Walpole’s Separation from his Party.--His Character of Mr. Conway.--
Commencement of the Troubles with North America.--Death of the Duke
of Cumberland.--His Character.--Negotiations with the Courts of
Versailles and Madrid respecting the Fortifications at Dunkirk and
the Ransom of the Manillas.
The dissolution of our Opposition now afforded me that opportunity of
retreating from those who had composed it, for which I had so eagerly
longed; nor was I dilatory in executing my resolution. Many new reasons
concurred to make me adhere to the plan I had formed. It was against my
opinion that my friends had accepted the Administration; and though I
would not peremptorily advise Mr. Conway to decline taking part, when
he told me he thought himself obliged in honour to obey the King’s
and Duke’s commands, still I saw so much weakness both in the leaders
and the numbers, that I entertained no hopes of the permanence of
their power. Chiefs who could not conduct a party with sense, seemed
little qualified to govern a nation. I had given notice, that if ever
they attained power, I would have nothing farther to do with them.
They had attained it now, but with so little prospect of maintaining
their ground, that nothing was so probable as their being soon driven
to opposition again. In that I was determined to engage with them
no more. If I quitted them triumphant, they would have no right to
call on me should they again be defeated by their own want of skill.
I had fully satisfied my honour and my engagements, and had anybody
cause to complain, it was myself--but I chose to part with them on
good terms; nor would I, when I was really hurt, condescend to utter
a reproach. This topic truth demands that I should explain. I had
entered into opposition on the view of the violent measures, and still
more violent designs of the Court. Personal dislike to the Bedford
faction had inflamed my natural warmth, and the oppression exercised on
Mr. Conway had fixed in me an unalterable desire of overturning that
Administration. Not the smallest view of self-interest had entered into
my imagination. On the contrary I risked an easy ample fortune with
which I was thoroughly contented. When I found unjust power exerted to
wrong me, I am not ashamed to say I flattered myself that, if ever our
party was successful, I should obtain to have the payments of my place
settled on some foundation that should not expose me to the caprice or
wanton tyranny of every succeeding Minister; for court I was resolved
to make to none, whether friend or foe,--a haughtiness I maintained
throughout my life, never once condescending to go to the levee of
any first Minister. My wish of making this independence perfectly
easy I had hinted to Mr. Conway during our opposition. He received
it with silence. It was not in my nature to repeat such a hint. As
disinterestedness was my ruling passion, I did hope that on the change
some considerable employment would be offered to me, which my vanity
would have been gratified in refusing. It was mortifying enough to me,
when Mr. Conway (for I have said that during the last negotiation I was
confined in bed with the gout) reported to me the proposed arrangement
of places, to find that my name had not been so much as mentioned.
That I would take no place was well known,--I had frequently declared
it. From the Duke of Cumberland, to whom I had never paid court; from
the Duke of Newcastle, whom I had constantly ridiculed; from Lord
Rockingham and the Cavendishes, whom I had treated with a very moderate
share of regard; I had no reason to expect much attention: and though
some notice is due to all men who are respected in a party, _they_
were excusable in proposing nothing for me, when they found nothing
demanded for me by my own intimate friend and near relation. He must be
supposed to know my mind best: if he was silent, what called on them to
be more solicitous for my interest? But what could excuse this neglect
in Mr. Conway? For him I had sacrificed everything; for him I had been
injured, oppressed, calumniated. The foundation of his own fortune,
and almost every step of his fortune, he owed solely to me. How
thoroughly soever he knew my sentiments, was a compliment at least not
due to me. Whatever was due to me, much or little, he totally forgot
it; and so far from once endeavouring to secure my independence, in his
whole life after he never once mentioned it. I had too much spirit to
remind him of it, though he has since frequently vaunted to me his own
independence. Such failure of friendship, or to call it by its truer
name, such insensibility, could not but shock a heart at once so tender
and so proud as mine. His ensuing conduct completely opened my eyes.
