not resigned when you did. Your Lordship knows I expressed myself freely to you on that subject, but I am ignorant of any other attack. Suffer me once more to repeat what I then said: your resignation at the minute you made it was immediately treated as an abandonment of the King; you foresaw this, and took the part of declaring to Himself and others you meant his support; it was nobly and nicely done. Continue in this way of thinking, and you will draw the tooth of malice and act a part worthy of you; but, my dear Lord, if you suffer little conversations (for the most part strangely disfigured in the repetition) to make you deviate from your former plan, those who hate you, or who want to detach you, will infallibly come back to their first assertion and give it plausibility, by appealing to your own conduct. Let them not triumph by such little arts. I began with saying, I could not believe the reports you have heard of 's conversation, were well founded. I must go farther, they cannot be founded in truth. I have known the too long, have had too many proofs of the most inviolable love to veracity, to credit any man in these Kingdoms contrary to the actual declaration made to myself, no, not though he affirmed he was present and heard it.[1] Adieu, my dear Lord, this letter is too long, but shall be the last on political matters for those I heartily take my leave of; it is certainly meant to do you all the service in my power, and convince you how sincerely I remain, with the greatest regard,
Your most obedient humble Servant,
Bute.
Thus wrote Bute, and yet before the close of the year circumstances were to arise destined to put an end to the connection which united him to Shelburne. By November, the Court had finally resolved to plunge into the unconstitutional and illegal persecution of an individual, which ended by shaking the throne itself, and immortalising a comparatively worthless man. Parliament stooped to become the instrument of the Court.
- ↑ The person referred to is the King.
