in which Moira was engaged until he went to India; for he appears shortly after the events just recorded to have left the seat of war. His subsequent military career at home is unimportant, and may be thus summed up: he was promoted Lieutenant-General in 1798, and General in 1803; he was appointed Commander of the Forces in Scotland about the same time, Colonel of the 27th Foot in 1804, and Constable of the Tower in 1806.
In 1797 Moira announced, in a letter to Colonel McMahon, that a large number of Members of Parliament who supported the Government had proposed that he should become Prime Minister to the exclusion of both Pitt and Fox, and he intimated that he was quite ready to form an administration if the King wished it, but that he declined to co-operate with the greater part of Pitt's colleagues, especially the Duke of Portland, and would only admit a few of Fox's friends; his Chancellor of the Exchequer was to be Sir J. Pulteney. This news, according to his critics, 'threw the whole town into paroxysms of laughter,' and drew the following remarks from his old friend and late commander, Cornwallis: 'It is surely impossible that Lord Moira's letter can be genuine; if it is, excess of vanity and self-importance must have extinguished every spark of understanding, and I am sure there was a time when he had sense[1].'
- ↑ Cornwallis Correspondence, ii. 329. Readers of the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin will remember the 'Ode to Lord M—ra' written upon this occasion, of which the following is the last stanza: —
