[50] Dr. Loyd, Dean of Norwich, who had been tutor to Mr. Grenville’s sons.
[51] He was couched during this negotiation, in which he took little or no part, though his name was often made use of. He recovered a small degree of sight, and went into public and played at cards, yet, as he said himself, saw very imperfectly.
[52] Mr. Meynell was M.P. for Stafford, and the Duke’s intimate friend, as appears in his Grace’s Memoirs. He was a man of high fashion, in which service he spent a large portion of a noble estate on the turf and other expensive amusements and vices so popular with the aristocracy of that day. Captain Meynell, M.P. for Lisburn, is his grandson and lineal representative.--E.
[53] I can find nothing among the Bedford papers to show how the negotiation of the Bedford party with the Government originated, or how it was conducted. The following are the last letters that passed between the Duke and Mr. Grenville previous to their political separation. Some unimportant matter only is omitted.
“I should have been very glad to have had an opportunity of talking to you fully on the present state of political affairs, and of the steps it may be proper to take at the beginning of the ensuing session. If such a coalition as to unite in Opposition all those who are adverse to the present Administration could be obtained, it would at least have this one good effect--to render the Ministers incapable of carrying on the business of this session, though I fear a further coalition of what would be advisable to be done in future would be impracticable. You see I am readier to pull down than to set up; that is owing to the unfortunate crisis of the times. So far as to what relates to the general plan of politics.”
“I shall always be happy in any opportunity of explaining to your Grace my ideas upon the public business, and of improving myself by learning your opinion, which nobody can more highly regard than I do. I purpose being in London on the Saturday before the meeting of Parliament, when my first care will be to wait upon your Grace, if you are then arrived. In the mean time, as you wish to know my thoughts on the present state of political affairs, I can only say that they continue to be the same that you have long known them. I think that public measures must be the great object of every honest man’s attention, and that from them we must derive our security, or shortly meet with our destruction. By public measures, I mean the maintaining the peace abroad with the utmost vigilance, by the firmest as well as the most temperate conduct, both of which I look on as equally necessary for that purpose;--I mean a settled, moderate, and frugal Government at home, to heal the grievous wounds which contrary principles have inflicted upon us;--I mean the availing ourselves of every resource to save, if possible, our sinking public credit, to restore our declining trade, and to strengthen us in time of peace against that day of danger which the first war we are engaged in must bring upon us;--I mean the asserting and establishing the lawful authority of the King and Parliament over every part of our dominions in every part of the world: these, my dear lord, I am sensible are general expressions, which few gentlemen in words will venture directly to contradict; but I, as well as your Grace, mean the reality and not the words, and can therefore only give an assent to a system of measures conformable to them. I shall readily support these principles, whoever shall propose them; and I never can support any Ministry which act in contradiction to them. The steps to be taken at the beginning of the ensuing session must necessarily depend on the plan to be opened by the Ministry, if any is formed, and on the dispositions of mankind. I am entirely ignorant of the former; but as to the latter, it appears to me that there is a general listlessness and supineness in all degrees of men, from which I fear nothing but the stroke of calamity will rouse them. The present Ministry may probably be overturned by many events, and from their own weakness and inability, if no other cause co-operates. But the difficulty in the present unhappy crisis, as your Grace truly observes, is how to set up what is right; and I must fairly own that I do not see any means of it, until the King’s mind shall be possessed with a serious conviction of the danger, or the people be brought to open their eyes on the brink of a precipice before they fall into it. My course, however, will be, at all events, to acquit myself of what I owe to them and to my friends, as well as to my own character and opinions; but I believe that our attendance will be very thin in the House of Commons, from a variety of circumstances.”