He called himself a Whig, but he had no zeal for Whig principles. He
voted steadily with Lord North, and quite approved of taxing and
coercing America into slavery; but he had no high notions of the royal
prerogative, and was lukewarm in this as in everything. With such
absence of passion one might have expected that he would be at least
shrewd and sagacious in his judgments on politics. But he is nothing
of the kind. In his familiar letters he reserves generally a few lines
for parliamentary gossip, amid chat about the weather and family
business. He never approaches to a broad survey of policy, or
expresses serious and settled convictions on home or foreign affairs.
Throughout the American war he never seems to have really made up his
mind on the nature of the struggle, and the momentous issues that it
involved. Favourable news puts him in high spirits, which are promptly
cooled by the announcement of reverses; not that he ever shows any
real anxiety or despondency about the commonwealth. His opinions on
the subject are at the mercy of the last mail. It is disappointing to
find an elegant trifler like Horace Walpole not only far more
discerning in his appreciation of such a crisis, but also far more
patriotically sensitive as to the wisdom of the means of meeting it,
than the historian of Rome.
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