it was the motto of Wolsey. Not
Wolsey himself made a more complete failure. The King fought hard for
Carteret; but the stars in their courses were fighting harder against
him.

Carteret's term of office was familiarly known as "the drunken
Administration." The nickname was doubtless due in part to Carteret's
love of wine, which made him remarkable even in that day of
wine-drinking statesmen. But the phrase had reference also to the
intoxication of intellectual recklessness with which Carteret rushed at
and rushed through his work. It was the intoxication of too confident
and too self-conscious genius. Carteret was drunk with high spirits,
and with the conviction that he could manage foreign affairs as nobody
else could manage them. No doubt he knew far more about continental
affairs than any of his English contemporaries; but he made the fatal
mistake which other brilliant foreign {242} secretaries have made in
their foreign policy: he took too little account of the English people
and of prosaic public opinion at home. In happy intoxication of this
kind he reeled and revelled along his political career like a man
delighting in a wild ride after an exciting midnight orgy. He did not
note the coming of the cold gray dawn, and of the day when his
goings-on would become the wonder of respectable and commonplace
observers.

The cold gray dawn came, however, and the day. The public opinion of
the country could not be kept from observing and pronouncing on the
doings of Carteret. Carteret felt sure that he was safe in the favor
and the support of the King. He did not remember that the return of
every cold gray dawn was telling more and more against him. The King,
who, with all his vagaries and brutalities, had a considerable fund of
common-sense, was beginning to see that, much as he liked Carteret
personally, the time was fast approaching when Carteret would have to
be thrown overboard. The day when the King could rule without the
House of Commons was gone. The day when the House of Commons could
rule without the Sovereign had not come.

In truth, the Patriots were now put at a sad disadvantage. It is a
great triumph to overthrow a great Ministry, but the triumph often
carries with it a responsibility which is too much for the victors to
bear, and which turns them into the vanquished before long. So it
fared with the Patriots. While they were in opposition they had
promised, as Sallust says Catiline an