Note 19 — Chapter II
Reading edition
The Duke says in his MS. Memoirs—
“Though I expected to find Lord Chatham very ill indeed, his situation was different from what I had imagined: his nerves and spirits were affected to a dreadful degree, and the sight of his great mind, bowed down and thus weakened by disorder, would have filled me with grief and concern even if I had not long borne a sincere attachment to his person and character. The confidence he reposed in me, demanded every return on my part, and it appeared like cruelty in me to have been urged by any necessity to put a man I valued to so great suffering. The interview was long and painful: I had to run over the many difficulties of the session, for his lordship, I believe, had not once attended the House since his last return from Bath. I had to relate the struggles we had experienced in carrying some points, especially in the House of Lords; the opposition, also, we had encountered in the East India business, from Mr. Conway as well as Mr. Townshend, together with the unaccountable conduct of the latter gentleman, who had suffered himself to be led to pledge himself at last, contrary to the known decision of every member of the Cabinet, to draw a certain revenue from the Colonies, without offence to the Americans themselves; and I was sorry to inform Lord Chatham, that Mr. Townshend’s flippant boasting was received with strong marks of a blind and greedy approbation from the body of the House; and I endeavoured to lay everything before his lordship as plainly as I was able, and assured him that Lords Northington and Camden had both empowered me to declare how earnestly they desired to receive his advice as to assisting and strengthening the system he had established by some adequate accession, without which they were satisfied it could not nor ought to proceed.
“It was with difficulty that I brought Lord Chatham to be sensible of the weakness of his Administration, or the power of the united faction against us, though we received every mark we could desire of his Majesty’s support. At last, after much discourse and some arguing, he proceeded to entreat me to remain in my present station, taking that method to strengthen the Ministry which should appear to me to be the most eligible; and he assured me that if Lords Northington and Camden, as well as myself, did not retain our high places, there would be an end to all his hopes of being ever serviceable again as a public man.”
Eventually Lord Chatham acquiesced in the Duke entering into a negotiation with the Bedford or Rockingham party—though he preferred the former,—a preference which explains the Duke’s remark in the text of p. 49.—E.