Lord Bult finding his cabinet divided upon Chap. almost every question that came before them; and searing the Duke of Bedford's indignation, 1763. . • . - ,. •. \ who Lord ".; Bute re as one deaf and dumb questioned on a concert of music; as lZn*' little of a judge as a blind man in a gallery of pictures. A dabbler in the fine arts without grace, without taste. A traveller through-countrie's without seeing them, and totally unacquainted with his own. '" In a dull ungenial solitude) muddling away what leisure he may have from salse politics, and ruinous counsels, in stusfing his port folios with penny prints and pretty pictures of coloured simples, those gazing-traps of simpletons, and garnishing his knicknackatory with mechanical toys, baubles, and gimeracks, or varying his nonsense with little tricks of chemistry; while all these sutile puerilities have been rendered still more sutile by the gloom of a solemn visage, ridiculously exhibiting the preternatural character of a grave chi!i.L Bagatelles these, which it would doubtless be impertinent, illiberal, and even uncharitable to mention, were it not for the apprehension of his having inspired this most unroyal taste for trisles where it could not exist, but at the expence of a time and attention, of which the nation could not be robbed without capital detriment to it: A circumstance this, that must draw down a ridicule upon his master, not to be easily shaken off, and as much more hurtful to a Prince than a calumny of a graver nature, as contempt is ever more satal to government, than even sear or hatred. "Too unhappily, alas! for this nation, chance had thrown this egregious trifler into a family whom his domestic streights had savourably disposed toward; him. . How he maintained and improved his footing into a pernicious ascendant, is surely beneath curiosity. So much, however, it would be unsair to suppress, that the attack on the same of his political maker, was not only treated by him with such an apathy as had nothing in it of a just and noble contempt; but to consummate the ingratitude, one of notoriously the first instigators xsf the scandal was inrolled among his intimate confidents arid supporters, without even this being the only appearance afforded by him of his not being insinitely-displeased at the currency of the calumny. "As to the Royal Pupil, who, by a much misplaced confidence, sell under his management at the tender age of sus ceptibility CnAT. who was on the point of returning from Paris, XXIV, |ie set(ie(] an arrangement in favour of the Duke's friends, and retired from his public station on the eighth day of April, 1763. He made Mr. Grenville his successor *f, hoping he should, by that ccptibillty of all impression*, it was not well possible for him to prevent a deep-rooted partiality for a choice manisestly not made by him, but for him. In raw, unexperienced, unguarded youth, practised upon by an insidious study of his inclinations not to rectify, but to govern him by them: captivated by an unremitting attention to humour and perpetuate the natural bent of that age to the lighter objects of amusement; instituted to an implicit saith in the man who littered his head with trifles, and unable to corrupt his heart, only hardened it like his own against the remonstrances of true greatness, while warping his understanding with the falsest notions of men and things, and especially of maxims of state, of which himself never had so much as an elementary idea; thus delivered up to such a tutor, how could the Disciple pcsiibly escape such a combination ?—What of essentially wise or magnanimous could he learn from such a pedlar in politics and manners? No one can impart what himself never had. Honour, gratitude, dignity of sentiment, energy of sincerity, comprehensiveness of views, were not in him to inculcate. Obstinacy under the stale disguise of sirmness; the royalty of repairing a wrong by persisting in it, the plausible decencies of private life, the petty moralities, the minutenesses of public arrangements, the preference of dark juggle, mystery, and low artifice to the frank, open spirit of government; the abundant sufsiciency of the absence of great vices, to atone for the want of great virtues, a contempt of reputation, and especially that execrable absurdity in the sovereign os a free people, the neglect of popularity, were all that the hapless pupil, f When Mr. Gren-jllle was appointed secretary of state, he was under the necessity of soliciting his brother, Lord Temple, to permit him to be re-elected for the town of Buckingham; and upon his promotion to the treasury, he repeated the same act of supplication. His generous brother said, it would have been a disgrace to government, to have seen the Kinx's sirst minister a mendicant for a feat in Parliament. that promotion, Appease the Duke's choler. — Chap; It was immediately signified to all the sureign xXIv. ministers, that his Majesty had placed his go- 1762 vernment pupil could possibly learn from such a preceptor. Moulded by such an eternal tutorage, imperceptibly formed not to govern i but to be governed; and from being the lawful possessor of a great empire, converted into the being himself the property of a little silly subject; stolen thus away from himself, what remains for us but ardently to pray that, before it is too late, Ke may be restored to himself; that he may at length enter into the genuine spirit of royalty, assume the part he was born to, and Have a character of his own ?—May he quit a borrowed darkness for native light, never more to exhibit, in any the least degree, the copy of an original, whom not to resemble would surely be the honour! Let him give us the Sovereign himselfi not the savourite at second hand; or still worse yet, the savourite's Commls f at, second hand! And in this deprecation of detriment and dishonour to himself, there canquestionkssbe nothing disloyal or disrespectful. This testimony of a genuine sentiment, takes birth too naturally from the subject with which .it is connected to appear a digreflioh; though in such a cause, and in such a crisis of the times, I should have judged even the digressiveness meritorious, and certainly alone the best apology for a portraits the exhibition of jvhich from any motive off pique or personality, would be infinitely beneath the meanest os daubers. "Here it would be perfectly insignificant to search out the distinction^ without a difference to the public, whether or notj the savourite after that scandalous desertion, when he as abjectly sneaked out of an ostensible ossice in the state, as he had arrogantly strutted into it, retains individually by himself, or by his appointment of others, the power of Continuing that insernal cltao^ into which he from the first plunged affairs, at.the time that through his cloudy imbecility it so' soon thickened in the clear of the sairest horizon that ever- tantalised a country with the promise of meridian splendor. It is enough to observe, that since his having delivered up to his own parasites that master whom he thus made the centre of their paltry cabals, and the prey of their sordid rapacioufness, it ap -] Lord Hawksbury. . Vcl. I. U pears4 Cha?. vernment in the hands of Mr. Grenvitte, Lord ^Halifax, and Lord Egremont; and as soon as 1763. the other arrangements were made, (the particulars of which, the reader will fee in the list of administrations at the end of the work), the session was closed on the nineteenth of Apris. It was upon the speech delivered at the close of this session,, that the North Briton made those observations, which drew upon the supposed author, an illegal and vindictive exertion of all the power and malice of government. The particulars of this interesting affair, have beer* amply slated in several books. In Jimmi's adpears, at least, from the identity of spiritlesshess, of insensibility to honour, of want of plan, and of the total disorder in which we see things for ever languishing, that the same destructive impulsion still subsists; while none could collaterally be admitted into any participation of trust, but such as would wink hard, and at least, pretend not to see through that gross illusion, with which a natural desire of not appearing to be governed, might blind a Prince, without imposing on any but himself. The joke of holding committees with respective ministers of departments, passes on Ho one. In vain would the master take blame upon himself, and sather errors not his own. The wires of motion to the will have been too clumsily worked, not to be seen, however they may not havebeen selt. Add, that the primary cause may, by the sairest evestigation, be brought home to that unhappy man, whom chance had thrown into a channel of power to do much good, or much mischies. The last he has mechanically done, without perhaps much meaning it, coming upon the scene, with absolutely every thing in his savour, except himself. All prejudice then apart, mark in him to his Prince a tutor without knowledge, a minister without ability, a savourite without gratitude. The very anti-genius of politics. The curse of Scotland. The disgrace of his master. The despair of the nation, and the disdain of history."—Public Advertiser, August 30, 1776. |