King had built upon my resignation, which I had no opportunity ever given me to speak about. I am supposed out of my employment, but I think I know your Lordship to be an honest man and incapable of any insincerity, and therefore with as much frankness and sincerity as I have, I have wrote what I have wrote; I acquit your Lordship of any sinister design. I have now, my dear Lord, unburthened my mind, whether wisely or no I cannot tell, but with a view to have everything between us as well as it ever was. And in the belief that it will be so I proceed to tell you, and you only, my intention. I will go to His Majesty and tell him I am sorry he has built on a mistake, but since it has been so, I will never leave it possible for myself to think that I, who came to do Him all the service that was in my power at the beginning of the Session (and I hope did Him some), should leave him in difficulties increased by any action of mine. I shall therefore beg leave to resign now, and shall have the pride to think and the hope that His Majesty will think I have done my duty perfectly. The world will say and think I am turned out; will say this is the reward I meet with, and that such a bad man as I am ought to meet with, that the Duke of Devonshire's prophecy to my brother is fulfilled, &c., &c., &c.
"To know that I am a truly honest man, and that the King and you must think me so, shall outweigh the sense of all this scurrility in my mind.
"If you think you can outweigh this opinion in other people by what His Majesty may at the same time be pleased to do with regard to my brother and Lord Digby and myself in point of rank, I shall be glad if you do it and it succeeds; at all events I shall keep a consciousness of having done right, and that good humour that always accompanies such a consciousness. I then am determined, my Lord, to resign immediately, but must beg His Majesty to appoint A. B. to carry on the Office till Midsummer (which is alone a proof how well Lord Shelburne knew my intention).[1] But my resignation
- ↑ Because, if the accounts of the Pay Office were allowed to be carried on in the
