illiterate demagogue, whose Cockney English and scraps of mispronounced Latin were the jest of the newspapers, Alderman Beckford.  It may well be supposed that these strange proceedings produced a ferment through the whole political world.  The city was in commotion.  The East India Company invoked the faith of charters.  Burke thundered against the ministers.  The ministers looked at each other, and knew not what to say.  In the midst of the confusion, Lord Chatham proclaimed himself gouty, and retired to Bath.  It was announced, after some time, that he was better, that he would shortly return, that he would soon put everything in order.  A day was fixed for his arrival in London.  But when he reached the Castle inn at Marlborough, he stopped, shut himself up in his room, and remained there some weeks.  Everybody who travelled that road was amazed by the number of his attendants.  Footmen and grooms, dressed in his family livery filled the whole inn, though one of the largest in England, and swarmed in the streets of the little town.  The truth was that the invalid had insisted that, during his stay, all the waiters and stable-boys of the Castle should wear his livery.

His colleagues were in despair.  The Duke of Grafton proposed to go down to Marlborough in order to consult the oracle.  But he was informed that Lord Chatham must decline all conversation on business.  In the meantime, all the parties which were out of office, Bedfords, Grenvilles, and Rockinghams, joined to oppose the distracted Government on the vote for the land tax.  They were reinforced by almost all the county members, and had a considerable majority.  This was the first time that a ministry had been beaten on an important division in the House of Commons since the fall of Sir Robert Walpole.  The administration, thus furiously assailed from without, was torn by internal dissensions.  It had been formed on no principle whatever.  From the very first, nothing but Chatham’s authority had prevented the hostile contingents which made up his ranks from going to blows with each other.  That authority was now withdrawn, and everything was in commotion.  Conway, a brave soldier, but in civil affairs the most timid and irresolute of men, afraid of disobliging the King, afraid of being abused in the newspapers, afraid of being thought factious if he went out, afraid of being thought interested if he stayed in, afraid of everything, and afraid of being known to be afraid of anything, was beaten backwards and forwards like a shuttlecock between Horace Walpole who wished to make him Prime Minister, and Lord John Cavendish who wished to draw him into opposition.  Charles Townshend, a man of splendid eloquence, of lax principles, and of boundless vanity and presumption, would submit to no control.  The full extent of his parts, of his ambition, and of his arrogance, had not yet been made manifest; for he had always quailed before the genius and the lofty character of Pitt.  But now that Pitt had quitted the House of Commons, and seemed to have abdicated the part of chief minister, Townshend broke loose from all restraint.