words to the Council, and wished Walpole to consider it. He immediately began to see daylight, and proposed a meeting at Devonshire House, and when there a small committee to draw up what should be said. It quickly returned with a paper approving all that Walpole's administration had done. Lord Bute told me that, apprized of this, he had lying by him, for several years before George II. died, a declaration to put into the present King's hands, who proposed it to the Cabinet, where Mr. Pitt, expressing great admiration of the language, desired leave to object to only two words, 'bloody and expensive' war, in the place of which he proposed inserting, 'just and necessary.' I have seen hundreds of instances where a want of habit of committing your thoughts to paper offhand, or of what is called 'composition' at the Secretary of State's office, has produced the most serious consequences. It opens the door to all commis, whose necessary impudence sticks at nothing, who, once consulted, quickly find the weakness of their principals, and whose modesty suppresses and conceals even from themselves their own powers which are generally far superior. Presence of mind again is a gift with which everybody is not endowed. If Lord Bute had bestowed his time on thinking what measures he should pursue whenever the event happened, instead of the composition of what he should say, he would have abided by the words 'bloody and expensive,' by which means he would have got the wind of Mr. Pitt by fair and noble means, for nothing could be more prepared than the public was, but it has seldom happened that those who come in by the back ever after prefer the great stairs.
"Sir Robert Walpole finding that he had so far succeeded beyond his expectations, next turned his thoughts to the Queen, with whom Sir Spencer Compton had had some difference of opinion and had disappointed about her establishment. The Queen imagined, because the King said so, she had no influence upon him, a common error when ladies are concerned. Sir Robert Walpole promised her everything she desired, and by that
