In my journey with them through life, I met Mr. Fox in my road; and I travelled with him very cheerfully, as long as he appeared to me to pursue the same direction with those in whose company I set out.  In the latter stage of our progress a new scheme of liberty and equality was produced in the world, which either dazzled his imagination, or was suited to some new walks of ambition which were then opened to his view.  The whole frame and fashion of his politics appear to have suffered about that time a very material alteration.  It is about three years since, in consequence of that extraordinary change, that, after a pretty long preceding period of distance, coolness, and want of confidence, if not total alienation on his part, a complete public separation has been made between that gentleman and me.  Until lately the breach between us appeared reparable.  I trusted that time and reflection, and a decisive experience of the mischiefs which have flowed from the proceedings and the system of France, on which our difference had arisen, as well as the known sentiments of the best and wisest of our common friends upon that subject, would have brought him to a safer way of thinking.  Several of his friends saw no security for keeping things in a proper train after this excursion of his, but in the reunion of the party on its old grounds, under the Duke of Portland.  Mr. Fox, if he pleased, might have been comprehended in that system, with the rank and consideration to which his great 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.