welcome to Sir Spencer probity and honour, I am be cunning; and when Walpole returned instantly to the councils of the new king, after Sir Spencer's pitiful failure, Dodington was driven into opposition, and became the more bitterly rancorous because he knew that he was unforgiven. Compton. As usual, he over- thoroughly charmed with the played his part. He showed prospect, and am proud to own himself base where he hoped that your good opinion does give one a pleasure that the friendship of a private man could not give." The sincerity of the last sentence is at least unquestioned. The friendship of any man was as nothing in Dodington's eyes, unless it could bring him wealth and preferment. And he cared not a jot how thickly he plastered his victims with vain eulogy, if only he might use them for his own purpose. To the Prince the gabble about glory and probity and honour was probably unintelligible. He looked upon Dodington with a sternly practical eye. He was not at the pains to spell his name correctly, and in his illiterate letters addressed him as Dorrington. But he found him and his wealth useful, and thought it a clear proof of his folly that one day he was able, in Shelburne's phrase, to "touch him" for £5000. Thus for a while the ill-balanced friendship lasted. The Prince and his satellite were neighbours as well as friends, and Dodington had received the last gratification of a key, which should admit him, when he would, to Carlton House. The quarrel came soon, as it was bound to come, since not even the Prince could have confidence in the man who had already turned against one benefactor, and interested conspirators intensified the distrust. Nor was the discarded favourite permitted to go His fall was quietly away. If he could no longer assail Walpole with his flattery, he soon found another and, as he thought, a more profitable object of worship. The King's son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, soon followed his father to England, and in accord with a settled practice set up a rival court of his own. Dodington was among the first to bow the knee to the new prince, and was presently rewarded by being appointed adviser and first Minister. The letter, in which he announced his good intentions and sketched his simple hopes for the future, is cited by Mr Sanders, and is characteristic of its author. "I have set my whole heart," wrote Dodington, "on your happiness, but I place it in your glory, and this last in the welfare of our country. To see that life and gaiety, which makes you the delight of all that are near you, corrected by a severe probity and rigid honour, makes me every day bless my good fortune and your partiality to me; but when I eonsider the happiness of millions one day flowing from you, as the effect of that duly advertised by the shrubs self-mertification, who, for sixwhich were planted between teen years, had condescended his house and the Prince's to bear part of the odium." garden, and by the changed looks of Carlton House. No resource, then, was left for Dodington save to orawl back in all humility to Walpole. He was received with severity, and went obediently to heel. "As to what you said," Walpole told Hervey in 1735, "about my enemies being great with impunity, I have told Dodington this very morning that I will no longer bear his shuffling, fast-and-loose conduot, and will rather risk the entering into the next session of Parliament with a majority only of forty or fifty than go on in this way. I desired, therefore, we might understand one another, and he has, with the greatest submission, promised everything I could require with regard to his future good behaviour." Walpole's righteous insolence, which might have angered a better man, left Dodington unscathed. He merely pocketed his pride and doubled his resentment, and while he served Walpole openly he lost no opportunity of fighting against him in secret. He showed great skill and pertinacity in organising oppositions, and it was not his fault that none of them succeeded. He aoted for a while as the Duke of Argyle's spaniel, and when in 1742 Walpole fell from power he was loudest in his insults to the ruined Minister. Sir Robert was content to dismiss "Mr Dedington, who had called his administration infamous, as a person of great So he sank in the public esteem, and in spite of his boroughs was compelled always to be in the minority, because no majority would accept him. At the first report of Culloden, says Horace Walpole, he “came out with an illumination; so pretty, that I believe he had it by him, ready for any occasion.” A few years later he is pictured as "so reduced as to be relapsing into virtue." And then in 1749, by a supreme stroke of luck, the Prince of Wales called him to his councils again. Once more he became one of the band of conspirators at Carlton House, who framed their mimic cabinets and dreamed of what they would do when the King died. Dodington was triumphant, and more frankly obsequious than ever. At last he had won the position and the influence which he had yearned for, and he was determined not to lose them. So proud was he of his place, so highly flattered by the honour done him, that he sat him down to compose a Diary, which is a document of surpassing value, and which displays in his true and lasting colours the complete politician. Lord Charlemont described it as "the statesman's cabinet unlocked," and the description is precisely accurate, if we put "politician" for "statesman." How the Diary came to be published is no less interesting than its cynical eontents. Dodington's papers passed through the hands of Thomas Wyndham, who died in 1777, to Henry Penruddecke Wyndham, with a request "not to print or publish any of them, but those that are proper to make publick, and such only as may, in some degree, do honour to his memory." Now, Henry Penruddocke Wyndham was a gentleman who lacked neither ingenuity nor candour. He admits at once that Dodington's conduct is proved by the Diary to "have been wholly directed by the base motives of avarice, vanity, and selfishness." How, then, should its publication do honour to Dedington's memory? It depends wholly upon the meaning which we attach to Dodington's sense of honour. The Editor makes no concealment of his own opinion, and he asks himself the question: "How could I, with such sentiments of the Diary, venture to publish it, consistent with the clauses in the will?" He concludes from the eare with which the Diary is copied out, that Dodington designed it for publication, and further meant it as an apology for his political conduct. In other words, he assumed that Dodington himself saw nothing dishonourable in his Diary, and though he did not agree with Dodington's estimate of the work, he felt bound to sacrifice his own judgment. "The prejudices, perhaps, of education," says he ingenuously, "have instilled in my mind ideas of honour very different from those of his