CHAPTER VI.

1741-2.

[Hagley MS.-Glover's Memoirs-Burke's Appeal to the Old Whigs

Letters on a Regicide Peace-Hume's Essays-Walpole's

Private Correspondence, vol. i.-Parl. Hist. vol. xii.]

1741.

On the 25th of April the Parliament was prorogued, and, its natural death being close at hand, was dissolved immediately afterwards, and writs were issued for new elections, returnable on the 25th day of June.

Lyttelton, in his Letter to a Member of Parliament,' already mentioned, had observed that in a short time the country gentlemen would be too dispirited to contest any election with the Court. "A kind of congè d'elire might be sent down into the country, and directed to our trusty and well-beloved officers of the Customs, Excise, and Army, in all the towns and boroughs of England, Scotland, Wales, and the Duchy of Cornwall. Suitable returns would be made; but, Sir, this would not be a Parliament." The prediction, however, was not destined to be accomplished.

Walpole, beset by difficulties, entreated the King to defer his usual journey to Hanover, but in vain. The Minister's influence was everywhere on the decline; and yet he is said at this time to have fallen into a

lethargy of power, and to have flattered his indolence
that the failure of Sandys' attack upon him, the death
of Wyndham, and the absence of Bolingbroke, had
disunited and dispirited the Opposition. Meanwhile
England reaped no laurels in the war. The inactivity
of our fleet in the Mediterranean, caused by the great
numerical superiority of the combined fleets of France
and Spain, and the miserable and sanguinary result of
Vernon's ill-planned and worse conducted attack on
Carthagena,* had exasperated the people against the
Minister. The purses of the old Duchess of Marl-
borough, of Pulteney (who was extremely rich), and
of the Prince, were liberally opened.
"Don Carlost
(writes Glover, in the Memoirs anonymously printed
after his death), told me, that it cost him twelve thou-
sand pounds in corruption, particularly among the
Tories, to carry the Westminster and Chippenham
elections, and other points, which compelled Lord
Orford, at that time Sir Robert Walpole, to quit the
House of Commons." Lord Chesterfield sent to
Bubb Doddington a sketch of the wisest tactics for the
Opposition to pursue in the House of Commons, as for
his own House he said nothing was to be done in it,
"for such a minority to struggle with such a majority,
would be much like the late King of Sweden's attack-
ing the Ottoman Army at Bender, at the head of his
cooks and butler." He advised that Onslow, who,

* See a very spirited account of it by Smollett, in Roderick Random, chap. xxxi, xxxii; the author was then a surgeon's mate on board the Cumberland, one of the ships engaged in the action.

+ Meaning Frederic Prince of Wales.

Lyttelton dedicated to him his Letter to a Member of Parliament

1741.

1741.

66

by a certain decency of behaviour, had made himself many personal friends in the minority," should not be opposed, but that the first battle should be on the question of proposing the Chairman of the Committee of Privileges and Elections. Lyttelton was again returned for Okehampton, having, as it appears from the following letter, ineffectually contested his father's county of Worcester.

"Spaa, Aug. the 1st, N. S 1741.

"DEAR LYTTELTON,-I can return you little from hence, but my thanks for your letter, this place furnishing nothing worth either writing or reading. But I must do it the justice to say, that it furnishes health; and I am so much the better for it, that I will not abuse it, as I justly could in all other respects. I shall leave it in about a week, to go and be baked a little by the sun of Provence and Languedoc, from whence I expect the confirmation at least, if not the increase of the health I have got here. I am only apprehensive of being obliged to stop short, and turn homewards, for the rumours of war are so strong, and the motions of France so extensive, that I can't help thinking that the Cardinal is at last either tempted by the opportunity, or importuned into a War, in which case we shall be in a fine situation, who have not been able to carry on a war even against Spain alone. Our minority in this Parliament is so considerable, that I think it can hardly be called a minority, at least I am sure it need not be so long, if well conducted; but I confess that if is so little probable, that Sir Robert

upon

might answer as the Lacedemonians once did, upon 1741. some occasion which I have forgot, If. It will raise the price of some individuals, and he will be obliged to come up to it, and there's an end of the Opposition. I do not condole with you for the loss of your County Election, on the contrary I congratulate you upon getting rid of that plague, I hope for ever, and of being able to live for the future in quiet in your own house, whenever you have a mind to it. I hope your popular efforts that occasion did not impair your health, which, in my mind, is the only thing a man should not think of, if he can bring himself to it; for my own part, when I turned my back upon London, I repeated Urbs venalis et mox peritura si emptorem invenerit, and resolved when I was once out of England, not to think into it, if I could help it, but attend singly to my health, as the only thing I can now call my own. I have executed my resolution as to the publick part of it pretty well. As to my friends in England, I neither desired to nor would forgett 'em, on the contrary I entertained that remembrance with pleasure, and with much the more for being able to reckon you in that number. I am, most faithfully and zealously yours,

"CHESTERFIELD.”

"Spa, To Mr. Lyttelton, at his house in Pall Mall, Angleterre, London, Amsterdam-franco-"

The next letter from the same quarter is interesting, from its account of Bolingbroke, the despair which seems to have possessed at this time the chiefs of the

1741. Opposition, and from the allusion to the treachery of the Post Office.

66

"Lyons, Sept. 11, N. S. 1741.

my ram

DEAR LYTTELTON,--When you consider bling state, you will easily excuse the irregularity of my correspondence, time and opportunity not conspiring in the least with my inclinations to write to you. I am now got thus far in my pilgrimage to the shrine of health, and hope, in about a week's time, to discharge my vows to the sun of Aix and Montpelier. I ask very little more than the confirmation of what I now enjoy; for the little time that I have already been in France, has really done me more good than I could have expected. I will finish my southern rambles as soon as I can, and return to Paris, where I shall be within call, whenever my friends think fitt to call upon me. The present situation of affairs abroad is as ridiculous, and at the same time as lamentable, as that of our affairs at home, and I see no good to be done in either case; but, however, I will not decline any part that shall be assigned me; and though I give up the game in opinion, I will not give it up in fact, till my friends do so too. I shall be supposed to return full of dangerous and combustible matter, having been three days at Bolingbroke's, which it was impossible for me to avoid, if I had been inclined to it, being obliged necessarily to pass by his door. But he is so much of my mind, that the whole affair is over, that we did not lose one quarter of an hour's time, in talking of publick matters. He is plunged in metaphysics, and willingly neither speaks, nor