settled an arrangement in favour of the Duke's friends, and retired from his public station on

being the only appearance afforded by him of his not being infinitely displeased at the currency of the calumny.

As to the royal pupil, who, by a much misplaced confidence, fell under his management at the tender age of susceptibility of all impressions, it was not well possible for him to prevent a deeprooted partiality for a choice manifestly not made by him, but for him. In raw, unexperienced, unguarded youth, practised upon by an insidious study of his inclinations, not to rectify, but to govern him by them; captivated by an unremitting attention to humour, and perpetuate the natural bent of that age to the lighter objects of amusement; instituted to an implicit faith in the man who littered his head with trifles, and, unable to corrupt his heart, only hardened it like his own against the remonstrances of true greatness, while warping his understanding with the falsest notions of men and things, and especially of maxims of state, of which himself never had so much as an elementary idea; thus delivered up to such a tutor, how could the disciple possibly escape such a combination? What of essentially wise or magnanimous could he learn from such a pedlar in politics and manners? No one can impart what himself never had. Honour, gratitude, dignity of sentiment, energy of sincerity, comprehensiveness of views, were not in him to inculcate. Obstinacy, under the stale disguise of firmness; the royalty of repairing a wrong by persisting in it, the plausible decencies of private life, the petty moralities, the minutenesses of public arrangements, the preference of dark juggle, mystery, and low artifice, to the frank open spirit of government; the abundant sufficiency of the absence of great vices, to atone for the want of great virtues; a contempt of reputation, and especially that execrable absurdity in the sovereign of a free people, the neglect of popularity; were all that the hapless pupil could possibly learn from such a preceptor.

the eighth day of April 1763.

He made Mr.

Moulded by such an eternal tutorage, imperceptibly formed not to govern, but to be governed; and from being the lawful possessor of a great empire, converted into the being himself the property of a little silly subject; stolen thus away from himself, what remains for us but ardently to pray that, before it is too late, he may be restored to himself; that he may at length enter into the genuine spirit of royalty, assume the part he was born to, and have a character of his own: May he quit a borrowed darkness for native light, never more to exhibit, in any the least degree, the copy of an original, whom not to resemble would surely be the honour! Let him give us the sovereign himself, not the favourite at second hand, or what is still worse yet, the favourite's commis* at second hand! And in this deprecation of detriment and dishonour to himself, there can questionless be nothing disloyal or disrespectful.

This testimony of a genuine sentiment takes birth too naturally from the subject with which it is connected to appear a digression; though in such a cause, and in such a crisis of the times, I should have judged even the digressiveness meritorious, and certainly alone the best apology for a portrait, the exhibition of which, from any motive of pique or personality, would be infinitely beneath the meanest of daubers.

Here it would be perfectly insignificant to search out the distinction, without a deference to the public, whether or not the favourite, after that scandalous desertion, when he as abjectly sneaked out of an ostensible office in the state, as he had arrogantly strutted into it, retains individually by himself, or by his appointment of others, the power of continuing that infernal chaos, into which he from the first plunged affairs, at the time that, through his cloudy imbecility, it so soon thickened in the clear of the fairest horizon that ever tantalised a country with the

* Charles Jenkinson, now Earl of Liverpool.

Grenville his successor*, hoping he should, by

promise of meridian splendour. It is enough to observe, that since his having delivered up, to his own parasites, that master whom he thus made the center of their paltry cabals, and the prey of their sordid rapaciousness, it appears, at least from the identity of spiritlessness, of insensibility to honour, of want of plan, and of the total disorder in which we see things for ever languishing, that the same destructive impulsion still subsists; while none could collaterally be admitted into any participation of trust, but such as would wink hard, and at least pretend not to see through that gross illusion, with which a natural desire of not appearing to be governed, might blind a Prince, without imposing on any but himself.-The joke of holding committees with respective ministers of departments passes on no one. In vain would the master take blame upon himself, and father errors not his own. The wires of motion to the will have been too clumsily worked not to be seen, however they may not have been felt. Add, that the primary cause may, by the fairest investigation, be brought home to that unhappy man whom chance had thrown into a channel of power to do much good, or much mischief. The last he has mechanically done, without, perhaps, much meaning it, coming upon the scene with absolutely every thing in his favour, except himself. All prejudice then apart, mark in him, to his Prince a tutor without knowledge, a minister without ability, a favourite without gratitude! the very anti-genius of politics; the curse of Scotland; the disgrace of his master; the despair of the nation; and the disdain of history.

* When Mr. Grenville was appointed secretary of state, he was under the necessity of soliciting his brother, Lord Temple, to permit him to be re-elected for the town of Buckingham; and upon his promotion to the treasury, he repeated the same act of supplication. His generous brother said, It would have been a disgrace to government to have seen the King's first minister a mendicant for a seat in Parliament.

that promotion, appease the Duke's choler. it was immediately signified to all the foreign ministers, that his Majesty had placed his government in the hands of Mr. Grenville, Lord Halifax, and Lord Egremont, and as soon as the other arrangements were made (the particulars of which the reader will see in the list of administrations at the end of the work), the session was closed on the nineteenth of April.

It was upon the speech delivered at the close of this session, that The North Briton made those observations which drew upon the supposed author an illegal and vindictive exertion of all the power and malice of government. The particulars of this interesting affair have been amply stated in several books. In Junius's address to the King, originally published on the 12th of December 1769, are these words, "The destruc"tion of one man has been for many years the sole object of your government."

CHAPTER XXV.

Interview between Mr. Pitt and Lord Bute.-Conferences between the King and Mr. Pitt.-Treaty of connivance.-Mr. Pitt at Court.—His Remark. -Lord Hardwicke's conduct.

EARLY in the month of August 1765, a circumstance happened which threw the ministry into some disorder and perplexity.-This was the sudden death of the Earl of Egremont. The ministers had rendered themselves odious to the nation by supporting the measures of the late administration, and the measures of the court, in the persecution of Mr. Wilkes. Notwithstanding Lord Bute had recommended them to their situations, as the bargain of his own escape,.. yet he grew impatient under the proscription he had imposed on himself, and apprehending that their removal would be received with satisfaction by the public, he seized this opportunity, which the death of the secretary of state afforded, and the vacancy of the president's chair, which had not been filled since the death of Lord Granville, to form a new administration; not so much with a view of manifesting his influence, as of effecting his emancipation. He fixed his attention