gland to
support the cause of their political friends. The new parliament opened
with the victory of an opposition, which was fortified by strong clamour
and strange coalitions. From the event of the first divisions, Sir
Robert Walpole perceived that he could no longer lead a majority in
the House of Commons, and prudently resigned (after a dominion of
one-and-twenty years) the guidance of the state (1742). But the fall
of an unpopular minister was not succeeded, according to general
expectation, by a millennium of happiness and virtue: some courtiers
lost their places, some patriots lost their characters, Lord Orford's
offences vanished with his power; and after a short vibration, the
Pelham government was fixed on the old basis of the Whig aristocracy.
In the year 1745, the throne and the constitution were attacked by a
rebellion, which does not reflect much honour on the national spirit;
since the English friends of the Pretender wanted courage to join
his standard, and his enemies (the bulk of the people) allowed him to
advance into the heart of the kingdom. Without daring, perhaps without
desiring, to aid the rebels, my father invariably adhered to the Tory
opposition. In the most critical season he accepted, for the service of
the party, the office of alderman in the city of London: but the duties
were so repugnant to his inclination and habits, that he resigned his
gown at the end of a few months. The second parliament in which he sat
was prematurely dissolved (1747): and as he was unable or unwilling
to maintain a second contest for Southampton, the life of the senator
expired in that dissolution.

The death of a new-born child before that of its parents may seem an
unnatural, but it is strictly a probable, event: since of any given
number the greater part are extinguished before their ninth year, before
they possess the faculties of the mind or body. Without accusing the
profuse waste or imperfect workmanship of Nature, I shall only
observe, that this unfavourable chance was multiplied against my infant
existence. So feeble was my constitution, so precarious my life, that,
in the baptism of each of my brothers, my father's prudence successively
repeated my Christian name of Edward, that, in case of the departure of
the eldest son, this patronymic appellation might be still perpetuated
in the family.

--Uno avulso non deficit alter.

To preserve and to rear so frail a being, the most tender assiduit