175 John Duke of Argyle, father of the Marquis, of Lord Lorn, of Lord Frederick Campbell, and of the Countess of Ailesbury, wife of Mr. Conway.

176 Groom of the Bedchamber to the Duke, and conqueror of Belleisle. [He had been aide-de-camp to the second Earl of Albemarle at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and all the principal actions in Flanders. He was subsequently transferred to the family of the Duke, whom he attended at Culloden.—(Life of Lord Keppel, i. 298.) Several of his letters during the expedition to Belleisle are published in Mr. Keppel’s work. They are very well written, and their frankness, vivacity, and good feeling, make it a subject of regret that more is not known of the writer. He died a field marshal.—E.]

177 A severe character of the Duke is given in the Memoirs of George the Second, vol. i. p. 85; nor has his memory found more favour from posterity. A love of truth, a dutiful consideration for his parents, and a decided preference of active employment, either civil or military, to the intrigues or frivolities of a Court, honourably distinguished him from his elder brother. In other respects he was not much to be esteemed.—E.

178 He was enormously fat, had lost one eye and saw but ill with the other, was asthmatic, and had had a stroke of the palsy, besides the wound in his leg, that had not healed.

179 George Keppel, third Earl of Albemarle, Lord of the Bedchamber to the Duke, and his favourite. The promise was not only renewed, but fulfilled at the end of the year, when the vacant garters were given to the Prince of Wales, the Hereditary Prince, and Lord Albemarle. [The latter was also entrusted by the King with the examination of the Duke’s papers and the administration of his property.—(Keppel’s Life, vol. iv. p. 384.)—E.]

180 A statue of the Duke was erected afterwards in Cavendish Square by General Strode, at his own expense.

181 Robert Adam, projector of the Adelphi Buildings and other known works. [An interesting life of him is given in the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.—E.]

182 This statue was not finished and set up till 1772. A bitter inscription was affixed to it in the night, supposed to be written by Wilkes.

183 Sir John Lambert was of a Huguenot family. He was born in 1728; he died in 1799.—E.

184 The concession was made too late to be of much benefit to the original holders of the bills. It had been confidentially intimated to the friends of the late Government, before the latter left office, that the point would not be pressed on the French Court, and the bills, in consequence, were sold at a very great depreciation. Sir George Colebrooke, who was one of the sufferers, mentions the circumstance in his MS. memoirs.—E.

185 When the Duc de Nivernois came to England to conclude the Peace, he would never take his remittances in bank bills, lest they should be traced. My cousin, Thomas Walpole, told me that he had paid to that Duke four thousand guineas in specie at a time. I do not charge the Ministers with the guilt of this corruption. They were paid by Lord Bute in places, honours, and power; but that French money had a share in that infamous transaction I do not doubt. The Duc de Nivernois, a man of economy, spent above thirty thousand pounds here in half a year. He kept a table for the tradesmen of London, that they might harangue for the Peace.

186 What the French thought of our glorious successes and of our shameful Peace, appeared from what the famous Madame Geoffrin said to me one day at Paris,—“Vous avez eu un beau moment, mais il est bien passé!”

187 His long and able services deserved a less tardy reward. He had been minister at Berlin from 1753, and was a constant companion of Frederick the Great during the Seven years’ war. Few understood that monarch better, and few, it is supposed, were loved by him so well. He died at an advanced age in 1771. His correspondence during his embassy, extending to 68 folio volumes, is preserved in the British Museum, and furnishes many valuable illustrations of cotemporary history—especially the letters addressed to him by his correspondents in England. It proves, also, his sagacity in perceiving that the minister of a representative Government requires an intimate knowledge of the state of affairs at home, in order to discharge his duties abroad most to the advantage of his country.—E.

188 Reported under the name of Entick v. Carrington and others, 2 Wilson, 275. The outlawry against Wilkes being unreversed, he could not sue.—E.

189 An account of Terrick has been given in a former page.—E.

190 A better reason for dissolving the Parliament was furnished by the great measures in the contemplation of the new Government. No doubt the character of the House fell in the public estimation by the readiness with which the same individuals concurred in the repeal of Acts passed after due deliberation only in the preceding year. It is true that circumstances had altered in the interval, but the only alteration which the country regarded as influential upon the Parliament, was that which had taken place in the Government. Some politicians of later date have however pronounced it a blunder in any Minister to dissolve Parliament until it has rejected a Government measure.—E.

