But like many others Selwyn had grown accustomed to the existing method of carrying on the government and obtaining majorities in the House of Commons.  He had seen much of political corruption and official influence, and having no high political standard he had come to regard the system of George iii. and North as normal and constitutional.  He had, too, a fear of a ministry in which Fox and his friends should take a leading part.  In Selwyn’s mind Fox was connected with the wildest gambling and with a carelessness in regard to monetary obligations which he considered to be almost criminal.  There were many others who shared this opinion:  it was one thing for a gambler to hurry from the card-table in St. James’s Street to the floor of the House of Commons and delight alike Ministerialists and Opposition by a brilliant attack on the Government:  it was quite another for him to be responsible for the affairs of the nation.  George iii. and Lord North were men of business.  Fox was a man of pleasure, and those who were most intimate with him at the clubs were the last—­very often—­to desire to see him a Minister.  “From a Pharo table to the headship of the Exchequer is a transition which appears to me de tenir trop au Roman, and those who will oppose it the most are those whom he has been voting with and assisting to ruin this country for the last ten years at least.”  Selwyn underrated the need for Fox’s great abilities in office; so powerful a debater could not be used by a party in opposition only.  But he certainly expressed a feeling which existed in the minds of many.

Selwyn’s letters which were written at this crisis give a lively description of the dismay which the change of Ministry produced among those who had begun to consider Lord North’s Government as a part of the established order of things.  The Court party had hardly taken the Opposition seriously; there were many who had grown to suppose that nothing could overturn the individual authority of the King, and they were puzzled and surprised at the impending changes.

In the first of the following letters there is an account of a curious academic discussion at Brooks’s on the theory of government, in which Fox took part.  Those who listened to him hardly realised that presently he would be the most important member of a new government.  It would not be easy to find a clearer picture of Fox at that extraordinary time than is given to us in these letters; the apprehension and the affection felt by his friends, the contrast between his social bonhomie and his political fervour is conspicuously presented.  We understand his greatness better when we see him moving among his contemporaries, good-natured, indifferent to what was said or thought of him, telling his opinions without hesitation—­a giant among political and intellectual dwarfs.

Again in the midst of the gambling, the supper parties, and the gaieties of the town, there is the continual sombre shadow of an important constitutional change—­a system and a Cabinet were falling under the deep resentment of the country.  Neither the King, the Ministry, or its supporters appeared to appreciate that, even in an age when public opinion was chaotic and often hardly audible, there must come a time when a day of reckoning was certain for a Government which had discredited and injured its country.