Horace Walpole saw the precipice on which Fox stood, and wished to save him from it. He saw, too, an opening for delivering the nation from that disgraceful man (Newcastle), who had so long perplexed all its Councils, and been a principal cause of its misfortunes. He sounded Lord George Sackville, and thinking him not ill-disposed to Fox, and by no means amicable to Newcastle, he proposed his plan to the former. It was, that the King should send _carte blanche_ to Pitt, to place the Duke of Dorset at the head of the Treasury, with Lord George for Secretary at War, and, by dissolving the Parliament, dissipate at once Newcastle’s influence. Fox, who feared a popular election, disapproved the latter part, and did not relish Lord George in the War Office--too sharp-sighted, and who, to the desertion of Fox, had added a refusal of making Calcraft agent to his regiment. However, he permitted Walpole to propose all this to Lord George, adding that he would take Paymaster (which seemed to be his nearest wish), under Pitt, or would even act under him without an employment, with the sole privilege reserved of abusing Newcastle as much as he pleased. Lord George Sackville owned he should have liked the plan, but was now too far engaged. He confessed he had taken his part, as the contest lay between Leicester House and the Duke; and the rather, as he had long observed that the Duke loved none but men totally detached from all other connexions, and had even been less kind to Conway since his marriage; and, as an insurmountable objection, said, that Lord Bute, who was of scrupulous honour, would now reckon their party bound by these resignations. Thus this plan failed, though the King, whose aversion was diverted from Pitt to Newcastle, would have consented to anything, that might make the treacheries of the latter fall on his own head. Fox’s junto met two or three times: Lord Granville would have infused his jovial intrepidity into them: Bedford wanted no inspired ardour; but Fox himself desponded, and Bedford reproached him with it.