March 4th.--The Duke of Bedford offered a Bill to postpone the activity of the Marriage Bill, till it should be maturely considered and amended. The Chancellor opposed it dictatorially; and it was rejected by 56 Lords to 10. * * * * * These were the last occurrences in the life of that fortunate Minister, Henry Pelham, who had surmounted every difficulty, but the unhappiness of his own temper. The fullness of his power had only contributed to heighten his peevishness. He supplied the deficiencies of genius by affected virtue; he had removed superiors by treachery, and those of whom he was jealous, by pretexting, or administering to the jealousies of his brother: but the little arts by which he had circumvented greater objects, were not applicable even to his own little passions. He enjoyed the plenitude of his Ministry but a short time, and that short period was a scene of fretfulness. He had made a journey to Scarborough in the summer for scorbutic complaints, but receiving little benefit from a short stay, and being banqueted much on the road, he returned with his blood more disordered. It produced a dangerous boil, which was once thought cured; but he relapsed on the third of March, and died on the sixth, aged near sixty-one. It would be superfluous to add much to the character already given of him in the former part of these memoirs. Thus much may be said with propriety: his abilities, I mean, parliamentary, and his eloquence cleared up, and shone with much greater force, after his power was established. He laid aside his doubling plausibility, which had at once raised and depreciated him, and assumed a spirit and authority that became him well. Considering how much he had made it a point to be Minister, and how much his partizans had proclaimed him the only man worthy of being Minister, he ought to have conferred greater benefits on his country. He had reduced interest, and a part of the National Debt; these were his services. He had raised the name of the King, but he had wounded his authority. He concluded an ignominious peace; but the circumstances of the times made it be thought, and perhaps it was, desirable. The desertion of the King in the height of a Rebellion, from jealousy of a man with whom he soon after associated against some of the very men who had deserted with him, will be a lasting blot on his name--let it be remembered as long, that, though he first taught or experienced universal servility in Englishmen, yet he lived without abusing his power, and died poor. FOOTNOTES: [229] Being deprived of this income, Keith swore he would be revenged of the Bishops--that he would buy a piece of ground and outbury them. [230] Yet no amendment was ever made in it, and all its clauses and faults supported by the utmost rigour of the power of Chancery. [231] An expression of Lord Lyttleton on Lord Hardwicke. [232] Meaning by his son, Charles Yorke.