lordship, which It is an ingenious defence, which we may accept or not as we please, and Wyndham does not strengthen it by pretending that the Diary may inculcate a useful lesson; that, in fact, "the country gentlemen, in particular, may learn from it, that they have as much to dread from those who are in pursuit of power as from those in actual possession of it; from those who are, hopefully, working in the cold climate of disappointment as from those who are luxuriously basking in the sunshine of enjoyment." That the oareer of Dodington is an awful warning is true enough. It is true also that the warning has not been of the slightest service in purifying the morals of politicians. And though, when he printed the Diary, Henry Penruddooke Wyndham gave us a document of great value, it cannot be said that he did honour to his victim's memory. In Dodington's Diary, as I have said, we see the complete politician displayed, with all his cunning, all his immorality, all his indifference. If any of the egoists who to day misgovern the country had the candour to expose their method and ambition, they would use the same terms as served the ingenious Dodington. They have not the candour, and, as far as we know, none of them has set down upon paper a faithful record of his misdeeds. But here is Dodington as our guide, and what he did we may be sure his successors are doing, if with less than his energy and resolution, with the him. He makes no pretence of taking interest in the affairs of Great Britain. He was living and plotting through those great years in which the elder Pitt was establishing the British Empire all the world over, and the triumph of England did not for an hour disturb his sedulous intrigue. He does not mention Plassey or Quebec. If the names of Clive and Wolfe were ever borne to his ears, they were speedily forgotten. He was far too busy arguing with Ministers about his past services to show any interest in the victories of our British arms. He thought his duty accomplished when he had done his best to exclude Pitt from the management of affairs. If he had had his way we should have muddled through to hopeless disaster under the auspices of Newcastle, and Dodington would have thought the world well lost if only the ruins had struck him the proud Treasurer of the Navy. At any rate, he was furious when Pitt was given his golden opportunity, and not a crumb of comfort was thrown to him. Nothing shows his true character more clearly than his comment upon Pitt's happy accession to best gifts they can summon to deaths of kings could advance the task. Never once, then, did a thought of his country or a scruple of conscience disturb him. He knew only one aim, the advancement of Dodington, and one means, the discomfiture of Dodington's rivals. He was always talking of action, and he dealt in nothing but speech. As far as touched him, the government of the country was carried on by interminable arguments, held with those in whose hands lay the distribution of offices. It mattered not a jot what this man or that did when he got into office, it mattered a vast deal who got into office. The complete politician, then as now, was handicapped by no principles, no opinions, no prejudices. Dodington had as little humour as honourhumour is a quality fatal to politicians and he saw nothing ridiculous in his shiftings and turnings, in his constant eavesdropping at the backstairs. The more secrets he knew the better for him, as he might turn them against his friends, if he were encumbered with such things, and make up in blackmail what he wanted in sagacity. When he was out for the hundred and fiftieth time the world laughed at him, and laughed especially at the gravity of his demeanour. So well did he play his losing game that at last nobody would be led by him, and yet, like the true artist that he was, he still followed his dreary craft for its own sake, though he must have known that nothing short of earthquakes and the power. "Thus ended this attempt," he writes in his Diary, "to deliver the King from hands he did not like." It mattered not to the politician that those hands presently saved England. His Diary is one of those docu ments which can never disappoint us. He disoloses all that he said and thought with a candour which no other politican has equalled. From the very beginning of his second period of service under the Prince, Dodington settled down comfortably to that which he loved best-a life of cunning. If there were nobody to plot against, he would plot against himself rather than be idle. Happily for him, his enemies gave him plenty to do. When the Prince-in 1749-offered him "the full return of his favour," he was overjoyed. It is true, that for the moment he held office under Pelham, to whom he was pledged. But as he knew no loyalty, so he speedily invented an excuse. "I saw the country in so dangerous a condition," he told Pelham, "and found myself incapable to contribute to its relief and so unwelcome to attempt it, that I thought it misbecame me to receive great emoluments from a country whose service I could not, and if I could I should not, be suffered to promote." The ingenuity of the excuse is admirable, and Dodington went down to Kew, proudly conscious of an act of high unselfishness. If he had renounced office, he had renounced it willingly, and the kindness of the Prince, who "often admitted him to the honour of supping with him," was sufficient reward. The Prince marched boldly from words to deeds, and offered Dodington £2000 a year. The offer Was not serious. The Prince was far more likely to "touch" his adviser than to pay him. But Dodington was always a stickler for form, and he humbly desired to stand upon the establishment without any salary, with the sole condition that he should take what the Prince designed for him when he should be king. The Prince, not a whit below Dodington as a comedian, solemnly assured him that, while it well became him to make the offer of voluntary service, it did not become him to accept it. And then they fell to bargaining. In truth, their favourite pastime was to cut up the skin before the bear was killed! As soon as the King died, Dodington was to have a peerage, with the management of the House of Lords, and the seals of Secretary of State for the Southern Province. So splendid was the prospect that he oared not a jot whether he was paid his salary or not. He beguiled the time spent at Kew pleasantly enough in devising comfortable plans for himself and his friends, and in praying that the King might be speedily removed to a still more exalted sphere. His good fortune did not escape envy. Enemies sprang up in the very household of the Prince himself. A rancorous pamphlet charged him - the blameless Dodington-with intruding into the family to create differences. His righteous indignation was unbounded. When he was urged to come to an explanation with the Prince, his air of startled innocence |