FOOTNOTES:
[10] He himself took a cutter and twenty marines and went to survey the coast. A battery fired on them; and one of the rowers said, “Sir, we are in great danger.” He replied, coolly, “Pho, they can’t hurt us;” and turning to young Fitzroy (Charles, afterwards Lord Southampton, from whom I received this relation), he said, “Now, if they would not say I was boyish, I would land with these twenty marines, to show them we can.” I have already mentioned his gallant behaviour at Fontenoy, at Laffelt, and at Culloden, at the first of which battles he was taken prisoner; but I cannot help repeating an unsuspected, because disinterested testimonial in his favour. When this miscarriage at Rochfort made so much noise, and the courage of the Generals was questioned, Lord Chesterfield said to Mr. Fox these words: “I am sure Conway is brave; I remember when I was praising George Stanhope (a young man of remarkable spirit, brother of Earl Stanhope), he replied, ‘Faith, my Lord, I believe I have as much courage as other people; indeed, I don’t pretend to be like Harry Conway, who walks up to the mouth of a cannon with as much coolness and grace, as if he was going to dance a minuet.’”
[11] Lord George Sackville, who was privy to this negotiation, and who hated the Speaker on former injuries, said, “Ponsonby is a dirty fellow; we have nothing to do but rub his nose against a Devonshire.”
[12] The conduct of one of his friends was not quite so judicious; Potter, then ill at Bath, sent the Mayor of the place an account of a private letter he had received from Mr. Pitt, lamenting his disappointment, which had broken his heart. This letter was left for public perusal in a bookseller’s shop, till getting into the Bath Journal, Potter thought proper to advertise that this had been done contrary to his intention.
[13] The Duke was much diverted on hearing that Pitt, who had drawn the plan for the Militia, urged against the Generals that there had been no force on the coast of France, but twenty thousand of the Militia!
[14] It appears by Mr. Gray’s Letters, published with his Life by Mr. Mason in 1795, that the laurel was actually offered to Mr. Gray, and was refused by him.
[15] Eldest son of John Earl of Bristol, and Lord Privy Seal: a great favourite of Queen Caroline, and a principal object of Pope’s satire.
1758.
Punch. Who is that?
Luckless. That is an orator, Master Punch.
Punch. An orator!—what’s that?
Luck. Why, an orator is—egad, I can’t tell what: he is a man that nobody dares dispute with.
Fielding’s Pleasures of the Town.
[CHAPTER IV.]
Mr. Pitt’s political Influence at the commencement of the year 1758—Five Great Men—Opening of Parliament, and Speech of Mr. Pitt—Clive’s Victories in India—Military Appointments—Affairs of Ireland—Disinterested conduct of Mr. Conway—Dr. Clayton, Bishop of Clogher—Picture of the Manners of the Age—The King’s Munificence—Affair of the Habeas Corpus—Attorney-General Pratt brings in a Bill for extending it—Anecdotes of the Navy Bill.
Pitt was now arrived at undisturbed possession of that influence in affairs at which his ambition had aimed, and which his presumption had made him flatter himself he could exert like those men of superior genius, whose talents have been called forth by some crisis to retrieve a sinking nation. He had said the last year to the Duke of Devonshire, “My Lord, I am sure I can save this country, and nobody else can.” It were ingratitude to him to say that he did not give such a reverberation to our stagnating Councils, as exceedingly altered the appearance of our fortune. He warded off the evil hour that seemed approaching; he infused vigour into our arms; he taught the nation to speak again as England used to speak to Foreign Powers; and so far from dreading invasions from France, he affected to turn us into invaders. Indeed, those efforts were so puny, so ill-concerted, so ineffectual to any essential purpose, that France looked down with scorn on such boyish flippancies, which Pitt deemed heroic, which Europe thought ridiculous, and which humanity saw were only wasteful of lives, and precedents of a more barbarous warfare than France had hitherto been authorized to carry on. In fact, Pitt had neither all the talents he supposed in himself, nor which he seemed to possess from the vacancy of great men around him. Thinly, very thinly, were great men sown in my remembrance: I can pretend to have seen but five; the Duke of Cumberland, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Granville, Lord Mansfield, and Pitt. I have expatiated on all their characters separately; and yet I am inclined to say a few words more in the light of comparison. It is by setting the same characters in different oppositions and points of view, that nearer acquaintance with them may be struck out.
