was acknowledged on all hands that an exception would have to be made in the Act in favour of the person who should fill the high office of Chancellor.[1] It is also worth observing that neither the Chancellor nor Sir Joseph Yorke were adherents of Shelburne.
An unexpected piece of patronage at this time came in Shelburne's way. Vergennes expressed a wish to show by any means that lay in his power his sense of the upright and honourable manner in which Shelburne had conducted the Treaty negotiations. Shelburne replied that if any favour could be shown to the Abbe Morellet it would also be a favour to him; as it was to Morellet that he owed the liberal views on commercial affairs and the proper relations between England and France, which could be recognized in the treaties of peace, and were to have entered in a yet more decided shape into the commercial treaties which he had hoped to negotiate. Morellet accordingly received a pension of four thousand francs per annum on the Economats, which he enjoyed till the Revolution.[2]
Having arranged these matters Shelburne retired into the country, where, writing to Mr. Francis Baring, whom he had frequently consulted on commercial questions during the recent negotiations, he described himself as "immersed in idle business, intoxicated with liberty and happy in his family."[3] He only once appeared in his place in Parliament during the remainder of the session, when, by previous arrangement with Pitt,[4] he attacked Lord John Cavendish on the 5th of May for abandoning the sinking fund, and for borrowing by increase of capital rather than by increase of interest, and for attaching a lottery to the loan, a species of public gambling, he said,
- ↑ See Pitt's speech, Parliamentary History, xxiii. 588-589.
- ↑ Mémoires de Morellet, i. 269, 271. Morellet to Shelburne, June 27th, 1783. Before leaving office Lord Shelburne also obtained from the King of Sardinia the pardon of Count Viri, the son of M. de Viri, the real negotiator, together with the Bailli Solar de Breille, of the peace of 1763 (see Vol. I. p. 109). Viri had married Miss Speed, a niece of Lady Cobham. Owing to her intriguing disposition, he was placed under permanent arrest at Susa in 1777, "Madame having leave to go where she pleased." Walpole Corretpondence, vi. 481.
- ↑ Shelburne to Baring, April 25th, 1783.
- ↑ Pitt to Shelburne, May 1783. Parliamentary History, xxiii. 808.
