y sovereign of England. Lord Carteret had
many brilliant qualities: he was undaunted, enterprising, eloquent; had
considerable knowledge of continental politics, was a great linguist,
a master of public law; and though he failed in his premature effort to
terminate the dogeship of George the Second, he succeeded in maintaining
a considerable though secondary position in public life. The young
Shelburne married his daughter. Of him it is singular we know less than
of his father-in-law, yet from the scattered traits some idea may be
formed of the ablest and most accomplished minister of the eighteenth
century. Lord Shelburne, influenced probably by the example and the
traditionary precepts of his eminent father-in-law, appears early to
have held himself aloof from the patrician connection, and entered
public life as the follower of Bute in the first great effort of George
the Third to rescue the sovereignty from what Lord Chatham called "the
Great Revolution families." He became in time a member of Lord Chatham's
last administration: one of the strangest and most unsuccessful efforts
to aid the grandson of George the Second in his struggle for political
emancipation. Lord Shelburne adopted from the first the Bolingbroke
system: a real royalty, in lieu of the chief magistracy; a permanent
alliance with France, instead of the whig scheme of viewing in that
power the natural enemy of England: and, above all, a plan of
commercial freedom, the germ of which may be found in the long-maligned
negotiations of Utrecht, but which in the instance of Lord Shelburne
were soon in time matured by all the economical science of Europe,
in which he was a proficient. Lord Shelburne seems to have been of
a reserved and somewhat astute disposition: deep and adroit, he was
however brave and firm. His knowledge was extensive and even profound.
He was a great linguist; he pursued both literary and scientific
investigations; his house was frequented by men of letters, especially
those distinguished by their political abilities or economical
attainments. He maintained the most extensive private correspondence of
any public man of his time. The earliest and most authentic information
reached him from all courts and quarters of Europe: and it was a common
phrase, that the minister of the day sent to him often for the important
information which the cabinet could not itself command. Lord Shelburne
was the first great minister who comprehended the risin