to nothing. Other attempts also failed. They were renewed when the star of Grattan became in the ascendant and his own proportionally declined, till in 1783, the Duke of Chandos procured his return for Winchester. The dissolution consequent on the dismissal of the Coalition again sent him adrift on the popular waters; and his Grace was said to have shuffled out of a positive engagement so unfairly that a challenge from his Irish acquaintance was the result. Seaford was then tried; and on the third election he succeeded.
Fortune failed him in rendering the change conducive to increase of fame. Why, it is not easy to say; excepting that the reputation earned in one place does not necessarily accompany its possessor to another. He reached St. Stephen’s for the first time during the discussion of Fox’s India Bill. Insufficiently prepared, he was imprudent enough to take part against it;[1] and on avowing such insufficiency, paid the penalty of frankness to the ridicule and sarcasm of one of his countrymen (Courtenay[2]),
- ↑ Horace Walpole’s sagacity in immediately foreseeing the result of this imprudence upon Flood’s future reputation, is not a little remarkable. He writes to the Earl of Strafford, December 11, 1783:—“Mr. * * * (Flood), the pillar of invective, does not promise to re-erect it (the character of Parliament)—not, I conclude, from want of having imported a stock of ingredients, but his presumptuous début on the very night of his entry was so wretched, and delivered in so barbarous a brogue, that I question whether he will ever recover the blow Mr. Courtnay gave him. A young man may correct and improve, and rise from a first fall; but an elderly formed speaker has not an equal chance.”—Private Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 357. 1820.
- ↑ Well known in the political and literary societies of London. He had been in the army; afterwards held office in Ireland under the Marquis of Townshend; also under Whig administrations in England; mostly in Parliament. He wrote A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral
