also hardly doubt that the attraction Pitt was beginning to exercise over him formed a material factor in his resolve. Freed from the trammels of office, Shelburne boldly stood forward as an opponent of the arbitrary and fatuous course which the Grenville ministry, all subservience to the king's wishes, adopted in the miserable business of Wilkes. Jeremy Bentham has said of Shelburne that he was the only statesman he ever heard of who did not fear the people. Certainly, Shelburne on this occasion showed, with an unmistakableness that simply infuriated George III., that he did not fear the court. The king made no secret of his displeasure. He dismissed the ex-minister even from his post of royal _aide-de-camp_, and when he appeared at court snubbed him pointedly by pretending not to notice his presence. Bute followed suit, and from this time all intercourse between him and Shelburne ceased. For upward of a year after these events Shelburne kept entirely aloof from the world of politics, busying himself with the management of his estates in the country, collecting a vast number of historical documents (which are now in the British Museum), and every now and then coming up to London to enjoy the society of the "young orators" (as Walpole calls them) who frequented his house in Hill street, and the non-political clubs of _litterateurs_. Benjamin Franklin was among his visitors at this time, and the two, as Shelburne in a letter to Franklin nineteen years afterward reminds him, "talked upon the means of promoting the happiness of mankind."