administration. This was naturally in Pulteney's power. But Pulteney
suddenly remembered having said long ago that he would accept no
office, and he declared that he would positively hold to his word. At
a moment of excitement, it would seem, and stung by some imputation of
self-seeking, Pulteney had adopted the high Roman fashion, and
announced that he would prove his political disinterestedness by
refusing to accept any office in any administration. The King
consulted Walpole during all these arrangements, and Walpole strongly
recommended him to offer the position of Prime-minister to Lord
Wilmington. Time had come round indeed--this was the Sir Spencer
Compton for whom King George at his accession had endeavored to thrust
away Walpole, but whom Walpole had quietly thrust away. He was an
utterly incapable man. Walpole probably thought that it would ruin the
new administration in the end if it were to have such a man as Compton,
now Lord Wilmington, at its head. Lord Wilmington accepted the
position. Lord Carteret had desired the post for himself, but Pulteney
would not hear of it. The office of Secretary of State--of the
Secretary of State who had to do with foreign affairs--was the proper
place, he insisted, for a man like Carteret. The secretaries then
divided their functions into a Northern department and a Southern
department. The Northern department was concerned with the charge of
Russia, Prussia, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Poland, and Saxony;
the Southern department looked after France, Spain, Italy, Portugal,
Switzerland, Turkey, {192} and the States along the southern shore of
the Mediterranean. So Carteret became one secretary, and the grotesque
Duke of Newcastle remained the other. The duke's brother, Henry
Pelham, remained in his place as Paymaster, Lord Hardwicke retained his
office as Lord Chancellor, and Mr. Samuel Sandys, who had moved the
resolution calling for Walpole's dismissal, took Walpole's place as
Chancellor of the Exchequer. There seems some humor in the appointment
of such a man as successor to Robert Walpole.

[Sidenote: 1742--The combined four]

Then Pulteney's career as a great Prime-minister is not beginning?
No--not beginning--never to begin. By one of the strangest strokes of
fate the events which closed the career of Walpole closed the career of
Pulteney too. Yet but a few months, and Pulteney ceases as completely
as Walpole has done to move the world of po