played with such success in 1766, and by a refusal to remain rendered any arrangement impossible. According to Keppel, "the share of power offered by Lord Shelburne, was all that Mr. Fox could desire to assist his management of the House of Commons, and was equal to anything that could in justice be required or with propriety granted."[1] On the 5th of July there was an animated conversation at Court, when Fox peremptorily asked Shelburne if he intended to accept the offer made to him by the King. Shelburne replied that he did, and Fox thereupon went to the King and resigned the seals.[2] He was followed in his resignation by Lord John Cavendish, Lord Althorp, and Mr. Montague, all members of the Treasury Board formed by Lord Rockingham, by Burke and Sheridan, by the Duke of Portland, by Mr. Fitzpatrick, who preferred attaching his fortunes to his friend rather than to his brother-in-law, and by Mr. Lee, the Solicitor-General. Some members also of the Whig connection who held places at Court resigned their appointments, but the resignations fell far short of what Fox had expected, and he and his friends hardly concealed their disappointment. Out of doors their conduct met with little approval or sympathy from a public opinion which at once realized the delight with which the news of the ministerial dissensions would be received in France and Spain.[3] Unwarned however by the first early symptoms of popular disapproval, they resolved to persevere in the course on which they had entered, careless of what means they employed to obtain their ends, and not foreseeing that in another year they would emerge ruined, alike politically and morally, from their death struggle with a Sovereign as unscrupulous as themselves.
- ↑ Autobiography of Grafton, 227. Memorials of Fox, i. 435-437. Life of the Lord Chief Justice Kenyon, 45, 47. Nicholls' Recollections, i. 98.
- ↑ Memorials of Fox, i. 435-437. The King to Shelburne, July 3rd, 4th, 1782. On the evening of the 5th at 6 o'clock Horace Walpole writes to Lord Harcourt: "The Prince of Wales dined with Mr. Fox yesterday by previous engagement; they drank royally. Charles went thence to Brook's, stayed till four in the morning, and it being so early finished the evening at White's with Lord Weymouth, 'and the evening and the morning and the next day were the first day.'"—Correspondence, viii. 245.
- ↑ Walpole, Journals, ii. 552. Correspondence, viii. 252.
