f the position. The higher aristocracy are
still in possession of great influence, but they are ceasing to be the
adequate representatives of the great political forces. They are in the
comfortable position of having completely established their own
privileges; and do not see any reason for extending privileges to
others. Success depends upon personal intrigues among themselves and
upon a proper manipulation of the Lower House which, though no overt
constitutional change has taken place, is coming to be more decidedly
influenced by the interests of the moneyed men and the growing middle
classes. Pitt and Newcastle represent the two classes which are coming
into distinct antagonism. Pitt's power rested upon the general national
sentiment. 'You have taught me,' as George II. said to him, 'to look for
the sense of my people in other places than the House of Commons.' The
House of Commons, that is, should not derive its whole authority from
the selfish interest of the borough-mongers but from the great outside
current of patriotic sentiment and aspiration. But public opinion was
not yet powerful enough to support the great minister without an
alliance with the master of the small arts of intrigue. The general
sentiments of discontent which had been raised by Walpole was therefore
beginning to widen and deepen and to take a different form. The root of
the evil, as people began to feel, was not in the individual Walpole but
in the system which he represented. Brown's _Estimate_ is often noticed
in illustration. Brown convinced his readers, as Macaulay puts it, that
they were a race of cowards and scoundrels, who richly deserved the fate
in store for them of being speedily enslaved by their enemies; and the
prophecy was published (1757) on the eve of the most glorious war we had
ever known. It represents also, as Macaulay observes, the indignation
roused by the early failures of the war and the demand that Pitt should
take the helm. Brown was a very clever, though not a very profound,
writer. A similar and more remarkable utterance had been made some years
before (1749) by the remarkable thinker, David Hartley. The world, he
said, was in the most critical state ever known. He attributes the evil
to the growth of infidelity in the upper classes; their general
immorality; their sordid self-interest, which was almost the sole motive
of action of the ministers; the contempt for authority of all their
superiors; the worldly-mindednes