success, or stunned with clamour, and this peace will not go down, the German Troops should be recalled immediately and War continued against Spain and France, and Portugal defended, till we grow wiser.
"These suppositions spring from my opinion that Lord Bute should not treat with the Duke of Newcastle. I am clear that a notion of Lord Bute's meeting in any way with him will weaken Lord Bute, and treating with him will end in nothing else, for he will be intractable.
"Short of being Secretary of State, I am, for the necessary time, at His Majesty's Service. But let it be well considered before I am called upon to try what, if it fails, will do His Majesty great harm. I will risk a great deal indeed to have the honour of doing him any good."
A few days after sending the above paper, Fox wrote to Shelburne:
"You'll look on the confused Paper I sent you by Calcraft, I hope not as an answer or to be shewn as such, but for your Lordship to think upon, and to talk out of, if you think fit. It was as this is, pouring out the thoughts, as they arise, of a mind very anxious about the cruel situation the King is in, the dangers that press upon the country, and the small hope there is from the means proposed to extricate both. I have all your Lordship's feelings; I vow to God I do not, I will not consider myself, or the Duke of Cumberland, further than to grieve that I knew him so little. My disposition is what you would wish it, but my opinion is very different; and what I said in my last and am going to say in this, ought to be well considered. Can I do any good, may I not do a great deal of harm? And if the experiment fails, the King is lost, and what a King! Indeed, my Lord, it ought to be well weigh'd and examined over and over again before His Honour is trusted to so weak, however willing, a support. I think, and am not singular in thinking, that you will not get one vote more than you have already by my change of situation. Everybody I can think of influencing, you have already. My abilities, which you
