19th.--The Council, which had been postponed, was held at Bedford-house, whither the Duke of Newcastle would have carried Lord Halifax and Lord Anson, but the Duke of Bedford refused to admit them. It was proposed to hear the whole Board of Trade upon their Memorial; but the Duke of Bedford said, that this proposal of stationing two men of war at Nova Scotia, upon the notion of a French fleet going thither, had not been mentioned in a long letter that he had received from that Board in January last, since which period there had been no letters from Governor Cornwallis. Nobody agreed with the Duke but Lord Sandwich, not even his father-in-law, Lord Gower, who had been with him an hour before the rest arrived, and said to him, “Now we have caught Lord Halifax in a trap;” (but he himself was intangled in Mr. Pelham’s snares, and did not know it!) nor the Duke of Marlborough, though his friend and brother-in-law, and though his connexion with Mr. Fox had made the Duke of Bedford flatter himself with his support: but both the Duke and Lord Sandwich were too sanguine about Mr. Fox, who had declared to them, that if it came to a rupture, he must adhere to Mr. Pelham. He had repeated this to Lord Sandwich in the summer, when commissioned by him to carry a reconciling message to Mr. Pelham. Mr. Fox had made the same declaration of his unavoidable connexion with Mr. Pelham to the Duke of Cumberland: but the Duke of Bedford was not only apt to forget what he did not care to hear, and even to forget his own change of opinion, but would and did often believe the very reverse. He told the two brothers that this was designed as a hostile measure against him, which they then denied. 20th.--Potter[73] opened in an able manner his scheme for an additional duty of two shillings on spirits, to be collected by way of Excise. He was a young man of the greatest goodnature, though he had set out with two of the severest speeches[74] that ever were made against the Ministry and the Grenvilles, and with the greatest applause; but his goodnature had kept up to its character much more than his parts. He was not bashful nor void of vanity, and had now flattered himself that he should figure like Sir Robert Walpole by attempting to re-establish the defeated Excise Scheme; not reflecting that the opposition to that project was levelled at the Minister, not occasioned by the pretended inconveniences and dangers of it. Mr. Pelham spoke greatly against it, and for suppressing unlicensed houses, and for a visitation by parish officers. He was seconded by the Solicitor General. Alderman Baker, a man rather busy and confident than very able, fluctuated between both schemes: but Mr. Pelham desiring a respite till the morrow se’nnight for further deliberation, it was agreed to.