meets your Lordship's idea, I will take care to give it all possible attention, and will make it my business to see Mr. Beckford upon it, and that it shall be properly understood. If it does not, I beg your Lordship to let me have your further commands any time to-morrow. I am sure I need not endeavour to express to your Lordship my concern for the occasion of your delay, or for the inconvenient situation I am afraid you find yourself in."[1]
The news had now arrived—and it was to this that Shelburne alluded in the concluding paragraphs of his letter that "the gout had returned so severely upon Lord Chatham at Marlborough as to confine him to his bed."[2] From this time forward he continued "quite unable to enter into any detail of things,"[3] nor could his colleagues induce him to give his opinion on the answer of the East India Company, which they had received on February 20th, or on any other business. He only declared "that his fixed purpose had always been and still was, not to be a proposer of plans, but, as far as a seat in one House enabled him, an unbiassed judge of them."[4]
But while he lay on a sick bed at Marlborough, his disorganized Ministry suffered the first defeat on a Money Bill experienced by any Ministry for five and twenty years. All the sections of the landed interest gathered in their strength, and on the 27th of January, headed by Dowdeswell—the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Rockingham Administration—proposed to reduce the land tax from four to three shillings in the pound. Townshend was told he might substitute the promised American revenue for the extra shilling. He needed no encouragement. His resistance to the proposition of Dowdeswell was weak, and the majority against him was considerable. Stung by the defeat, Chatham dragged himself to London resolved "to crush the preposterous
