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though I see no symptoms at present of foul weather near at hand, yet I know that once in ten or twelve years in this country filthy humours will collect, the whole age turns sour upon a man's hands and the better he has deserved of the public in general the fairer chance he stands of mounting the pilory for his reward.
HENRY PELHAM AND HIS SUCCESSORS
Henry Pelham died at six on the morning of 6 March 1754. Men's immediate reaction of ‘confusion and consternation’ marked a fear, on the part of both the King and the people, that political tranquillity had died with the man who, pre-eminently, had come to personify it. Historians, too, have not succeeded in distinguishing a Pelhamite political consensus from Pelham's own personal contribution; and Horace Walpole, even without foreknowledge of the intrigues which were to follow, wrote: ‘all that calm, that supineness, of which I have lately talked to you so much, is at an end! There is no heir to such luck as his. The whole people of England can never agree a second time upon the same person for the residence of infallibility…‘ In part, this respect had stemmed from a widespread affection for Pelham's ‘most amiable composition’ as a man; in part, from the fact of his political blandness and broad acceptability. In part, too, it arose from Whig confidence in his skill as an election manager. In March, a general election was imminent; but there was no widespread expectation of another decisive Whig success.
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