Lord Temple endeavoured to explain away this coolness, and said Lord Lyttelton was so newly reconciled to them that Mr. Pitt had not talked openly to him; but, continued he, if Conway had not been turned out, we should now have no Opposition—intimating, that my zeal was founded on resentment, not on any attachment to him and Mr. Pitt; and though with regard to himself this was most true, it was most unadvised arrogance in him to drop these words to me (as he did),—“Conway did not resign for us.” At the same time he was profuse of incendiary volubility, and of compliments to myself, particularly on my not only having overlooked Wilkes’s attacks,[26] but in voting for him. We agreed in our sentiments, that there should be a select junto of the ablest men in the House of Commons to conduct the party. “Still, my Lord,” said I, “we should have difficulties even there: the Duke of Cumberland would object to the admission of Lord George Sackville to our councils.” Lord Temple answered abruptly, “We must not have a Prince of the blood for first Minister; that would entirely alienate the King.” This sentence explained the Duke of Cumberland’s complaints of Mr. Pitt’s coldness to all his overtures. I replied, I wished no more than his Lordship to see the Duke Minister; but he was of great credit to our party, and his life too precarious to make him formidable: “but,” said I, “I was speaking of Lord George”—“Oh!” interrupted he, “there are very, very great difficulties about Lord George: he must make his own way before we can do anything for him.”

I was so offended at this royal style of we and us, and saw so plainly that Lord Temple, though he would be glad of our bearing him on our shoulders to St. James’s, could not even disguise his little inclination to us, that I determined to disappoint him, and forbear all connexion both with Mr. Pitt and him. I acquainted Mr. Conway with the ill-success of this visit; and here too, as usual, had a pill of mortification to swallow. Provoked at Lord Temple’s discourse, he wished, he said, I had not gone so far: Mr. Pitt should come to him; he would not go to Mr. Pitt; nor liked to be thought to court anybody. I replied that it was with his consent I had proposed that interview to Lord Lyttelton; that I should never wish my friend to court men in power: overtures of union to men out of power were different; nor was there any sense in opposing without union. I told him we must either form as strong a party as we could, or give up the game. We could do better without Pitt than he without us; for he would never dare alone and unfollowed to trust himself with Lord Bute. Our business was to serve our country and preserve our characters. I had staked everything, and valued not my fortune; but I did value my character, my understanding, and my ease; nor would expose my sense by a tame, middling, now-and-then opposition. That I would make no peace with the Ministers, but would go abroad, if I could not find more activity and more sense, than I had met with hitherto. Conway replied (unfeelingly enough as to me), that for himself he was independent: he could wait; and supposed, if not soon, something would turn up at last. That he would oppose occasionally, but did not think it reasonable to say, It shall do now, or I will not try. This was a true picture of us both. I had embarked him and myself on principle, and without consideration; had gone on with redoubled zeal when I saw him injured; and now was impatient to repair the effects of my own rashness. He had been drawn in without knowing it, and had continued to act by system; could not bear to own, even to me, how deeply he felt the wound he had received; but was as much too much undisguised, on the other hand, in letting me perceive how little he felt the force of the sacrifice I had made to him. In this, and all his conversations, he dwelt on his obligations to the Dukes of Devonshire and Grafton. I said I respected their characters, but could not content myself with so narrow a bottom. He said, he thought himself bound in honour to acquaint Charles Townshend with what had passed. I said, it would immediately make him leave us; but I should not object to it, if he thought this strange delicacy honourable or necessary. He said he should not talk farther of it, nor appear cool to Mr. Pitt, lest it should be said that he had paid court to him, and was angry at the disappointment. He would have no opportunity, I told him, of showing either anger or civility to Mr. Pitt; but if he acquainted Townshend, all the world would know what had passed. He did write to Townshend the whole account.

I was now reduced to as disagreeable a situation as can well be conceived. I had, from a point of honour, and from ancient friendship, gone all lengths for a man who I perceived had much more system than warmth of affection. My secrets were communicated to a babbler; and it would be known that I had tried every quiver to wound the Ministers, without finding a single arrow to my purpose. The only thing that remained to do, I did—I kept my temper; and neither let Conway nor any man else suspect the mortifications I underwent. It had been double pleasure to my enemies to know I was not content with him; and to have let him know it, had disappointed the purposes to which I might still apply him both for his sake and my own. I wished to repair the hurt I had done him; nor till that was effected, could I accomplish my own object of withdrawing myself entirely from politics. The only notice I therefore took of what had passed, was at times to declare to Conway and others of the party, that I was so little satisfied with the conduct of the Opposition, that though I would never desert them while they remained oppressed, yet was I determined to take my leave of them as a party the moment, if ever that moment should arrive, in which they should be successful. This declaration I afterwards found as satisfactory to myself as it had been honest to those with whom I acted; and how much I was in earnest in making this resolution, my adherence to it will demonstrate.

There was perhaps a greater difficulty attending us than all I have mentioned, though not very likely to befall us. It was, what answer we should make to a question Lord John Cavendish very sensibly put to me in one of our conversations. “If we do get the better,” said he, “whom can we make Ministers?” It had been to no purpose to answer, “I do not care whom.” Unless we could form an Administration, we must remain in Opposition. The event did happen; we were offered, and could not furnish out a Ministry; and yet it once more fell into our hands by a concourse of ridiculous circumstances, that if they do not ennoble History, yet render it perhaps more entertaining than revolutions of more serious complexion.