Lord Granville was most a genius of the five: he conceived, knew, expressed whatever he pleased. The state of Europe and the state of literature were equally familiar to him. His eloquence was rapid, and flowed from a source of wit, grandeur, and knowledge. So far from premeditated, he allowed no reflection to chasten it. It was entertaining, it was sublime, it was hyperbole, it was ridiculous, according as the profusion of ideas crowded from him. He embraced systems like a legislator, but was capable of none of the detail of a magistrate. Sir Robert Walpole was much the reverse: he knew mankind, not their writings; he consulted their interests, not their systems; he intended their happiness, not their grandeur. Whatever was beyond common sense, he disregarded. Lord Mansfield, without the elevation of Lord Granville, had great powers of eloquence. It was a most accurate understanding, and yet capable of shining in whatever it was applied to. He was as free from vice as Pitt, more unaffected, and formed to convince, even where Pitt had dazzled. The Duke of Cumberland had most expressive sense, but with that connexion between his sense and sensibility, that you must mortify his pride before you could call out the radiance of his understanding. Being placed at the head of armies without the shortest apprenticeship, no wonder he miscarried: it is cruel to have no other master than one’s own faults. Pitt’s was an unfinished greatness: considering how much of it depended on his words, one may almost call his an artificial greatness; but his passion for fame and the grandeur of his ideas compensated for his defects. He aspired to redeem the honour of his country, and to place it in a point of giving law to nations. His ambition was to be the most illustrious man of the first country in Europe; and he thought that the eminence of glory could not be sullied by the steps to it being passed irregularly. He wished to aggrandize Britain in general, but thought not of obliging or benefiting individuals.
Lord Granville you loved till you knew him; Sir Robert Walpole, the more you knew him: you would have loved the Duke, if you had not feared him. Pitt liked the dignity of despotism; Lord Mansfield the reality: yet the latter would have served the cause of power, without sharing it: Pitt would have set the world free, if he might not command it. Lord Granville would have preferred doing right, if he had not thought it more convenient to do wrong: Sir Robert Walpole meant to serve mankind, though he knew how little they deserved it; and this principle is at once the most meritorious in oneself and to the world. I beg pardon for this digression.
The Parliament had opened on the first of December in the last year; and, as if to notify honestly, that Germany would not be proscribed by Mr. Pitt, the King’s Speech talked openly of the defence of his Majesty’s dominions of Britain and elsewhere. By that little word elsewhere, Hanover was incorporated into the very language of Parliament. Lord Westmoreland, in the Lords, spoke with applause against re-echoing Addresses, and universal submission to a Minister. In the Commons, Mr. Fox was absent on the death of his favourite nephew, Lord Digby; and elsewhere passed as if a phrase of course, like the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Yet on the 14th, when Lord Barrington, on delivering the estimate of the Army, had complaisantly reverberated the word elsewhere, Mr. Pitt himself said, he did not agree with his Lordship in that term; he meant the Army for our immediate selves. He had never been against continental measures when practicable; but would not now send a drop of our blood to the Elbe, to be lost in that ocean of gore. Other parts of this speech, admired almost beyond any of his orations, were so fine, and so bombast, that I must just mention a few, though I do not intend to fatigue the reader with more speeches: those I have given are sufficient to illustrate our oratory.
Sir John Philipps had spoken dully, Beckford wildly, dropping this expression, “He did not know in what hands we were.” Lord George Sackville had made the apology of Lord Loudun, whose idle conduct in America was much censured; yet where Lord George wished to have him remain, lest, on a change of commanders, he himself should be named. Pitt said, “In what hands were we?—in those of a most gracious King:” on whom he made a panegyric, and of which the least part was not his Majesty’s goodness to him since he last took the Seals. How the King had listened even to him, though least in Administration—though least, he hoped to continue in it with honour: and he spoke of the great concord among the Ministers. But nothing could be well till the Army was subjected to the civil power: they were to obey, not to reason. Those sent on the late expedition had laughed at it even at table—nay, so had some of the Cabinet. He warmed himself on this topic, though he knew, he said, he ought not, as the commander was actually under trial. On Lord Loudun he kept no measures at all, but loaded him with all the asperity peculiar to his style—he had scarce any hopes now, though the people paid such an army in America: not only nothing was done—nothing was attempted. We had lost all the waters; we had not a boat on them now. Every door there was open to France. Though Lord George had excused, he could not; he would not condemn, yet he believed against Lord Loudun, who might have recovered our affairs if he had not loitered from the 9th of July to the 5th of August, inquiring whether or no the French were superior: indeed, for himself, our ill success had hurt his quiet and tainted his health. He then burst out into an Eastern panegyric. There he found Watson, Pococke, and Clive:—what astonishing success had Watson had with only three ships, which had been laid up for some time on land! He did not stay to careen this, and condemn that, but at once sailed into the body of the Ganges. He was supported by Clive, that man, not born for a desk; that heaven-born General, whose magnanimity, resolution, determination, and execution would charm a King of Prussia; and whose presence of mind astonished the Indies!
