"Because Sir," replied Johnson, "I suppose he promised the King to do whatever the King pleased."[1]
Some said he intended to dissolve Parliament; nor were there wanting numerous advisers of such a course.[2] Considering the great success which attended the dissolution of the same Parliament by Pitt in the following year, it might seem as if a dissolution would have been the best policy. The circumstances were not however exactly the same, as however unpopular the Coalition already was, it had not yet had full time to show that the genius of violence and faction which had presided over its birth was also to inspire and direct its maturer counsels. Nor was Shelburne Pitt. The popularity of the latter was in no small degree owing to the fact that he stood totally unconnected with the quarrels of the past twenty years: quarrels of which the country was grown weary and disgusted. The nation in 1784 was inclined to throw itself into the arms of any man of sufficient ability and purity of character who it was believed would open a new era. The feeling was akin to that which in other countries has led to a Dictatorship and the loss of parliamentary institutions, when they have been made the instruments of sordid intrigues and personal ambitions. The history of England from 1760 to 1782 had been the record of the struggle between the Court and the great Whig Houses, and of the internal jealousies of the latter. Of all this the nation was weary, and although Shelburne following the example of Chatham, had attempted to form an Administration which was to be the slave neither of the King nor of the Whigs, he had been too much personally identified with the turmoil, the strife, and the political anarchy of the past twenty years to have the same hold on the public as Pitt. There was yet another reason why a dissolution in 1783 would have been a dangerous experiment. The
- ↑ Boswell's Johnson, iv. 174. A writer in the European Magazine, xxx, 160, says that Johnson visited Lord Shelburne at Bowood. At dinner he repeated part of his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield. A gentleman arrived late. Shelburne telling what he had missed, went on: "I dare say the Doctor will be kind enough to give it us again." "Indeed, my Lord, I will not. I told the circumstance first for my own amusement; but I will not be dragged in as a story teller to a company."
- ↑ Walpole, Journals, ii. 586 5 and many private letters at Lansdowne House.
