I have mentioned the projected match with Brunswick: the suddenness of the measure, and the little time left for preventing it, at once unhinged all the circumspection and prudence of the Princess. From the death of the Prince, her object had been the government of her son; and her attention had answered. She had taught him great devotion, and she had taken care that he should be taught nothing else. She saw no reason to apprehend from his own genius that he would escape her; but bigotted, and young, and chaste, what empire might not a youthful bride (and the Princess of Brunswick was reckoned artful) assume over him? The Princess thought that prudence now would be most imprudent. She immediately instilled into her son the greatest aversion to the match: he protested against it: but unsupported as they were, how to balance the authority of a King who was beloved by his people, who had heaped every possible obligation on the Princess, who, in favour of her and her children, had taught himself to act with paternal tenderness, and who, in this instance, would be blindly obeyed by a Ministry that were uncontrolled? Here Legge’s art stepped in to her assistance; and weaving Pitt’s disgusts into the toils that they were spreading for the Duke of Newcastle, they had the finesse to sink all mention of the Brunswick union, while they hoisted the standard against subsidiary treaties. Mr. Pitt, who had never contentedly acquiesced in remaining a cipher after the death of Mr. Pelham, and who was additionally inflamed at Mr. Fox’s being preferred to the Cabinet, had sent old Horace Walpole to the Duke of Newcastle the day before the King went abroad, with a peremptory demand of an explicit answer, whether his Grace would make him Secretary of State on the first convenient opportunity; not insisting on any person’s being directly removed to favour him. The response was not explicit; at least, not flattering. From that moment, it is supposed, Pitt cast his eyes towards the successor. Early in the summer Pitt went in form to Holland-house, and declared to Mr. Fox, that they could have no farther connexions; that times and circumstances forbad. Fox asked, if he had suspected him of having tried to rise above him. Pitt protested he had not. “Yet,” said Fox, “are we on incompatible lines?” “Not on incompatible,” replied Pitt, “but on _convergent_: that sometime or other they might act together: that for himself, he would accept power from no hands.” To others, Pitt complained of Fox’s connexion with Lord Granville; and dropped to himself a clue that led to an explanation of this rupture. “Here,” said Pitt, “is the Duke King, and you are his Minister!” “Whatever you may think,” replied Fox, “the Duke does not think himself aggrandized by being of the Regency, where he has no more power than I have.”