Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/217

Rh known, rarely bestowed, except upon persons who have rendered important services to the state.

The elevation of a nobleman, only known heretofore as the royal preceptor, and who was also obnoxious to vulgar prejudices on account of his country, to such high place and honour, naturally excited much irritation in England. This feeling was greatly increased, when, in May, 1762, his lordship was constituted first lord of the treasury. It reached its acme, on his lordship taking measures for concluding a war with France, in which the British arms had been singularly successful, and which the nation in general wished to see carried on, till that country should he completely humbled. The great Whig oligarchy, which, after swaying the state from the accession of the house of Hanover, had now seen the last days of its dominancy, was still powerful, and it received an effective, though ignoble aid, from a popular party, headed by the infamous Wilkes, and inflamed by other unprincipled demagogues, chiefly through the medium of the press. A newspaper, called the Briton, had been started for the purpose of defending the new administration. It was met by one called the North Briton, conducted by Wilkes, and which, in scurrility and party violence, exceeded all that went before it. Wilkes, it is said, might at one time have been bribed to silence by lord Bute ; he now took up the pen with the determined purpose, as he himself expressed it, of writing his lordship out of office. Neither the personal character of the minister, nor his political proceedings furnishing much matter for satire, this low-minded, though clever and versatile man, set up his country and countrymen as a medium through which to assail him. The earl, seeing it in vain to contend against prejudices so firmly rooted, lost no time, after concluding the peace of Paris, in resigning; he gave up office on the 16th of April, 1763, to the great surprise of his enemies, who, calculating his motives by their own, expected him, under all circumstances, to adhere to the so-called good things which were in his grasp.

The Bute administration, brief as it was, is memorable for the patronage which it extended to literature. The minister, himself a man of letters and of science, wished that the new reign should be the commencement of an Augustan era; and he accordingly was the means of directing the attention of the young monarch to a number of objects, which had hitherto languished for want of the crown patronage. One of the most remarkable effects of the spirit infused by his lordship into the royal mind was, the rescuing of the majestic mind of Johnson from the distresses of a dependence on letters for subsistence; a transaction, for which many bosoms, yet to be animated with the breath of life, will expand in gratitude at the mention of the name of George III.

The ministerial character of lord Bute has been thus drawn by an impartial writer: "Few ministers have been more hated than lord Bute was by the English nation; yet, if we estimate his conduct from facts, without being influenced by local or temporary prejudices, we can by no means find just grounds for the odium which he incurred. As a war minister, though his plans discovered little of original genius, and naturally proceeded from the measures of his predecessor, the general state of our resources, the conquests achieved, and the dispositions of our fleets and armies, yet they were judicious; the agents appointed to carry them on were selected with discernment, and the whole result was successful. His desire of peace, after so long and burdensome a war, was laudable, but perhaps too eagerly manifested. As a negotiator, he did not procure the best terms, which, from our superiority, might have been obtained. His project of finance, in itself unobjectionable, derived its impolicy from the unpopularity of his administration. Exposed from unfounded prejudices to