'Lord Rockingham's childish arrogance and indiscretion.'-vol. ii. p. 298.

'Rockingham, a weak, childish, and ignorant man.'-vol. iii. p. 334. Then we have some additional sneers at his nearest and dearest friend, Conway-Secretary of State in that administration:

The disgusting coldness of Conway's manner would revolt those he met at court, and I foresaw (though not to the degree I found it afterwards) how little he was made to ingratiate himself with strangers, and consequently to conduct the House of Commons. To talk to Conway against public opinion was preaching to the winds. His heart was so cold that it wanted all the beams of popular applause to kindle it into action.'-vol. ii. pp. 195, 213.

Mr. Dowdeswell-Chancellor of the Exchequer :

"The office of Chancellor of the Exchequer was bestowed on Dowdeswell, who was so suited to the drudgery of the office, as far as depends on arithmetic, that he was fit for nothing else. Heavy, slow, methodical without clearness, a butt for ridicule, unversed in every graceful art, and a stranger to men and courts, he was only esteemed by the few to whom he was personally known.'-vol. ii. p. 196.

Lord Dartmouth-President of the Board of Trade

only stayed long enough to prostitute his character and authenticate his hypocrisy.'-vol. iv. p. 84.

Then came what is called LORD CHATHAM's second administration, in which General Conway continued the leader of the House of Commons.

So great a name as Lord Chatham's, and his most extraordinary conduct at this period, deserve more copious extracts, which we give the rather because they confirm the view which we formerly took of the eccentricity of this period of his career, and because he is, of all others, the statesman towards whom Walpole seems to have felt impartially-or, at least, with only a favouring partiality. In fact, he almost worshipped him, till the official connexion, and we may add, something of official conflict, between Conway and Lord Chatham brought Walpole into a nearer view and more accurate judgment of that extraordinary man. Walpole seems to have had little or no doubt-nor indeed had Lord Chatham's colleagues-that he was, during his second administration, under the influence of insanity.

Walpole opens by the following general observations on his

ministerial character:

'Peace was not his element; nor did his talent lie in those details that restore a nation by slow and wholesome progress. Of the finances he was utterly ignorant. If struck with some great idea, he neither knew how, nor had patience to conduct it. He expected implicit assent - and he expected more― -that other men should methodize and superintend,

U 2

tend, and bear the fatigue of carrying his measures into execution; and, what was worse, encounter the odium and danger of them, while he reposed and was to enjoy the honour, if successful. .

His conduct

in the late war had been the same. He drew the plans, but left it to the Treasury to find the means; nor would listen to their difficulties, nor hold any rein over their ill-management.'-vol. ii. p. 365.

He then proceeds to particulars. Mr. Pitt-even before his administration was completed

'had already commenced that extraordinary scene of seclusion of himself which he afterwards carried to an excess that passed, and no wonder, for a long access of phrensy.'-p. 342.

ib.

"The mad situation to which Lord Chatham had reduced himself.'— p. 402.

The pride and folly of Lord Chatham.'-ib. p. 402.

'The wildness of Lord Chatham baffled all policy.'—ib. p. 416. "The madness or mad conduct of Lord Chatham.'-vol. iii. p. 67. 'Lord Chatham's wild actions of passion and scorn.'-ib. p. 435. "The Chancellor Camden had given many hints of his friend's frenzy.'-vol. iii. p. 251.

As if there were dignity in folly, and magic in perverseness—as if the way to govern mankind was to insult their understandings,—the conduct of Lord Chatham was the very reverse of common sense, and made up of such undissembled scorn of all the world, that his friends could not palliate it, nor his enemies be blamed for resolving it into madness. He was scarce lame, and even paraded through the town in a morning to take the air; yet he neither went to the King, nor suffered any of the ministers [his colleagues] to come to him.'-vol. ii. p. 426.

