To Shelburne the deprivation of his appointment as aide-de-camp was not a serious loss, being abundantly compensated by the fairly earned popularity which this mark of the royal displeasure conferred upon its victim. It was not so in the case of Barré. He was Adjutant-General of the Forces and Governor of Stirling Castle. The income he himself stated publicly in subsequent years arising from these appointments was about £4000 a year, the loss of which, to a man who four years before had described himself as a friendless subaltern of eleven years' standing, was no inconsiderable matter.[1] But though deprived of office and placed on the retired list, Barré was nothing daunted, and with the full approval of Shelburne, continued to oppose the Grenville administration in their persecution of Wilkes. During the debate on the 14th of February 1764, on the legality of general warrants, Grenville was bold enough to deny the charge of having used "menaces to officers," whereupon, says Walpole, "Colonel Barré rose, and this was attended with a striking circumstance. Sir Edward Dering, one of our noisy fools, cried out, Mr. Barré. The latter seized the thought with admirable quickness, and said to the Speaker who in pointing to him had called him Colonel, 'I beg your pardon, sir, you have pointed to me by a title I have no right to,' and then made a very artful and pathetic speech on his own services and dismission; with nothing bad but an awkward attempt towards an excuse to Mr. Pitt for his former behaviour."[2] Whether the excuse was awkward or not, the reconciliation it announced was genuine, and the political attachment of Barré to Pitt was only ended by the death of the latter.
- ↑ See Vol. II. p. 156.
- ↑ To the Earl of Hertford, February 15th, 1764. Correspondence, iv. 186.
he were still corresponding. The last extant letter of Bute to Shelburne is dated September 20th and is quite cordial in tone, so that, assuming Shelburne to have answered the letter, the statement was substantially correct. Grenville does not give the name of his informant.