These heroes soon added new wreaths to those with which Mr. Pitt had crowned them. The King of Prussia took Breslau, and made prisoners an Army of Generals and ten thousand men: and the letters of the following month brought accounts of such victories and riches acquired by Clive as astonished Europe as much as the Indies. Discovering that the Nabob who ruled in that quarter was encouraged by the French to break his alliance with us, and was actually on the march to attack our settlements, Clive bribed his first Minister, who, expediting his treachery in a more summary way than is usual in this part of the world, murdered his master; and then Clive, at the head of only three thousand men, and with a bravery that deserved a better foundation than the assassination of an enemy, attacked and defeated an army of thirty-five thousand. The new Nabob, established by Clive’s influence, made immense presents to our fleet and East India Company. Clive’s share amounted to above 200,000l. Admiral Watson, to whom the Red Riband was destined, died of a fever two days after the engagement.
General Abercrombie was sent to command in America; a man who signalized himself neither before nor after his advancement. Five new Brigadier-Generals and three Colonels, with rank only in our colonies, were appointed to serve under him. Amherst had a separate command, with Wolfe for second. These officers were all selected by Pitt, who contented himself with always speaking of the affair of Rochfort as res intentata, and with keeping the commanders on that expedition unemployed; though Conway, in the most earnest terms, and by every interest he could use, begged to serve in any quality, and in any part of the world. He was refused: and even when the English staff was carried in to the King by Ligonier, his Majesty struck out the names of Mordaunt, Conway, and Cornwallis. Ligonier represented Conway’s eagerness for employment, and that his case was different from Mordaunt’s—he had tried to do something. “Yes,” said the King, “après diné la moutarde.” However, he said he would think of Conway, though not then.
In Ireland, affairs grew to a crisis. The Opposition were inflamed with resentment at the Secret Committee set up by the Duke of Bedford, the management of which they had wrested from him. As the season, too, approached for the departure of the Lord Lieutenant, the Primate had no time to lose for recovering his place in the Regency. Every reason of policy and decency made it more eligible to him to obtain that situation by gentle means than by violence. He and Ponsonby offered terms to the Duke of Bedford, who, though confessing their superiority in the House of Commons, refused to unite with them. In truth, he had involved himself so much with Lord Kildare, and was so unwilling to disoblige Fox by disobliging that Lord, that he knew not how to extricate himself. If Kildare would have softened towards the Primate, the accommodation would soon have been completed; but he would not desert himself; and he knew his party would desert him if once reconciled to the Prelate. More, the Black Rod, was dispatched to England to consult Mr. Fox; the Duke hoping in the meantime to be able to govern independently of either party.
The first step he took towards the system only tended to make it more impracticable. A Judge’s place falling vacant, the Lord Lieutenant, to demonstrate his impartiality, offered the nomination to the Chancellor, who recommended Malone’s greatest enemy, a creature of the Primate, and one formerly employed by Lord George Sackville to write pamphlets on their side. His preferment, thus obtained, was no obligation to the Primate: Malone resented it strongly, and soon took an opportunity of exerting his resentment. The Secret Committee got enlarged powers, intending to turn them against the Duke of Bedford’s Treasury; and the party in general hurried to hostilities.
The Lord Lieutenant’s secretary was a place of great profit, if in the hands of an intelligent and interested man. He had fees from every new commission in the army; and his selling regiments and subordinate ranks had long passed as a matter scarce to be disavowed. If he had great power over his patron, and none over himself, Bishoprics and every other preferment in the gift or at the recommendation of the Lord Lieutenant were marketable at the secretary’s apartments in the Castle. But it was on the death of a King that the secretaryship was largely lucrative. He touched for every renewal of commission and patent. With some of these advantages, Mr. Conway had been a sufferer by the employment. The table and equipage are very expensive for the year of the Lord Lieutenant’s residence in Ireland. It is the second, the fallow[16] year, that indemnifies both the master and the servant; and the Duke of Devonshire quitted before their second year.