When I saw him eager and anxious to exalt his brother Hertford to the
Vice-royalty of Ireland, and his brother-in-law Lorn to a regiment; and
when he omitted no occasion of serving them and the Duke of Argyle[175]
and Lord Frederick Campbell--all four, men who had abandoned him to
persecution without a pang, I saw clearly into his nature. He thought
it noble, he thought it would be fame, to pardon the neglect he had
met with; and that the world would applaud his generous return of
their ungenerous and interested behaviour. No glory would have accrued
from his serving me, as it would have been natural and no more than
was expected. His heart was so cold that it wanted all the beams of
popular applause to kindle it into action. I had command enough of
myself not to drop a word of reproach on a friendship so frozen; but,
without murmur, and with my wonted cheerfulness, as soon as my strength
was tolerably recruited, I declared my intention of making a visit to
Lord Hertford, at Paris, before he quitted his embassy. I acted with
the same unconcern to the whole party, for I would neither suffer them
nor my enemies to know that I had any cause to be dissatisfied with
Mr. Conway. When I scorned to open myself, even to him, it was not
likely I should be more communicative to others. As disgust with my
friends did not, as most commonly happens, reconcile me to my enemies,
I foresaw that I might still have occasion to make use of my power with
Mr. Conway to the annoyance of the latter; for though Mr. Conway had
none of the warmth of friendship, yet he had more confidence in me, and
knew he might have, than in any man living; and, notwithstanding the
indifference I have described, he frequently trusted me afterwards with
secrets that he reserved from his wife and his brother.
He no sooner discovered that my intention was to remain in France
much longer than he expected, than he broke out into complaints,
entreaties, and reproaches: and, as if he had satisfied all the duties
of friendship, and I had violated them, he tried with angry words to
divert me from my purpose; urged the occasion he should have for my
advice, and called my retreat desertion of my friends. Satisfied with
making him feel the want of me, and now hardened against the calls of
friendship, I treated the matter lightly, civilly, and desultorily. I
reminded him of the declaration I had often made of quitting the party
as soon as they should be successful, which he could not deny; and,
with a little mixture of conscious scorn, I said I knew the obligations
the party had had to me; I knew none I had to them. Vexed, and his
pride hurt, he employed Lady Ailesbury to tell me in his presence that
he looked upon my behaviour as deserting him; and himself dropped
many peevish accents. Fixed in the plan I had laid down to myself,
nothing could provoke me to be serious; I carried off all with good
humour; and, above owing to a retort of reproaches what I ought to
have owed to his sentiments, I parted with him with such inflexible,
and consequently mysterious, cheerfulness, that he knew not what
interpretation to put on my behaviour--if he did guess, he was more
blameable than I suspected. His insensibility had made me insensible;
his ingratitude would have given me stronger sensations. But it is
justice to him to say, that I think he was incapable of ingratitude:
his soul was good, virtuous, sincere; but his temper was chill, his
mind absent; and he was so accustomed to my suggesting to him whatever
I thought it was right for him to do, that he had no notion of my
concealing a thought from him; and as I had too much delicacy to
mention even my own security, I am persuaded it never came into his
conception. His temper hurt me, but I forgave his virtue, of which I
am confident, and know it was superior to my own. We have continued
to this day on an easy and confidential footing; but conscious that I
would not again devote myself for him, I have taken strict care never
to give him decisive advice, when it might lead him to a precipice.
Before I set out, and as a mark that I meant no breach with him, at the
same time to serve another friend, and to wear an air of interest with
the Administration which might disguise my dissatisfaction, I desired
Mr. Conway to raise Sir Horace Mann, the resident at Florence, to the
rank of envoy; which was immediately done. The Bedfords, however, knew
me enough to surmise that my retreat was the effect of some dislike
I had conceived to the new system; and at my return to England, near
eight months afterwards, officiously threw out civilities that might
draw me to their connection. I soon let them see that whatever my
dislikes were, nothing had happened to soften my conduct, or change my
opinion of them and their principles. Nor was it much longer before
they found that I had lost neither inclination nor power to bar their
return to Court by the weight I retained with Mr. Conway.
I left England in August, and did not return till the April following.
A very interesting scene passed in the interval, on which, as I was
not an eye-witness, I shall be more brief than ordinary; but as I
corresponded with Mr. Conway, was consulted by him, and received other
information from very good authority, I shall set down nothing but
what I know to be truth; and that will be sufficient not to leave any
material break in the thread of my narration.
The new Ministers had scarce taken possession of their places, before
they were alarmed with accounts of the mutinous behaviour of the
Colonies, on the attempt to carry into execution the new Stamp Act.
