is still my King."

In these circumstances the ministers, though with scarcely the faintest
hope of success, determined to try what they could do to meet the King's
wishes. A select Committee had been appointed by the House of Commons to
frame a bill for the disbanding of all the troops above seven thousand.
A motion was made by one of the Court party that this Committee should
be instructed to reconsider the number of men. Vernon acquitted himself
well in the debate. Montague spoke with even more than his wonted
ability and energy, but in vain. So far was he from being able to
rally round him such a majority as that which had supported him in the
preceding Parliament, that he could not count on the support even of the
placemen who sate at the same executive board with him. Thomas Pelham,
who had, only a few months before, been made a Lord of the Treasury,
tried to answer him. "I own," said Pelham, "that last year I thought a
large land force necessary; this year I think such a force unnecessary;
but I deny that I have been guilty of any inconsistency. Last year the
great question of the Spanish succession was unsettled, and there was
serious danger of a general war. That question has now been settled in
the best possible way; and we may look forward to many years of peace."
A Whig of still greater note and authority, the Marquess of Hartington,
separated himself on this occasion from the junto. The current was
irresistible. At last the voices of those who tried to speak for the
Instruction were drowned by clamour. When the question was put, there
was a great shout of No, and the minority submitted. To divide would
have been merely to have exposed their weakness.

By this time it became clear that the relations between the executive
government and the Parliament were again what they had been before the
year 1695. The history of our polity at this time is closely connected
with the history of one man. Hitherto Montague's career had been more
splendidly and uninterruptedly successful than that of any member of the
House of Commons, since the House of Commons had begun to exist. And now
fortune had turned. By the Tories he had long been hated as a Whig; and
the rapidity of his rise, the brilliancy of his fame, and the unvarying
good luck which seemed to attend him, had made many Whigs his enemies.
He was absurdly compared to the upstart favourites of a former age, Carr
and Villiers, men whom he resembled in nothing but in