Grange thought at one time that he had great claims on Walpole, and Lord Ilay; and he seems to have very diligently performed one class of duties which politicians sometimes think sufficient to establish a claim for reward--he had been an indefatigable petitioner for ministerial favours. We have heard somewhere of a story of a political economist, who during a long walk is pestered by an Irish beggar, who asks his honour just to give him a sixpence, "for the love of God." The economist turns round to argue the matter: "I deny," says he, "that I would be showing my love to the Deity by giving an idle rascal like you money; if you can state any service you have ever done to me worth the sixpence, you shall have it."--"Why, then," says the mendicant thus appealed to, "haven't I been keeping your honour in discourse this half hour?" Such seems to have been the character of Grange's claim on the ministry--he kept them in unceasing "discourse" as a petitioner. Not that he did not profess some claims of another kind. "During all this time," he says, "I ran their errands and fought their battles in Scotland." Nor did he fail sometimes to allude to his services as a religious professor, so ill-requited, that he taunts Ilay with having "already effectually interposed for Tom (now Baron) Kennedy, who had been Queen's advocate, and obnoxious to all the Presbyterian party, _which I was not_." And how was he rewarded for all this running errands, fighting battles, and being religious enough not to be obnoxious? "Ilay showed me no countenance, and Argyle shunned to see me.... He [Ilay] never speaks nor writes to me of any business, but to shame me (as you have seen) about my own: and, these three or four years past, has visibly to all the world drawn off by degrees from all familiarity with me, and has dropped me even from his conversation about trifles or mirth. I could give you many strong instances of this." Here is an incident told with a pathos sufficient to move a whole antechamber to tears:--