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believed.'* And Walpole, in retouching the portrait of Mr. Pelham, at the period of his death, allows that his eloquence cleared up and shone with much greater force after his power was established. He laid aside his doubling plausibility, which at once raised and depreciated him, and assumed a spirit and authority that became him well.' Of his deportment on ordinary occasions, Chesterfield, no inconsiderable authority, says that he had a gentlemanlike frankness in his behaviour.' While very young he had served a campaign against the rebels of 1715, and signalized himself in the affair of Preston; and a respectable contemporary writer observed, or fancied, that he retained to the end of his life the openness of demeanour which belongs to the military profession. According to the small talk of his day, he had the infirmity of betraying emotion by his countenance when conversation touched on points which were uneasy to him. Hume Campbell (Earl of Marchmont), in his Diary published by Sir George Rose in the Marchmont Papers, even accuses him of the uncourtierlike vice of blushing. Though not unsusceptible of anger, he was naturally gifted with a calmness and moderation of temper, which suited well, and no doubt prompted on some occasions, his policy in public affairs. It is he who is reported to have said, when some one recommended an exertion of privilege to restrain the newspapers from publishing the debates of the House of Commons, Let them alone, they make better speeches for us than we can for ourselves.' Mr. Coxe gives an example of the same mildness of disposition, evinced by him on a more trifling

occasion.

'A traditional anecdote preserved in the family, and communicated by the present Duke of Newcastle, will afford a pleasing instance of the easy and kind condescension with which Mr. Pelham behaved to his domestics. He had sent for his coachman to give him some orders. Whilst he was speaking, the man suddenly drew out his watch, and glancing a look at it, abruptly broke off the conversation by exclaiming, "Sir, it is my time, and I must go and drive my children in the carriage." "Richard," said Mr. Pelham, "the time and the carriage may be yours, and so may the horses and other things; but, my good Richard, do let the children be my own."-Pelham Administration, vol. ii. p. 304, note.

* Characters by Lord Chesterfield, published in his Miscellaneous Works, 4to. by Maty.

+ Dr. Birch, writing under the name of Tindal.

Pelham Administration, vol. i. P. 355. A similar answer (though in a matter where self-love was less concerned) is related of George II. 'Being informed that an impudent printer was to be punished for having published a spurious (King's) speech, he answered that he hoped the man's punishment would be of the mildest sort, because he had read both, and, as far as he understood either of them, he liked the spurious speech better than his own.'-Lord Waldegrave's Memoirs, p. 88.

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The severest trials of Mr. Pelham's temper and fortitude arose from the infirmities of his brother and colleague in government. There are few characters in history more generally known by their little and ludicrous points than that of the Duke of Newcastle. Mr. Coxe, in a masterly though indulgent delineation of this celebrated Whig leader, has drawn attention to the comelier features, which in so many representations of him are altogether disguised or caricatured. There was much in him which it is impossible to respect, but he possessed many qualities which it is equally impossible to despise. Considering the ascendancy which he so long maintained, in a court where the sovereign never cordially regarded him, and where ambitious, strong, and favoured competitors, watched eagerly, and strove without scruple, to wrest from him the prize of power, it seems extravagant to pronounce with Horace Walpole that he was a mere phantom of abilities.' It may be true, that (according to the exquisitely descriptive saying of Lord Wilmington) he always lost half an hour in the morning, and was running after it all day without being able to overtake it ;' but experience, zeal, activity, and, in foreign affairs at least, extensive knowledge, compensated, as far as such qualities could compensate, for the want of method and of well-directed energy. It is said that many of the first draughts of his letters still extant, some of them very long, and of a nature requiring order and arrangement, are remarkable for their perspicuity, and have scarcely a single erasure. Those in the present collection, though not equal in manliness and sense to Mr. Pelham's, betray neither want of talent nor perplexity of thought. Hear him speak in parliament,' says Lord Waldegrave, his manner is ungraceful, his language barbarous, his reasoning inconclusive. At the same time he labours through all the confusion of a debate, without the least distrust of his own abilities, fights boldly in the dark, never gives up the cause, nor is he ever at a loss either for words or argument.' This picture conveys no exalted notion of the statesman, but there have been times when such a man might be considered no contemptible debater.

