Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/53

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1737-1757
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
27

at his Treasury. Henry, Lord Holland, speaking of those times, said he asked Sir Robert Walpole why he never came to an understanding with Lord Sunderland. He answered: 'You little know Lord Sunderland. If I had so much as hinted at it, his temper was so violent that he would have done his best to throw me out of the window.'

"After the Revolution the Tory and Jacobite parties had become almost identified by their together opposing the Court for so many years, and still more by the persecution which they suffered in common, for it was the policy of Sir Robert Walpole to confound them as much as possible, so as to throw the Jacobite odium upon every man who opposed government. Dr. King was one of the chief Jacobites. His most famous exploit was when, in 1754, in his speech upon opening the Ratcliffe Library at Oxford, before a full theatre he introduced three times the word ' Redeat,' pausing each time for a considerable space, during which the most unbounded applause shook the theatre, which was filled with a vast body of Peers, members of Parliament, and men of property. Before this, and soon after the rebellion, Dr. King, speaking of the Duke of Cumberland, described him as a man, qui timet omnia præter Deum. I presented this same Dr. King to George III. in 1761, seven years after he made his Ratcliffe speech.

"The old kings were for twenty years in the habit of leaving everything to Sir Robert Walpole.[1] He was Minister in the full sense of the word. His business was of course to keep down and not to raise talents to rival his own. Besides, he had no turn for foreign affairs. He had, I take it, more wisdom than elevation. He came forward at the end of the Queen's time; suffered from the Tories, and contracted a dread of the Pretender which never quitted him, I have been well assured. His thoughts were always bent on keeping the present family secure by means of a large majority in both Houses. He had besides, I believe, talents for administering the

  1. From 1721 to 1742.