The political education he had received now made the unstable youth ready and anxious to shine in the State; but being yet under age, he could not, of course, take his seat in the House of Lords.  Perhaps he was conscious of his own wonderful abilities; perhaps, as Pope declares, he was thirsting for praise, and wished to display them; certainly he was itching to become an orator, and as he could not sit in an English Parliament, he remembered that he had a peerage in Ireland, as Earl of Rathfernhame and Marquis of Catherlogh, and off he set to see if the Milesians would stand upon somewhat less ceremony.  He was not disappointed there.  ‘His brilliant parts,’ we are told by contemporary writers, but rather, we should think, his reputation for wit and eccentricity, ’found favour in the eyes of Hibernian quicksilvers, and in spite of his years, he was admitted to the Irish House of Lords.’

When a friend had reproached him, before he left France, with infidelity to the principles so long espoused by his family, he is reported to have replied, characteristically enough, that ’he had pawned his principles to Gordon, the Chevalier’s banker, for a considerable sum, and, till he could repay him, he must be a Jacobite; but when that was done, he would again return to the Whigs.’  It is as likely as not that he borrowed from Gordon on the strength of the Chevalier’s favour, for though a marquis in his own right, he was even at this period always in want of cash; and on the other hand, the speech, exhibiting the grossest want of any sense of honour, is in thorough keeping with his after-life.  But whether he paid Gordon on his return to England—­which is highly improbable—­or whether he had not honour enough to keep his compact—­which is extremely likely—­there is no doubt that my lord marquis began, at this period, to qualify himself for the post of parish-weathercock to St. Stephens.

His early defection to a man who, whether rightful heir or not, had that of romance in his history which is even now sufficient to make our young ladies ‘thorough Jacobites’ at heart, was easily to be excused, on the plea of youth and high spirit.  The same excuse does not explain his rapid return to Whiggery—­in which there is no romance at all—­the moment he took his seat in the Irish House of Lords.  There is only one way to explain the zeal with which he now advocated the Orange cause:  he must have been either a very designing knave, or a very unprincipled fool.  As he gained nothing by the change but a dukedom for which he did not care, and as he cared for little else that the government could give him, we may acquit him of any very deep motives.  On the other hand, his life and some of his letters show that, with a vast amount of bravado, he was sufficiently a coward.  When supplicated, he was always obstinate; when neglected, always supplicant.  Now it required some courage in those days to be a Jacobite.  Perhaps he cared for nothing but to astonish and disgust everybody with the facility with which he could turn his coat, as a hippodromist does with the ease with which he changes his costume.  He was a boy and a peer, and he would make pretty play of his position.  He had considerable talents, and now, as he sat in the Irish House, devoted them entirely to the support of the government.