CHAPTER III
THE PIOUS FRAUD
1762–1763
"Mr. Fox," Shelburne wrote many years afterwards,[1] "was infinitely able in business, clear, penetrating, confident, and decisive in all his dealings with mankind, and of most extraordinary activity. His first connection was among the Torys. Everybody knows his origin. In 1727 he was elected for Hindon,[2] and on a petition being preferred against him supported by Government, he made by his activity and his connections among the young men of fashion, such interest in the House of Commons, that to the amazement of the Minister, who looked upon it as a common petition easily carried as he should direct, he found the two first questions carried against him, and was not able to carry it at last without a very strong exertion of the power of Government. He thus felt the power of the Minister, and in seven years after, on his coming in, attached himself closely to him, and ever afterwards looked up to him as his model, insomuch that it was common to Mr. Winnington to say that the Foxes thought nobody could read or write except it was Walpole. His ambition was quite of a modern kind, narrow, interested: in short the ambition of office, which had the Court for its object, and looked on corruption as the only means to attain it.[3] 'I give you so much, and
- ↑ This memorandum was written many years after the events to which the chapter relates (probably in 1803), which accounts for the bitterness of the expressions used, Bute and Fox having both long since quarrelled with Shelburne.
- ↑ He was elected for Hindon on the 28th of February 1734.
- ↑ "He had not the least notion of or regard for the public good or the constitution; but despised those cares as the object of narrow minds."—Lord Chesterfield's Characters.
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