Mr. Conway had disdained the least gratification for his interest; and as often as the Duke of Devonshire offered him the nomination of regiments and commissions, he constantly recommended neglected officers, who deserved the station, and were too indigent to reward the service, for which Conway scorned to be rewarded. The great age of the King, joined to the other inducements I have mentioned, had been the principal object that had shone in Rigby’s eyes when he carried the Duke of Bedford to Ireland; but that prospect the Opposition now cut off; and while their patriotism was only sharpened by popularity, it happily served to disburthen poor officers from so heavy a tribute. They proposed a question, which, by the ill-humour of Malone, was carried without a negative, that the Lord Lieutenant’s secretary ought to have no fees for commissions; that the loss ought to be made up to him in some other way. The King, when this resolution came to England, ordered the secretary’s salary to be 2500l. a year. The blow was heavy, and had its effect.
The Primate, having demonstrated his power, showed he was not implacable. Lord Fane, of whose integrity the Duke of Bedford had the greatest opinion—and with some reason, for it was like his own, founded on a partial degree of sense, and easily misled to very contrary purposes—was then in Ireland. To him the Primate sent Lord Hilsborough’s uncle, Mr. Hill, with new offers of accommodation. Lord Fane carried them; but at first the Duke of Bedford was deaf. Lord Fane went again; the Duchess and Rigby were present, and to disguise their inclinations to the treaty, affected to receive him with the same coldness as the Duke did; by which stale art the Duke thought them of his opinion, till they had time to make him of theirs; and then the negotiation was easily carried on, and the Primate restored to his usual power in the Government, where, when once reinstated, he became the sole arbiter of affairs. He avoided interfering with Rigby’s traffic; he assured the Duchess of the homage of her subjects, and secured her return to them; and he had too much insinuation not to charm the Duke himself, who departed to England, smiling and self-satisfied, though sold by one[17] man and vanquished by another! Offers were made to Lord Kildare of being included in this treaty, which he refused, quitting his part of the Regency, but professing to avoid future hostilities. The Primate and the Speaker were left Lords Justices; the third place, Lord Kildare’s [one must have lived in England and seen the abandoned behaviour of our patriots before one could believe it], was filled by Lord Shannon; that very Mr. Boyle, for whom Lord Kildare had commenced all these disturbances, and whose opposition to the Primate had first introduced virtue, and consequently prostitution, into Ireland. Malone, too, kept his place, and Sir Richard Cox[18] was made a Commissioner of the Revenue.
Before I quit the affairs of that country, I must mention a spiritual business that made some noise there. Dr. Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, had already distinguished himself as a man of parts and a freethinker. His Essay on Spirit, which seemed to accord with Clarke’s esoteric doctrine, had more the address of an heresiarch than the plain-dealing simplicity of a Christian pastor. He now published a vindication of the Testament, which seemed calculated for doing anything with the Testament rather than supporting it. Yet the man was believed sincere in his opinions—and so a man ought to be who thinks it worth his while to expose himself by exploding any common prejudices. He even aspired to sufferings for his zeal in propagating counterband metaphysics among illiterate Irish. But the Bishops, his brethren, taking the alarm, and intending a meeting with their orthodox Primate, in order to prepare an application to the Crown for a royal visitation, Clayton died suddenly of a panic, though possessed of a good private estate, and ambitious of martyrdom!
This little flame was soon extinguished; in fact, there were no religious combustibles in the temper of the times. Popery and Protestantism seemed at a stand. The modes of Christianity were exhausted, and could not furnish novelty enough to fix attention. Linzendorffe plied his Moravians with nudities, yet made few enthusiasts. Whitfield and the Methodists made more money than disturbances; his largest crop of proselytes lay among servant-maids; and his warmest devotees went to Bedlam without going to war. Bower, whom some thought they had detected as a Jesuit, and who at most was but detected as an impostor, had laid open the practices of the Catholics, and detailed the establishments of the Jesuits in the very heart of London, without occasioning either alarm or murmur against those fathers. His History of the Popes, one of the ablest performances we have, was decried, because, to recommend a work of truth and utility, he had embroidered his own story with some marvellous legends. Yet, uninflammable as the times were, they carried a great mixture of superstition. Masquerades had been abolished, because there had been an earthquake at Lisbon; and when the last jubilee-masquerade was exhibited at Ranelagh, the ale-houses and roads to Chelsea were crowded with drunken people, who assembled to denounce the judgments of God on persons of fashion, whose greatest sin was dressing themselves ridiculously.
