Secretary of State, Grafton sought an interview with Shelburne. It was intended to offer the third Secretaryship of State to Hillsborough.
At this interview Grafton said:[1]
I do not choose to take any step of consequence without first communicating it to your Lordship, particularly anything which can have the least regard to the situation your Lordship is in, or indulge more than a thought concerning it, without endeavouring to know your Lordship's inclination and your feelings upon it. In the distressing situation in which I am, having embarked in this thing, and from my office feeling it incumbent upon me, since the state Lord Chatham has been in, to take the lead, and being bound to wish what is best in the main for the King's affairs, I should feel myself the most culpable man in the world if there was an opening when any great body of men might be taken in, and faction broke into by that means (which was always Lord Chatham's great object), if I did not do everything in my power to embrace it. Now having received openings from different parties, though really and in fact they are but faint glimmerings, what I would presume to wish to know, would be what your Lordship's sentiments are in regard to your own department, or what your feelings would be in case it would be useful to the King's affairs to come to a division of it. Your Lordship may perhaps have heard that it was a thing in agitation in August last. When there was so many different schemes about General Conway, it was then thought that your Lordship might be prevailed upon to go to the Northern Department, and General Conway hold one part of yours with the Ordnance. I must say that it has ever been my opinion that it ought to be separated. I have declared it a hundred times to the Chancellor; I told General Conway so expressly at the meeting we had about him last summer before Mr. Walpole and Lord Hertford. I beg and beseech your Lordship at the same time not to think it is any personality towards you, because I do protest it is not. Were a Solomon in the situation, I should not be of opinion that he could go through it. When General Conway had that department, though he had it not in so extensive a manner as your Lordship, I then was of opinion that it ought to be separated, and was the strongest for Lord Dartmouth's being made a third Secretary, which shows that it is not now personal towards your Lordship; I therefore beseech you not to attribute it to any such motive.
- ↑ Paper marked "Friday night, December 11th, 1767. At the Lord President's." Compare Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iii. 138.
