Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/134

108 resolution of turning out the Duke, viz. that he panted for the Treasury.

"As for Mr. Grenville, the peevishness of his temper led him to wish to have the Duke of Newcastle out. His narrowness made him really of opinion for the single million, and eager in it, and besides, he wished to be higher, which he might have been before when Mr. Pitt went out, if his timidity and confusion had not made him prefer the half-measure. At first, the Duke of Newcastle, staggered with the defection of his own Board, declared he could not brook the affront; he was taken at his word; he was ready afterwards to retract, notwithstanding what he had said, and make every sort of submission, and actually offered it through Lord Mansfield, but it was all refused. He might have had a pension, but that the Duke of Cumberland, as was generally supposed, prevailed on him not to accept, or at least to decline asking it. Lord Bute was named his successor; Mr. Grenville, Secretary of State, for which he was not fit, not Chancellor of the Exchequer, for which he was at least better qualified than any other person that was likely;, Treasurer of the Navy; and , Chancellor of the Exchequer. By this two brothers-in-law became Secretaries of State together in this critical moment; neither of them famed for integrity or for knowledge of foreign affairs, or for that sort of right-headedness which makes people of superior understandings submit to be convinced by those in whom the world has more confidence. On the Duke of Newcastle's going out of office Lord Hardwicke and the Duke of Devonshire left the Cabinet. The latter says he explained it to the King, who consented to his keeping the Chamberlain's staff on those terms. About this time some civil compliments that had passed through the Sardinian Ambassador between the two nations in relation to the Count d'Estaing, a prisoner sent from