before he had attained his twenty-fifth year had been offered, and refused, the place of First Minister.[1]
When the late Mr. Harris of Salisbury made his first speech in the House of Commons, Charles Townshend asked, with an affected surprise, who he was? He had never seen him before. “Ah! you must, at least, have heard of him. That’s the celebrated Mr. Harris of Salisbury, who has written a very ingenious book on grammar, and another on virtue.”—“What the devil then brings him here? I am sure he will neither find the one nor the other in the House of Commons.”
Mr. Townshend knew Mr. Harris well enough; but it was a common practice with him, as with other wits, to lay traps for saying good things.
Mr. Lees (of the post-office in Ireland), who was originally a clerk in the Townshend family, told me that it was Mr. Charles Townshend’s usual practice to dictate speeches on every great question; that he had himself frequently written down for him three or four speeches on the same subject; that afterwards he used to ride out and converse with various people, both those who were likely to be on the same side with himself, and those of the opposite party. When he had sucked all their arguments out of them, he would then dictate another speech on a different side of the question from that which he had before taken. In the House, however, he never spoke any of these
- ↑ Afterwards, in 1784, he was appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and continued in office till January 1802.—Mal.
