George Grenville took advantage of the triumphant situation of his connexion, and renewed his Navy Bill, which had been thrown out the last year. And here Mr. Pitt had an opportunity of showing that if he had submitted to unite with the very men he had persecuted, the depression fell to them. The Duke of Newcastle, Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Anson were all obliged to vote for this very Bill, which they had rejected last year. Some pretended that this shifting conduct was but a compromise, and that their intention of flinging out the new Habeas Corpus was to be overlooked, in consideration of their facilitating the Navy Bill; a bargain about laws, not the more incredible for its being shameful; and considering for what trifling acts Mr. Pitt has stickled, while he acquiesced in the loss of such an invaluable Bill, his patriotism will lie under the suspicion of being more specious than real. Lord Winchelsea, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Marchmont, and the adherents of the Duke and Fox, still opposed the Navy Bill; but it was carried on the first division by 74 to 14. At the third reading, Lord Bath spoke upon it,--a speech so miscellaneous and rambling, that it resembled his ancient orations, except that in this he much commended Sir Robert Walpole. Lord Denbigh attacked Lord Marchmont, and said, he remembered when that Lord had been connected with a man of very different principles. Lord Marchmont, thinking Lord Bolingbroke was the person alluded to, treated his memory with great severity--though, by the way, Lord Bolingbroke had died in friendship with him. Lord Denbigh, without rising, said aloud, “He mistakes; I meant Sir William Windham.” Marchmont was disconcerted. The other, after the debate, went up to Lord Hardwicke, and said, “Sir William Windham put me under Lord Marchmont in politics; and one day, in warm conversation, the latter clapped his hand on my knee, and said, ‘Young man, remember I tell you, this country will never be in a better situation while one of this family is on the Throne.’” The Bill passed. FOOTNOTES: [16] It seems by this passage, that in George the Second’s reign, the Lord Lieutenants of Ireland absented themselves, as a matter of course, the second year of their Viceroyalty.--E. [17] When they returned from Ireland, the Duke of Newcastle, who was leaning from Pitt, was impatient to see Rigby. The latter went to dine at Claremont. The Duke showed him the gardens and improvements; and in the expansion of the folly of his heart, forgetting that it was himself and not Rigby that was in transports of satisfaction, he said, “Well! is not this better than going about and abusing me?” In the following summer, Newcastle carried this disposition to the Bedfords still further: at the Commencement at Cambridge he affected to take extreme notice of Lord Tavistock, a modest, but plain lad, cried up his beauty and the goodness of his coffee, and recommended him to the University for successor to himself.