Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/183

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
1782
HIS ADMINISTRATION
157

military offence; but the fact was notorious that he had been dismissed for his votes in the House of Commons. It was also customary to give a regiment to the Adjutant-General, and his dismissal had entailed upon him the loss of that also. In 1763 he retired on the half-pay of a lieutenant-colonel, £166 a year. In 1770, again owing to his political conduct, a junior officer was promoted over his head; he had remonstrated but in vain; and in consequence gave up his half-pay and retired from the army. Thus he had to leave his profession, and was now in return to enjoy, whenever he should quit his present office, a pension not more than equal to the half-pay annexed to the rank which he would have been filling had he not been driven from his profession; for the real amount of the pension to him after deducting taxes and fees would be £2100. Such were the points which Barré urged. The defence, to borrow Walpole's phrase, may sound "broker like," but will hardly be denied a certain amount of force.[1] Fox said "he considered the pension as a payment for services most honourably performed, and by no means thought it either a lavish or misapplied grant." He then left the subject, and diverged into a defence of his own resignation. His speech was however vague and inconclusive, consisting mainly in charges of a deviation on the part of Shelburne from those principles on which the Administration had been formed. It ended with a fierce denunciation of him and his colleagues as a set of "men of that magnanimity of mind which was superior to the common feelings of humanity, for they thought nothing of promises which they had made; of engagements into which they had entered; of principles which they had maintained; of the system on which they had set out. They were men whom neither promises could bind, nor principles of honour could secure; they would abandon fifty principles for the sake of power, and forget fifty promises when they were no longer necessary to their

  1. See as to Barré's dismissal and loss of office and salary in 1763, Vol. I. pp. 212-215.