191 The following are the words of his amendment:—

“To express our just resentment and indignation at the outrageous tumults and insurrections which have been excited and carried on in North America, and at the resistance given by open and rebellious force to the execution of the laws in that part of his Majesty’s dominions.”—E.

192 “He asserted with vehemence his approbation of the Stamp Act, and was for enforcing it: he leant much to Mr. George Grenville’s opinion, soothed him, and sat down determined to vote against his amendment! Mr. Elliot the same; thereby insuring a double protection.”—Mr. Cooke to Mr. Pitt. Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 351.—E.

193 Lord Shelburne appears to have spoken rather against the amendment than for the Ministers. He regarded the language applied to the Americans by the Opposition both in their speeches and the amendment as dangerous, and perhaps imprudent and unjust, and he deprecated a motion which seemed to preclude a repeal before it was considered thoroughly how far it might be necessary. His speech met with Mr. Pitt’s entire approbation.—(Lord Shelburne’s Letter to Mr. Pitt, and the reply in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 353.)—E.

194 Lord Shelburne had attached himself to Mr. Pitt, and would not enter the Government without him.—(Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 357.)—E.

195 He was affectionate to his daughters, but surely not to the Dauphin, whose life he made unhappy by excluding him from active employment, and whose death he bore with feelings of very slight regret.—E.

196 He even stood at a window to see her coffin carried out of the palace.

197 If the French were thus ignorant of the real character of the Dauphin, the ignorance has been of long continuance. All the French historians regard him as a fanatic. According to Sismondi (Histoire des Français, vol. xxix. p. 328) the Archbishop of Paris and the Molinist clergy formed around him a cabal which at first inspired alarm, next disdain, and at last pity. The story of his scepticism came, probably, to Walpole from the Duc de Choiseul, who had always been on the worst terms with him; nor is the Duc de Nivernois, the partizan of Choiseul, a courtier of pursuits and feelings utterly dissimilar to those of the prince, a much better authority. The only vice which the irreproachable conduct of the Dauphin admitted of being imputed to him, was hypocrisy. Whether he had sufficient energy of character to have averted the destruction which afterwards overwhelmed his unfortunate son, is more doubtful. He was personally brave, and is said to have shown spirit and readiness at Fontenoy, and it was with difficulty that the jealousy of the Duc de Choiseul could prevent his serving in the seven years’ war; but the qualities requisite for the successor of Louis the Fifteenth, were hardly compatible with his gentle, yielding, and amiable disposition. He died on the 20th of December, 1765, in his thirty-seventh year.—E.

198 The Dauphin certainly preserved a tender attachment for the memory of his first wife, the Infanta Maria Therese. She died in child-bed in July, 1746. This did not, however, prevent his appreciating the merit of the second Dauphiness. Observing him in tears just before their marriage, she bade him indulge his grief, for it assured her of what she too might expect from his regard if she had the happiness to deserve it. She was by no means popular in the coteries frequented by Walpole, but by the nation at large she was held in high estimation. Her death was ascribed to a disorder she had contracted in nursing her husband. The Duchesse de Lauragais might have treated the expressions of a person in the agonies of death with more indulgence. Judging from this speech, she must have been as heartless as her lover the Maréchal de Richelieu, than whom, allowing for the difference of sex, she was not much more respectable.—E.

199 The Duchesse was a niece of the financier Croisat, and brought to the Duc the great fortune of four millions of livres. After her husband’s death she retired into a convent, and submitted to severe privations in order to obtain the means of paying not only his debts, but even his legacies, for he had the assurance to make large testamentary bequests, though he must have known himself to be worse than insolvent. She was the Duc’s second wife. His first, also a considerable heiress, died within a year of their marriage, and he generously restored her fortune to her relations, though he was at that time poor.—E.

200 His mal-administration of Brittany was an appropriate prelude to his career as President of the Council. In both offices he incurred almost universal hatred and contempt. It was at the Court alone that he shone. There his brilliant success was undeniable; and indeed it is not to be wondered at, for he was eminently adroit and specious; and, with a noble deportment, he possessed the art of expressing himself nobly. The English officers taken at St. Cas returned home fascinated by his urbanity and generous sayings. Though an undisguised profligate, he was the acknowledged leader of the religious party to which the Dauphin belonged, and the confidant of that exemplary Prince; and this did not prevent his subsequently becoming the minister of Louis the Fifteenth. The Duc was the great-nephew of Cardinal de Richelieu, and had inherited Aiguillon from the Cardinal’s favourite niece, Madame de Combalet. He died in 1783, leaving an only son.—E.

