instance before us.  For certainly, the same responsibility, that ought to remove a minister from the helm, when he is become obnoxious to his countrymen, equally makes it improper, that he should be originally appointed by the fancy or capricious partiality of the sovereign.  But were they over so much in the right, it will yet remain true, that they took a poor and ungenerous advantage of the personal distresses of their master, which men of a large heart, and of sterling genius, could never have persuaded themselves to take.

Such were the ministers, whom it appears that king George the second would have had no objection to strip of their employments.  I will tell you who it was, that he was willing to have substituted in their place.  It was a man of infinite genius.  His taste was a standard to those, who were most attached to the fine arts, and most uninterruptedly conversant with them.  His eloquence was splendid, animated, and engaging.  Of all the statesmen then existing in Europe, he was perhaps the individual, who best understood the interests and the politics of all her courts.  But your lordship may probably find it somewhat more intelligible, if I take the other side of the picture, and tell you what he was not.  He was not a man of fawning and servility.  He did not rest his ambitious pretensions upon any habitual adroitness, upon the arts of wheedling, and the tones of insinuation.  He rested them upon the most solid talents, and the most brilliant accomplishments.  He did not creep into the closet of his sovereign uncalled, and endeavour to make himself of consequence by assiduities and officiousness.  He pleaded for years, in a manly and ingenuous manner, the cause of the people in parliament.  It was by a popularity, great, and almost without exception, that he was introduced into power.  When defeated by the undermining and contemptible art of his rivals; when convinced that it was impossible for him, to employ his abilities with success in the service of his country, he retired.  And it was only by the personal intreaties of his sovereign, and to assist him in that arduous and difficult situation, in which those who ought to have served, deserted him, that he once again accepted of office.  He accepted it, for the temporary benefit of his country, and till those persons, who only could come into administration with efficiency and advantage, should again resume their places.  He made way for them without a struggle.  He did not pretend to set practical impotence, though accompanied with abilities incomparably the superior, against that influence and connexion by which they were supported.  Of consequence, my lord, his memory will always be respected and cherished by the bulk of mankind.