6

a few days afterward moved that a Committee should be appointed to inquire into the conduct of Robert Earl of Orford, during the last ten years of his administration.' This second proposition was carried by a majority of seven; and a Committee of Secrecy, consisting of twenty one members, was elected by ballot.

On the thirteenth of April, his Lordship reported from the Committee, that they had been greatly obstructed in their proceedings by the obstinacy of Mr. Gwynn Vaughan and of Paxton and Scroop, late Solicitor and Secretary to the Treasury, who refused to answer interrogatories.' Upon which, the House committed Paxton to Newgate; and as he and his associates had pleaded in their defence, that the laws of England did not compel any man to reveal matters tending to their own crimination,' passed a bill of indemnity for such persons as should upon examination make discoveries concerning the disposition of public money or offices, or any payment or agreement in respect thereof, or concerning other matters relating to the conduct of Robert Earl of Orford. This bill however, after a long debate, was rejected in the House of Lords;* no man op

* This Inquisition-Bill, which (as Mr. Coxe remarks) held up the ex-minister as a public felon and converted the Lower House into a tribunal of blood, had been carried in the Commons after a severe struggle by only a majority of twelve, 228 against 216. The debates upon the subject, in that assembly, were never given to the public. Bathurst, we find, applauded it, as the natural consequence of new schemes of villainy and new schemes of evasion;' and by Chesterfield it was asserted to be no new thing in the constitution, because rewards were daily offered to highwaymen and murtherers for the discovery of their accomplices:' but it encountered the

posing it more strenuously than Lord Carteret, the professed enemy of Orford, as he thought it would tempt the subordinate servants of the crown to ac

severe reprobation of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, ascalculated to make defence impossible, to deprive innocence of it's guard, and to let loose oppression and perjury upon the world; to dazzle the wicked with a prospect of security, and to incite them to purchase an indemnity for one crime by the perpetration of another; to confound, in short, the notions of right and wrong, to violate the essence of our constitution, and to leave us without any certain security for our property or rule for our actions."

Mr. Coxe does not admit that the large majority, by which this bill was thrown out in the Upper House (109 against 57) was, in any respect, owing to the influence of the crown in consequence of a compromise with Pulteney, or that the prosecution was only a collusion. The Secret Committee, he observes, were eager to establish the guilt of Walpole, and the new administration as violent in their assertion of it as the Tories and disaffected Whigs, who by Pulteney's arrangement had been excluded. The charges against him were reducible to three general heads: 1. Undue influence in elections;

2. Granting fraudulent contracts; and

3. Peculation and profusion in the expenditure of Secret Service-Money.

As proofs, however, that he did not (to adopt Chesterfield's bitter expressions) retire to his country-seat, loaded with the spoils and the hatred of the public,' his biographer gives a minute statement of what estate he possessed in 1700 (upward of 2,000l. per ann. clear) which could not have been less than doubled before his resignation in 1742, of the places which he and his family held during that interval, of his fortunate sale of South Sea Stock at 1,000l. per cent. before the bursting of the bubble in which his friend Lord Pembroke, more ductile than Mrs. Walpole, by following his advice participated-and of his purchase of pictures for Houghton, which collectively cost him 40,000%. (the dearest, Guido's Doctors, being bought for six hundred guineas) and sold for nearly double that price: all concurring to demonstrate, that he was neither a needy adventurer at his outset, in his progress a profligate plunderer, nor an overburthened miser at the conclusion.

cuse their superiors upon every change of ministry with impunity, under the hope of securing the favour of the new administration.

The friends of the bill in the Commons now complained of an obstruction of public justice. They examined the journals of the Peers for precedents of such a rejection: and the misunderstanding between the two Houses would probably have been carried to violent lengths, if the King had not by proroguing the parliament saved his old servant, as the cry of vengeance without doors extended even to his life.

In the next session of parliament, indeed, the motion was revived for appointing a Committee with the same object as that of the preceding year; but it was rejected by a majority of sixty seven votes.

Walpole was subsequently consulted by the King, who retained a high regard for him, respecting ministerial arrangements; and it was through his advice, that Pelham was placed at the head of the treasury. But his prospects either of personal ambition, or of public utility, were now brought to a close. He had long been afflicted with severe calculous complaints, which were so much aggravated by a journey from Norfolk to London, undertaken at the King's command in November 1744, that he thenceforth found relief from extreme agony only in large doses of opium. On March 18, 1745, he expired, in the sixty ninth year of his age, having displayed through the whole of the concluding scene the most exemplary fortitude and resignation. His remains were interred in the parish-church at Houghton, without monument or inscription:

'So peaceful rests without a stone, a name

Which once had honours,' titles, wealth, and fame.'

His contemporaries, however they may differ about his public character, invariably agree in bestowing the highest encomiums upon his private conduct.

His political character will have shown itself in the preceding sketch of his life. The desire of preserving peace abroad, and avoiding all subjects of contention at home, of promoting gradual improvements in the trade and finances* of the country, and pursuing useful rather than splendid objects, joined with a sincere zeal for the Protestant succession, were the leading principles of his government: and the means which he employed were prudence, moderation, vigilance, and (it must be allowed) corruption, though it may well be doubted, whether he left public men more corrupt than he found them. He was an excellent man of business, methodical and diligent: an artful, says Lord Chesterfield, rather than an eloquent speaker; who saw, as by intuition, the disposition of the House, and pressed or receded accordingly. So clear in stating the most intricate matters, especially in the finances, that whilst he was

* Lord Chatham himself said, "The more I reflect on my conduct, the more I blame myself for opposing his Excise-Bill:" concluding with his accustomed energy, as he observed several members smile, "Let those, who are ashamed to confess their errors, laugh out. Can it be deemed adulation to praise a minister, who is no more?" The Duke of Newcastle, even while censuring his measures in other respects with the greatest asperity, bore evidence to his parsimony of the public money: "As this is a demand of money," he observed in a letter to Lord Hardwicke, "we shall find Sir Robert more difficult to comply, than upon former occasions." And it has been affirmed (in language nearly parallel to that, which Augustus used of Rome, "Lateritiam inveni, marmoream relinquo") that ⚫ he found the Book of Rates the worst, and left it the best in Europe.'

speaking, the most ignorant thought that they understood what they really did not. He was a man not of genius, but of sound sense, and of great,quickness of apprehension.

His eloquence, generally plain, perspicuous, and manly, was occasionally brilliant, classical, and impassioned. In sharpness of reply, he was singularly happy. The tone of his voice, though he never entirely lost the provincial accent, was highly melodious. Luminous in his arrangement even of the most complicated subjects, he was able to impart interest even to the dry topic of finance. His speeches on the Peerage-Bill, on relinquishing the ExciseScheme, and against Sir William Wyndham on the Secession, were commended by Speaker Onslow, Lord Cornbury, the Duke of Argyle, and Lord Chatham respectively, in the highest terms. Of a ready and tenacious memory, and eminently distinguished for his method and despatch in transacting public business, he is characterised by Chesterfield himself as never seen in a hurry,' whereas the Duke of Newcastle was never out of one, from the opposite cause: and Lord Hervey represents him, as doing every thing with the same ease and tranquillity, as if he was doing nothing.'

6

To these valuable qualities and habits, however, he must have superadded signal industry: as he seems very seldom to have employed a secretary; and yet he not only wrote all his own letters, but also constantly noted the substance of the foreign correspondence, and made numerous extracts from the despatches of the foreign ministers. His great principle seems to have been expressed by his favourite motto, Quieta non movere; with this interpretation however, not rashly, or at once, to overturn things at rest: for