“Gentlemen, you see I am grown quite an old man in your service. Twenty years I’ve served you, and always upon the same principles. I rejoiced at the success of our enemies in the American War, and the war against the virtuous French has always met with my most determined opposition; but the infamous Ministry will not make peace with our enemies, and are determined to keep me out of their councils and out of place. Therefore, gentlemen, as their principles are quite different from mine, and as I am now too old to form myself according to their systems, my attendance in Parliament is useless, and, to say the truth, I feel that my season of action is past, and I must leave to younger men to act, for, alas! my failings and weaknesses will not let me now recognize what is for the best.” [Illustration: THE WORN-OUT PATRIOT, OR THE LAST DYING SPEECH OF THE WESTMINSTER REPRESENTATIVE, ON THE ANNIVERSARY MEETING, HELD AT THE SHAKESPEARE TAVERN, OCTOBER 10, 1800. BY JAMES GILLRAY. ] Pointed and pungent as is this version, it is on record that Fox’s mental activity was still most brilliant; indeed, to the extent of converting his consistent enemy, George III. The supposed “Worn-out Patriot” lived to form an administration in 1806 in conjunction with Lord Grenville, who made Fox’s accession to power a _sine quâ non_. He filled the office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at perhaps the most delicate and critical period of our history, when Napoleon entertained designs against England; and on the death of the patriotic statesman, the king declared “he had never known the duties of that office so efficiently discharged for the honour of the country.” “Who,” remarked a contemporary, “in reviewing Fox’s noble adherence to the cause of Liberty, as it affected the American nation, and weighing the wisdom of his forewarnings of the fatal consequences of the American War, but must admire the prophetic spirit with which he foretold all the direful events which resulted both to the Mother Country and her colonies from that unnatural fratricidal war.”