fine talkers in the world.  This character he long supported with that cunning which is frequently found in company with ambitious and unquiet mediocrity.  He constantly had, even with his best friends, an air of mystery and reserve which seemed to indicate that he knew some momentous secret, and that his mind was labouring with some vast design.  In this way he got and long kept a high reputation for wisdom.  It was not till that reputation had made him an Earl, a Knight of the Garter, Lord High Treasurer of England, and master of the fate of Europe, that his admirers began to find out that he was really a dull puzzleheaded man.485

Soon after the general election of 1690, Harley, generally voting with the Tories, began to turn Tory.  The change was so gradual as to be almost imperceptible; but was not the less real.  He early began to hold the Tory doctrine that England ought to confine herself to a maritime war.  He early felt the true Tory antipathy to Dutchmen and to moneyed men.  The antipathy to Dissenters, which was necessary to the completeness of the character, came much later.  At length the transformation was complete; and the old haunter of conventicles became an intolerant High Churchman.  Yet to the last the traces of his early breeding would now and then show themselves; and, while he acted after the fashion of Laud, he sometimes wrote in the style of Praise God Barebones.486

Of Paul Foley we know comparatively little.  His history, up to a certain point, greatly resembles that of Harley:  but he appears to have been superior to Harley both in parts and in elevation of character.  He was the son of Thomas Foley, a new man, but a. man of great merit, who, having begun life with nothing, had created a noble estate by ironworks, and who was renowned for his spotless integrity and his munificent charity.  The Foleys were, like their neighbours the Harleys, Whigs and Puritans.  Thomas Foley lived on terms of close intimacy with Baxter, in whose writings he is mentioned with warm eulogy.  The opinions and the attachments of Paul Foley were at first those of his family.  But be, like Harley, became, merely from the vehemence of his Whiggism, an ally of the Tories, and might, perhaps, like Harley, have been completely metamorphosed into a Tory, if the process of transmutation had not been interrupted by death.  Foley’s abilities were highly respectable, and had been improved by education.  He was so wealthy that it was unnecessary for him to follow the law as a profession; but he had studied it carefully as a science.  His morals were without stain; and the greatest fault which could be imputed to him was that he paraded his independence and disinterestedness too ostentatiously, and was so much afraid of being thought to fawn that he was always growling.

Another convert ought to be mentioned.  Howe, lately the most virulent of the Whigs, had been, by the loss of his place, turned into one of the most virulent of the Tories.  The deserter brought to the party which he had joined no weight of character, no capacity or semblance of capacity for great affairs, but much parliamentary ability of a low kind, much spite and much impudence.  No speaker of that time seems to have had, in such large measure, both the power and the inclination to give pain.