eat talents entitle him, and indeed
must secure to him in any party arrangement that _could_ be made. The
Duke of Portland knows how much I wished for, and how earnestly I
labored that reunion, and upon terms that might every way be honorable
and advantageous to Mr. Fox. His conduct in the last session has
extinguished these hopes forever.

Mr. Fox has lately published in print a defence of his conduct. On
taking into consideration that defence, a society of gentlemen, called
the Whig Club, thought proper to come to the following
resolution:--"That their confidence in Mr. Fox is confirmed,
strengthened, and increased by the calumnies against him."

To that resolution my two noble friends, the Duke of Portland and Lord
Fitzwilliam, have given their concurrence.

The calumnies supposed in that resolution can be nothing else than the
objections taken to Mr. Fox's conduct in this session of Parliament; for
to them, and to them alone, the resolution refers. I am one of those who
have publicly and strongly urged those objections. I hope I shall be
thought only to do what is necessary to my justification, thus publicly,
solemnly, and heavily censured by those whom I most value and esteem,
when I firmly contend that the objections which I, with many others of
the friends to the Duke of Portland, have made to Mr. Fox's conduct, are
not _calumnies_, but founded on truth,--that they are not _few_, but
many,--and that they are not _light and trivial_, but, in a very high
degree, serious and important.

That I may avoid the imputation of throwing out, even privately, any
loose, random imputations against the public conduct of a gentleman for
whom I once entertained a very warm affection, and whose abilities I
regard with the greatest admiration, I will put down, distinctly and
articulately, some of the matters of objection which I feel to his late
doctrines and proceedings, trusting that I shall be able to demonstrate
to the friends whose good opinion I would still cultivate, that not
levity, nor caprice, nor less defensible motives, but that very grave
reasons, influence my judgment. I think that the spirit of his late
proceedings is wholly alien to our national policy, and to the peace, to
the prosperity, and to the legal liberties of this nation, _according to
our ancient domestic and appropriated mode of holding them_.

Viewing things in that light, my confidence in him is not increased, but
totally destroyed, by those proc