“ The small fragments of poetry which he left behind him, and which were almost solely the composition of his early years, display a certain facility and vigour of diction, but their thought and fancy are never more than commonplace, and not unfrequently in striving to be eloquent and impressive he is only grotesquely and extravagantly absurd. In administrative talent he was the superior of all his contemporaries, and his only rival in parliamentary eloquence was Somers ”

“ Indeed it may be affirmed that no other statesman has initiated schemes which have left a more permanent mark on the financial history of England. Although perhaps it was inevitable that England should sooner or later adopt the continental custom of lightening the annual taxation in times of war by contracting a national debt, the actual introduction of the expedient was due to Montague, who on the 15th of December 1692 proposed to raise a million of money by way of loan. ”

“ George Montague, fifth son of the first earl of Manchester, was born at Horton, Northamptonshire, on the 16th of April 1661. In his fourteenth year he was sent to Westminster school, where he was chosen king’s scholar in 1677, and distinguished himself in the composition of extempore epigrams made according to custom upon theses appointed for king’s scholars at the time of election. In 1679 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he acquired a solid knowledge of the classics and surpassed all his contemporaries at the university in logic and ethics. ”