There was a sleepy coolness in that fat Lord North which was the most provoking thing that the Opposition had ever to encounter from him.  He heard me with half-shut eyes.  When I had finished a long violent speech—­which I made striding about his room in Downing Street, and gesticulating with all the energy of an Irishman—­he opened one eye, smiled, and asked me gently if I had done.  On my replying in the affirmative, he said, ’Well, Mr. Barry, I’ll answer you, point by point.  The King is exceedingly averse to make peers, as you know.  Your claims, as you call them, have been laid before him, and His Majesty’s gracious reply was, that you were the most impudent man in his dominions, and merited a halter rather than a coronet.  As for withdrawing your support from us, you are perfectly welcome to carry yourself and your vote whithersoever you please.  And now, as I have a great deal of occupation, perhaps you will do me the favour to retire.’  So saying, he raised his hand lazily to the bell, and bowed me out; asking blandly if there was any other thing in the world in which he could oblige me.

I went home in a fury which can’t be described; and having Lord Crabs to dinner that day, assailed his Lordship by pulling his wig off his head, and smothering it in his face, and by attacking him in that part of the person where, according to report, he had been formerly assaulted by Majesty.  The whole story was over the town the next day, and pictures of me were hanging in the clubs and print-shops performing the operation alluded to.  All the town laughed at the picture of the lord and the Irishman, and, I need not say, recognised both.  As for me, I was one of the most celebrated characters in London in those days:  my dress, style, and equipage being as well known as those of any leader of the fashion; and my popularity, if not great in the highest quarters, was at least considerable elsewhere.  The people cheered me in the Gordon rows, at the time they nearly killed my friend Jemmy Twitcher and burned Lord Mansfield’s house down.  Indeed, I was known as a staunch Protestant, and after my quarrel with Lord North veered right round to the Opposition, and vexed him with all the means in my power.

These were not, unluckily, very great, for I was a bad speaker, and the House would not listen to me, and presently, in 1780, after the Gordon disturbance, was dissolved, when a general election took place.  It came on me, as all my mishaps were in the habit of coming, at a most unlucky time.  I was obliged to raise more money, at most ruinous rates, to face the confounded election, and had the Tiptoffs against me in the field more active and virulent than ever.

My blood boils even now when I think of the rascally conduct of my enemies in that scoundrelly election.  I was held up as the Irish Bluebeard, and libels of me were printed, and gross caricatures drawn representing me flogging Lady Lyndon, whipping Lord Bullingdon, turning him out of doors in a storm, and I know not what.  There were pictures of a pauper cabin in Ireland, from which it was pretended I came; others in which I was represented as a lacquey and shoeblack.  A flood of calumny was let loose upon me, in which any man of less spirit would have gone down.