attempt was made to carry on Government without
their concurrence. However, this was only a transient cloud; they were
hid but for a moment; and their constellation blazed out with greater
brightness, and a far more vigorous influence, some time after it was
blown over. An attempt was at that time made (but without any idea of
proscription) to break their corps, to discountenance their doctrines, to
revive connections of a different kind, to restore the principles and
policy of the Whigs, to reanimate the cause of Liberty by Ministerial
countenance; and then for the first time were men seen attached in office
to every principle they had maintained in opposition. No one will doubt,
that such men were abhorred and violently opposed by the Court faction,
and that such a system could have but a short duration.

It may appear somewhat affected, that in so much discourse upon this
extraordinary party, I should say so little of the Earl of Bute, who is
the supposed head of it. But this was neither owing to affectation nor
inadvertence. I have carefully avoided the introduction of personal
reflections of any kind. Much the greater part of the topics which have
been used to blacken this nobleman are either unjust or frivolous. At
best, they have a tendency to give the resentment of this bitter calamity
a wrong direction, and to turn a public grievance into a mean personal,
or a dangerous national, quarrel. Where there is a regular scheme of
operations carried on, it is the system, and not any individual person
who acts in it, that is truly dangerous. This system has not risen
solely from the ambition of Lord Bute, but from the circumstances which
favoured it, and from an indifference to the constitution which had been
for some time growing among our gentry. We should have been tried with
it, if the Earl of Bute had never existed; and it will want neither a
contriving head nor active members, when the Earl of Bute exists no
longer. It is not, therefore, to rail at Lord Bute, but firmly to embody
against this Court party and its practices, which can afford us any
prospect of relief in our present condition.

Another motive induces me to put the personal consideration of Lord Bute
wholly out of the question. He communicates very little in a direct
manner with the greater part of our men of business. This has never been
his custom. It is enough for him that he surrounds them with his
creatures. Several imagine, theref