But he is celebrated for being a man of large professions, and by these professions he has induced some persons in different classes in society, to esteem him the friend of liberty and renovation.  What he has held out, however, upon these heads, has not been entirely confident.  He has appeared the enthusiastical partizan of the aristocracy, a kind of government, which, carried to its height, is perhaps, of all the different species of despotism, the most intolerable.  He has talked in a very particular stile of his fears of reducing the regal power to a shadow, of his desire that the extension of prerogative should keep pace with the confirmation of popular rights, and his resolution, that, if it were in his power to prevent it, a king of England should never be brought to a level with a king of Mahrattas.  The true sons of freedom will not certainly be very apprehensive upon this score, and will leave it to the numbers that will ever remain the adherents of monarchical power, to guard the barriers of the throne.  In opposition, his declarations in favour of parliamentary reform seemed indeed very decisive.  In administration, he was particularly careful to explain away these declarations, and to assure the people that he would never employ any influence in support of the measure, but would only countenance it so far as it appeared to be the sense of parliament.  In other words, that he would remain neutral, or at most only honour the subject with an eloquent harangue, and interest himself no further respecting it.

But let us proceed from his language to his conduct in office.  Almost every salutary measure of administration, from the resignation of lord North downward, was brought about during the union of the noble earl with the Rockingham connexion.  What inference are we to draw from this?—­That administration, as auspicious as it was transitory, has never been charged with more than one error.  They were thought too liberal in the distribution of two or three sinecures and pensions.  To whom were they distributed?  Uniformly, exclusively, to the friends of lord Shelburne.  Lord Shelburne proposed them to his august colleague, and the marquis, whose faults, if he had any, were an excess of mildness, and an unsuspecting simplicity, perhaps too readily complied.  But let it be remembered, that not one of his friends accepted, or to not one of his friends were these emoluments extended.  But, if the noble marquis were sparing in the distribution of pensions, the deficiency was abundantly supplied by his successor.  While the interests of the people were neglected and forgotten, the attention of the premier was in a considerable degree engrossed by the petty arrangements of office.  For one man a certain department of business was marked out; the place had been previously filled by another.  Here the first person was at all events to be promoted; and the second gratified with a pension.  Thus, in the minute detail of employment, in adjusting the