And again

'Lord Chatham might have given firmness and almost tranquillity to the country; might have gone farther towards recruiting our finances than any reasonable man could have expected; but, alas! his talents were not adequate to that task. The multiplication-table did not admit of being treated as epic, and Lord Chatham had but that one style. Whether really out of his senses, or conscious how much the mountebank had concurred to make the great man, he plunged deeper and deeper into retreat, and left the nation a prey to faction and to insufficient persons that he had chosen for his coadjutors.'-vol. ii. p. 433.

We then have, at a length too great for an extract, a very curious account of what certainly looks like phrensy in Lord Chatham's morbid anxiety to re-purchase the villa at Hayes, which he had not long before disposed of to Mr. Thomas Walpole, from whom Horace had the details, which, as little exaggerated, perhaps, as any of Horace's anecdotes, are a curious and melancholy picture of Lord Chatham's interior life at this critical

time.

We have also the still less suspicious evidence of the Duke of Grafton's

Grafton's account-in an autobiography, with a few extracts from which the Editor has been allowed to enrich this work—of an interview which, with great difficulty and after long delays, he, the First Lord of the Treasury, had obtained from his mysterious colleague: the Duke says

"Though I expected to find Lord Chatham very ill indeed, his situation was different from what I had imagined: his nerves and spirits were affected to a dreadful degree, and the sight of his great mind, bowed down and thus weakened by disorder, would have filled me with grief and concern even if I had not long borne a sincere attachment to his person and character." —vol. iii. p. 51.

6

With all this evidence, and recollecting that both his sisters were indisputably mad, and that one of them, Anne Pitt, who, as Walpole once wittily said to a French acquaintance, resembled him comme deux gouttes de-feu,' died, after a long exhibition of talent and eccentricity, quite insane, we can hardly doubt that he was labouring under a strong nervous disturbance. So, certainly, thought the Duke of Grafton-when, subsequently exasperated by some of Lord Chatham's wild and unfounded assertions in the House of Lords, he told him to his face that they were the effect of a distempered mind brooding over its own disappointments;' but we doubt whether it was not a disturbance of the same nature (though of greater intensity) as that under which Walpole himself appears to have habitually laboured—the result, namely, of allowing his clear and powerful intellect to be overclouded and subdued by a proud, passionate, and feverish temper. And, on the whole, we adhere to the opinion expressed in our Article on Lord Chatham (vol, lxvi. p. 253), that, seeing how sudden and complete his recovery was on going out of office, and with what more than juvenile vigour, spirit, and ability he threw himself again into the stormy torrent of faction, we cannot excuse, on the plea of mere physical and involuntary infirmity, a long course of conduct so perverse, ungrateful, and unprincipled at the time, and in its consequences so degrading and calamitous to his neglected country and his insulted Sovereign. We may admire Lord Chatham's great oratorical talents and soaring spirit, but we can neither esteem nor respect him. His was, we believe, the most disastrous glory that ever intoxicated—and when the intoxication was over-enervated our country, and planted the first germs of revolutionary disease in the Constitution.

Lord Chatham's Lord Chancellor was

'Lord Camden, whose character did not clear up as he proceeded, but was clouded with shades of interest and irresolution, and when it veered most to public spirit was subject to squalls of time-serving, as by the Court it was taxed with treacherous ambiguity.'—vol. iii. p. 251.

His Chancellor of the Exchequer was that meteor' Charles Townshend, who died unexpectedly in 1767 :

*

Though cut off so immaturely, it is a question whether he had not lived long enough for his character. His genius could have received no accession of brightness; his faults only promised multiplication. He had almost every great talent, and every little quality. His vanity exceeded even his abilities. With such a capacity he must have been the greatest man of this age, and perhaps inferior to no man in any age, had his faults been only in a moderate proportion-in short, if he had had but common truth, common sincerity, common honesty, common modesty, common steadiness, common courage, and common sense.'

