the charms of his manner and of his conversation made him a favourite.
He was seriously alarmed by the violence of the public discontent.
He thought that liberty was for the present safe, and that order and
legitimate authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his fashion,
joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was not wholly
disinterested. For study and reflection, though they had emancipated
him from many vulgar prejudices, had left him a slave to vulgar desires.
Money he did not want; and there is no evidence that he ever obtained
it by any means which, in that age, even severe censors considered as
dishonourable; but rank and power had strong attractions for him. He
pretended, indeed, that he considered titles and great offices as baits
which could allure none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, and
pageantry, and that his dearest wish was to escape from the bustle and
glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which surrounded his ancient
mansion in Nottinghamshire; but his conduct was not a little at variance
with his professions. In truth he wished to command the respect at
once of courtiers and of philosophers, to be admired for attaining high
dignities, and to be at the same time admired for despising them.

Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the political immorality
of his age was personified in the most lively manner. Nature had given
him a keen understanding, a restless and mischievous temper, a cold
heart, and an abject spirit. His mind had undergone a training by
which all his vices had been nursed up to the rankest maturity. At his
entrance into public life, he had passed several years in diplomatic
posts abroad, and had been, during some time, minister in France. Every
calling has its peculiar temptations. There is no injustice in saying
that diplomatists, as a class, have always been more distinguished by
their address, by the art with which they win the confidence of those
with whom they have to deal, and by the ease with which they catch the
tone of every society into which they are admitted, than by generous
enthusiasm or austere rectitude; and the relations between Charles and
Lewis were such that no English nobleman could long reside in France as
envoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland
came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning,
supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all
principles.