friendship of Fox and Burke to be severed, and it was a complete divergence of opinion on these events which at this period also led to an estrangement between Barré and Lord Lansdowne. The blow to the latter was heavy, for it was the termination of a friendship which had lasted without interruption for more than thirty years. "I take it for granted," Lord Lansdowne wrote to Bentham, "you do not mean to give up Bowood for the summer. We reserve till then telling you all we think about the Colonel; but there must be nothing of old kindnesses in little or in great character. Though I do not pretend to rival Mr. Pitt, I am enough of a negotiator to know the danger of suffering principles to be lodged."[1] Barré vacated his seat in Parliament, and was succeeded in the representation of Calne by Benjamin Vaughan;[2] to the great disappointment of Bentham, who was under the impression that he was going to be returned. He expressed his disappointment in a letter of sixty-one pages, accusing his patron of the breach of an engagement, commenting also with great bitterness on the absurd condition of the present rump of the ci-devant Shelburne party and on the character of his friends, and urging him once more to try to assume a leading place in Parliament. "The curious thing," he said, "is that there is nothing I could say to you of their insignificance in which you have not gone before me." To this strange effusion Lord Lansdowne replied in a letter which the Editor of Bentham's works allows does the writer great credit. After explaining that no offer such as Bentham imagined, had ever been made, he went on to say: "Now that I know your wishes, I assure you that it will give me great pleasure if I can contribute to the completion of them; and that I will spare no pains for the purpose, so far as consists with the engagements I have, express or implied, which have taken place when I was totally ignorant of
- ↑ Bentham, x. 258. June 20th, 1791.
- ↑ For a few months the seat was held by Mr. Morris, K.C. of Box, in the county of Wilts, probably during the absence of Vaughan in France. As to Vaughan and his visit to France in 1794, see the article in the Dictionary of National Biography, by the present author, lviii. 158-159.
