The breach which had been made in the Government by the defection of so many of the Rockinghams, Chatham hoped to supply by the help of the Bedfords.  But with the Bedfords he could not deal as he had dealt with other parties.  It was to no purpose that he bade high for one or two members of the faction, in the hope of detaching them from the rest.  They were to be had; but they were to be had only in the lot.  There was indeed for a moment some wavering and some disputing among them.  But at length the counsels of the shrewd and resolute Rigby prevailed.  They determined to stand firmly together, and plainly intimated to Chatham that he must take them all, or that he should get none of them.  The event proved that they were wiser in their generation than any other connection in the State.  In a few months they were able to dictate their own terms.

The most important public measure of Lord Chatham’s administration was his celebrated interference with the corn trade.  The harvest had been bad; the price of food was high; and he thought it necessary to take on himself the responsibility of laying an embargo on the exportation of grain.  When Parliament met, this proceeding was attacked by the Opposition as unconstitutional, and defended by the ministers as indispensably necessary.  At last an act was passed to indemnify all who had been concerned in the embargo.

The first words uttered by Chatham, in the House of Lords, were in defence of his conduct on this occasion.  He spoke with a calmness, sobriety, and dignity, well suited to the audience which he was addressing.  A subsequent speech which he made on the same subject was less successful.  He bade defiance to aristocratical connections, with a superciliousness to which the Peers were not accustomed, and with tones and gestures better suited to a large and stormy assembly than to the body of which he was now a member.  A short altercation followed, and he was told very plainly that he should not be suffered to browbeat the old nobility of England.

It gradually became clearer and clearer that he was in a distempered state of mind.  His attention had been drawn to the territorial acquisitions of the East India Company, and he determined to bring the whole of that great subject before Parliament.  He would not, however, confer on the subject with any of his colleagues.  It was in vain that Conway, who was charged with the conduct of business in the House of Commons, and Charles Townshend, who was responsible for the direction of the finances, begged for some glimpse of light as to what was in contemplation.  Chatham’s answers were sullen and mysterious.  He must decline any discussion with them; he did not want their assistance; he had fixed on a person to take charge of his measure in the House of Commons.  This person was a member who was not connected with the Government, and who neither had, nor deserved to have the ear of the House, a noisy, purseproud,