with the Rockingham connexion. What inference are we to draw from
this?--That administration, as auspicious as it was transitory, has
never been charged with more than one error. They were thought too
liberal in the distribution of two or three sinecures and pensions. To
whom were they distributed? Uniformly, exclusively, to the friends of
lord Shelburne. Lord Shelburne proposed them to his august colleague,
and the marquis, whose faults, if he had any, were an excess of
mildness, and an unsuspecting simplicity, perhaps too readily complied.
But let it be remembered, that not one of his friends accepted, or to
not one of his friends were these emoluments extended. But, if the noble
marquis were sparing in the distribution of pensions, the deficiency was
abundantly supplied by his successor. While the interests of the people
were neglected and forgotten, the attention of the premier was in a
considerable degree engrossed by the petty arrangements of office. For
one man a certain department of business was marked out; the place had
been previously filled by another. Here the first person was at all
events to be promoted; and the second gratified with a pension. Thus, in
the minute detail of employment, in adjusting the indeclinables of a
court calendar, to detach a _commis_ from this department, and to fix a
clerk in that, burthen after burthen has been heaped upon the shoulders
of a callous and lethargic people.--But no man can say, that the earl of
Shelburne has been idle. Beside all this, he has restored peace to his
country. His merits in this business, have already been sufficiently
agitated. To examine them afresh would lead me too far from the scope of
my subject. I will not therefore now detain myself either to exculpate
or criminate the minister, to whom, whatever they are, they are
principally to be ascribed.

From the considerations already suggested, I am afraid thus much may be
fairly inferred, that the earl of Shelburne is a man, dark, insidious