Another Bill, brought in by George Grenville on a good-natured principle, called out the passions and feelings of men at this extraordinary crisis. It was the custom in the Navy not to pay punctually the wages of the seamen, but to keep back some part, lest the natural profuseness of that wandering people should disperse them as often as they were masters of a little sum. Grenville proposed more frequent terms of payment. The superiors of that class in the House of Commons, who, according to the nature of mankind, liked that others should endure what they had endured, and who are apt to attribute their own proficience to an education under which they had begun with suffering, had opposed this compassionate reformation; and indeed the profession were but too well founded in the advantages resulting from the established hardships! Fox divided against the Bill, though without speaking; and it was carried in that House by above 60 to 42. When it came to the Lords, it was warmly opposed by Lord Winchelsea. The Duke of Bedford, too honest to be always biassed by faction, supported it against his friends, as he had the Militia Bill. Lord Denbigh, a man whose parts were better than his character, spoke out in very plain terms: he said, he should be for measures, not men: good measures he would support, whoever proposed them, be his name William, Holles, or even _Harry_--and observing all the Bishops withdrawn but two, he supposed, he said, they were gone to dinner--he hoped they would not return to vote! The Dukes of Newcastle and Devonshire, Lord Hardwicke, and many others had retired, which gave but too fair a handle for that satire on the Bench. The Bill was rejected by 23 to 18. The _inter-ministerium_ (if I may be permitted to use a new word on a new occasion; and truly as there never was such a being as the Duke of Newcastle, one may be allowed to describe him, his actions, and their consequences in a novel language,) had now lasted seven weeks. On the last rupture of the treaty with Pitt, his Grace thought he had determined to take the sole burthen of the State upon himself. He even sent his Majesty word that he would be at Kensington on the 24th, and would declare his final resolution--but he put the King off; he had fixed on nothing--and while he prevented any other man from having power, his own idea of being Minister was in a manner answered. Lord Lincoln, Lady Catherine Pelham, and Lord Ashburnham, the private chorus, that had not the less part in the drama for being cyphers, earnestly dissuaded him from coming in again without an union with Leicester House. To advise him to be governed by his fears, was governing him. He reverted to another interview with Pitt at Lord Royston’s, where Lord Hardwicke was present.