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Rh angry, and said it was imprudence that had done him mischief; that the foreign Ministers as well as others did and would think that your sentiments so delivered, unprovoked and uncalled for, were at least a trial, and as you two lived together a trial made in concert with him.

"I thought and indeed understood from you that you would see him, or you would have heard this before. Pray do see him as soon as may be. Delay between two honest men does not help reconciliation.

"I have no desire to read any treatise upon honesty. It is native, not taught honesty that I admire, of which indeed, my dear Lord, there is more than you at present seem to me to think there is. A man who follows his own interest, if he makes no undue sacrifices, either private or public, to the worship of it, is not dishonest or even dirty. I wish your Lordship, whom I love and admire, would not be so free of thinking or calling them such. Whoever goes on with what I have left off—ambition—must wish for such supporters, and it would be an additional curse on that cursed trade to have a constant bad opinion of one's most useful friends and most assiduous attendants."

Meanwhile, the remarkable scene had taken place in the House of Commons, so graphically described by Walpole, when Barré attacked Pitt in language overstepping all the bounds of decency and decorum, but with an eloquence and force which carried all before them. Walpole asserts that this attack was directly promoted by Shelburne, and describes Barré as "the bravo selected by him to run down Pitt." It was not unnatural in this instance to suppose that Barré, being Shelburne's nominee at Wycombe, was inspired by him. So far, indeed, as his sentiments about the war were concerned, Barré merely uttered the same opinions as those Shelburne had previously