Yet let me not be thought to lament this weak man’s pusillanimity. I am condemning his want of policy, but rejoice at it. Had he been firm to himself, there was an end of the constitution! The hearts of Englishmen were corrupt and sold, and the best heads amongst them toiled in the cause of Despotism. A happy panic blew up the system of absolute power when it had lasted but five months; and a trifling Opposition overturned in a fortnight the work of that majority which a fortnight had purchased. Yet the struggle was not over. The rod fell into abler and more resolute hands; the mercenaries were not disbanded, though the commander-in-chief ran away. Fortunately he became incompatible with his successors; and liberty owed its salvation, not to its friends, but to discord among the conspirators.
I have mentioned how utterly Fox was disconcerted at this unexpected resignation. His first movement was to press Lord Bute to retain the Treasury, at least for six months. That attempt was fruitless. His next step was to secure his own peerage. Again was he astonished to be told that he had agreed to cede the Pay-office on going into the House of Lords. This he peremptorily denied. But he had dealt with a worthy pupil of his own. Lord Shelburne, who had negotiated between him and Lord Bute, when Fox undertook the conduct of the House of Commons, had told the Earl that Fox would quit the Pay-office for a peerage; but Fox had only stipulated to give his support for that reward. He now broke out against his scholar, reproached him for concealing Lord Bute’s intention of retiring, and spoke of Shelburne to everybody _as a perfidious and infamous liar_; those were his usual words. The probability was, that Shelburne intended to slip into the Pay-office himself. The Favourite, who would have declared Fox his successor, excused Lord Shelburne to him, and, in his pedantic style, called the secrecy he had observed _a pious fraud_; for Fox, he said, he knew would not have engaged in the management of the Parliament, had he been apprized that he (Bute) intended to retire, and it had been necessary to the King’s affairs that Fox should carry them through the session. This very offer of the Treasury to Fox showed how little the Favourite had taken any measures for carrying on his master’s business for the future, and corroborates the presumption that a sudden panic was the immediate cause of his retreat.