Page:The Marquess of Hastings, K.G..djvu/41

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POLITICAL LIFE
33

The objects of Pitt were identical with his own, for both endeavoured to remove injustice and the causes of legitimate complaint; but Pitt had also to assure himself that he did not disturb the fundamental principles of law and order, without which no society can stand and all concessions must be useless. That Moira would have adopted a similar course, despite his speeches, is shown by the fact that although he denounced British rule in India as 'founded in injustice and originally established by force,' and opposed Lord Wellesley's policy there, he in no way guided his conduct by this opinion when the reins of government were placed in his own hands, and, on the contrary, shaped his action on the model afforded to him by the great Governor-General whom he had criticised.

When Fox and Grenville came into office, in 1806, Moira was admitted to the Privy Council, and was appointed Master of the Ordnance; but the following year he resigned office, when the Duke of Portland came into power — the same statesman whom he specially excluded from his projected ministry of 1797,but with whom on the Regency question in 1788 he had, in his own words, 'slidden into a kind of alliance.’


    'Determin'd their landlord's fine words to make good, They hid Pikes in his haggard, cut staves in his wood; And attack'd the King's troops — the assertion to clinch, That no town is so Loyal as Ballynahinch. O! had we but trusted the Rebels' professions, Met their cannon with smiles, and their pikes with concessions; Tho' they still took an ell, when we gave them an inch, They would all have been Loyal — like Ballynahinch.' Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, p. 214.