confer on him an honorary degree almost immediately after--on
the day, in fact, of the King's coronation.

{99}

[Sidenote: 1714--Lord Townshend]

Lord Townshend, the Prime-minister, as we may call him, was not a man
of any conspicuous ability. He belonged to that class of competent,
capable, trustworthy Englishmen who discharge satisfactorily the duties
of any office to which they are called in the ordinary course of their
lives. Such a man as Townshend would have made a respectable Lord
Mayor or a satisfactory Chairman of Quarter Sessions, if fortune had
appointed him to no higher functions. He might have changed places
probably with an average Lord Mayor or Chairman of Quarter Sessions
without any particular effect being wrought on English history. Men of
this stamp have nothing but official rank in common with the statesmen
Prime-ministers--the Walpoles and Peels and Palmerstons; or with the
men of genius--the Pitts and Disraelis and Gladstones. Lord Townshend
had performed the regular functions of a statesman in training at that
time. He had been an Envoy Extraordinary, and had made treaties. He
was a brother-in-law of Walpole. Just now Walpole and he are friends
as well as connections; the time came when Walpole and he were destined
to quarrel; and then Townshend conducted himself with remarkable
forbearance, self-restraint, and dignity. He was an honest and
respectable man, blunt of speech, and of rugged, homespun intelligence,
about whom, since his day, the world is little concerned. Such name as
he had is almost absorbed in the more brilliant reputation of his
grandson--the spoiled child of the House of Commons, as Burke called
him--that Charles Townshend of the famous "Champagne Speech;" the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, of whom we shall hear a good deal later
on, and who, by the sheer force of animal spirits, feather-headed
talents, and ignorance, became, in a certain perverted sense, the
father of American Independence.

The Second Secretary of State, James, afterwards Earl, Stanhope, was a
man of very different mould. Stanhope was one of the few Englishmen
who have held high position in arms and politics. He had been a
brilliant {100} soldier; had fought in Flanders and Spain; had
distinguished himself at Barcelona, even under a commander like
Peterborough, whose daring spirit rendered it hard for any subaltern to
shine in rivalry; had been himself raised to command, and kept on
winning vic