dient was left untried, and no influential individual overlooked. Some were bribed, and others frightened into submission. The Earl of Orford was tempted with the Rangership of St. James's and Hyde Parks. Messengers were stationed at the different seaport towns to waylay the Marquis of Granby on his return from the Continent, and to tempt him with the choice of either the Ordnance or the command of the Army. Marshal Conway was got rid of by being selected to conduct the army to England; and, lastly, in order to silence the tongue of the King's brother, the Duke of York, whose boyish abuse of Bute and the Scotch appears to have given great offence to the King, his royal highness was despatched on an idle expedition to Italy. Moreover, one persecution followed another persecution. The Duke of Devonshire-" the Prince of the Whigs," as he was styled by the Princess Dowager was not only summarily dismissed from his post of Lord Chamberlain, but the King was induced to send for the Privy Council book, and with his own hand to strike the Duke's name off the list of Privy Councillors. The Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, and the Marquis of Buckingham, were severally deprived of the Lord-Lieutenancies of their respective counties.

Still more shameful was the principle of oppression which Fox carried into the second, and sometimes into the third and fourth, grades of the State.

1 Walpole's 'Reign of George III.,' vol. i. pp. 208–9, 235.

A Mr. Schultz, who for seven years had been a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, was dismissed merely because he was without a seat in Parliament; and a worthy and gallant officer, Admiral Forbes, was removed from the Board of Admiralty, to enable Fox to make room for one of his own friends.' Far indeed from being satisfied with cashiering LordLieutenants of counties, and removing Tellers of the Exchequer and Lords of the Admiralty, Fox and his myrmidons extended their searching scrutinies and their inhumanity even to the humblest departments of the State. Hitherto Fox had been regarded by his friends as a kind-hearted, and admitted even by his enemies to be a good-natured, man. He was

certainly a warm friend, a devoted husband, and, as a parent, was indulgent even to weakness. But now his entire nature seemed to have undergone a change. His conduct, in fact, amounted in many cases not only to persecution, but to positive cruelty. It was only necessary to discover that a clerk in a Government office owed his situation to being related to an Opposition member of Parliament, or that a Whig Opposition Peer had obtained a messenger's place for his wife's footman, or an Exciseman's situation for the son of his gamekeeper, and these unfortunate underlings were frequently sent about their business, in order to supply places for those who were ready to support the Peace.

1 Walpole's 'Reign of George III.,' vol. i. p. 234.

A poor man in Sussex, who had distinguished himself by his gallantry in a desperate affray with smugglers, was deprived of his pension for no better reason than that it had been procured for him by the Duke of Grafton, while a no less unworthy affront was put upon the house of Cavendish. A lady of that name, the widow of Admiral Philip Cavendish, instead of having been placed on the Pension-list at the time of her husband's decease, had been appointed housekeeper of one of the public offices. Probably her place was wanted for another, but, at all events, Fox's emissaries chose to presume that her late husband had been related to the Duke of Devonshire, and accordingly orders were given for her instant dismissal. The amount of distress which was thus entailed on private families it would be difficult to exaggerate. "Fox," said the Duke of Cumberland, "has deceived me grossly; for I thought him good-natured, but in all these transactions he has shown the bitterest revenge and inhumanity."

But, atrocious as was this system of persecution, the venality which accompanied it was almost worse. Fox had no sooner accepted the terms of the Court, than he also plunged into a course of wholesale bribery and corruption, with a tithe of which even that old arch-jobber, the Duke of Newcastle, would

1 Walpole's 'Reign of George III.,' vol. i. pp. 233-5. Macaulay's 'Essays,' vol. iii. p. 567; 10th ed.

2 Walpole's 'Reign of George III.,' vol. i. p. 241.

have hesitated to bespatter his late Administration. Places were recklessly multiplied in the royal household, and pensions no less profligately conferred. "Leaving the grandees to their ill-humour," writes Walpole, " Fox directly attacked the separate members of the House of Commons, and with so little decorum on the part of either buyer or seller, that a shop was publicly opened at the Pay Office, whither the members flocked and received the wages of their venality in Bank-bills, even to so low a sum as 2001." It was subsequently admitted by Martin, Secretary to the Treasury, that no less a sum than 25,000l. had been issued from the public exchequer in one morning for the basest purposes of corruption.

But Fox had promised the courtiers a triumph, and he did not disappoint them. As the day appointed for the meeting of Parliament drew near, the mingled feelings of interest and curiosity, which had for some time prevailed throughout the country, increased almost to intensity. With the mass of the population of London, the war had been almost universally popular; and accordingly, when, on the 25th of November, 1762, Parliament assembled, the King, on his way to Westminster, was so far coupled in the minds of his subjects with the peace policy of his Ministers, as to be received by the large assembled multitude with an ominous silence. Bute on the same occasion was not only hissed and pelted,

VOL. I.

E

but on his return had the windows of his sedan-chair broken, and, indeed, narrowly escaped with his life.' Fortunately for him, affairs within the walls of Parliament went on more smoothly than without. Pitt was ill-too ill to appear in his place and oppose a measure which, it is almost needless to say, he entirely deprecated; and thus the victory of the Ministers was complete. Fox of course claimed the peerage which had been guaranteed him, and accordingly, on the 16th of April following, he was created Baron Holland, of Foxley, in Wiltshire. Even now, however, his satisfaction was incomplete. Four years afterwards, for instance, we find him with almost childish eagerness preferring his claims to an earldom. "He sent for me," writes Walpole in 1767, "and meekly pretending that it was to gratify his wife, of all women the most indifferent to grandeur, he supplicated me in the most flattering terms to obtain him an earldom from the Duke of Grafton." "I did earnestly labour at it," adds Walpole, "and really the Duke of Grafton did too, as he promised me he would; but the King could not be persuaded to grant it." About the same time, also, it may be mentioned, we find Lord Holland writing to another friend, George Selwyn, urging him to use his influence with his friend the Duke of Grafton, then Prime Minister, for the same purpose.

2

1 'Bedford Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 160.

Walpole's Reign of George III.,' vol. iii. pp. 94, 95.