But the power of the new Ministry was vulnerable in another place where the most unconstitutional weapons were employed against it. The King was eager to avenge the affront that had, as he conceived, been put upon him by the compulsion that had forced him to accept ministers so little to his taste. He was prepared to stick at little in order to retaliate upon his enemies, as he always conceived those men to be who ventured to cross his purposes. Nothing could be done effectively to change the political composition of the Lower House; something could be essayed with the reasonable hope of modifying the composition of the Upper House. Lord Temple, a second-rate statesman, whose position gave him almost first-rate importance, was the instrument by which the King was able to bring very effective pressure upon the peers. George wrote a letter to Lord Temple in which he declared that he should deem those who should vote for Fox's measure as "not only not his friends, but his enemies;" and he added that if Lord Temple could put this in stronger words "he had full authority to do so." With this amazing document in his {235} possession Lord Temple went from one noble lord to another, pointing out the unwisdom of each in pursuing a course which would constitute him an avowed enemy of the King, and insisting upon the advantages that must follow from the taking of the very broad hint of the royal pleasure thus conveyed. Temple's arguments, backed by and founded upon the King's letter, had the most satisfactory result from the King's point of view. Peer after peer fell away from the doomed Ministry; peer after peer hastened to prove himself one of the elect, to assert himself as a King's friend by recording his vote against the obnoxious measure. [Sidenote: 1783--Fall of the Coalition Ministry]