Such were the ministers, whom it appears that king George the second
would have had no objection to strip of their employments. I will tell
you who it was, that he was willing to have substituted in their place.
It was a man of infinite genius. His taste was a standard to those, who
were most attached to the fine arts, and most uninterruptedly conversant
with them. His eloquence was splendid, animated, and engaging. Of all
the statesmen then existing in Europe, he was perhaps the individual,
who best understood the interests and the politics of all her courts.
But your lordship may probably find it somewhat more intelligible, if I
take the other side of the picture, and tell you what he was not. He was
not a man of fawning and servility. He did not rest his ambitious
pretensions upon any habitual adroitness, upon the arts of wheedling,
and the tones of insinuation. He rested them upon the most solid
talents, and the most brilliant accomplishments. He did not creep into
the closet of his sovereign uncalled, and endeavour to make himself of
consequence by assiduities and officiousness. He pleaded for years, in a
manly and ingenuous manner, the cause of the people in parliament. It
was by a popularity, great, and almost without exception, that he was
introduced into power. When defeated by the undermining and contemptible
art of his rivals; when convinced that it was impossible for him, to
employ his abilities with success in the service of his country, he
retired. And it was only by the personal intreaties of his sovereign,
and to assist him in that arduous and difficult situation, in which
those who ought to have served, deserted him, that he once again
accepted of office. He accepted it, for the temporary benefit of his
country, and till those persons, who only could come into administration
with efficiency and advantage, should again resume their places. He made
way for them without a struggle. He did not pretend to set practical
impotence, though accompanied with abilities incomparably the superior,
against that influence and connexion by which they were supported. Of
consequence, my lord, his memory will always be respected and cherished
by the bulk of mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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