Exchequer and a Regent of the kingdom; and this elevation he owed not
at all to favour, but solely to the unquestionable superiority of his
talents for administration and debate.

The extraordinary ability with which, at the beginning of the year 1692,
he managed the conference on the Bill for regulating Trials in cases of
Treason, placed him at once in the first rank of parliamentary orators.
On that occasion he was opposed to a crowd of veteran senators renowned
for their eloquence, Halifax, Rochester, Nottingham, Mulgrave, and
proved himself a match for them all. He was speedily seated at the Board
of Treasury; and there the clearheaded and experienced Godolphin soon
found that his young colleague was his master. When Somers had quitted
the House of Commons, Montague had no rival there. Sir Thomas Littleton,
once distinguished as the ablest debater and man of business among the
Whig members, was content to serve under his junior. To this day we may
discern in many parts of our financial and commercial system the marks
of the vigorous intellect and daring spirit of Montague. His bitterest
enemies were unable to deny that some of the expedients which he had
proposed had proved highly beneficial to the nation. But it was said
that these expedients were not devised by himself. He was represented,
in a hundred pamphlets, as the daw in borrowed plumes. He had taken, it
was affirmed, the hint of every one of his great plans from the writings
or the conversation of some ingenious speculator. This reproach was,
in truth, no reproach. We can scarcely expect to find in the same human
being the talents which are necessary for the making of new discoveries
in political science, and the talents which obtain the assent of divided
and tumultuous assemblies to great practical reforms. To be at once an
Adam Smith and a Pitt is scarcely possible. It is surely praise enough
for a busy politician that he knows how to use the theories of others,
that he discerns, among the schemes of innumerable projectors, the
precise scheme which is wanted and which is practicable, that he shapes
it to suit pressing circumstances and popular humours, that he proposes
it just when it is most likely to be favourably received, that he
triumphantly defends it against all objectors, and that he carries it
into execution with prudence and energy; and to this praise no English
statesman has a fairer claim than Montague.

It is a remarkable proof of his selfkno