The Americans were determined not to submit to it; and great pains
had been taken in order to bring about a general union of all the
provinces, in order to oppose the admission of the tax. To all it was
disagreeable; yet some Colonies accepted it. Virginia and New England
were the most refractory, and precipitated themselves into great
violences. In some parts, the ships that brought over the stamps were
seized and the stamps burned. The officers of the new revenue were
not suffered to land, or were cruelly treated, their houses forced
and pillaged, and their persons menaced. The governors themselves
were not secure, and trembled lest their few strongholds should be
seized by the hand of rebellion. In the most mutinous towns there was
no possibility of executing the Act. But the weapon with which the
Colonies armed themselves to most advantage, was the refusal of paying
the debts they owed to our merchants at home, for goods and wares
exported to the American provinces. These debts involved the merchants
of London, Liverpool, Manchester, and other great trading towns, in
a common cause with the Americans, who forswore all traffic with us,
unless the obnoxious Stamp Act was repealed. Nothing could be more
delicate to the new Ministers than such a crisis. They themselves had
opposed the Act. Should they enforce the execution, which could only be
done by the sword, it would be tyrannizing against their consciences,
and supporting a bad or weak act of their antagonists. They would
risk lighting up a rebellion in the Colonies, would ruin the mutual
intercourse and trade between the mother-country and the outlying
provinces; would endanger those distant dominions flinging themselves
into the arms of France or Spain, at least receiving succours thence;
while they were threatened at the same time with insurrections in the
trading towns at home, who loudly demanded a repeal of the bill, on
which depended the payment of what was due to them, and the hopes of
re-establishing so beneficial a commerce.
On the other hand, to repeal a revenue-bill, because it was distasted
by those obnoxious to it, was setting a precedent of the most fatal
complexion. What country, what town, what profession, what order of
men, would submit to the most legal impositions, if Government once
showed itself afraid, and recoiled, as soon as force was used to
reject the duty? In the present case the insult was unparalleled and
accompanied with every kind of aggravating circumstance. Not only
payment of the duty was refused, but the very authority called in
question by which it was enjoined. The Parliament of Great Britain,
said the Colonists, had no right to impose internal taxes on them:
they were not represented there; they would tax themselves. This was
striking at the very vitals of the Constitution, for however the
Colonies affected to distinguish between the King and the Parliament,
the Act had been the act of the whole Legislature, and the Constitution
knows not the King in a legislative capacity distinct from the two
other branches of the Legislature. Here was disobedience to the law,
and rebellion against the principle of all our laws. Nor was this
speculative view the sole object to weigh in the decision the Ministers
were to make. Should they embrace the measure of repeal, were they sure
they could carry it? The Act had passed by a great majority in both
Houses, and with the royal assent. Was it probable that such majorities
could be induced to revoke their opinion in compliment to mutinous
associations that flew in the face of their ordinance, and denied their
authority? Was it likely that the King would approve of, or consent
to, such diminution of his Majesty, before an attempt had been made to
enforce it? When do princes bend but after a defeat? There could be no
doubt but force would easily reduce the Colonies to obedience. They
had no strongholds, were ill-armed, a disjointed body, not yet engaged
in a common cause, nor so compact a corps as easily to be put in motion
together; and from being distinct governments, habituated to different
usages, and actuated by different interests, easily to be separated
from a joint plan, and more likely to obstruct than to promote one
general system of operations. To temporize in favour of resisting
subjects would be speaking that language of Whiggism so distasteful
to the Court, so dissonant from the tone of the present reign, and so
much objected to the new Ministers during the late opposition. It would
be opening a door to the flattery of their antagonists, who, instead
of setting out by obstructing the measures of the Crown, would have
an opportunity of paying their court at the expense of the Ministers
themselves.
These were deep and weighty considerations, and, with this precipice
on either hand, were young, artless, inexperienced men to date their
career. Grenville, the parent of the Bill, and even fond of it beyond
the love of a politician, was not a man to overlook so sudden a
prospect of recovering the ground he had lost. Though he would have
revelled in an opportunity of glutting his vengeance and enforcing
obedience to his law, he could not but enjoy the distress to which
the crisis reduced his adversaries. It suited his proud spirit to
call for assertion of the Crown’s and Parliament’s dignity; and his
revengeful spirit, to drive the Ministers on measures so repugnant to
their principles and opinions, and, rather than not see the Colonies
punished, he wished to have the punishment inflicted even by his
adversaries. He toiled to obtain the most circumstantial evidence of
the mutiny; he exaggerated every instance, and called aloud on the hand
of power to vindicate the honour of the Legislature.
