Page:The Carcanet.djvu/72

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indulgent to our unhappy species, and surely a little too general, led him into measures that were greatly mischievous to himself, and for that reason among others, perhaps fatal to his country; measures, the effects of which are, I am afraid, for ever incurable. He made an administration so chequered and speckled, he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented, and so whimsically dovetailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tesseiated pavement, without cement,—here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white—patriots and courtiers—king's friends and republicans—Whigs and Tories —treacherous friends and open enemies;—that it was indeeia very curious shew, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, ' Sir your name?' —' Sir, you have the advantage of me.'—' Mr. such a one, I beg a thousand pardons.'—I venture to say it did so happen that persons who had never spoken to each other before in their lives had a single office divided between them."

He continued his speech by alluding to the close of the ministerial career of this great personage, and thus expressed himself of the authority and power Mr. Charles Townshend had possessed.

" Even then, Sir, even before this splendid orb was entirely set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, and for his hour became lord of the ascendant."