My lord, I will tell you, what were the Pelhams, and what was the true
character of lord Granville. Whatever may be said, and much I think may
justly be said, in favour of the former, they were not men of genius.
Capable of conducting, and willing upon the whole to conduct with
loyalty and propriety the affairs of their country, while they kept
within the beaten channel, they were not born to grapple with arduous
situations. They had not that commanding spirit of adventure, which
leads a man into the path of supererogation and voluntary service: they
had not that firm and collected fortitude which induces a man to look
danger in the face, to encounter it in all its force, and to drive it
from all its retrenchments. They were particularly attached to the
patronage, which is usually annexed to their high situations. They did
not come into power by the voice of the people. They were not summoned
to assume the administration by a vote of the house of commons. They
were introduced into the cabinet by an inglorious and guilty compromise
of sir Robert Walpole; a compromise, that shunned the light; a
compromise, that reflected indelible disgrace upon every individual
concerned in it. We will suppose them ever so much in the right in the
instance before us. For certainly, the same responsibility, that ought
to remove a minister from the helm, when he is become obnoxious to his
countrymen, equally makes it improper, that he should be originally
appointed by the fancy or capricious partiality of the sovereign. But
were they over so much in the right, it will yet remain true, that they
took a poor and ungenerous advantage of the personal distresses of their
master, which men of a large heart, and of sterling genius, could never
have persuaded themselves to take.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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