revenue and principles regarding it far from contemptible. He was himself a man of business. He kept those immediately under him diligent and tolerably honest. His practice at his levée, I have heard, was when he was applied to for revenue matters to refer to Scrope, the principal of the secretaries of the Treasury, and to say: 'If he will agree to it I will. If not, I can't.' Since his time commis and under-secretaries have commenced politicians and their masters commis. But his two great plans for a sinking fund and a general excise were both thwarted by the then Opposition, who on their part made no one general proposition which could stand the test of history. He was a man of plain, coarse manners. His forte was managing the House of Commons, where he had been bred in the midst of the most serious party intrigues and convulsions which could distract a country.
"Lord Melcombe told me several things about Sir Robert Walpole. He said he was inconceivably coarse and low mannered. He gave me an instance. When he went down with Sir Robert Walpole, which he frequently did, to Houghton, they were obliged to pass a bad common and were more than once benighted on it, which made him represent to Sir Robert how becoming it would be and how suitable to his rank to have flambeaux ready for such occasions. Sir Robert said he would give orders accordingly. The first time the circumstance occurred again, Lord Melcombe reminded Sir Robert Walpole. He stopped the coach and enquired of the servants for the links. They said they were in the coach; he then obliged them both to get out in a cold dark night, but the links he obtained were some links of sausages. Such was the vulgarity of Sir Robert's diction and habits that he had used the phraseology of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and called the lights links, which the stupidity of the servants interpreted 'links of sausages.' Everybody agrees that he was coarse in his conversation, particularly about women, scouting all sentiment and sentimental love. He was, however, their slave in his turn. When some of his friends were going to tell him some infidelity of Mrs. ——, he stopped their
