Shelburne by telling Fox that it was "a pious fraud."[1] "I can see the fraud plainly enough," is said to have been the retort of the retired statesman; "but where is the piety?" This story repeated and exaggerated, as is usually the case with such stories, became the origin of those imputations of duplicity which pursued Shelburne through life. It was to his conduct towards Fox that his enemies, in subsequent years, appealed as the final justification of their hostility. The very unpopularity of Fox served only to heighten the force of the attack. Fox, it was said, was looked upon as the ideal of cunning, but here was the man who had outwitted Fox. It will have been seen how baseless these attacks were. Fox, in October 1762, when accepting the lead of the House of Commons, considered that this token of royal confidence—a very thankless one in itself—would under the other circumstances which accompanied it, oblige him to abandon the Pay Office, and he had already taken the preliminary steps to resignation when he thought fit to alter his mind and stay where he was. Could Shelburne, Bute, and Calcraft have reasonably doubted that the same motive, viz. the fear of public opinion, which prompted Fox to think his resignation of the Pay Office necessary on receiving a seat in the Cabinet and the lead of the House of Commons—honours which entailed no salary but a great deal of work and of abuse—would not equally lead him to think his resignation called for when, intending to abandon political life and go abroad, he was created a Peer, and saw ample provision made for himself, his relatives, and his personal followers.
That they did think so, and considered Fox had let them suppose that this was his own opinion, is clear. Even Rigby was against Fox. "The man," says Walpole, "he most loved was Rigby. He had assisted in Rigby's promotions, and wished to push him forwards and to be strictly connected with him in every political walk. In the height of his quarrel with Shelburne and Calcraft, Fox,
- ↑ Memoirs, i. 258. In 1765 the Grenville Ministry made the immediate removal of Lord Holland from the Pay Mastership a condition of their remaining in office. Grenville Correspondence, iii. 41.
