and they agreed in
their political views, as nearly as a very cunning statesman and a
very honest country gentleman could be expected to agree, [583] By
Caermarthen's influence Lowther was now raised to one of the most
important places in the kingdom. Unfortunately it was a place requiring
qualities very different from those which suffice to make a valuable
county member and chairman of quarter sessions. The tongue of the new
First Lord of the Treasury was not sufficiently ready, nor was his
temper sufficiently callous for his post. He had neither adroitness to
parry, nor fortitude to endure, the gibes and reproaches to which, in
his new character of courtier and placeman, he was exposed. There was
also something to be done which he was too scrupulous to do; something
which had never been done by Wolsey or Burleigh; something which has
never been done by any English statesman of our generation; but which,
from the time of Charles the Second to the time of George the Third, was
one of the most important parts of the business of a minister.

The history of the rise, progress, and decline of parliamentary
corruption in England still remains to be written. No subject has called
forth a greater quantity of eloquent vituperation and stinging sarcasm.
Three generations of serious and of sportive writers wept and laughed
over the venality of the senate. That venality was denounced on the
hustings, anathematized from the pulpit, and burlesqued on the stage;
was attacked by Pope in brilliant verse, and by Bolingbroke in stately
prose, by Swift with savage hatred, and by Gay with festive malice. The
voices of Tories and Whigs, of Johnson and Akenside, of Smollett and
Fielding, contributed to swell the cry. But none of those who railed
or of those who jested took the trouble to verify the phaenomena, or to
trace them to the real causes.

Sometimes the evil was imputed to the depravity of a particular
minister: but, when he had been driven from power, and when those who
had most loudly accused him governed in his stead, it was found that the
change of men had produced no change of system. Sometimes the evil
was imputed to the degeneracy of the national character. Luxury and
cupidity, it was said, had produced in our country the same effect which
they had produced of old in the Roman republic. The modern Englishman
was to the Englishman of the sixteenth century what Verres and Curio
were to Dentatus and Fabricius. Those who held th