military offence; but the fact was notorious that he had been dismissed for his votes in the House of Commons. It was also customary to give a regiment to the Adjutant-General, and his dismissal had entailed upon him the loss of that also. In 1763 he retired on the half-pay of a lieutenant-colonel, £166 a year. In 1770, again owing to his political conduct, a junior officer was promoted over his head; he had remonstrated but in vain; and in consequence gave up his half-pay and retired from the army. Thus he had to leave his profession, and was now in return to enjoy, whenever he should quit his present office, a pension not more than equal to the half-pay annexed to the rank which he would have been filling had he not been driven from his profession; for the real amount of the pension to him after deducting taxes and fees would be £2100. Such were the points which Barré urged. The defence, to borrow Walpole's phrase, may sound "broker like," but will hardly be denied a certain amount of force.[1] Fox said "he considered the pension as a payment for services most honourably performed, and by no means thought it either a lavish or misapplied grant." He then left the subject, and diverged into a defence of his own resignation. His speech was however vague and inconclusive, consisting mainly in charges of a deviation on the part of Shelburne from those principles on which the Administration had been formed. It ended with a fierce denunciation of him and his colleagues as a set of "men of that magnanimity of mind which was superior to the common feelings of humanity, for they thought nothing of promises which they had made; of engagements into which they had entered; of principles which they had maintained; of the system on which they had set out. They were men whom neither promises could bind, nor principles of honour could secure; they would abandon fifty principles for the sake of power, and forget fifty promises when they were no longer necessary to their
- ↑ See as to Barré's dismissal and loss of office and salary in 1763, Vol. I. pp. 212-215.