As the accounts from America grew every day worse, the Ministers,
who at first were inclined to repeal the Act, were borne down by the
flagrancy of the provocation. But being temperate men in themselves,
fixed in their principles, forseeing not only more extensive but more
immediate evils from violence, (for the danger from the clamours of
the merchants and trading towns increased in proportion,) and possibly
indignant at the attempts made by their antagonists to drive them to
extremities, they coolly and firmly resolved to remove the grievance,
rather than involve their country and outlying brethren in a series of
calamities more destructive of the common good than the wound given
to the authority of Government. Whoever will reflect on the state of
the dangers they were to encounter, and which I have specified above,
must own that their conduct was virtuous, honest, prudent, humane, and
brave: it will be difficult, I believe, to discover that it could be
interested.
This determination of the Ministers to attempt the repeal of the Stamp
Act was putting their power to the test at once; and was the more
adventurous, as they certainly had not taken any steps to secure the
previous favour of the Crown. If on one hand they increased by this
measure the animosity of Grenville and his party, and held out to him
the means of making his cause common with that of the Legislature; on
the other, they afforded an opportunity to Lord Bute and his faction
of returning their hostilities, and of veiling his grievances under
the mantle of the King’s and Parliament’s dignity. The Colonies,
however pleased, could lend no support to their protectors, who, in
truth, could stand on no ground at home, but on the popularity they
had already acquired with the people, and should acquire with the
mercantile part of the kingdom. In this exigence they lost the only
real pillar of their Administration at Court.
Notwithstanding the services he had rendered, it is not probable that
the Duke of Cumberland had made any progress in his Majesty’s or the
Princess’s affections. He had driven out obnoxious Ministers, it is
true, and furnished the King with a new set when no others would
venture to enlist. But were not these new men more attached to his
Royal Highness than to the person of the King? and had not the Duke
promoted his own views in forming an Administration for his nephew?
Had his Royal Highness interested himself to obtain any terms for the
Favourite? Was not the latter in a manner proscribed by the friends
of his Royal Highness? Had not the most select of those friends
been as offensive to the Princess as the late Ministers themselves?
Undoubtedly; and yet the personal character of his Royal Highness was
in such estimation, his behaviour was so full of dignity, he was so
attached to the Crown, and understood the Court so much better than
the Ministers, and could dare to hazard language in the closet which
their want of authority and favour forbad them to use, that he could
have interposed in their behalf, or could have bent them to necessary
submission to the Crown, which no other man in England was capable of
doing. But of this mediator the Ministers were soon deprived.
On the 30th of October his Royal Highness was playing at picquet with
General Hodgson.[176] He grew confused, and mistook the cards. The next
day he was recovered enough to appear at Court; but after dinner was
seized with a suffocation, and ordered the window to be opened. One of
his _valets-de-chambre_, who was accustomed to bleed him, was called,
and prepared to tie up his arm; but the Duke said, “It is too late!--it
is all over!”--and expired.
I have spoken so much of his Royal Highness’s character in the
beginning and in various parts of these Memoirs,[177] that little
addition is necessary. His haughtiness and severity had made him most
obnoxious in the early parts of his life. His profound understanding
had taught him to profit of his mortifications; and though he never
condescended to make himself amiable but to very few, he became as
much respected, though deprived of power, as if his heroism had been
victorious. Whether his good sense would have resisted prosperity
with equal temper, I much doubt. He would have made a great King, but
probably too great a King for so corrupt a Country. His indifference to
death, which he had so long and so frequently had in prospect in the
last years of his life, and which he seemed to invite, was, I believe,
less owing to the solidity of his courage, which was intrepid, than
to the unhappiness of his situation. His bodily infirmities,[178]
though borne without complaint or impatience, were grievous. His mind
had been more sensibly afflicted. Born with a martial spirit and fond
of command, he had not only been unsuccessful in every battle, except
that of Culloden; but had been forced by cruel circumstances from the
favourite profession of his soul; in civil life he was kept, by the
temper of his father and the aversion of the Princess Dowager, in a
state of neglect and disgrace. Fox, who he had a right to expect should
stickle for his power, had betrayed and abandoned him; Pitt had made
it a point to bar him from all influence; and the two Pelhams, after
leaning on him for a while, had sacrificed him to the Princess and to
their own ambition or jealousy of credit. His mind had not been formed
for idleness, and could ill digest an exclusion from all military and
all civil councils; and was too lofty and too unpliant to feed on
trifling amusements. It had the great, but none of the little, powers
of philosophy; could bear misfortune, but could not compensate to
itself for the want of its object. He used books rather than liked or
valued them, and cared for none of the arts. His principles restrained
him from going any considerable lengths against the Crown; nor could
he stoop to bestow those caresses that are necessary to form extensive
connections. He dealt his smiles to those who followed him, like a King
that rewards, not like the head of a party, who has farther to go.
