further advised Shelburne to advise the King to send for Portland, or if he did not resign himself, to try to coalesce with North.
Shelburne next saw Pitt. The following day Lord John Cavendish was to bring forward a second motion, which, with sublime indifference to the declaration of its predecessor, that the House had not yet had time to examine the preliminaries and therefore could not applaud them, now proposed to censure them in the lump, without even calling for papers. "Such a gross indecorum," says Walpole, "was perhaps occasioned by the desire of saving Lord North from any retrospect the neglect of which they could not justify if they went into articles against Lord Shelburne."[1] The result of the interview between Shelburne and Pitt seems to have been that they should await the debate on the Resolutions; and that if Pitt saw that the result must be adverse, he should announce the resignation of Shelburne.
Their decision was based to a considerable extent on an idea that the King had been hitherto playing them false and now regretted it. The division list of the House of Commons might consequently in some instances be altered, and as a few votes would turn the scale, the Resolutions of Lord John Cavendish might after all be thrown out. In the previous division Jenkinson, once Secretary to Lord Bute, who had been a member of Lord North's Administration after 1778, as Secretary at War, and was still regarded with Mr. John Robinson as the leader of the party known as the King's friends in the House of Commons, had indeed voted for the Address, but he had not been followed by all the members who were supposed to know his real mind, and some members of the household, it was supposed with the consent of the King, had expressed disapprobation of the peace.[2] The suspicions of Shelburne were thereby aroused, for he had always distrusted Jenkinson, and they were increased on receiving a letter from Mr. Orde, who had succeeded
