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power of conferring offices and honors. Five months before this, upon Lord Sackville's being called to the peerage, the Earl of Shelburne questioned his Majesty's right even to create a peer, and quoted Lord Chancellor West against it. A man of the first impression would call this audacious nonsense. Merely to ennoble a man, according to the current rate of the peerage, supposes nothing of much interest to the nation. But every subject has some concern in the conduct of a minister. He has a scope for mischief, and is therefore responsible. If the King's unqualified power of making a peer be a questionable point, his power of making a minister is surely fifty times more so.
This however is a small defect in the scale of the noble Lord's conduct. He knows, that all the slaughter of the last century has originated in too free an exercise of the prerogative. Yet the noble Lord has delivered sentiments upon that subject too valuable not to have made some impression in the Royal bosom. What is it to the people, whether they are injured by the prerogative, or by the influence of the crown? A dirk wounds as fatally as a poniard. Much labour has indeed been employed at the Revolution to define the prerogative, but the Earl of Shelburne knows it still contains enough of a