The dignity of his conduct and behaviour gave his Court the air of
a dethroned monarch’s, but had nothing of a Prince whom his nephew’s
Court had suspected of having views on the Crown.
The King, at his Royal Highness’s request, had promised the first
vacant garter to the Earl of Albemarle,[179] and now with great
propriety bestowed on him that of his master. The Ministers, too, were
assured by his Majesty that the Duke’s death should make no alteration
in the present system.
In London, the Duke’s death was deeply felt; and when the orders
for mourning were issued, which, according to usage, were as for an
uncle, and regulated by the late shorter ceremonial, the middling
and lower people almost universally went into the closet mourning
with weepers, and wore it for the whole time that had been customary
before the contraction enjoined in the late reign. An attempt was
made for a subscription to raise a statue to his memory, but without
success:[180] and the new area in Berkeley Square being destined for
the place, Adam,[181] a Scotch architect, defeated the project, from
the hatred which his nation bore to their conqueror, by proposing to
erect a statue[182] of his Majesty on that very spot, a compliment his
Majesty too willingly accepted, and which became ridiculous by the King
himself being at the expense. The Duchess of Bedford, then at Bath,
distinguished her animosity as absurdly, by wearing slighter mourning
for the Duke than that prescribed by the Court.
The Administration was not without difficulties with regard to
the Courts of Versailles and Madrid, who delayed to demolish the
fortifications of Dunkirk, to liquidate the payment on the Canada
Bills, and to settle the ransom of the Manillas. But though the new
Ministers were more in earnest in their attempts to obtain all these
ends than their predecessors had been, the ignominy of not obtaining
them lay heavier on the latter. They it was who had sacrificed so
much glory and advantage to the two Courts--at least all of them had
concurred with Lord Bute in that paltry Peace; and when they had
retained so small a portion of our conquests, and stipulated for such
slight indemnifications, on them it lay to have secured at least the
accomplishment of such poor terms. Indeed they had not dared to use
a vigorous tone to either Court; for could the Ministers of Louis or
Charles believe that those men would seriously undertake a war for
trifles, who had sacrificed so much to purchase a Peace that they might
have dictated? They accordingly had hoped that they should wheedle the
two Courts to save them from the reproach of having accepted fallacious
conditions, rather than attempted to call loudly for execution of the
Treaty. The new Ministers had less to fear in speaking out. They had
nothing to manage for their own sakes; and if the nation was not in
a situation or a temper to go to war for the violation of the Peace,
they were not answerable for the measures that had reduced us to such
a state of timidity. It would be glorious to them to extort what the
peacemakers had not dared to insist on; or baffled, the shame would
lie at the door of their predecessors. Our Ministers, therefore, at
Versailles and Madrid were ordered to make the demands with spirit.