A more inconvenient reformation, and not a more sensible one, was set on foot by societies of tradesmen, who denounced to the magistrate all bakers that baked or sold bread on Sundays. Alum, and the variety of spurious ingredients with which bread, and indeed all wares, were adulterated all the week round, gave not half so much offence as the vent of the chief necessary of life on the seventh day. Indecent prints were prohibited: the Chief-Justice Mansfield caused to be seized at an auction a well-known tale, called “The Woman of Pleasure,” a work that simplified novels to their original intention. Some of the elders, too, of our own Church, seeing what harvests were brought into the tabernacles of Whitfield and Wesley by familiarizing God’s word to the vulgar, and by elevating vulgar language, had the discretion to apply the same call to their own lost sheep, and tinkled back their old women by sounding the brass of the Methodists. One Ashton, a quaint and fashionable preacher of the Orthodox, talked to the people in a phrase compounded of cant and politics: he reproved them for not coming to church, where “God keeps a day, but sees little company;” and informed them that “our ancestors loved powder and ball, and so did our Generals; but the latter loved them for their hair and hands.” Yet to do justice to better principles, the age had made some estimable improvements. Prize-fighting, in which we had horribly resembled the most barbarous and most polite nations, was suppressed by the Legislature. Hogarth had undertaken the cause of humanity, and painted satires on all species of cruelty. From France and Italy, we had adopted hospitals for foundlings; and from the dictates of nature, all manner of hospitals. Our stage grew chaste; indecency dared not to show its face in a modern comedy, though it still remained in possession of the old ones; and what is remarkable, having been tolerated when women went to the theatre in masks, preserved its hold, now they went without them.
About this time, Lord Bute[19] obtained by the means of Pitt the place of Commissioner of Excise for Scott, the late Preceptor, to whom it had been promised. It was even wrested from a young Pelham, to whom Newcastle had actually given it. Lord Bute thought this service to Scott necessary, and had insisted warmly—otherwise Pitt shunned all interfering in the disposal of employments.
The King, on the death of Princess Caroline, had voluntarily promised to continue her allowance to Princess Emily, who handsomely engaged to pay the same pensions and the same grants to the prisons that her sister Caroline had done. She had even desired to impart a large portion of it to her sister Mary of Hesse; but the King, while the vapour of munificence lasted, said he should take care of Mary. In a month’s time, the Duke of Newcastle was sent in form to notify to Princess Emily that the King retracted his promise, and should not continue to her the allowance of Princess Caroline.
An affair was now opened, which having once been deemed the most important point to English liberty, would seem to demand large discussion. But having been so much agitated formerly, and so well explained in our parliamentary books, and now ending without any alteration—rather without any improvement, of the ancient system, I would willingly be very brief in relating what passed. That I mention it at all with any detail, when hastening to the conclusion of my work, is only to mark how much the modes of thinking change, and that fundamentals themselves can make no impression, if apprehensions of arbitrary power are not in fashion. If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary.
The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner-stone of our liberty. The power of pressing, and some other cases, seemed to clash with this invaluable privilege, or that with the utility of pressing; for if soldiers or mariners, impressed and carried to any distant quarters or ports, might demand their habeas corpus, and claim to be brought to the capital to have it examined whether they were properly subject to the violence laid on them, sudden emergencies would be deprived of their service, and a thousand accidents might happen to facilitate their total escape, though ever so fit for the intended destination of them. It was a doubt, too, whether all the twelve Judges could or were obliged to grant the writ in time of vacation. These doubts, which many prudent men thought it best to leave in suspense or overwhelm in silence, others, if warmer, not worse-intentioned, held necessary to be ascertained the moment they had come into question: and they had come into question, and a man, too apt to decide peremptorily when his decisions could strengthen prerogative, had affected to pronounce against that universal immunity from uncertain detention of their persons, which the English, with so much reason, think their birthright. This was the Chief Justice Mansfield. He had a bitter antagonist in the Attorney-General Pratt, who had not only entered into employment on a popular foot, but personally hated the Chief Justice, and was himself steady, warm, sullen,[20] stained with no reproach, and an uniform Whig. He declared himself with impetuosity for the utmost latitude of the Habeas Corpus; and it reflected no small honour on him, that the first advocate of the Crown should appear the firmest champion against prerogative. Nor should we deem less highly of him, because private motives spurred him on to the contest—alas! how cold would public virtue be, if it never glowed but with public heat! So seldom, too, it is that any considerations can bias a man to run counter to the colour of his office and the interests of his profession, that the world should not be too scrupulous about accepting the service as a merit, but should honour it at least for the sake of the precedent.
