pretext and perseverance; their numbers were very great, and the King had displeased so many, and they stuck so well together, that they really made up what one might call the town. We had before agreed that Mr. Pitt wanted coolness; and I forgot to add, that his young friends blinded him by their adulation, and that his Attorney and Solicitor Generals[1] were men who wanted sober discreet manners of speaking. But recapitulating, I said that the only thing then to carry him (Mr. Pitt) through, was the King. That the King very possibly might be pursuing his old plan of putting to the test the virtue of all public characters, and had led Mr. Pitt into this scrape. Of that I knew nothing; and certainly that sort of policy had got to its last shift, as another set of changes would ruin him.'"[2]
While the Administration was in process of formation, and during the great struggle against the Whig houses in and out of Parliament, which was only terminated by the final defeat of the latter at the general election of 1784, Shelburne never left Bowood. The condition of politics and a succession of personal losses both equally inclined him to this course. Oswald, who had been very seriously ill in 1783 on the road between London and Paris,[3] died in the course of the year; he was shortly followed by Alderman Townshend; while Barré became totally blind. The old antagonist of Barré, Lord North, also lost his sight before the close of his days. It is said that one day they met one another at Tunbridge. "Ah Colonel," said Lord North with all his old wit, "whatever may have been our former animosities, I am persuaded there are no two men who would now be more glad to see one another than you and I." From this time Barré appeared but seldom in the House. "To my memory alone," he sadly observed on one of these rare occasions, "I must henceforward recur for assistance in stating or recalling facts."[4] The successor of
