George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

¹ was yet capable of persevering in a system

chap. I.} 1748.

Newcastle was of ‘so fickle a head, and so treacherous a heart,’ that Walpole called his ‘name Perfidy;’² Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, said, ‘he had no friends, and deserved none;’ and Lord Halifax used to revile him, in the strongest terms, as ‘a knave and a fool;’³ he was too unstable to be led by others, and, from his own instinct about majorities, shifted his sails as the wind shifted;—Bedford, who was bold and unbending, and would do nothing but what he himself thought ‘indisputably right,’ was ‘always governed,’ and was also ‘immeasurably obstinate in an opinion once received;’⁴ being ‘the most ungovernable governed man in England,’⁵ and the most faithful to the vulgar and dissolute ‘bandits’ who formed his political connection. Neither was cruel or revengeful; but while the one ‘had no rancor or ill-nature,’ and no enmities but freaks of petulance, the other carried decision into his attachments and his feuds. Newcastle, with no elevation of mind, no dignity of manner, lavished promises, familiar caresses, tears and kisses,⁶ and cringing professions of regard with prodigal hypocrisy;—Bedford, whose hardy nature knew no wiles, was too haughty to practise even concealment, and was blunt, unabashed, and, without being aware of it, rudely impetuous, even in the presence of his sovereign. Newcastle was jealous of rivals;— Bedford was impatient of contradiction. Newcastle was timorous without caution, and rushed into difficulculties