[144] Fox’s friends, Mr. Powys and Sir Cecil Wray, had reprobated his present action.
[145] “Parl. Hist.,” xxiii, 543–50. I may here note that after the resignation of Shelburne, Pitt framed a Bill for regulating in friendly terms commerce with the United States. It was sharply criticized and much altered in committee; but his Bill as well as the words quoted above prove the depth of his conviction as to the need of winning back if possible the goodwill of those young communities.
[146] Horace, “Odes,” bk. iii, 29. From modesty he omitted the words “et mea Virtute me involvo.” (“If she [Fortune] abides, I commend her. If her fleet wings quiver for flight, I resign her gifts—and hail honest, dowerless poverty as mine.”)
[147] Wraxall, iii, 15.
[148] Chevening MSS. Yet on 25th February, Dundas wrote of the plan as “my project” (Stanhope, i, 105).
[149] Fitzmaurice, “Shelburne,” iii, 369–70; Stanhope, i, 104–9; “Memorials of Fox,” ii, 40–2. The King’s letter to Shelburne refutes Horace Walpole’s statement that the King made the offer very drily and ungraciously: also that Pitt’s vanity was at first “staggered” by the offer.
[150] “Buckingham P.,” i, 170.
[151] “Buckingham P.,” i, 194.
[152] Pitt MSS., 103.
[153] Stanhope, i, App. III.