EORGE III TO ADDINGTON,
_29th January 1801_.

On 25th September 1800 Pitt wrote to the Lord Chancellor, Loughborough,
then in attendance on the King at Weymouth, requesting his presence at a
Cabinet meeting in order to discuss the Catholic Question and proposals
respecting tithes and a provision for the Catholic and Dissenting
clergy. Five days later he explained to his colleagues the main
proposal. In place of the Oaths of Supremacy and Abjuration he desired
to impose on members of Parliament and officials merely the Oath of
Allegiance, which would be no bar to Romanists. The change won the
approval of all the Ministers present except Loughborough. He strongly
objected to the proposal, upheld the present exclusive system, and
demurred to any change affecting Roman Catholics except a commutation of
tithes, a measure which he had in preparation. His colleagues,
astonished at this firm opposition from the erstwhile Presbyterian of
East Lothian, begged him to elaborate his Tithe Bill, and indulged the
hope that further inquiry would weaken his resistance to the larger
Reform. They did not know Loughborough.

There is a curious reference in one of Pitt's letters, of October 1798,
to Loughborough as the Keeper of the King's conscience.[572] The phrase
has an ironical ring well suited to the character of him who called it
forth. Now, in his sixty-seventh year, he had run through the gamut of
political professions. An adept in the art of changing sides, he, as
Alexander Wedderburn, had earned the contempt or envy of all rivals. Yet
such was the grace of his curves and the skill of his explanations that
a new turn caused less surprise than admiration. Unlike his rival,
Thurlow, who stormed ahead, Wedderburn trimmed his sails for every
breeze and showed up best in light airs. Making few friends, he had few
inveterate enemies; but one of them, Churchill, limned him as

Adopting arts by which gay villains rise
And reach the heights which honest men despise;
Mute at the Bar and in the Senate loud,
Dull 'mong the dullest, proudest of the proud,
A pert prim prater of the northern race,
Guilt in his heart, and famine in his face.

This was before Wedderburn had wormed himself into favour with Lord
North and won the office of Solicitor-General (1778). Two years later he
became Lord Loughborough, a title which Fox ascribed to his rancorous
abuse of the American colonists. Figuring next as a member of t