201 The persecution to which M. de Chalotais was subjected has been detailed in a work extending to three volumes quarto, entitled “Procès Extraordinaire contre MM. Caradeuc de la Chalotais,” &c., with this singular motto: “Ad perpetuam sceleris memoriam.” He appears to have narrowly escaped with his life. The most important witness against him was a young Maître de Requêtes, M. de Calonne, twenty years later unhappily celebrated as the minister of Louis the Sixteenth. The trial gives a frightful picture of the state of criminal justice in France in those days. M. de Chalotais had pure motives, and was an able man; but his indiscretion, the irascibility of his temper, and the bitterness with which he treated all who differed from him in opinion, no doubt greatly aggravated his difficulties. His first work, “Compte rendu des Constitutions des Jesuites,” appeared in 1762, he being then sixty-one years of age: from that time until his death, in 1785, he maintained a hot and incessant warfare against the Court and religious parties, who regarded him as the representative of principles fraught with ruin to them both. This struggle no doubt materially hastened the Revolution. An interesting account of the proceedings against Chalotais is given in Anquetil (Hist. de France, vol. viii. p. 106–116), one of the best parts of a book of slender merit, and also in Sismondi (Hist. des Français, vol. xxix. p. 321), and in the able article on Chalotais in the Biographie Universelle.—E.

202 It would be difficult to find, in the various histories of the period, a more ably drawn character of the Duc de Choiseul than this. The Duc was born in 1719. His administration lasted from 1757 to 1770, and he died in 1785.—E.

203 It should be recollected that D’Alembert’s intimacy with Mademoiselle Espinasse had caused him to quarrel with Walpole’s old friend, Madame du Deffand. He wrote much that has long ceased to be read; but his Introduction to the Encyclopédie is a very able work, and as a mathematician he was one of the most eminent of his day. He died in 1783, aged sixty-six.—E.

204 Nor could they be respected as judges are in England, as solicitation is practised in France in all causes. Where there is solicitation, there must be partiality. Where partiality is, there must be injustice; and injustice will never be popular.

205 In his youth he had served with some distinction in Italy, where, in conjunction with the Infant Don Philip, he commanded the allied army of France and Spain. He possessed the personal courage, the cleverness, the turn for political intrigue, and the wrong-headedness which seemed hereditary in his family. The part he took in the affairs of the Parliament gained him the sobriquet, from the King, of “Mon Cousin l’Avocat.” He died in 1776, aged fifty-nine.—E.

206 A dissolute courtier of illustrious family, who had the poor merit of being sincerely attached to an unworthy master. Unhappily for his country he was trusted with high commands, even after the battle of Rosbach, where he had shared all the dishonour of that signal defeat. The assistance of Marshal d’Estrèes enabled him for once to be successful at Johannisburgh. He died in 1787, aged seventy-two. The ex-Jesuit, Georgel, who was attached to the family, has painted him in flattering colours. See Mémoires de Georgel, vol. i. p. 278.—E.

207 The Maréchal d’Estrèes, Louis César le Tellier, grandson of the celebrated Louvois. He was at this time seventy years old, and probably exhausted by long service. He had greatly distinguished himself at Fontenoy; but his chief exploit was the victory he gained at Hastenbeck, over the Duke of Cumberland. This did not prevent his being harshly treated by the Court, and through the intrigues of the Maréchal de Richelieu he was for a time deprived of his rank and employment, and imprisoned in the Castle of Doulens on an unfounded charge of having left his victory incomplete. He was afterwards recalled and employed, but his last campaign against Prince Ferdinand was not a successful one. He died in 1771, aged seventy-six.—E.

208 See vol. i. p. 138, supra.

209 See vol. i. p. 139, supra.

210 He had defeated Prince Ferdinand at Clostercamp, in the battle which made the name of the Chevalier d’Assas so illustrious in the French annals. In the reign of Louis the Sixteenth he became Minister of Marine and was much respected. He died in 1801, aged seventy-four.—E.

