and their good never appears. Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, were tossed from one hand to another as were also principal cities, but of all the foreign transactions in which this country was ever engaged, see what regards Lorraine.[1] Lord Bolingbroke's letters, lately published, show how little real knowledge he had under that imposing style, and what Alderman Beckford used to call that diarrhœa of words.[2] How much influence it has always had, and how little it ought to have. Compare the letters of Lord Strafford and Lord Bolingbroke: what a difference of character!
"The Walpole letters, an invaluable collection lately published by Mr. Cox,[3] give a perfect idea of the manner in which Government was carried on from the accession to the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole. The character of the Hanover family will be seen lain open, which necessarily makes the ground-work of the history of the times, for nothing can be more mistaken than the common notion that Kings are ciphers and indolent. See the private history of Louis XIV., XV., and XVI. Indolence, when it is not the result of weakness or vice, is a very great virtue, especially in Kings. It requires a very strong mind to forbear meddling, and not only a very good head, but a very good heart also—an union which falls to the lot of few—to govern active habits. It will be seen in the history of the time quam parvâ sapientiâ regitur mundus, at least with how little wisdom England was governed during the reigns of George I. and George II., how the seeds were sown of all that has happened since, with the commencement and progress of a system of corruption which must sink from under us after rotting the national character, and all the bulwarks of the constitution. In the meantime the country enjoyed fifty years of unexampled prosperity. Commerce increased as rapidly
- ↑ The allusion is to the Treaty of Vienna, 1735, which, through English mediation, ended the war of the Polish succession. Lorraine was given to Stanislas Lezcinski, the dethroned King of Poland, for life, and the reversion was vested in France. The Duke of Lorraine was compensated with the succession to Tuscany.
- ↑ Lord Chesterfield and Lord Chatham, on the other hand, both commend Lord Bolingbroke's works as inimitable models of style. Letters of Lord Chesterfield, ed. Bradshaw, i. 390. Chatham Correspondence, i. 109.
- ↑ In 1798.
