advantage from the opportunity it gave of showing to Lord Rockingham, the Cavendishes, Mr. Fox, and their principal friends that we would not stir except in conjunction with them. This circumstance cemented the Opposition into a more solid body, and furnished the means that Lord Camden and I improved, by persuading Lord Shelburne not to contest with Lord Rockingham the Treasury, in case a new Administration was to be formed. Lord Shelburne yielded the point with a better grace than I had expected, and it must be considered as of consequence, since nothing could be more generally circulated by the Ministerial party or more universally credited than the impossibility of such a compliance ever existing between the Leaders of Opposition."[1]
The proposals of the Commissioners appointed under the second of Lord North's Conciliatory Bills were summarily rejected by Congress. Before leaving America they issued a Proclamation which contained threats of carrying on the war in future with the utmost severity. The Proclamation was said to have received the approval of Mansfield, against whom it had been an article of accusation in former years that when prosecuting the rebels of 1745 he never applied the epithet rebels or any other harsh epithets to them.[2] This charge he did not attempt at the time to deny, for he said that he had the honour to serve a benign prince and prosecute on behalf of a great and merciful people, and that to obtain Lord Coke's fortune he would not have used the expressions which Lord Coke had used against Sir Walter Raleigh. Shelburne now said that he regretted that Lord Mansfield had not retained the benignant ideas and benevolent disposition of Sir William Murray.[3]
The attacks of Fox, Burke, Barré and Thomas Townshend in the House of Commons were equally vigorous. Upon one of these debates, in which Barré was conspicuous, Garrick, the intimate friend of many members of the Opposition, wrote the following lines, specially
- ↑ Autobiography of the Duke of Grafton, 307.
- ↑ See Vol. I. p. 68.
- ↑ Parliamentary History, xx, 34, 35.
