphy. The monarch had stooped low enough, for his new sultana was the daughter of a shoe-maker. The royal history was scarcely more profligate, than it was ridiculous. His Majesty, though the husband of a respectable queen, had seemed to regard every abomination of life as a royal privilege. He had first adopted the society of a Madame de Mailly, a clever coquette, but with the disqualification of being the utter reverse of handsome. Madame, to obviate the known truantry of the King, introduced her sister, Madame de Vintinsille, as clever, but as ordinary as herself. The latter died in child-birth, supposed to have been poisoned! The same family, however, supplied a third sultana, a very pretty personage, on whom the royal favour was lavished in the shape of a title, and she was created Duchess de Chateauroux.