system of the eighteenth century, to attend to the making of bishops and of revenue officers not less than to the fulfilling of the boast of Carteret—the making of kings and emperors and maintaining the balance of power in Europe. But it was equally necessary for ministers of the Crown to assert a right to initiative and to a considerable measure of discretionary authority in the conduct of foreign affairs.
Addison, writing in The Freeholder[1] of the mutability in politics charged by foreigners against the English,[2] tells how the famous Prince of Condé would ask the English Ambassador, on the arrival of a mail, 'Who was Secretary of State in England by that post?' One of the chief arguments advanced for the passing of the Septennial Bill was the greater trust that foreign States would repose in this country if general elections and changes of ministers were less frequent. Just a little later, at the time of the Whig Schism, we find Lord Stair, Ambassador to France, invoking a plague on both parties, and especially on Whig factions. In his own words, in a letter to Craggs,[3] who within a few months was made Secretary of War, 'I look upon what has happened, as the most dangerous thing could befall us, both as to the matter, and as to the manner. What the devil did Lord Sunderland and Stanhope mean, to make such a step[4] without concerting it? … I am afraid these
- ↑ No. 25. Cf. Nos. 37 and 54.
- ↑ Cf. Milton: 'I know not, therefore, what should be peculiar in England, to make successive parliaments thought safest, or convenient here more than in other nations, unless it be the fickleness which is attributed to us as we are islanders.'—The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth: English Prose Writings of John Milton, ed. by Henry Morley (1889), 434.
- ↑ Hardwicke, State Papers (1778), ii. 556, January 4, 1717.
- ↑ The removal of Townshend from the Secretaryship of State for the Northern Department. Walpole also retired from office. Both were opposed to the Hanoverian junta.
