tted for higher office, and we shall find that he
does not remain long at the post of Paymaster-general. The Duke of
Shrewsbury had resigned both his offices: that of Lord Treasurer, and
that of Viceroy of Ireland. Lord Sunderland accepted the Irish
Viceroyalty, and the Lord Treasurership was put into commission, and
from that time was heard of no more. Next to Walpole himself, the most
notable man in the administration--the man, that is to say, who became
best known to the world afterwards--was {98} Pulteney, now Walpole's
devoted friend, before long to be his bitter and unrelenting enemy.
Pulteney, just now, is still a very young man, only in his thirty-third
year; but he is the hereditary representative of good Whig principles,
and has already distinguished himself in the House of Commons as a
skilful and fearless advocate of his political faith; he is a keen and
clever pamphleteer; in later days, if he had lived then, he would
doubtless have been a writer of leading articles in newspapers. His
style is polished and penetrating, like that of an epigrammatist. He
has travelled much for that time, and is what was then called an
elegant scholar. The eloquent and silver-tongued Lord Cowper was
restored to the office of Lord Chancellor, which he had already held
under Queen Anne, and by virtue of which he had presided at the
impeachment of Sacheverell. When Cowper was made Lord Keeper of the
Great Seal by Anne in 1705, he was in the forty-first year of his age,
but looked very much younger. He wore his own hair at that time, an
unusual thing in Anne's days, and this added to his juvenile
appearance. The Queen insisted that he must have his hair cut off and
must wear a heavy wig; otherwise, she said, the world would think she
had given the seals to a boy. Cowper was a prudent, cautious, clever
man, whose abilities made a considerable impression upon his own time,
but have carried his memory only in a faint and feeble way on to ours.
He was a fine speaker, so far as style and manner went, and he had a
charming voice. Chesterfield said of him that the ears and the eyes
gave him up the hearts and understandings of the audience. The Duke of
Argyll became Commander-in-chief for Scotland. In Ireland, Sir
Constantine Phipps was removed from the office of Chancellor, on the
ground of his Jacobite opinions; and it is a curious fact, worth noting
as a sign of the times, that the University of Oxford unanimously
agreed to