Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/276

250 effects of good and bad fortune than has hitherto happened in our time.

"He owed such success as he met with in life, to his birth, the gravity of his manner, a naturally clear understanding, which prevented his taking up any argument in private, and still less in public, of which he was not complete master, but above all to his talent for imposition of every kind but one. As most men when they are content to apply their mind only to one thing, gain a wonderful tact in it, and especially when it regards manner only, he attained a very great faculty of judging both of parties and men, and turning both to what was always uppermost in his mind, his general line of imposition. He had no desire of searching out truth, he had no scruples, no management for any friends; was used to content himself with taking up the corner of an argument upon which he used to declaim with great decision and a great deal of seeming force, and for the most part judged both his time and place admirably well. Next to himself he owed his consideration to his mother's country; he erected a Scotch Standard which always stuck to him, and his Westminster connection never failed to advise and support him underhand, even when he was most pressed. But he wanted judgment in all great affairs, and he wanted heart on every occasion. He neither knew mankind nor did he know himself: the first is sufficiently proved by his never having had a creditable connection; the second by his putting himself repeatedly in situations in which he could not acquit himself, and putting himself forward in a manner both revolting and unbecoming, which no wise man would have ventured. He had likewise a great want of secrecy, naturally enough a part of the same character and to be accounted for on the same principles.

"He might be considered as an object of pity for some of his other failings, but what should deprive him of any and must stain his character for evermore, was his intolerable meanness and love of corruption, which he could not resist even when he enjoyed an ample fortune,