Pratt prepared a Bill for explaining and extending the Habeas Corpus, and ascertaining its full operation. It was brought into the House of Commons, where Pitt and the Speaker supported it with firmness, and the majority cheerfully promoted it. Yet even in that House it met with avowed foes. The authority of Lord Mansfield had weight with some; the influence of Lord Hardwicke with more; and the lawyers, who easily overlooked the essence of a thing on which there was enough said in their books to enchant them with sounds and cavils, laid themselves out in such a profusion of jargon, that nothing but the nonsense they talked prevented all the world from seeing how much they contradicted both themselves and one another. They made the plainest thing in the world, the right to freedom, the most obscure; and yet while any hope of their becoming intelligible remained, men listened to know through what genealogy of terms this blessing had been derived to them: a common error that I willingly censure, as if precedents brought in support of, did not weaken liberty. Can ages of ancestors submitting to tyranny impeach my freedom? Have I not a right to be free the moment I have the power of being so? If we hold our liberties but by Magna Charta, we hold them by an extorted piece of parchment. If the Crown had a right to enslave us before, it has a right still, for then that struggle was Rebellion; and what right can Rebellion give? Magna Charta was but the King’s confession of his usurpation; as taking up arms against oppression is only doing justice on the oppressor. I have ever found that such grave personages as affect to authenticate our liberties by history and precedent, are no better than those foppish tools the Heralds, who hoard long rolls of nobility, but are ready to forge a pedigree for the first pretender to birth.
The Bill passed easily, though tediously, through the Commons. Before I proceed to its fate among the Lords, I must touch upon the other events of the season.
The campaign was opened on our part with great success. Prince Ferdinand and that gallant boy, his nephew, drove the French out of Hanover, by a plan, like that of Turenne in Alsace, of attacking them in four different quarters at once. The Count de Clermont, who had succeeded Richelieu, behaved with a politeness that sufficiently indicated how much the French were humbled;—he gave a pass to a Courier, to come and acquaint the King that he was again master of his dominions. But the virtuous humanity of the Duc de Randan must not be confounded with the humiliation of his countrymen: Governor of Hanover, he had treated the conquered with amiable lenity; and when he was obliged to quit his post, and had full time to destroy his magazines, he nobly abandoned them to the magistrates, and marched himself the last out of the city, to prevent his troops from committing any revengeful outrage.
George Grenville took advantage of the triumphant situation of his connexion, and renewed his Navy Bill, which had been thrown out the last year. And here Mr. Pitt had an opportunity of showing that if he had submitted to unite with the very men he had persecuted, the depression fell to them. The Duke of Newcastle, Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Anson were all obliged to vote for this very Bill, which they had rejected last year. Some pretended that this shifting conduct was but a compromise, and that their intention of flinging out the new Habeas Corpus was to be overlooked, in consideration of their facilitating the Navy Bill; a bargain about laws, not the more incredible for its being shameful; and considering for what trifling acts Mr. Pitt has stickled, while he acquiesced in the loss of such an invaluable Bill, his patriotism will lie under the suspicion of being more specious than real. Lord Winchelsea, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Marchmont, and the adherents of the Duke and Fox, still opposed the Navy Bill; but it was carried on the first division by 74 to 14. At the third reading, Lord Bath spoke upon it,—a speech so miscellaneous and rambling, that it resembled his ancient orations, except that in this he much commended Sir Robert Walpole. Lord Denbigh attacked Lord Marchmont, and said, he remembered when that Lord had been connected with a man of very different principles. Lord Marchmont, thinking Lord Bolingbroke was the person alluded to, treated his memory with great severity—though, by the way, Lord Bolingbroke had died in friendship with him. Lord Denbigh, without rising, said aloud, “He mistakes; I meant Sir William Windham.” Marchmont was disconcerted. The other, after the debate, went up to Lord Hardwicke, and said, “Sir William Windham put me under Lord Marchmont in politics; and one day, in warm conversation, the latter clapped his hand on my knee, and said, ‘Young man, remember I tell you, this country will never be in a better situation while one of this family is on the Throne.’” The Bill passed.