adopted that of their adversaries.[1] Retribution was now to befall them. When the Jacobites returned to Court, it was no longer possible for the Whigs to argue that upon their own retention of power depended either the maintenance of the House of Hanover or the Throne, or that of the Protestant religion in the country; while of that support which they might justly have claimed out of doors from a vigorous assertion of the principles of the Revolution of 1688, as capable of further development in the direction of civil and religious liberty, they had effectually deprived themselves. The popular belief was that it would have been difficult at that time to have found among the great Revolution families, a single man ready to sacrifice an appointment at Court or an official salary for any such Quixotic object. Nor could the Whigs claim confidence as administrators, for every child in the street knew that, after the death of Mr. Pelham, they had proved themselves incapable either of governing the country at home or of waging war abroad with success, that only the talents and energy of Pitt had saved the country from ruin since the time when, after many hesitations, Newcastle had exchanged his majority for a share of the popularity of the Great Commoner, and that it was the lustre of that popularity on which the Whig connection had been living ever since, though guiltless of having earned it. The country was in fact governed not by parties but by factions. Thus, when George III. ascended the Throne, the Whigs had ceased to be either necessary or consistent or even respected, while Pitt—although France, exhausted by the struggle, was willing to treat—seemed determined to carry on the war long after the main objects of the war had been attained. It was in this posture of affairs that Lord Fitzmaurice, entering public life, found Bute and Bedford anxious to terminate the war and put an end to the domination of Newcastle, the head of the most powerful of the three great Whig factions—the Pelhams, the Russells, and
- ↑ See the observations at the commencement of Lord Macaulay's Essay on the Earl of Chatham, 725, edition 1851. Critical and Historical Essays.
