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Rh partly owing to his surroundings, he lacked the courage to put his principles into practice. The Old Whigs were more deeply pledged than any other school of politicians to the existing tariffs. Hatred of France, the nearest neighbour of England, was the corner-stone of their foreign policy, and commercial intercourse with that country had been uniformly discouraged by them. The great triumph of their diplomacy was the Methuen treaty of 1703, which condemned the English consumer to imbibe dear Portuguese port instead of cheap French claret. The solitary triumph of Whig party politics in the last year of Queen Anne had been the defeat of the 8th and 9th Clauses of the Treaty of Utrecht, which provided that all laws made in Great Britain since 1664 for prohibiting the importation of any goods coming from France should be repealed, and that a "most favoured nation clause" should be granted to that country by Act of Parliament. The influence of Chatham was uniformly hostile to any change in a liberal direction, and he disliked Burke not only as the author of Thoughts on the present Discontents, but as the holder of suspected opinions on commercial questions. Such were the opinions of the leading English statesmen when Shelburne became a convert to the new school of Political Economy. Whatever else might be the result, he was certain not to gain any additional good-will thereby from the Rockingham Whigs.

Amongst the visitors whom Morellet met at Bowood was Dr. Price. The statesman who, judging from the Diary of Lady Shelburne, so frequently spent his evenings in theological reading, was not unnaturally attracted by the author of the Dissertations on Providence, on The Junction of Virtuous Men in a Future State, and on Miracles. Through the recommendation of their mutual friend Mrs. Montagu, a meeting had taken place between them in 1769, when Shelburne professed a warm regard to the Dissenters as friends of liberty, and promised, if ever he came into power, to exert himself in supporting their rights, and placing them on the same footing with other Protestant