His most characteristic failing, and that which made the condition of all associated with him in business uneasy and insecure, was a morbid restlessness of mind, a perpetual recurrence of that distrust, the too ordinary effect of which is to render him who entertains it himself fickle and unsteady. Lord Waldegrave, writing of him in his lifetime, says, 'Ambition, fear, and jealousy, are his prevailing passions:' a jealousy which could not be carried to a higher pitch if every political friend was a favourite mistress.' His correspondence in the present work abounds with the indications of this unquiet temper; suspicions, complaints, counter

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plottings on the mere surmises of a plot, confidences made to one friend with injunctions to withhold them from another, and tormenting apprehensions of a similar conduct towards himself.

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'I beg of you,' says Mr. Pelham in one of his letters, (1752,) do not so often call upon me to act in concert, and to act as one; I have never done otherwise. If we differ in opinion toto cælo, we cannot act together in what we differ; but where that has not been notoriously so, and known by yourself to be so, before you engaged in them, I do not know an instance wherein either confidence or concert has been wanting on my part.'-Pelham Administration, vol. ii. p. 462.

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Scarcely, indeed, had Mr. Pelham been appointed first lord of the treasury, when the duke complained in a letter to Lord Hardwicke, that his brother was falling into Lord Orford's old method of being the first person upon all occasions.' These feelings, it may be supposed, were watched and turned to advantage by interested observers, and there was address as well as malice in the taunt which Lady Yarmouth is said to have levelled at the duke, that he was bred up in the fear of his brother.' It appears from some curious passages in the correspondence now published,* that in the latter part of Mr. Pelham's life, the king formed (or intimated in Hanover that he had formed) the plan of 'cajoling and managing' that minister, and, as the duke expressed it, playing off' the Pelhams against each other. But this, whether seriously contemplated or not, was a scheme which no man had hitherto accomplished or was likely to undertake with success. The clouds of displeasure which arose between the brothers, whether from the difference of their opinions on some political subjects, or from the sensitive and busy jealousy of the duke, were transient, though often recurring their fraternal affection and their concord as ministers on the most essential points, if occasionally shaken, could never be subverted; their quarrels (to use the duke's own observation) were amantium iræ, and were ever followed by an increase of cordiality. The duke, if he was the most irritable, was also the most placable, of men. Mr. Coxe + furnishes, from one of his letters to Lord Hardwicke, a striking instance of the frankness and good grace which he could yield to remonstrance, and acknowledge himself in error. The following characteristic passages form part of a letter to Mr. Pelham, from Hanover, in 1748, when, after some acrimony between the brothers on the subject of the negotiations for peace then depending, the duke unexpectedly learned that Mr. Pelham had had a severe fit of illness:

• Believe me I am the more touched on this occasion as I am sensible the situation of affairs, and possibly the part I may have had in them,

*Vol. ii. p. 455, &c.

+ Vol. i. p. 6.

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or at least some warmth I have used in justifying them, has been in great measure the cause of the continuance, if not of your origina illness. This good effect it has had, that you shall never more hav one disagreeable word from me.'-vol. ii. p. 27.

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After stating the general anxiety at the court of Hanover on Mr Pelham's account, and that the king, who is a bit of a doctor, had desired to know every particular of his illness, he concludes :'For God's sake, dear brother, make yourself as easy as you ca about our foreign affairs. If they are not as well as we could wish I hope they are better than you fear. I will do more than is possibl to conclude. My heart is set upon it, for my country's service, for m own honour, to recommend myself to the king, and, believe me I spea truth, to remove the only possible point of difference that can ever b between you and me. I love you, I esteem you; and I pray Go grant good news of you by the messenger I expect. I can say n more.'-ibid. p. 29.

