who it was even reported were about to have a duel.[1] The general wish of the Whigs was that they should fight, that one should be shot, and the other hanged for it.[2] No encounter however ensued, and Lord Lansdowne retired to the "woods" from which, as he assured the House of Lords, "he was just come," without having to add another duel to his exploits against Colonel Fullarton.
In these "woods" he now generally remained for the greater part of the year, avoiding London and Parliament. His relations with the Government were naturally delicate, from the relative positions of Pitt and himself. With the Opposition he refused to hold any communication. They made it a principle, he said, to oppose everything right or wrong, and thereby to stifle and mislead public opinion. Faction was however the weapon most natural to a party which, while professing to be more liberal than the Government, was in reality behind the time on all the great questions of the day.
Under these circumstances it was only natural that Lord Lansdowne should prefer the society he gathered around him at Bowood and the occupations of country life to the game of politics in London. He at the same time kept up a busy correspondence, both at home and abroad, chiefly on economic subjects, to which he was now turning his attention in an increasing degree. Morellet kept him informed of all that was passing in France, Arthur Lee of the state of affairs in America, and Orde of events in Ireland; while Baring and Jekyll supplied the latest commercial and political news from London.
One effect of the study of the principles of political economy was to convince him more and more that the terrible condition of the rural poor, especially in his own neighbourhood, was in no small degree owing to the very laws intended for their relief. "I have long been mortified," he wrote to a friend, "to see the state of the poor
