"His parts were by no means great: he was nervous, and mere necessity alone made him at all a speaker in Parliament; where, though he spoke good sense, neither flattery nor partiality could admire or applaud. He was rather trifling and dilatory in business than indolent. Virtues and amiability he must have possessed; for his party esteemed him highly, and his friends loved him with unalterable attachment. In the excess of faction that we have seen, he was never abused; and no man in public life, I believe, had ever fewer enemies. His death may be more remembered than his actions would have been, and may have greater consequences than any plan of his would have had; for he countenanced a system rather than instigated it. Whoever is his successor will not be of so negative a character."
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandUniversity of Cambridge alumniFellows of the Royal SocietyWhig (British political party) politicians
Original Language: English
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Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann (1 July 1782), quoted in The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford, Vol. XII: 1781–1783, ed. Paget Toynbee (1904), p. 280
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Watson-Wentworth%2C_2nd_Marquess_of_Rockingham
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Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham
Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham KG PC FRS (13 May 1730 – 1 July 1782; styled The Hon. Charles Watson-Wentworth before 1733, Viscount Higham between 1733 and 1746, Earl of Malton between 1746 and 1750 and The Marquess of Rockingham in 1750) was a British Whig statesman and magnate, most notable for his two terms as prime minister of Great Britain. He became the patron of many Whigs, known as the Rockingham Whigs, and served as a leading Whig grandee. He served in only two hig
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