more severely felt, as the Comptrollership had been asked as a step to an office of real employment. "Your Lordship knows better than I do," he wrote to Bute, "the manner places and employments are asked for in. By the manner I asked for this, you must be sensible that if any exigency required that it should be given to another, which by my own knowledge I think proper in the present case of Lord Powis, I should have been sorry that it had been given to me. I told your Lordship, by giving it you could not make me more your friend; by refusing it in the manner I was sure you would do, you would not make me less so. I was prevailed upon to ask it, as a step which might facilitate my coming to an employment of real business.
"But I am sorry that by any fault, in my expressions to His Majesty, my meaning and intentions should not have been understood. I cannot conceive that any man attached to His Majesty's Ministers and satisfied with their conduct, should not desire to have as considerable employments as he thinks suitable to his talents and capacity. If I had declared myself to be one of those that follow, I cannot imagine that His Majesty could have so favourable an opinion of me as I flatter myself he has. The only pleasure I propose by employment is not the profit, but to act a part suitable to my rank and capacity such as it is. If I have no employment, my part I hope still shall be suitable, and it is a pleasure which it is impossible to be deprived of."[1]
Vexed however at the refusal, Shelburne began to talk of retirement and devotion to country pursuits, except during a short interval of the year. Fox, however, did not encourage him in these notions. "Why," he writes,[2] "should not you like farming, but you are too young for anything that savours of retirement or philosophy. I should say more on this topick but that in the same letter, I see you have ordered Mr. Adam to look out for space to build an Hôtel upon. The late Lord Leicester and the late Lord Digby were about a fine piece of ground for that purpose, still to be had, the garden of
