learnt nothing more than I knew before; namely, that the Marquis is an honest and honourable man, but that 'moderation, moderation!' is the burden of the song among the body. For myself, I am resolved to be in earnest for the public, and shall be a scarecrow of violence to the gentle warblers of the grove, the moderate Whigs and temperate statesmen."[1]
The party thus sarcastically alluded to took an early opportunity of justifying the taunts levelled at them, and made even their own followers doubt, not only their wisdom, but even their sincerity.[2] A great opposition meeting had been summoned for the last days of September in Yorkshire. When the day arrived, "Mr. Charles Turner proposed a new remonstrance, but, to the surprise of the most zealous, Sir George Savile talked with much moderation, and Lord John Cavendish occasioned greater astonishment by advising the assembly to expect by decency redress from the King. The assembly, not knowing how to decipher this change of language, broke up in perplexity."[3] Chatham, disgusted at these vacillations, appears to have resolved to cultivate more friendly relations with Shelburne than he had done for some time previously.[4] Only a few days before the Yorkshire meeting he had written to him as follows: "It is with extreme pleasure that I learn, by the kind favour of your Lordship's letter, that you are arrived in England, if this wretched island is still to be called by a once-respected name. I was counting the hours till I could be assured of your return towards these parts; which from the information at Shelburne House I understood was to be about this time. I trust I need not say, that to see your Lordship is at all times a truly sincere and sensible satisfaction to me. In the present melancholy and most perilous moment, the friends of the public and of each other cannot meet too
- ↑ Chatham Correspondence, iii. 469.
- ↑ Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iv. 175.
- ↑ Ibid. iv. 174, 175.
- ↑ No correspondence had passed between Chatham and Shelburne between December 22nd, 1767, and September 29th, 1770, with the exception of one very stiff and formal letter on April 28th of the latter year. See too the letter of Chatham to Calcraft, March 30th, 1770, already quoted.
