justice, was truly affecting, and increases my attachment for the Duke....  The Duke said the only objection to this plan was that he thought it was due from this country, and that he grudged the honour of it to Ireland; but as nothing in England was ready, this plan was settled.  You may think it strange that to this moment Burke does not know a word of all this, and his family are indeed, I believe, suffering a little under the apprehension that he may be neglected in the general scramble.  I believe there never were three cabinet counsellors more in harmony on any subject than we were, nor three people happier in their day’s work.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Life and Letters of Sir G. Elliot, i. 261-263.]

This leaves the apparent puzzle where it was.  Why should Burke not be approved of for Chancellor of the Exchequer?  What were the many difficulties described as seeming to be in the way of arranging for Burke in a manner equal to Burke’s merits and the Duke of Portland’s wishes?  His personal relations with the chiefs of his party were at this time extremely cordial and intimate.  He was constantly a guest at the Duke of Portland’s most private dinner-parties.  Fox had gone down to Beaconsfield to recruit himself from the fatigues of his rapid journey from Bologna, and to spend some days in quiet with Windham and the master of the house.  Elliot and Windham, who were talked about for a post for which one of them says that Burke would not have been approved, vied with one another in adoring Burke.  Finally, Elliot and the Duke think themselves happy in a day’s work, which ended in consigning the man who not only was, but was admitted to be, the most powerful genius of their party, to a third-rate post, and that most equivocal distinction, a pension on the Irish establishment.  The common explanation that it illustrates Whig exclusiveness, cannot be seriously received as adequate.  It is probable, for one thing, that the feelings of the Prince of Wales had more to do with it than the feelings of men like the Duke of Portland or Fox.  We can easily imagine how little that most worthless of human creatures would appreciate the great qualities of such a man as Burke.  The painful fact which we are unable to conceal from ourselves is, that the common opinion of better men than the Prince of Wales leaned in the same direction.  His violence in the course of the Regency debates had produced strong disapproval in the public, and downright consternation in his own party.  On one occasion he is described by a respectable observer as having “been wilder than ever, and laid himself and his party more open than ever speaker did.  He is folly personified, but shaking his cap and bells under the laurel of genius.  He finished his wild speech in a manner next to madness.”  Moore believes that Burke’s indiscretions in these trying and prolonged transactions sowed the seeds of the alienation between him and Fox two years afterwards.  Burke’s excited