political world" to evince much
interest in its vicissitudes, the honours which his official career had
so well earned followed him into private life. Towards the close of
1784, he was created Marquis of Buckingham.

In his retirement, however, he was not an inattentive observer of public
affairs, and seems to have contemplated the design of drawing up an
account of that memorable struggle of parties of which he had been a
witness, and especially of the transactions in which he had been
directly and personally concerned. That he did not carry this design
into execution, and that nothing remains of it but the following
fragment, is much to be regretted, as few men were so well qualified by
experience, knowledge and ability, to become the historian of these
events. The fragment, for it is nothing more, breaking off at the most
interesting point of the narrative, which it was evidently the writer's
intention to pursue to the close, is printed with the title, and exactly
in the form in which it was left by Lord Temple. It is hardly necessary
to remark that there is an error in the date, which has reference to the
months of November and December, 1783, and not 1784, a mistake which
probably arose from the circumstance of these notes having been put
together in the latter year.

LORD BUCKINGHAM'S PRIVATE NOTES.

I have much lamented that, during the very interesting period of
November and December, of 1784, I did not keep a regular journal
of the transactions of those months, in which I am supposed to
have borne so principal a share. Many of the minuter springs
which guided those operations have slipped my memory, from the
multiplicity of them, and from the rapidity with which they
crowded upon each other during the latter busy days, ending with
the formation of the new Ministry on the 21st of December, 1784.
It will, however, be necessary for me to take this narrative
from an earlier period, necessarily connected with it--I mean
the formation of the Government known by the name of the
Coalition Ministry.

I was in Ireland during that period, and was not uninformed,
authentically, of the disposition on the part of Lord North to
have supported the Ministry of Lord Shelburne upon terms of
provision for his friends, very short of those which he
afterwards claimed and extorted from Mr. Fox. It was clearly
known to Lord Shelburne, that no official