211 The Duc had none of the brilliancy of his cousin. His manners were cold and reserved, which his enemies ascribed to pride, and his friends to modesty. He never was popular. As Minister of Marine he appears to have discharged his duties efficiently, and the French fleet under his administration recovered the losses it had suffered in the war. His splendid seat near Melun, still in the possession of his descendants, and formerly the delight of the Intendant Fouquet, shows that his public services were not unrewarded. He died in 1795, aged seventy-three.—E.

212 Madame de Staël paints him to the life: “C’étoit un homme d’esprit dans l’acceptation commune de ce mot.... Sa dignité de Prêtre, jointe au désir constant d’arriver au Ministère, lui avoit donné l’extérieur réfléchi d’un homme d’état, et il en avoit la réputation avant d’avoir été mis à portée de la dementir.... Il n’étoit ni assez éclairé pour être philosophe, ni assez ferme pour être despote; il admiroit tour à tour la conduite du Cardinal de Richelieu, et les principes des encyclopédistes.”—Considérations sur la Révolution Française.—His brief administrations made the Revolution inevitable, and he was among its early victims. The manner of his death is uncertain; the Abbé Morellet, his friend and dependant, insinuating that he poisoned himself. According to an article in the Biographie Universelle, which is very carefully written, he died in consequence of the brutal treatment he received from some soldiers at Sens. The Abbé makes a feeble effort to defend his memory.—(Mémoires de Morellet, vol. i. p. 17; vol. ii. p. 16–467.)—E.

213 He also became at a great age Chief Minister, in the next reign, and died so. Walpole must have written this eulogy on Maurepas before the latter was restored to office. Agreeable as he might be in society, he proved a most inefficient minister, and altogether unequal to the times. He died in 1781, eighty years old, regretted only by the King and the courtiers, who enjoyed his wit and profited by his patronage. One of his last acts was the disgrace of Necker, a minister who perhaps could then have saved the monarchy, though he afterwards hastened its downfall.—E.

214 He was related to the Duc de Bouillon by his mother, the Princess Clementina Sobieski.—[Lord Mahon’s Hist. of England, vol. iii. p. 523.—E.]

215 Clement XIII. His name was Charles Rezzonico, a Venetian.

216 Avignon.

217 After a reign of twenty years. He had governed his small kingdom with prudence and ability; and had shown spirit and firmness in the manner in which he met the preparations made by Peter III. for invading Denmark, in 1762. He has the honour of having employed the celebrated Niebuhr, on that scientific expedition to the East, of which the latter has left so interesting a description.—E.

218 The Duke of Newcastle, besides having joined Lord Bute against Mr. Pitt at the beginning of the reign, had personally offended the latter, by contriving to have his American pension paid at the Treasury, which subjected it to great deductions.

219 George Bussy Villiers, only son of William Earl of Jersey.

220 An interesting account of the debate, and especially of Mr. Pitt’s speech, is given in a note to a letter of Mr. Pitt to Lady Chatham.—Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 363. It agrees generally with the text; indeed, many of the expressions are identical.—E.

221 Mr. Pitt, however, with less kindness, said, in reply to Conway’s defence (on the ground of defective information) against the charge of having given such tardy notice to the House of the disturbances in America, that “The excuse to be a valid one, must be a just one. This must appear from the papers now before the House.”—(Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 101.)—E.

222 Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord Despencer.

223 Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, First Commissioner of the Treasury under George I.

224 Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, Lord Treasurer to Queen Anne.

225 Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, Prime Minister to George I. and George II.

226 Sir William Draper, created Knight of the Bath for the conquest of the Manillas.—[The credit he had gained by his conduct there, and at the capture of Fort St. George, he lost by various weaknesses, and especially by his gross flattery of Mr. Pitt and Lord Granby. In 1779 he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Minorca, and held that office at the time of its capture in 1782, when he exhibited twenty-nine charges against General Murray, his superior in command; the only result of which was, a reprimand to himself. He died at Bath, in 1787. Sir William Draper had been a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, in whose noble chapel the standards taken at the Manillas are still preserved. See more of him in Wraxall’s Posthumous Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 186–7. Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 326. Walpole’s Letters to Mann, vol. iii. p. 386.—E.]

