His Lordship manifested either so much apathy, or so much indifference to the subject, that on the 2nd of March following, William Harrison thus writes, "l have at last got my answer from Lord North, which, like all the rest, is nothing at all;" and again, "Lord North seems to pay no attention at all, but would willingly waive off every thing that takes public money out of the common channel of pensions," &c.[1]
That the honourable Frederic North, first Lord of the Treasury, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a knowledge of the interest his royal Master took in the success of the Claimant (and how could
- ↑ Crabbe the poet (afterwards zealously patronized by Mr. Burke) was equally unsuccessful in addressing his Lordship, who, like—
A plain good man, and Balaam was his name—
was no more obliged to admire what had Apollo's sanction, than to attend to uncommon merit in mathematical mechanics. If neither of these attempts to reach the Premier's sensorium (wherever that was) could penetrate it, yet by those who are not admitted behind the scenes in the national drama, it would be universally supposed that a knowledge of the interest which the principal actor took in the Petitioner's success, would have elicited, if not much alacrity, yet some readiness in the Prime Minister, to take the cue from his Patron in this part of the piece. The absence of this deference, when combined with the direct opposition which Lord Sandwich, another cabinet minister, lending himself, perhaps unawares, to the revenge of the Lunar party, is found to offer to the King's views, leaves a field open for the arguments of philosophical politicians, with whom we are unequal to interfere.