The DUKE OF GRAFTON was left by the resignation of Lord Chatham at the head of the administration; of which indeed, by Lord Chatham's seclusion, he had all along been the effective chief-but Walpole (at one time in much friendship with him) gives the following very unfavourable estimate of his fitness for the post :

'The negligence and disgusting coldness of the Duke of Grafton.'— vol. iii. p. 106.

The moody and capricious temper of Grafton.'-vol. iii. p. 267. 'His unfitness for the first post of the state.'-vol. iv. p. 66.

The King was worn out with Grafton's negligence and impracticability.'-p. 67.

'His fall was universally ascribed to his pusillanimity; but whether betrayed by his fears or his friends, he had certainly been the chief author of his own disgrace. His haughtiness, indolence, reserve, and improvidence had conjured up the storm, but his obstinacy and feebleness-always relaying each other and always mal-à-propos-were the radical cause of all the numerous absurdities that discoloured his conduct and exposed him to deserved reproaches; nor had he depth of understanding to counterbalance the defects of his temper (p. 69). The details of his conduct were as weak and preposterous as the great lines of it' (p. 70).

LORD NORTH had become Chancellor of the Exchequer on Mr. Townshend's death; and on the Duke of Grafton's secession, became First Lord of the Treasury; but there was little other change in the ministry.

LORD NORTH had neither system, nor principle, nor shame, but enjoyed the good luck of fortune with a gluttonish epicurism that was

* There is an amusing instance of Townshend's amazing talents, and more amazing incongruities of character, detailed by Walpole (iii. p. 22); and it is made additionally curious by the Editor's having been able to recover another and authentic account of the same transaction from Sir George Colebrook's Memoirs, which shows, in a remarkable way, Walpole's style of exaggeration-but the whole is too long to be extracted.

equally

equally careless of glory or disgrace. As a minister he had no foreHe miscarried in all sight, no consistence, no firmness, no spirit. he undertook in America-was more improvident than unfortunate, and less unfortunate than he deserved to be. If he was free from vices, he was as void of virtues; and it is a paltry eulogium of a prime minister of a great country-yet the best that can be allotted to Lord North-that though his country was ruined under his administration, he preserved his good humour, and neither felt for his country nor for himself.'vol. iv. pp. 80-83.

This character, bad as it is, of Lord North is one of the least defamatory in the whole work; but even this 'paltry eulogiumthe positive merit of good humour, and the negative one of not meaning all the mischief he did-he probably owed to a small " In the fact which we have already quoted in another place. payments of my office bills,' says Walpole, I always received justice and civility from Lord North.'-Works, vol. ii. 369. The Chancellor Bathurst

p.

was too poor a creature to have any weight.'-vol. iv. p. 84.

Lord Rochford-Secretary of State

'less employed, had still less claim to sense, and none at all to knowledge.'-ib.

Lord Suffolk-Secretary of State :

'his soul was harrowed by ambition, and as he had not parts to gratify it, he sought the despotism of the Crown as means of gratifying his own pride. He was totally unpractised in business, pompous, ignorant, and of no parts, but affecting to be the head of Grenville's late party.'-ib. Lord George Germaine-Secretary of State

was proud, haughty, and desperate.'-vol. iv. p. 84.

Lord Halifax-Privy Seal—

a proud, empty man.'-vol. iv. p.

208.

Lord Hillsborough-Secretary of State

'was a pompous composition of ignorance and want of judgment.'vol. iv. p. 199.

Such were, according to Walpole, the talents and characters of the principal statesmen with whom George III. had to conduct the affairs of his empire in almost, if not altogether, the most critical and difficult period of our history. We need not repeat how far we are from adopting these gloomy pictures as likenesses -the supposition of such a monstrous and yet uniform assemblage of knaves and fools is not merely contradicted by much indisputable evidence, but it outrages probability and libels even human nature itself. But Walpole's evidence must be taken altogether; -we are forced to meet his representations of George III. by his representations of those with whom the King had to deal,

and