The Duke of Richmond, though he had concurred in the Peace, wanted no
alacrity to enforce the terms of it. He had had little or no connection
with the late Administration, had never been favourably looked on at
Court, had no predilection for Lord Bute, and now entered with warmth
into alliance with the Ministers. Though possessed of the Dukedom of
Aubigné, he was far from having any partiality to France: and having
naturally a high and national spirit, he was ready to hold as firm a
language as the Administration could choose to authorize. In truth, his
friends apprehended that he would be more likely to embroil the Courts
than to relax in following his instructions. Yet young, inexperienced,
and high-souled as he was, no man could conduct himself with more
prudence and temper. Though he negotiated with obstinacy, he bore the
flippancy and evasions of the Duc de Choiseul with admirable patience,
neither betraying the honour of the Crown, nor exposing it to any
unwarrantable contestations. In the short period of his embassy he
performed an essential service by his resolution, quickness, industry,
and perseverance. It is almost sufficient to say, that he settled one
point of his negotiation and was unwelcome to that Court: a proof that
he neither temporized too far, nor was over-reached by men of larger
experience. On his way to Paris he passed purposely by Dunkirk. The
Duke of Cumberland had disapproved of that visit. “My Lord,” said the
Prince, “Dunkirk is not worth going to war for: if you do not visit
it, you may say it is destroyed; you cannot after seeing it with your
own eyes.” This implied that his Royal Highness was convinced France
did not mean to destroy it. As I had arrived at Paris before the Duke
of Richmond, I had learnt the desperate situation of their finances,
and was witness to the disturbances occasioned to their Government by
the active spirit of their Parliaments. I had written to Mr. Conway on
these grounds, to advise their authorizing the Duke to talk big to the
French Court, who, from the causes I have mentioned, were less in a
situation than we were to recommence war. Mr. Conway heartily approved
my views. The Duke had more doubts, but yielded to my reasons when
he came over and found the soundness of my intelligence. The measure
succeeded to my expectation. The Duc de Choiseul consented at last
to settle the affair of the Canada Bills. Our merchants at home had
blundered in their calculation, and asked less for themselves than they
were entitled to. Sir John Lambert,[183] an English banker at Paris,
pointed out the error to the Duke, who, with amazing quickness, himself
discovered a method of obtaining, within twelve thousand pounds, a
full indemnification for them. The French Court yielded to this new
demand.[184] I persuaded the Duke to conclude the negotiation without
any new transaction with our merchants at home, lest the readiness of
the French should cool; and I urged him to ratify the agreement on
the authority of three letters from Mr. Conway, who pressed to finish
the bargain, and enjoined him to threaten the French Ministers that
he (Conway) would represent it to Parliament, if they did not do us
justice. The Duke doubted whether, having put the business into a new
train, he could justify concluding it without again consulting the
merchants. I persuaded him to despatch a courier to Mr. Conway, to say
he would conclude, but not to specify in his public letter the error of
the merchants, lest the Court of France should get intelligence, and
repent of their facility.
With regard to Dunkirk, nothing was to be obtained. Choiseul told the
Duke of Richmond that the late Ministers had not been so difficult.
“But,” said the Duke, “before I came away, I saw in the Secretary’s
office a strong letter to your Court on the subject of Dunkirk.”
“True,” said Choiseul, “but it was not written till after Lord Halifax
knew he was to be turned out.” This indiscretion flowed from Choiseul’s
natural levity, not from any intention of hurting our late Ministers,
whose fall he regretted, and on whose complaisance[185] he could
better build than on men who had loudly condemned the Peace. Still was
France not alarmed while Mr. Pitt remained without power. Their dread
of him existed in all its force. To judge of it, one should have seen,
as I did, the efficacy of his name to change their countenances and
language. One day at dinner with the Duc de Praslin, when Mr. Pitt was
accidentally mentioned, the Duc, with visible marks of alarm, asked
if Mr. Pitt was coming into place again? And it is true that when any
Frenchman gave a loose to their natural presumption before me, I had
no occasion but to drop a careless hint that he was likely to be again
employed, to strike silence through a whole company.[186]
One other point obtained by the new Ministers was a mutual exchange
of envoys between England and Prussia, their first intercourse of
communication since the war. Mitchell, destined for that embassy, was
created a Knight of the Bath.[187] Count Malzahn came hither from
Prussia.
November the 5th, Lord Camden, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas,
decided in that court the great cause between Wilkes and the
Secretaries of State, in favour of the former.[188]
Terrick, Bishop of London, set himself to prosecute mass-houses, with
what view I know not; for though noways blameable in his morals, zeal
for religion by no means entered into the composition of the man.
Ambition, creeping upwards by little intrigues, formed his whole
character. Perhaps he thought this activity might be one step to the
primacy. He had not much chance under the new dispensation.[189] The
Duke of Newcastle, whose fears had surmounted his passion for the first
rank in power, had told the King that he would content himself with
making bishops in concert with the archbishop. Content or not, he had
waived the Treasury, and Lord Rockingham, become First Minister by
accepting it, was too fond of power not to engross all he could. It
was a proof how old Newcastle was grown, when he bore this pre-eminence
without jealousy or treachery.
Lord Rockingham had been advised, seeing the present Parliament had
been chosen by Lord Bute, and recruited by Grenville, not to trust
to it, but to dissolve, and call a new one; and that measure was for
some time in deliberation. For his own interest he would have acted
wisely, no doubt, in taking the advice; but he at last rejected the
proposal, saying, that in so factious a time it would produce unheard
of corruption. The sentiment was laudable, but neither faction nor
corruption has decreased since that time.[190]