Of the numerous titles of the Revolution of 1688 to
respect, not the least remarkable is this, that the great families of
the country, and great powers of the State, made no effort, as they
might have done, in the hour of its weakness, to aggrandize themselves
at the expense of the crown. Nevertheless, for various reasons, and
among them because of the foreign origin, and absences from time, of
several Sovereigns, the course of events tended to give force to the
organs of Government actually on the spot, and thus to consolidate, and
also to uplift, this as yet novel creation. So late, however, as the
impeachment of Sir Robert Walpole, his friends thought it expedient to
urge on his behalf, in the House of Lords, that he had never presumed to
constitute himself a Prime-Minister.
The breaking down of the great offices of State by throwing them into
commission, and last among them of the Lord High Treasurership after the
time of Harley, Earl of Oxford, tended, and may probably have been
meant, to prevent or retard the formation of a recognized Chiefship in
the Ministry; which even now we have not learned to designate by a true
English word, though the use of the imported phrase "Premier" is at
least as old as the poetry of Burns.
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