New Promotions.--Pitt and Grenville.--Aggrandizement of Lord Bute.--His haughtiness.--Sir Henry Erskine, Home, and Worseley.-- Debt to the Chancery of Hanover.--Secret Article in the Treaty with the Landgrave of Hesse.--Extravagance of the War.--New Tenure of the Judges.--Approaching general Election.--Flagrant Corruption.--Lord Bute appears more ostensibly in the character of Minister.--Mr. Pitt and Lord Holderness.--Injudicious Conduct of Lord Bute.--Ministerial Changes.--A strange Exaltation.--The Duke of Rutland.--Mr. Legge and the King.--General Conway.-- Overtures by France for Peace. The new year opened with promotions. The Lord Keeper Henley was made Lord Chancellor. Lord Denbigh,[44] a creature of the Favourite, Master of the Harriers; and George Grenville[45] was called to the Cabinet Council. Pitt had ever treated him with contempt, and little expected to find him vain or daring enough to enter the lists against him. Grenville’s conceit of himself was by no means measured by the standard of modesty. His ambition was equal to Pitt’s; and his plodding, methodic genius made him take the spirit of detail for ability. Avarice, which he possessed in no less proportion than his other passions, concurred to lead him from a master, who browbeat and treated him superciliously, to worship the rising sun. Lord Bute was in want of tools; and it was a double prize to acquire them from his rival’s shop. But Fortune, had he known how to use her gifts, was kinder to the Favourite than his own politics. His wife’s father, old Wortley Montagu, died at this time, and left to her and her second son a fortune, that, at four per cent., was estimated at one million three hundred and forty thousand pounds. This was the third death within twelve months that happened to aggrandize Lord Bute. The decease of his uncle, the Duke of Argyle,[46] left Scotland open to his power; and that of the late King put the Crown itself into his hands. The estate of his father-in-law was all he was qualified to enjoy. What could be expected from a boy[47] locked up from the converse of mankind, governed by a mother still more retired, who was under the influence of a man that had passed his life in solitude, and was too haughty to admit to his familiarity but half a dozen silly authors and flatterers? Sir Henry Erskine,[48] a military poet, Home,[49] a tragedy-writing parson, and Worseley,[50] a rider of the great horse and architect, were his principal confidents. The nation was soon governed accordingly. And yet it was not the nation’s fault, if it did not receive the yoke even from this Junto!