it, if not unfair, at least a poor compliment to the House, to attribute to an individual what was owing to their resolutions. Conway retorted what was perfectly true, and what he had a special right to say, that the independence of America had never been made a question in that House at all.
Fox was supported by Burke and Lord John Cavendish. The speech of the latter was brief and moderate, but Burke surpassed himself in that bad taste which nearly invariably disfigured his speeches when persons and not principles were in question. His speech, which was listened to with the utmost impatience, concluded by his asking Conway, whether if he had lived in the time of Cicero, he would have taken Catiline upon trial for his colleague in the consulship, after he had heard his guilt clearly demonstrated by the great orator? "Would he be co-partner with Borgia in his schemes, after he had read of his accursed principles in Machiavel? He could answer for him he knew he would not. Why then did he adhere to the present man? He meant no offence, but he would speak his honest mind. If Lord Shelburne was not a Catiline or a Borgia in morals, it must not be ascribed to anything but his understanding."[1] Burke would have done well, before uttering these sentiments, to have recollected the discreditable arrangement which when about to leave the Pay Office he had attempted to perpetrate for the benefit of his son.[2] Sir George Yonge and Pitt followed on the ministerial side. The speech of the latter marked the commencement of his long contest with Fox. He said he was bound to believe what the latter had said, but had it not been for his solemn declarations, he would have attributed his resignation to a balk in a struggle for power. His conduct was, in his
- ↑ The Rev. William Mason, writing to Horace Walpole, January 18th, 1783, says, "I think that Burke's mad obloquy against Lord Shelburne, and those virulent pamphlets in which he certainly must have had a hand, will do more to fix him in his office than anything else. By coming into Yorkshire to Lord Fitzwilliam's last summer, and there wrangling with various of his Lordship's guests about Parliamentary Reform, he in like manner indisposed several gentlemen of property and consequence against that noble lord." Correspondence, viii. 317.
- ↑ Walpole, Journals, ii. 554, who speaks of Burke's "frantic proposals." Memorials of Fox, i. 451.
