nor would I have done it in the House of Lords, if you had not mentioned the particular situation there as an inducement to you for this nomination. In the public, popular clamour will undoubtedly be raised, and from many motives will be industriously propagated as much as is possible, and the graver and more sober part of mankind will be surprised and offended at the novelty of this step in all its circumstances. These, my Lord, are some of the most obvious difficulties, which, I apprehend, cannot fail of being aggravated at this critical juncture upon the appointment of a person so young and so unknown in public business. They seem also to carry the greater weight with them at a time when so large a body of the nobility are ostentatiously combining themselves in a public avowed opposition; a measure on their part which surely makes it advisable in Government to place in the first offices at least such persons as may be free not only from real but even plausible objections. Do not believe, my Lord, that they arise in me from personal prejudice only. Were Lord Shelburne the dearest friend I had in the world, I do protest I would advise him for his own sake to decline for the present the high office of Secretary of State, and to accustom the public by degrees to see him acting in business in some office lower than what is now proposed. In such a situation he might ripen for the seals, so as to take them whenever His Majesty shall be disposed to give them, without that offence which such a sudden and unprecedented elevation I think must occasion.
"I flatter myself you will believe I am too sensible of the King's goodness to me, to pretend to put any negative upon those whom he shall approve. I do not presume to suggest who is the most proper for that high office. I make no objection to any who is, in the public eye and opinion, big enough to fill it if Lord Egremont leaves it; whether it be Lord Gower, or any other person of that connection whom the King shall wish to bring forward, or of any other connection which is most agreeable to His Majesty; but what I have said is from a real sense of
