In the meantime, the inquiries began, April 19th. I shall give but a summary account of them: it would be ridiculous to enter into the detail of a pantomime, from which nothing was intended, expected, or produced. The Townshends pretended to be managers against the Ministers: Hume Campbell and Lord Royston acted with spirit and sense for their friends: Ellis was agent for Fox. The latter himself meddled a little, pointing out where inconveniences might arrive to Government from probing intelligence too nicely. The examination began with reading all the papers in order; intelligence, letters, orders, &c. But no kind of check had been held over the offices from whence the materials came. The clerks had been left at liberty to omit, abridge, secrete, what they pleased. No questions were asked, no proofs of authenticity demanded, no witnesses examined; and, for fear of discovering our channels of intelligence, no names were inserted in the extracts. And as the offices had been suffered to curtail at their discretion, so they had had as impartial liberty to send as much useless and perplexing lumber as they could amass. The very dates of the letters filled three and twenty sheets of paper! All this was read over in a hurry, yet was so tiresome, that before half a day was wasted, the House was almost empty. Yet three or four hundred men were supposed to extract a judgment from so crude and slovenly a process! Pitt, it was expected, would take advantage of illness, and not appear. But he refined on that old finesse; and pretending to wave the care of a broken constitution, when his country demanded his service, and as a pledge of his sincerity in the scrutiny, he came to the discussion in all the studied apparatus of a theatric valetudinarian. The weather was unseasonably warm; yet he was dressed in an old coat and waistcoat of beaver laced with gold: over that, a red surtout, the right arm lined with fur, and appendent with many black ribands, to indicate his inability of drawing it over his right arm, which hung in a crape sling, but which, in the warmth of speaking, he drew out with unlucky activity, and brandished as usual. On his legs were riding stockings. In short, no aspiring Cardinal ever coughed for the Tiara with more specious debility. This mummery was covered over with candour: he acquiesced in every softening term proposed by the advocates of the late criminals: his justice shrunk behind apprehensions of personality: moderation was the sole virtue of a censor. The loss of Minorca he avowed he meant to charge on the whole Government--for the whole Government could not be punished. On the second day, indeed, he trespassed a little upon all these gentle virtues, and threatened to _secede_, and publish to the world the iniquity of the majority: but recollecting how much more useful to him the majority might be than the world, he recomposed himself, and was content that the majority should be responsible for whatever