more than it did Flood, to the higher claims of country. At any rate, he was shrewd enough to recognise that without some extension of trade privileges the country was doomed to bankruptcy and discontent (cf. Beresford Corresp. i. 39, 64). His attitude was naturally misinterpreted by the public, and during the trade riots in November 1779 he narrowly escaped being murdered. As it was, every pane of glass in his house in Harcourt Street was smashed by the mob. He obtained compensation from parliament; though some remarks of Yelverton, tending to exonerate the mob, so inflamed him that the house was obliged to interfere to prevent a duel. But his personal feelings did not influence his political opinions, and to his colleague in London he wrote: ‘Send us two men, or one man of ability and spirit; send him with the promise of extension of commerce in his mouth as he enters the harbour, unconnected with this contemptible tail of English opposition, meaning well to the king, to his servants, and to the country, and he will rule us with ease; but if you procrastinate and send us a timid and popular trickster, this kingdom will cost you more than America; it will cost you your existence and ours’ (ib. i. 81). The appointment of Lord Buckinghamshire was little to his taste, and he inveighed strongly against the way in which he and his secretary, Sir Richard Heron, ‘bungled’ the business of government. His sentiments in regard to the claims of the Roman catholics were liberal, and on 17 July 1781 he remonstrated at length on the practice of appointing none but Englishmen to the chancellorship (Addit. MS. 34417, f. 394). He refused to be badgered into any premature expression of opinion as to the right of England to bind Ireland by acts of parliament, but astounded the house on 4 May 1782 by announcing ‘in the most unqualified, unlimited, and explicit manner … as a lawyer, a faithful servant to the crown, a well-wisher to both countries, and an honest Irishman,’ that Great Britain possessed no such right, and that if the parliament of that kingdom was determined to be the lords of Ireland, ‘he for his part was determined not to be their villain in contributing to it’ (Parl. Register, i. 351).
The declaration came perhaps a little too late to save his reputation for sincerity, but it was early enough to enrage the government against him; and, without receiving one word of explanation, he was at once dismissed from office by the Duke of Portland. The blow was wholly unexpected, and, in the general opinion, wholly unjustifiable. Overcome with mortification and prostrated by rheumatic fever and other family misfortunes, he deserved the pity accorded to him. In a letter to Fitzpatrick, written with a good deal of dignity, he remonstrated against the injustice done him (Auckland MS. 34419, f. 96). But fortunately the administration of the Duke of Portland was short-lived, and on 31 Dec. 1783 he was created, though not without a word of warning on the part of Fox (Grattan, Life of Grattan, iii. 112), prime serjeant by Lord Northington. He made a fast friend of Northington's successor, the Duke of Rutland, who recommended him for the post of chief justice of the king's bench whenever it should become vacant (Rutland MSS. iii. 77, 80), which it presently did by the death of John Gore, lord Annaly [q. v.] He was promoted on 10 May 1784, and at the same time raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Earlsfort of Lisson Earl. Only one thing was wanting, Beresford jocosely remarked, to complete his happiness—‘the satisfaction of sitting in judgment on his grace of Portland’ (Beresford Corresp. i. 256). And in thanking Eden for his assistance, Scott poured out the vials of his wrath on the duke and his ‘Dutch system,’ promising to ‘see whether it may not be possible to stop the torrent of favouritism and brutal oppression which has covered this country with dirt since we have been overflowed by the politics of republicans and Low Country folks’ (Auckland MSS. 34419, f. 207). He was specially consulted in November 1784 by the lord lieutenant on the subject of a parliamentary reform, and his opinion, which is merely recorded to have contained ‘sentiments very freely stated,’ was transmitted to Pitt, and seems to have carried great weight with government (Rutland MSS. iii. 148). On the question of the amended commercial propositions of 1785 he was strongly opposed to any attempt to force them through parliament, and predicted their rejection (ib. iii. 231). And hearing him speak on the subject of holdings of leases of low value in August that year, Woodfall, the reporter, declared that though it might be true that he had been lucky, yet he had ‘abilities enough to countenance good fortune’ (Auckland Corresp. i. 83). His severe illness in the spring of the ensuing year caused Rutland much anxiety, partly on his account, but chiefly because it threatened to deprive him of Fitzgibbon's services in the lower house (Rutland MSS. iii. 300, 302). Fortunately he recovered, and it was largely due to his ‘very able conduct’ that the magistracy bill of 1787 was carried through parliament; but in the following year he found it necessary for his health to
