the dreadful excesses which were committed by the
selfish who joined in its support; but in both we must acknowledge the
impartial justice of Providence, which has made the iniquity of men work
out their own appropriate and well-deserved punishments, and has made it
to descend to the third and fourth generations from those who committed or
permitted the deeds of injustice.

The power of the oligarchy, which resulted from the Revolution of 1688,
and the unbounded corruption by which, for seventy years afterwards, their
power was maintained, has been less the subject of observation or censure
by subsequent writers, for the very obvious reason that the popular party,
who had gained the victory at the Revolution, were during all that period
in power, and they have been in no hurry to expose or decry these
degrading, but to them most profitable, abuses. It is probable that they
never would have been brought to light at all, but would have quietly and
irrevocably sapped the foundations of the British character and of British
greatness, had it not been that, fortunately for the country, the incubus
of corrupting Whig aristocracy was thrown off by George III. and Lord
Bute, in 1761, and cast down by the same monarch and Mr Pitt, in 1784;
and, in their rage and disappointment, they exposed, when practised by
their opponents, the well-known, and, to them, long profitable abuses, by
which the government, since the Revolution, had been carried on. It is the
revelations on this subject which have recently issued from the press,
which have cast so broad, and, to the philosophic historian, so important
a light on the history of the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century;
and among them, the letters and memoirs of Horace Walpole occupy a
distinguished place. Certainly it was far from the intention of that able
and witty annalist to illustrate the unbounded abuses, so long practised
by Sir Robert Walpole and the Whigs who preceded him, nor the vast
blessings conferred upon the country by George III. and Lord Bute, who
first broke through the degrading spell. We have heard little of this view
of the subject from the able and learned Whigs who have reviewed his
works. Yet it lies on the very surface of things, and little need be said,
and still less learned, to show that it is there that the turning-point
and great political moral of the history of England, during the eighteenth
century, is to be found.

The truth on this subject coul