227 Dowdeswell.

228 These papers are printed in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 112.—E.

229 Mr. Huske was M. P. for Malden. He died in 1773.—E.

230 Sir John Cust.

231 It was not strictly a new paper, but a series of occasional letters in the daily papers. Lord Sandwich will again be found a persecutor of the press in 1773; for printers were alternately, as they served his purposes, his tools or his prey.—[Mr. Scott afterwards received from Lord Sandwich the lucrative appointment of chaplain to Greenwich Hospital. He was more respectable in his profession than might have been expected from his having such a patron, and an accomplished scholar. See an anecdote to his honour, in Twiss’s Life of Lord Eldon.—E.]

232 The club in Albemarle Street, erected by the late Opposition, now Ministers.

233 To the bar of the House, whither members are ordered when they violate the rules or privileges of Parliament.

234 Mrs. Burke was a Presbyterian; the belief, however, of her being a Papist was very general.—E.

235 A lively description of Burke, as a speaker in the House of Commons, is given in Wraxall’s Hist. Mem. v. ii. p. 35.—E.

236 William Burke was M. P. for Bedwin, in Wiltshire. He shared all his cousin’s fortunes, and lived with him on terms of the most intimate friendship. When the prospects of the Whigs seemed to be hopeless, he went to India; and through the support of Mr. Francis, obtained some lucrative offices. He was a person of considerable accomplishments. He survived Mr. Burke, and died in 1798.—E.

237 This division was the result of a junction of the friends of the late ministers with the friends of Lord Bute.—(Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 380.)—E.

238 Eldest son of Lord Bute.

239 Lord George Sackville was intimate with Wedderburne, who had been counsel for him on his trial.

240 Sir William Burnaby had been Admiral and Commander-in-Chief on the West India station. He was knighted in 1754, and made a baronet in 1767.—E.

241 I have not been able to find another report of this important debate.—E.

242 The fall of the Ministers was so much expected, that it was said, “They were dead, and only lying in state; and that Charles Townshend [who never spoke for them] was one of their mutes.”

243 Walpole takes no notice of the debate in the House of Lords on the American Resolutions. It took place on the 10th of February, and will be found in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 168. The speeches of Lord Camden and Lord Northington are eloquent and interesting.—E.

244 Prime Minister of Portugal.

245 Mr. Frederick Vane, M. P. for Durham.—E.

246 Whatever might be Lord Rockingham’s exultation at having carried a measure on which he considered the safety of the empire to depend, he was so far from being blind to his own precarious position, that a few days after, on the 26th, he made overtures to Mr. Pitt expressing an earnest desire to transfer the Government to him. The letters that passed on this occasion are given in Lord Chatham’s Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 397.—E.

247 Mr. Fuller, no doubt, was a hearty well-wisher of the repeal. He was a sensible man, and his opinion carried additional weight from the decided and independent tone in which he delivered it; and Almon says, that after his death it was discovered that he had been for many years in the receipt of a pension from the Government of 500l. a year, a fact that explains the sudden decline of his zeal mentioned by Burke, Correspondence, ii. 8.—E.

248 Dr. Hay was a man given up to his pleasures.

249 Some political writers, opposed to the Rockingham Ministry, have condemned and ridiculed this bill as inconsistent with the principle, and calculated to defeat the object of the repeal of the Stamp Act. Indeed, they have gone so far as to say that it raised an insurmountable barrier to the settlement of these unhappy differences. However unjust the charge may be, the bill proved a fertile experiment to maintain the dignity of the country, and the best defence of the measure is to be found in the state of political parties, which rendered it apparently impossible to obtain the repeal without this concession to the feelings of the King, and to public opinion. The Colonies, also, gave themselves, at that time, little concern about abstract resolutions of right, so long as the same were not carried into practice. The joy with which the Repeal Act was received in America seems to have been unqualified, and some years elapsed before any serious objections were taken against the Declaratory Act. Even in 1775, Burke writing to his Committee at Bristol, observes, that it had not yet become a grievance with the Colonists.—E.

250 Lord Rockingham gave the place to Mr. Milbank, and was justified in so doing, for the patronage did not belong to the Lord-Lieutenant, who was very indiscreet to have a difference with Lord Rockingham on such a subject.—E.

251 See pp. 184–187, 202, 203, supra.—E.

252 Stephen Fox.

253 Mary, eldest daughter of the Earl of Ossory, by Lady Evelyn Leveson, youngest daughter of John first Earl Gower.

254 There is no such prohibition in the Navigation Act, but the Act of 6 Geo. III. c. 62, seems to imply the possession of a monopoly of the cotton trade by our West India Islands. No cotton was at that time cultivated in North America. In 1843 our importation of cotton from the United States exceeded 574,000,000 lbs., whilst from our West India Islands it actually did not reach 2,000,000 lbs.—E.

