A large class of politicians, who had considered themselves as placed under sentence of perpetual exclusion from office, and who, in their despair, had been almost ready to join in a counter-revolution as the only mode of removing the proscription under which they lay, now saw with pleasure an easier and safer road to power opening before them, and thought it far better to wait till, in the natural course of things, the Crown should descend to the heir of the House of Brunswick, than to risk their lands and their necks in a rising for the House of Stuart.  The situation of the royal family resembled the situation of those Scotch families in which father and son took opposite sides during the rebellion, in order that, come what might, the estate might not be forfeited.

In April 1736, Frederick was married to the Princess of Saxe Gotha, with whom he afterwards lived on terms very similar to those on which his father had lived with Queen Caroline.  The Prince adored his wife, and thought her in mind and person the most attractive of her sex.  But he thought that conjugal fidelity was an unprincely virtue; and, in order to be like Henry the Fourth, and the Regent Orleans, he affected a libertinism for which he had no taste, and frequently quitted the only woman whom he loved for ugly and disagreeable mistresses.

The address which the House of Commons presented to the King on the occasion of the Prince’s marriage was moved, not by the Minister, but by Pulteney, the leader of the Whigs in Opposition.  It was on this motion that Pitt, who had not broken silence during the session in which he took his seat, addressed the House for the first time.  “A contemporary historian,” says Mr. Thackeray, “describes Mr. Pitt’s first speech as superior even to the models of ancient eloquence.  According to Tindal, it was more ornamented than the speeches of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than those of Cicero.”  This unmeaning phrase has been a hundred times quoted.  That it should ever have been quoted, except to be laughed at, is strange.  The vogue which it has obtained may serve to show in how slovenly a way most people are content to think.  Did Tindal, who first used it, or Archdeacon Coxe and Mr. Thackeray, who have borrowed it, ever in their lives hear any speaking which did not deserve the same compliment?  Did they ever hear speaking less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that of Cicero?  We know no living orator, from Lord Brougham down to Mr. Hunt, who is not entitled to the same eulogy.  It would be no very flattering compliment to a man’s figure to say, that he was taller than the Polish Count, and shorter than Giant O’Brien, fatter than the Anatomie Vivante, and more slender than Daniel Lambert.

Pitt’s speech, as it is reported in the Gentleman’s Magazine, certainly deserves Tindal’s compliment, and deserves no other.  It is just as empty and wordy as a maiden speech on such an occasion might be expected to be.  But the fluency and the personal advantages of the young orator instantly caught the ear and eye of his audience.  He was, from the day of his first appearance, always heard with attention; and exercise soon developed the great powers which he possessed.