Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/192

166 walking along St. James's Street, met and stopped Rigby's chariot, and leaning on the door of it, began to vent his complaints; when the other, unprovoked and unconcerned in the dispute, interrupted him with these stunning sounds: 'You tell your story of Shelburne; he has a damned one to tell of you; I do not trouble myself which is the truth,' and pushing him aside ordered his coachman to drive away. From that moment Fox became the enemy of Rigby." Walpole insinuates that Shelburne wished to have the Pay Office himself. There is no evidence whatever of this. Whatever his faults in the matter may have been, Shelburne was not an office-seeker. He had just refused the Secretaryship of State and the Presidency of the Board of Trade, though he subsequently accepted the latter. His independent means allowed him to be indifferent to the emoluments connected with the Pay Office. Bute, the principal of Shelburne in this unfortunate negotiation, declared to Fox "that the conduct of Lord Shelburne had been agreeable to himself," thereby identifying himself with that conduct. As against this, the vague tradition that Bute was the person who used the words "pious fraud" is valueless for the purposes of history. Fox, in the letter of March 26th, taxes Shelburne with no dishonourable conduct, but only with entertaining "a romantic idea of honour entirely repugnant to his own common-sense." It is only in a letter, written two days subsequently to that of the 27th of March, that Fox, after brooding over his supposed injuries, begins to paint the conduct of Shelburne in dark colours, while in another two days, viz. on March 3ist, he announces his intention of "being good friends with Lord Shelburne," an undertaking which he performed by abusing him all over London "as a perfidious and infamous liar." Thus was the friendship of Fox for Shelburne changed into suspicion and hostility by this quarrel, the full effects of which did not make themselves felt till twenty years after. Mean-