255 The Duke of Richmond had married Lady Mary Bruce, daughter by her first husband of Lady Ailesbury, Conway’s wife.

256 Henry Arthur Herbert had married Barbara, niece of the last Marquis of Powis, and had been created Earl of Powis on the accession of the fortune to him and her.

257 This was the lady celebrated by Pope, who first ambitioned the Crown of Poland, then sought a fortune in the mines of the Asturias, where she met the Comte de Gages. She then was reduced to such extreme poverty, that the young Pretender arriving in Spain, and visiting her, she received him in bed, not having clothes to put on, and he gave her his coat to rise in. She retired to Paris, and was at last harboured in the Temple by the Prince of Conti, where she died not long after the transaction and lawsuit I have mentioned in the text. The Comte de Gages had likewise retired to Paris, and died there a little before Lady Mary Herbert, who lived to August, 1775.

258 Richard Viscount Howe, an Admiral, Treasurer of the Navy, and a man of most intrepid bravery, as all his brothers were, but not very bright, though shrewd enough when his interest was concerned. [He was personally attached to Pitt, and probably accepted office with his consent. If he paid an undue attention to his own interest it was to very little purpose, for although he was frugal in his habits, and had many opportunities of enriching himself, he died poor.—E.]

259 He was much connected with the Duke of York, being of the same profession.

260 Lord Rockingham had reason to complain of Dyson’s conduct, as the King had in some degree answered for the latter when the Government was formed, and in consequence he had been allowed to remain in office. There were others of the Government whose votes reflected blame only on Lord Rockingham himself; for what can be said of his suffering Lord Barrington to become Secretary at War, with the express understanding that he might continue his opposition to the course pursued by the Government on such questions as the American Stamp Act and General Warrants?—(Political Life of Lord Barrington, p. 119.)—E.

261 Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

262 One was the establishment of a civil government in Canada, a plan for which had lain before the Chancellor for some months, and in which he did nothing [except declaring his entire disapprobation of the plan, and urging that no proposition should be sanctioned by the Cabinet until they had obtained a complete code of the laws of Canada.—1 Adolphus, 226.] It remained unsettled till the year 1774, when the famous bill, called the Quebec Bill, in favour of Popery, was passed, and, agreeably to the supposed author Lord Mansfield’s arbitrary principles, took away decisions by juries.

263 It appears that Lord Northington’s notification to the King was on the 5th of July.—(Lord Henley’s Life of Northington.) We learn from the same writer that the bad state of Lord Northington’s health, and his frequent disagreements with his colleagues, had for some months made him desirous of an honourable and quiet retreat. There is no doubt, both from his own letters, and the traditions still extant at the bar, that his habits of hard labour and extreme conviviality had by this time undermined his constitution much to the deterioration of his temper, and he perhaps suspected slights that were never intended. Moreover, the scrupulous sense of public duty, the natural reserve and strict propriety of deportment which characterized Lord Rockingham and Mr. Conway were by no means to his taste. He must have felt even less easy with such associates, than his successor Lord Thurlow did in a later day with Mr. Pitt; and, like him, his usual course in the Cabinet was to originate nothing, and to oppose everything. The commercial treaty with Russia, a measure of unquestionable benefit, nearly fell to the ground, owing to his unreasonable and obstinate opposition. He would rarely listen to remonstrances from his colleagues, and was on such cold terms with them as probably justified him in his own mind in breaking up the Cabinet so unceremoniously. He was too fearless to stoop to intrigue, and there was no necessity for it on this occasion. His communications with Mr. Pitt, on the formation of the new Government, are given in the Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 434.—E.

264 These words ceased to be true in the year 1783.

265 That Mr. Pitt’s indisposition was no pretence, is proved by his letters to Lady Chatham. He says on the 15th of July, evidently to calm her anxiety,—“In a word, three hot nights in town rendered a retreat hither [Hampstead] necessary, where I brought yesterday a feverish heat and much bile, and have almost lost it already.” Throughout their correspondence his health is a constant topic, and the extreme delicacy of his nervous system certainly rendered his acceptance of office a most imprudent act.—E.