Note 266 — Chapter XVI

In a letter of explanation to Lady Chatham, written a fortnight after his interview with Mr. Pitt at Hampstead, Lord Temple admits that his separation from Mr. George Grenville was conditional upon “a public and general union of parties taking place.” This union had long been one of the great objects of Mr. Pitt’s ambition, but was at this time wholly impracticable, as Lord Temple well knew; and taken together with the proposal of Lord Lyttelton for President of the Council, the admission goes far to support Walpole’s statement, that Lord Temple had determined not to take office without his brother. Indeed the connections which Lord Temple had lately formed, and not less than the opinions he had expressed in Parliament, must have rendered his acceptance of Mr. Pitt’s overtures out of the question, unless, to use his own words, he had chosen “to be stuck into the Ministry as a great cypher at the head of the Treasury.”—(Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 468.)—E.