lamented by all good and honest men, decryed by good and bad, are by all constantly compared to those of more order and steadiness, when measures and men were more solid and permanent. In this discourse their thoughts are naturally carried back to that time all remember when Sir R. Walpole and Mr. Pelham were First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Minister of the House of Commons, and here, if I am not deceived, the world see Mr. Fox when they look up to him.
"Here every difficulty would vanish. The greatest impediment, that natural radical prejudice against the man, that virulent sore that taints and discolours all his measures would be covered over, the trifling objection to the Pay Office, and every other removed. Here I am convinced (could it be) Mr. Fox would infallibly carry this and every other point. But in the middle way proposed, which I fear may be looked on when known as but an Half-Measure, my poor weak judgment is in some doubt of the event.
"Where this shoe would pinch was you to try to put your foot into it I can imagine, and would say a great deal too, but that I think you will again say 'That is not the question put to me—nor would I go to the Treasury were it offered.' If so I have done. You know infinitely best. I can never think that right you do not. Let my affection for you and solicitude for your interest plead my excuse for troubling you with what I could never have excused myself, if I had not done it."
The nature of Mr. Fox's reply to the proposition of his friend that he should insist on taking the Treasury, may be gathered from the following letter addressed to him by Shelburne:
Shelburne to Fox.
Hill Street, Monday Night, October 1762.
Dear Sir,—Lord Bute very much admires even my account of your conversation with the Duke of Cumberland, and is much satisfied with it.
