cene. Nothing could have
been more strictly in the nature of the burlesque effects of a
Christmas pantomime than Walpole and Pulteney shot up into the House of
Lords, and Wilmington and Sandys set to carry on the government of the
country.

[Sidenote: 1743--"The drunken Administration"]

Yet a little, and poor, harmless, useless Wilmington was dead. He died
in July, 1743. Then came the troubling question, who is to be
Prime-minister? The Ministerialists were broken into utter schism.
The Pelhams, who had for some time been secretly backed up by Walpole's
influence with the King, were struggling hard for power against
Carteret, and against such strength as Pulteney, Earl of Bath, still
possessed. Carteret had made himself impossible by the way in which he
had conducted himself in the administration of foreign affairs. He had
gone recklessly in for a thoroughly Hanoverian policy. He had made
English interests entirely subservient to the interests of Hanover; or
rather, indeed, to the King's personal ideas as to the interests of
Hanover. Carteret had the weakness of many highly cultured and highly
gifted men; he believed far too much in the supremacy of intellect and
culture. The great rising wave of popular opinion was unnoticed by
him. He did not see that {241} the transfer of power from the
hereditary to the representative assembly must inevitably come to mean
the transfer of power from the representatives to the represented.
Carteret in his heart despised the people and all popular movements.
Fancy being dictated to by persons who did not know Greek, who did not
know German, who did not even know Latin and French! He was fully
convinced for a while that with his gifts he could govern the people
through the House of Commons and the House of Commons through the King.
He was not really a man of much personal ambition, unless of such
personal ambition as consists in the desire to make the most brilliant
use of one's intellectual gifts. The effort to govern the House of
Commons through the King interested him, and called all his dearest
faculties into play. He scorned the ordinary crafts of party
management. If he thought a man stupid he let the man know it. He was
rude and overbearing to his colleagues; insulting to people, however
well recommended, who came to him to solicit office or pension. All
that sort of thing he despised, and he bluntly said as much. "Ego et
rex meus" was his motto, as we may say