There happened at this time, in another country, an event of which I shall take some notice, though it had no relation to our affairs. The deposed Czar, John of Muscovy, had been confined from his youth, and, as it was said, had had drugs administered to him destructive of his intellects. He had been spared, however, during the long reign of his rival Elizabeth; and had even been visited by her short-lived successor, Peter the Third. This visit might perhaps have awakened some sentiments in favour of Ivan in Russian breasts; at least jealousy in that of the foreign murderess, who now reigned in the room of both.[27] On a sudden it was given out, that one Mirowitz had forced himself into the castle where Ivan was imprisoned, intending to deliver and proclaim him Emperor, but that so great was the fidelity and circumspection of the governor, that he had instantly cut the poor young Prince to pieces. This tale, almost as improbable as horrid, was believed by the greater number, and supported by a parade of forms and manifestos. Mirowitz was tried by the senate, and beheaded, after reading a confession consonant to the story divulged. His accomplice, for one they did allow him to have had, was said to have made his escape, and to have been drowned in his flight crossing a river. As Mirowitz suffered death unaccompanied with the torments used in that country, it is no forced construction to suppose he was threatened with torture if he did not authenticate what was required of him; or deceived with hopes of pardon, and prevented by sudden execution before he could recal a false confession.[28] Whatever was the truth, the Empress had given such earnest of her bold and remorseless nature in the assassination of her husband, that no wonder she was suspected of being as deeply concerned in the death of Ivan. I was assured by the Duchess of Choiseul, wife of the first Minister of France, that a French physician who had been at Petersburg at the time, and employed at that Court, had told her that they who knew most believed that the death of the Empress Elizabeth had been hastened too by the arts of Catherine: yet this fell character did Voltaire and the Literati of France select as the patroness of philosophy and toleration! She had artfully been generous to a few of them; and a poet and an author will go as far in whitewashing a munificent tyrant, as a Cossack or Calmuck in fighting for those who pay him. From Augustus to Catherine the Second, no liberal usurper has ever wanted an ode or a panegyrist. The Duchess of Choiseul, who had an excellent heart and solid understanding, being provoked at the scandalous encomiums poured forth by Voltaire on so black a character, wrote an answer to him with equal sense, spirit, and reason; a work, in her situation, improper to be seen: I was one of a very few that had the satisfaction of reading it.

On the 1st of November the sentence of outlawry was pronounced against Wilkes; and on the 4th died that bacchanalian bard, his friend Churchill. He was on a visit to his friend Wilkes at Boulogne, where his excesses threw him into a fever, and where he died in a few days with epicurean indifference—a meteor that had shone but four years, and never so brightly as he might have done. He had wished, he said, for an opportunity of satirizing Mr. Pitt and Charles Townshend, who had not yet entirely listed themselves with the Court, the moment for which Churchill waited impatiently; yet, writing as he did at random, it was a chance whether he would have touched or not the true blemishes and characteristic marks of men so compounded of defects and exquisite ingredients. Churchill could hew out a block that would brave time, and last to posterity, but stood not near enough to seize the lineaments and shades that distinguish a portrait, and exhibit a resemblance to the eyes of cotemporaries.

Among Churchill’s papers was found a collection of letters from Lord Holland to Francis,[29] who had furnished them to the Satirist against his late patron. In one of those epistles Francis complained of Lord Holland for not making him an Irish Bishop, and threatened to publish something that would prove Lord Holland a still greater villain than the world believed him. To silence that wretch, Lord Holland sent him 500l., and gave him a place in Chelsea College.

The death of the Master of the Rolls happening at this time, Norton was appointed to succeed him, with an additional pension of 1200l. a year; and Mr. Charles Yorke again consented to accept his former post of Attorney-General: on which the Duke of Cumberland said shrewdly, “We have lost a man of character, but they have not gained one.” This arrangement, however, did not take place. The Chancellor[30] objected to Norton for Master of the Rolls; and Charles Yorke was frightened[31] with the offence taken at his deserting the Duke of Newcastle and his friends. Norton remained Attorney; Sewell was appointed Master of the Rolls; and Yorke accepted a patent of precedence over the Solicitor-General;[32] which only showed that he had made his peace without mending his fortune.

About the same time was published a pamphlet, perhaps the ablest ever written, called an “Inquiry into the Doctrine concerning Libels.” It severely took to pieces the arbitrary maxims of Lord Mansfield and Norton, who were roughly handled, as well as the late Lord Hardwicke. Dunning, a rising lawyer, was supposed the principal author, assisted by the Lord Chief Justice Pratt, and one or two others.

On the 19th died Stone, the famous Primate of Ireland, aged 57, having ruined his constitution by indulgence to the style of luxury and drinking established in Ireland, and by conforming to which he had found the means of surmounting the most grievous prejudices and of gaining popularity, ascendant, power: an instance of abilities seldom to be matched. He was aided, too, by several virtues: he was generous and charitable, and of a soul above revenge. When Lord Chesterfield[33] held the government of Ireland, he told the Primate, “My Lord, you must govern this kingdom, for you have the best parts in it; but you want one thing, you must take orders:” alluding to the irregularity of his life. But Stone had greater parts than Lord Chesterfield imagined, for he did govern that kingdom without conforming to the decencies of his profession.[34]