rt of the _Foreign_ Department),
Lord John Cavendish as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Keppel, First
Lord of the Admiralty, Viscount Stormont, President of the Council, and
the Earl of Carlisle, Privy Seal. The King had endeavoured in vain to
retain the services of Lord Thurlow. Upon this point, which had been
ceded very reluctantly by the Shelburne Cabinet, the coalition Ministers
were inexorable. They insisted upon putting the Seal into commission,
with Lord Loughborough as First Commissioner; and, as they were in a
position to dictate their own terms, His Majesty at last gave up this
point, to which he had clung with more tenacity than all the rest.

His Majesty's attachment to Lord Thurlow may possibly have been founded
on the conviction that he could securely calculate on the allegiance of
a man who was ready to avail himself of every opportunity to promote his
own interests, and who might therefore be expected, on all occasions, to
pay a deferential attention to the wishes of the King. His Lordship's
subsequent conduct during the Regency discussions in 1788 afforded a
conspicuous proof of his unscrupulousness: when, upon hearing one night,
at Carlton House, from one of the King's physicians, of the approaching
convalescence of His Majesty, he went down at once to the House, and, to
the utter astonishment of everybody, undertook a defence of the King's
rights against the Prince and the Whigs, with whom, up to that moment,
he had been engaged actively intriguing on the other side. The same
implicit devotion to the ascendant authority might no doubt have been
looked for from Lord Loughborough, who was a thorough party-man. But
there was a certain sturdiness in Thurlow, that rendered him a more
valuable adherent, and a more formidable antagonist. He seems to have
regarded all mankind with distrust. On the Bench, his disposition vented
itself in judgments remarkable for their brevity and the irascible tone
in which they were delivered. His utterance was sonorous, with the
mysterious pomp and grandiloquence of an oracle, kindling up at times
into solemn denunciation. His "make up" must have been perfect in its
way, from the awful air of preparation for which his speeches are said
to have been so remarkable. Thurlow acted with Pitt and the Whigs, and
was pronounced equally impracticable by both. Pitt complained of him
that he was always raising difficulties, and strangely irresolute of
purpose on public measures, for a