Charter. But the merits and the demerits of the East India Bill were in reality only the stalking-horse of politicians. Men and not measures were alone regarded throughout the events of 1782 and 1783, and, as Lord Grantham observed, Lord Shelburne always trusted too much to the latter.[1]
Of the three persons most concerned in settling the new Ministry, the King, as he himself told Temple, was hostile to Shelburne, for having as he considered abandoned the situation in February, when it was tenable, while Temple accused him of being impracticable, and of having shown vanity and arrogance in refusing to court an alliance with North at the same period.[2] Of the friends of Pitt, Rose was bitterly hostile to Shelburne, for having refused him a personal favour,[3] while Dundas, now as ever a worshipper of the rising sun, was as ready to desert Shelburne for Pitt as he had been to desert North for Shelburne. His present protestations, as Shelburne wrote to Orde, were "too plain."[4] Pitt himself was probably not very anxious to give himself a colleague with opinions as decided and a will as strong as his own. It was certainly one of Pitt's distinguishing characteristics, only to care for power when undivided and absolute, and he consequently surrounded himself with colleagues either personally devoted to him, or else mere cyphers. It
- ↑ Grantham to Harris, February 20th, 1783. Malmesbury Correspondence, i. 501.
- ↑ Courts and Cabinets of George III., i. 303. In the "Notes" by the Abbé Morellet the following passage occurs: "II y avait pour le Roi que deux routes à prendre: ou se donner un Ministre principal qui fût le sien, qui ne tînt à aucun parti, et qui en employant le pouvoir du Roi à revendiquer toute sa prérogative, le mît en état de se passer de la Chambre des Communes pour tout ce qui n'est pas du ressort de cette chambre; ou retomber dans la dépendance d'un parti. Le Roi paraît avoir eu au fond de l'âme au moins autant d'aversion pour ce dernier parti que pour l'autre. Il est impossible qu'il n'ait pas repugné fortement à se remettre entre les mains de Fox de qui il avait essuyé des insultes cruelles; le chef de ses ennemis; décrié aux yeux de la nation pour son immoralité, etc. D'un autre côté il a craint peut-être de tomber dans la dépendance d'un Premier Ministre, et en s'affranchissant d'un joug de retomber sous un autre. Tout ceci au reste n'est que conjecture, que je suis bien éloigné de garantir." Lansdowne House MSS. Notes of Conversations in 1783.
- ↑ The place of collector at St. Christopher's had at Mr. Rose's request been promised to Mr. Diver, Mr. Rose's brother-in-law. The Duke of Portland however appointed some one else. Mr. Rose thereupon assumed that this had been done with Lord Shelburne's consent, for what reason it is impossible to imagine, and went to the latter "to state to him his determination never to be in a room with him for the future."—Rose's Diary, i. 30.
- ↑ Shelburne to Orde, December 1783.
