reasons made him so very determined in making it a condition that he should retire at the year's end. I have dwelt the longer on his character, because, if it's well understood together with Lord Bute's, it will not be at all difficult to comprehend every event that happened to the end of the Session."
Whatever his merits or demerits may have been, Fox was not a man of hesitations. Having accepted the lead of the House of Commons, he determined to force the peace through at any cost, and did so by those arts which in the eighteenth century were known as political management. The condition of the House of Commons and—with a few exceptions—of the constituencies rendered his task easy. The last election had dethroned the Duke of Newcastle. A judicious use of rewards and punishments among members did the rest. But, in the opinion of Bute, the fall of the Duke of Newcastle was not enough. The Whig aristocracy were to be utterly trampled under foot, and the Minister eagerly awaited the moment when, after the signature of the preliminaries of peace, he would be able to assure the King that he was now at length his own master. Even before the meeting of Parliament a heavy blow had been struck. The King became suddenly convinced, or professed to be so, that some dark intrigue was on foot to hand him over again to the Whigs, and the resignation of their appointments at Court by the Duke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Rockingham, Lord George Cavendish, and Lord Bessborough came as the match to light the powder magazine of royal resentment. George III. determined to anticipate his real or supposed enemies, and without consulting the Ministers, struck the names of the Whig Duke and the Whig Marquis from the Council book.[1] But though the deed originated with the King, it was undeniably accepted by Bute and Fox
- ↑ See Jesse, Reign of George III., i. 144. "It was insisted by the courtiers that the King had just and ample grounds for being incensed against his Grace. Not only, they said, had the Duke of Devonshire for tome time past habitually absented himself from the meetings of the Privy Council, but he was even now, they believed, engaged in caballing with the Duke of Newcastle against the Government. Unluckily, that very morning the King, on his way from Richmond, had himself seen the two Dukes together in the same chariot."
