Whatever the Duke’s conduct and views at that critical moment may have been, those of his subordinates strike us now as not only impolitic, but dishonest. Sir George Murray went out of his way to assure the Whigs that he intended to manage the affairs of the colonies on the principles which they advocated. Sir Henry Hardinge became a frequent visitor at Spenser House, and professed opinions there which led Lord Althorpe to reckon upon him as a willing member of a new coalition. Meanwhile three members of Brookes’s, Lords Rosselyn and Jersey and Sir James Scarlett, held office under a Tory chief, and Earl Grey was approached with a view to conciliation by creating his son-in-law, Mr Lambton, Earl of Durham. All this gave sure evidence of weakness on the part of the Government, and encouraged the discontented among its old supporters to aim at its overthrow. On the other hand, Sir James Graham, as if looking rather to a fusion than to the break-up of parties, declared that he saw little difference, except on the question of the currency, between the opinions entertained by the Opposition on the one side, and the friends of the Administration on the other. And, as if to test the House, he moved, on going into Committee of Supply, that since Peel’s bill of 1819 was accepted as a final settlement of the currency question, the salaries of all public servants should be cut down by 20 per cent. Though listened to attentively, he received small support, either from his own friends or the friends of the Government; but he added, by the vigour of his appeal, to the reputation which he had already acquired, and was by common consent assigned a place with Lord Althorpe, Lord John Russell, and Mr Brougham, as one of the leaders of the Opposition in the House of Commons. Early in May 1830 the Parliamentary campaign opened in earnest, by a notice of motion by Sir James Graham for a return of all the pensions, salaries, and emoluments then receivable by members of the Privy Council. His speech was, in its own way, a telling one; and the motion was met by a proposal from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to supply the honourable member with a comprehensive enumeration of all civil and military offices and salaries under the Crown. Sir James either felt or affected great indignation, and, in rejecting Mr Goulbourne’s counter-proposal, made use of the expression, “That he was not disposed to stoop to ignoble game while flights of voracious birds of prey were floating in the upper regions of the air.” This was one of the clap-traps in which Sir James on all convenient occasions indulged, and it had its effect. Not fewer than 147 members in a House of 382 voted with him—a remarkable sign of the times, a sure proof that men’s passions had overclouded their reason on many matters, and that Government by party, as it had once existed, was for a season at least at an end.