The following extract from a letter to the chancellor, on Mr. Pelham's projected reduction of the interest on the national debt is equally descriptive of the writer:

It is a great and glorious design, worthy of him; and I have tol the king and everybody I speak to that no man is, or I verily believ ever was, so willing and sc able to do this great service to his coun try as my brother is. I will assure him two things, that this wil make my happiness in public affairs complete; and, secondly, that a I can possibly do to contribute towards it shall be done, by neve proposing any measure that does not appear to me to be absolutel necessary, that can in any way delay the execution of this great de sign. And, lastly, I never will hear anybody talk who will preten to let anybody else share in the merit.'-vol. ii. p. 45.

Considering the restless and variable temper of the Duke o Newcastle, his openness to flattery, and the foible which Lor Chesterfield, in one of his letters, imputes to him, of loving to hav a favourite, it cannot be observed without surprise, how little i any part of his conduct can be traced to the influence of unwor thy counsellors, and how uniformly his confidence was reposed in two of the wisest and best friends whom a statesman of that da could have selected,-his brother and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke And if it cannot be ascribed to him as a merit, it deserves at leas to be commemorated as his happiness, that three of the most emi nent persons of the last century, Pitt, Murray, and Yorke, (two o them numbered by Walpole in his list of the five great men within his memory,) were among those who owed early advancement to the favour of the Duke of Newcastle.

Distinguished, from the outset of his life, as a warm supporte of the house of Brunswick, and ever zealous for what he termed 'the old and great system' of combination against the ambitious

views of France, he was not unnaturally led, on some occasions, to concur, against the wish of Mr. Pelham, in the scheme of foreign policy espoused by the King and the Duke of Cumberland. It was, indeed, very difficult for a statesman once admitted to the cabinet of George the Second, more especially if he attended him abroad, to remain wholly uninfected with Hanover politics, which were the degeneracy of that old and great system' so gloriously upheld by King William and the Duke of Marlborough. Never, perhaps, was that system brought to a point so nearly bordering on burlesque as when England was intriguing and subsidizing to secure the election of King of the Romans in favour of the Archduke Joseph, unaided and at last baffled by Austria herself, who a few years afterwards obtained the desired object without any foreign assistance. Times were indeed to come when the old antigallican system should be wielded by stronger hands and with nobler results. But those days also have gone by; and we have lived to be taught by modern Whigs, that the true policy of England is to combine with, and not against, France-virtuous, liberal, easy, unambitious France!

The love of power and the official jealousies which characterised the duke were entirely free from any mercenary taint.* In pecuniary affairs he was disinterested and magnificent; politics were his expense, not his gain. Lord Chesterfield, who, as he himself observes, had been sometimes well and sometimes ill' with the duke, makes this eulogy upon him at his decease :

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My old kinsman and contemporary is at last dead, and for the first time quiet. He had the start of me at his birth by one year and two months, and I think we shall observe the same distance at our burial. I own I feel for his death, not because it will be my turn next, but because I knew him to be very good-natured, and his hands to be extremely clean, and even too clean, if that were possible,-for, after all the great offices which he had held for fifty years, he died three hundred thousand pounds poorer than he was when he first came into them. A very unministerial proceeding!'-Chesterfield's Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii. p. 564, 4to.

In no circumstance were the Pelhams more fortunate than in

I come now to speak to you of the affair of the Duke of Newcastle; but absolutely on considering it much myself, and on talking of it with your brother, we are both against your attempting any such thing. In the first place, I never heard a suspicion of the Duke's taking presents, and should think he would rather be affronted : in the next place, my dear child, though you are fond of that coffee-pot, it would be thought nothing among such wardrobes as he has, of the finest wrought plate: why he has a set of gold plates that would make a figure on any side-board in the Arabian tales: and as to Benvenuto Cellini, if the duke could take it for his, people in England understand all work too well to be deceived.' 'As to Stone,' (the duke's secretary,) if any thing was done, to be sure, it should be to him: though I really can't advise even that.'-Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 6, 1743.

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