No meeting took place between the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Grenville subsequently to the date of these letters, though they remained at their country seats, within a few hours’ journey of each other, for the ensuing fortnight. The tone of the correspondence is ominous of the approaching rupture; and if the Duke had been seeking a fair pretext for dissolving his connection with an impracticable associate, it was certainly presented by Mr. Grenville’s letter. Nothing could be more plain than that Mr. Grenville would oppose any Administration that might succeed the Duke of Grafton’s, unless it submitted to his dictation,--or, in other words, the little that could be gained by overthrowing the Duke of Grafton’s Government would be the substitution of one weak Government for another. The Duke of Bedford had, upon principle, long considered that of all Governments a weak one was the worst. It was from this feeling alone that, when a member of Mr. Grenville’s Cabinet, he had eagerly courted the accession of Mr. Pitt, whose views in many respects differed much from his own, and this was the main ground of his opposition to the Duke of Grafton. His scruples being removed by the retirement of Conway, it was now in his power to give the Government the strength which it so much wanted. This consideration was no doubt strongly urged upon him by Mr. Rigby, Lord Weymouth, and other aspirants to office. It was his nature to love his friends--not wisely, but too well; and he perhaps more readily yielded to their wishes from the resolution he had taken to accept nothing for himself. On the 20th of November he came to London to prepare for the operation on his eyes, which was performed on the 5th of December by Baron Wenzel, the celebrated oculist, so that, as Walpole observes, it was impossible for him to have been concerned in the details of the negotiation.--E.
[54] Lord Lisburne had been raised to an Irish Earldom in the preceding year, almost immediately on his succeeding his father. He was great-grandson of the celebrated Earl of Rochester, one of whose daughters, and eventually coheiresses, had married Mr. Vaughan, the grandfather of Lord Lisburne. He was a good scholar, and the editor has seen in the library he collected at Mamhead in Devonshire, the seat where he passed his latter years, many evidences of his attention to ancient and modern literature. He died at an advanced age in 1800. The present Lord Lisburne is his grandson.--E.