artment. Lord Halifax became
First Lord of the Treasury; Lord Cowper, Lord Chancellor; the Earl of
Nottingham, Lord President; the Marquis of Wharton, Lord Privy Seal; the
Earl of Oxford, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Earl of Sunderland,
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Robert Walpole, Paymaster-General of the
Forces. As Captain-General Marlborough was in the Cabinet.

Lord Halifax, when making out the Commission of the Treasury, invited
his cousin Montagu to be one of the Commissioners, although the latter
had not secured a seat in Parliament. "It will be surprizing to add,"
says Lady Mary, "that he hesitated to accept it at a time when his
father was alive and his present income very small; but he had certainly
refused it if he had not been persuaded to it by a rich old uncle of
mine, Lord Pierrepont, whose fondness for me gave him expectations of a
large legacy." Lady Mary, though glad enough that her husband had been
given a place, was not over and above delighted that it was one so
modest.

_Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to her Husband_

[Enclosed, September 24, 1714.]

"Though I am very impatient to see you, I would not have you, by
hastening to come down, lose any part of your interest. I am surprized
you say nothing of where you stand. I had a letter from Mrs. Hewet last
post, who said she heard you stood at Newark, and would be chose without
opposition; but I fear her intelligence is not at all to be depended on.
I am glad you think of serving your friends; I hope it will put you in
mind of serving yourself. I need not enlarge upon the advantages of
money; every thing we see, and every thing we hear, puts us in
remembrance of it. If it was possible to restore liberty to your
country, or limit the encroachments of the prerogative, by reducing
yourself to a garret, I should be pleased to share so glorious a poverty
with you; but as the world is, and will be, 'tis a sort of duty to be
rich, that it may be in one's power to do good; riches being another
word for power, towards the obtaining of which the first necessary
qualification is impudence, and (as Demosthenes said of pronunciation in
oratory) the second is impudence, and the third, still, impudence. No
modest man ever did or ever will make his fortune. Your friend Lord
H[alifa]x, R. W[alpo]le, and all other remarkable instances of quick
advancement, have been remarkably impudent. The Ministry is like a play
at Court; there's a little door to get in, and a gr