character was unimpeached, but he had never attempted to show any parliamentary abilities, nor had the credit of possessing any; nor did it redound to the honour of his faction, that in such momentous times they could furnish their country with nothing but a succession of mutes." His brief Lord-Lieutenancy in Ireland had not raised his reputation, and men profanely sneered at him as "a fit block to hang Whigs on," as the centre of a gang of "toad-eaters," and as a "heavy breeched Christian" who wanted "a shove."[1] Fortune nevertheless was reserving for him the singular distinction of being twice Prime Minister of England; first as the leader of the narrowest section of the Whig party, and afterwards as chief of the most Tory of Tory Administrations.[2]
Shelburne undertook to convey the wishes of his colleagues to the King. The King however refused to yield to the dictation of the Whigs, whom he described as "the phalanx," and "the leaders of sedition."[3] His determination was communicated by Shelburne to a meeting of the friends of the deceased minister. At this interview, according to Keppel, who was present, Fox "showed himself decided to give no facility to the new arrangement." Once he was brought by Richmond, who greatly disapproved of Fox's conduct,[4] to say, "that if Lord John Cavendish," who was determined in any case to leave the Exchequer, "would accept the seals, he would remain his colleague." Lord Ashburton was very anxious for a complete union, but Burke treated the idea with contempt, saying the Shelburne party did not consist of more than seven or eight persons. Lord Ashburton's reply was Non numeremur, sed ponderemur. Lord John Cavendish however again enacted the part which he had
- ↑ Walpole, Journals, ii. 547, 548. Correspondence, viii. 253, 261, 351.
- ↑ With true instinct, Horace Walpole saw that if Shelburne was to be put aside, Fox should be Rockingham's successor. "I have been called a republican," he writes to Lady Ossory; "but if never a republican quite, I never approached in thought, wish, or inclination to an aristocracy. … I never admired Lord Rockingham; shall his self-appointed executors tell me that I am to take the oaths to Lord Fitzwilliam? My Whiggism is not confined to the Peak of Derbyshire."—Correspondence, viii. 246-247.
- ↑ The King to Shelburne, July 9th, 1782.
- ↑ The King to Shelburne, July 4th, 1782. Autobiography of Grafton, 327.
