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162 Sovereign; he stood uncommitted to any man; and, though it had been insinuated that he had fomented divisions for the purpose of creating an opportunity to gratify his own ambition, he would publicly declare, that he had sacrificed the very situation he now held, to his desire of preserving harmony and unanimity in the Council; and though the office of First Lord of the Treasury was most certainly within his grasp when the first arrangements were forming, he sacrificed that object, which appeared to be so desirable to others, and joined the rest of His Majesty's new ministers in soliciting and pressing Lord Rockingham to accept that employment. It was true, he said, that his principles differed in some respects from those of some of his colleagues; but when they pleaded consistency, it was but fair that he should stand upon his consistency as firmly as they did upon theirs; and it would have been very singular indeed, if he should have given up to them all those constitutional ideas which for seventeen years he had imbibed from his master in politics, the Earl of Chatham; who had always declared, "that this country ought not to be governed by any party or faction, and that if it was to be so governed, the Constitution must necessarily expire." With these principles he declared he had always acted; they were not newly taken up for ambitious purposes; the House might recollect a particular expression that he had used some time ago, when speaking of party: he declared that "he never would consent that the King of England should be a King of the Mahrattas, among whom it was a custom for a certain number of great lords to elect a Peishwa, who was the creature of an aristocracy, and was vested with the plenitude of power, while the King was, in fact, nothing more than a royal pageant, or puppet." These being his principles, it was, he said, natural for him to stand up for the prerogative of the Crown, and insist upon the King's right to appoint his own servants. If the power which others wished to assume, of vesting in the Cabinet the right of appointing to all places, and filling up all vacancies, should once be established, the King