Lordship everything he could have wished in the conduct of the Administration. Without making any answer to this, I contented myself with expressing surprise, that no compliment should have been paid to you by any communication whatever of any plan or particulars of what was to be done. He could only, he said, desire me to consider the extreme difficulty and delicacy of doing it, when the conduct of the whole was not to be entrusted to you. My reply was of course much the same, as I had made upon a like occasion to Mr. Pitt."[1]
Notwithstanding his treatment by his former colleagues, Shelburne gave them every assurance of his support. "I have been at Court to-day," writes Orde, "where was a great kissing of hands. Lord Sydney did me the honour to show me your Lordship's letter, with which he seems to be highly pleased, and speaks of it with great satisfaction as a proof of your Lordship's friendly intentions. I found that it had been shown to the Duke of Rutland, who mentioned it to me in the like terms, and added that he was always sure you would act in the handsomest and the noblest manner."[2]
No person regretted the retirement of Shelburne more, both on public and personal grounds, than Oswald. "I have called upon him," Benjamin Vaughan wrote to Shelburne, "as I know him to be much consulted at present. He had dined with me a day or two before, and had repeated the question often put to me, why it might not be hoped that your Lordship should take some part, even though not the former, of the Administration? I told him that I had written to be instructed in your Lordship's measures. 'Well,' said I, 'Mr. Oswald, Lord Shelburne has given an answer, and it is somewhat contemptuous to your young gentleman. As it has proved their own wish, he has desired not to be thought connected with them, lest he should injure them.' After repeating that your Lordship had not condescended to speak about them, till pressed to it, I gave him the very words. 'And now,' said I, 'Who is the most ambitious, Lord
