Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/217

 of two days between Carteret and the Danish ministers, the treaty which had already been signed on the part of Sweden was concluded on 3 July by the king of Denmark. This treaty, which was ratified on 22 Oct., practically put an end to the war between Sweden, Russia, Denmark, and the king of Prussia, for the czar afterwards concluded an agreement with Denmark without the intervention of a mediator. Carteret, having accomplished the objects of his mission, returned through Hanover on his way to England, where he arrived on 5 Dec.

On 19 Aug. 1720 he had been appointed, together with Earl Stanhope and Sir Robert Sutton, ambassador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at the congress of Cambray. The meeting of the congress was delayed, and Carteret does not appear to have acted in this capacity. Soon after his arrival in England he took part in the debates on the state of the national credit occasioned by the failure of the South Sea scheme, and supported Lord Stanhope's contention that the estates of the criminals, whether directors or not, ought to be confiscated. During the discussions on this subject Carteret was appointed ambassador extraordinary to the court of France. He was on the point of setting out, when the death of James Craggs, jun., occurred. He was thereupon appointed secretary of state for affairs of the southern province in Walpole's administration, and, being admitted to office on 5 March 1721, was sworn a member of the privy council on the same day. It was impossible for two such men as Walpole and Carteret, neither of whom could brook any rivals, to act together in the same cabinet for any length of time. Carteret soon became jealous of Walpole's paramount authority, and endeavoured to ingratiate himself with the king. In this he quickly succeeded, as George could speak no English, and Carteret was the only minister who could speak German. Emboldened by the influence which he had acquired over George, Carteret endeavoured to form a party of his own. Having secured the assistance of the Countess of Darlington, and gained over to his side Lord Carleton, the lord privy seal, the Duke of Roxburghe, the secretary for Scotland, and Lord Cadogan, the commander-in-chief, he endeavoured to oust Walpole from office. With this object in view he strongly supported the Hanoverian policy of the king, and professed to exercise a considerable influence over Cardinal Dubois, the French minister.

The struggle for supremacy between Carteret on the one hand, and Walpole supported by Townshend on the other, was a prolonged one. Though Carteret was appointed one of the lords justices of the kingdom in the absence of the king on 26 May 1723, both he and Townshend, the other secretary of state, followed George to Hanover, and there a great part of these intrigues and counter-intrigues took place. The La Vrillière incident brought matters to a head. Sir Luke Schaub, a partisan of Carteret's, was recalled from his post of English minister at Paris; and Carteret, being succeeded as secretary of state by the Duke of Newcastle, was on 3 April 1724 nominated lord-lieutenant of Ireland. That country was then in a very excited and discontented state. In 1723 a patent had been granted to Wood for the exclusive right of coining halfpence and farthings to the value of 108,000l. This patent had been obtained through the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, and without any consultation with the Irish privy council. Carteret, by caballing with the Brodricks (Alan Brodrick [q. v.] was lord-chancellor of Ireland), and furnishing, it is said, the private history of the mode in which the patent had been obtained, had greatly encouraged the prevailing discontent. He had done this with the object of harassing Walpole, who now enjoyed the refined revenge of sending him to quell the disturbance which he had helped to raise. In 1724 Swift published the famous Drapier's Letters, which aroused the Irish to a pitch of frenzy. The new lord-lieutenant did not go over to Dublin until October. The fourth letter, addressed to the whole people of Ireland, was published in this month, and one of Carteret's first acts was to publish a proclamation offering a reward of 300l. for the discovery of the writer. Swift, who had made the acquaintance of Carteret some years before, had, on hearing of his appointment to the lord-lieutenancy, promptly written to him while still in London about the patent. When Harding, the printer of the letters, was imprisoned, Swift went to the levee, and demanded of Carteret an explanation of this severity against a poor industrious tradesman who had published two or three papers designed for the good of his country. Carteret, who could have had little doubt of Swift being the real author of the letters, though he was probably not desirous that it should be discovered, replied by an apt quotation from Virgil:

Res dura, et regni novitas, me talia cogunt Moliri. After an unsuccessful attempt had been made to allay the popular ferment by means of a compromise, Carteret procured the re-