Nothing could be less justly founded than Grenville’s complaint of libels. Himself wrote one on American affairs, in which Lord Rockingham and Conway were treated with contempt and bitterness. His friend, the Dean of Norwich,[50] Thomas Pitt, and Rigby, not to mention his brother Lord Temple, dabbled continually in that way. Rigby had even revised Almon’s last political register, in which was an account of the conference between the Duke of Bedford and Lord Chatham at Bath.
Conway answered that he had been struck at the time with the idea that Grenville was pleading in behalf of Spain: himself might have been too warm then; was not ashamed to recant and ask his pardon, if he had misrepresented him. He had heard, he said, that Mr. Grenville desired no place; but wondered he was so much wounded by libels. He himself was abused by one Almon once a-month for being avaricious; he believed it was pretty well known how unjustly. He always bought the pamphlet,--the only hurt he did to the printer. Almon had lately been so modest, as so solicit him for a patent for printing a book; he had spoken to the King and obtained it. Everybody must live by their trade; abuse was Almon’s trade. He himself sometimes differed with the other Ministers; he was pinned on no great man’s sleeve. He now warned his colleagues that he should differ with them whenever he was of a different opinion.
The conduct of Grenville in this debate was extremely remarkable. He not only seemed transported into very impolitic separation from the Rockinghams by his violence against the Americans, but even by personal resentment against the former: while at the same time his affected moderation had the appearance of having taken a new part, that of standing detached and waiting to see whether he could not penetrate with more facility into the closet when standing alone, than by the joint effort of two discordant factions. Whatever were his motives, he soon fell a sacrifice to this very conduct.
On the report of the address, Grenville engaged in a hot altercation with Dowdeswell and Burke on their different ideas of what ought to be done with respect to America. Rigby, provoked at Grenville’s unseasonable disputation, and perhaps not sorry to offend him, could not help saying he saw no use in that contest unless it were to tranquillize the Administration, who might have apprehended the union of the two Oppositions. The younger Onslow diverted the House with proposing, in imitation of the Romans, who used to send senators to inquire into the state of their provinces, to dispatch Grenville to America on that errand. Two days after Grenville complaining in form of the _Boston Gazette_, the elder Onslow moved to put off the consideration for six months, which the House, with a laugh, approved.