I have said that General Conway,[409] under pretence of bringing home the troops, had been kept abroad till the peace was voted, the ministers apprehending that they should not be able to influence him to approve an event so ruinous and shameful to his country. At his return, no man being less factious, he had entered into no cabals, had attached himself to no party. His chief friendships were with the Duke of Devonshire, with his own brother the Earl of Hertford, and with me. The Duke, though grievously insulted and provoked, was of so decent and cautious a nature, that he was the last man on earth to think of exciting his friends to violent measures; and, indeed, after the first sally of passion, bore his affront with too much patience. Lord Hertford was a perfect courtier, and more likely to dissuade his brother from, than incite him to, Opposition. I, much more inclined to party-heat, had been very seriously alarmed at the strides I had seen made towards arbitrary power; but having beheld the cowardice of Lord Bute, and knowing that of Lord Mansfield, and finding the nation delivered from the influence of Fox, I had flattered myself the danger was over. I had been pleased, too, that Grenville was become the acting minister; having (I confess my blindness) entertained a most favourable opinion of his integrity. He talked nothing but reformation--which, indeed, alone, would not have duped me--I had seen too much of patriot hypocrisy! but he went beyond myself in his principles of liberty--I mean, in his discourse. I thought him a grounded Republican; had heard him harangue by the hour against the despotic doctrines of Lord Mansfield. Nor had his venal prostitution of himself to Lord Bute as yet opened my eyes. But I was again roused by the arbitrary treatment of Wilkes, committed close prisoner to the Tower by an indefinite warrant. Lord Bute, I saw, had left his cloak to his successors; yet I could not believe that my friend, Algernon Sydney, (for Grenville appeared to me as scarce a less Whig saint,) was capable of concurring in such measures. In truth, when I saw Saint Sandwich added to his rubric, I began to be startled. I saw him lean, too, on the Bedfords: them I did not love: and nothing is a more sovereign cure for blindness in friendship, than a connection between one’s friends and one’s enemies. I laboured by those most in Grenville’s confidence to detach him from so disreputable an union; but Grenville knew his interest better than I knew him. Still I had not the most distant suspicion of what his heart was capable of, nor any view of opposing his administration. Thinking him as frank and candid as myself, and thoroughly shocked at the use made of General Warrants, I desired Mr. Thomas Pitt,[410] attached to Mr. Grenville, and my own friend, to tell him fairly in the summer, that I believed I should differ with him when the point of General Warrants should be agitated in Parliament.