said the Chief Justice, “that people who want places and benefices will go to those who have more leisure.”  The prediction was accomplished.  It would have been a busy time indeed in which the Pelhams had wanted leisure for jobbing; and to the Pelhams the whole cry of place-hunters and pension-hunters resorted.  The parliamentary influence of the two brothers became stronger every day, till at length they were at the head of a decided majority in the House of Commons.  Their rival, meanwhile, conscious of his powers, sanguine in his hopes, and proud of the storm which he had conjured up on the Continent, would brook neither superior nor equal.  “His rants,” says Horace Walpole, “are amazing; so are his parts and his spirits.”  He encountered the opposition of his colleagues, not with the fierce haughtiness of the first Pitt, or the cold unbending arrogance of the second, but with a gay vehemence, a good-humoured imperiousness, that bore everything down before it.  The period of his ascendency was known by the name of the “Drunken Administration”; and the expression was not altogether figurative.  His habits were extremely convivial; and champagne probably lent its aid to keep him in that state of joyous excitement in which his life was passed.

That a rash and impetuous man of genius like Carteret should not have been able to maintain his ground in Parliament against the crafty and selfish Pelhams is not strange.  But it is less easy to understand why he should have been generally unpopular throughout the country.  His brilliant talents, his bold and open temper, ought, it should seem, to have made him a favourite with the public.  But the people had been bitterly disappointed; and he had to face the first burst of their rage.  His close connection with Pulteney, now the most detested man in the nation, was an unfortunate circumstance.  He had, indeed, only three partisans, Pulteney, the King, and the Prince of Wales, a most singular assemblage.

He was driven from his office.  He shortly after made a bold, indeed a desperate, attempt to recover power.  The attempt failed.  From that time he relinquished all ambitious hopes, and retired laughing to his books and his bottle.  No statesman ever enjoyed success with so exquisite a relish, or submitted to defeat with so genuine and unforced a cheerfulness.  Ill as he had been used, he did not seem, says Horace Walpole, to have any resentment, or indeed any feeling except thirst.

These letters contain many good stories, some of them no doubt grossly exaggerated, about Lord Carteret; how, in the height of his greatness, he fell in love at first sight on a birthday with Lady Sophia Fermor, the handsome daughter of Lord Pomfret; how he plagued the Cabinet every day with reading to them her ladyship’s letters; how strangely he brought home his bride; what fine jewels he gave her; how he fondled her at Ranelagh; and what queen-like state she kept in Arlington Street.  Horace Walpole has spoken less bitterly of Carteret