But that very charge is, in fact, a tribute. WALPOLE’S indignation had been excited just at that moment by the zealous assistance which SHELBURNE had given, in the House of Lords, to the efforts of BURKE in the lower House in favour of economical reforms. He had brought forward a motion on that subject on the same night on which BURKE had given notice for the introduction of his famous Bill (December, 1779). He continued his efforts, and presently had to encounter a more active and pertinacious opponent of retrenchment than Horace WALPOLE. In the course of a vigorous speech on reform in the administration of the army, Lord SHELBURNE had censured a transaction in which Mr. FULLERTON, a Member of the House of Commons, was intimately concerned. [Sidenote: LORD SHELBURNE’S DUEL WITH FULLERTON.] FULLERTON made a violent attack, in his place in the House, upon his censor. But his speech was so disorderly that he was forced to break off. In his anger he sent Lord SHELBURNE a minute, not only of what he had actually spoken, but of what he had intended to say, in addition, had the rules of Parliament permitted. And he had the effrontery to wind up his obliging communication with these words:—‘You correspond, as I have heard abroad, with the enemies of your country.’ His letter was presented to Lord SHELBURNE by a messenger. The receiver, when he had read it, said to the bearer: ‘The best answer I can give Mr. FULLERTON is to desire him to meet me in Hyde Park, at five, to-morrow morning.’ They fought, and SHELBURNE was wounded. On being asked how he felt himself, he looked at the wound, and said: ‘I do not think that Lady SHELBURNE will be the worse for this.’ But it was severe enough to interrupt, for a while, his political labours. [Sidenote: HIS SECRETARYSHIP IN THE ROCKINGHAM ADMINISTRATION.] On the formation in March, 1782, of the Rockingham Administration, he accepted the Secretaryship of State, and took with him four of his adherents into the Cabinet. But the most curious feature in the transaction was that Lord SHELBURNE carried on, personally, all the intercourse in the royal closet that necessarily preceded the formation of the Ministry, although he was not to be its head. GEORGE THE THIRD would not admit Lord ROCKINGHAM to an audience until his Cabinet was completely formed. The man whose exclusion from the Grafton Ministry the King had so warmly urged a few years before, was now not less warmly urged by him to throw over his party, and to head a cabinet of his own. He resisted all blandishment, and virtually told the King that the triumph of the Opposition must be its triumph as an unbroken whole; though he doubtless felt, within himself, that the cohesion was of singularly frail tenacity.