fool”; Lord Townshend, a “choleric blockhead";[103] while Lord Chesterfield was disposed of as a “tea-table scoundrel."[104] He complained that he was “obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut his throat."[105] “The king and queen,” wrote Hervey, “looked upon human kind as so many commodities in a market, which, without favor or affection, they considered only in the degree they were useful, and paid for them in that proportion—­Sir Robert Walpole being sworn appraiser to their Majesties at all these sales."[106]

The cringing subserviency of political men was equal to their corruption.  When George I died, and it was believed that Sir Spencer Compton would succeed to the power of Sir Robert Walpole, at the king’s reception “Sir Robert walked through these rooms as if they had been still empty; his presence, that used to make a crowd wherever he appeared, now emptied every corner he turned to, and the same people who were officiously a week ago clearing the way to flatter his prosperity, were now getting out of it to avoid sharing his disgrace.  Everybody looked upon it as sure, and whatever profession of adherence and gratitude for former favors were made him in private, there were none among the many his power had obliged (excepting General Churchill and Lord Hervey) who did not in public as notoriously decline and fear his notice, as they used industriously to seek and covet it."[107] On the same occasion, Horace Walpole tells us, “my mother * * * could not make her way (to pay her respects to the king and queen) between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer to the queen than the third or fourth row; but no sooner was she descried by her Majesty, than the queen cried aloud, ’There I am sure I see a friend!’ The torrent divided and shrunk to either side:  ’and as I came away,’ said my mother, ’I might have walked over their heads if I had pleased.’"[108] The general corruption and wickedness produced a remarkable misanthropy in the minds of men, which is reflected in the savage satire of Swift, in the bitter invective of Junius, in the cynicism of Lord Hervey.  Sir Robert Walpole, said the latter, “had more warmth of affection and friendship for some particular people than one could have believed it possible for any one who had been so long raking in the dirt of mankind to be capable of feeling for so worthless a species of animals.  One should naturally have imagined that the contempt and distrust he must have had for the species in gross, would have given him at least an indifference and distrust toward every particular."[109]