channel of law to divert. That power must have relieved the people, or they would have relieved themselves, for men will not starve, if you tell them there is no law that can help them. The very phrase, too, _of forty days_ implied that liberty preceded and succeeded to that transient tyranny. It is when unlimited that tyranny is dreadful. The sentence, however, proved the text on which the following libels were preached for some months. Lord Mansfield was daunted, and retracted, and the House rose without a division.[293] In the other House Mr. Grenville held forth on the illegality, and abused Mr. Conway, not for intention, but for ignorance and blunders. Burke spoke finely on the same side; but they could not attempt a division, the Duke of Bedford’s people having absented themselves. The Tories, however, exclaimed against Lord Camden’s dispensing power; a clamour that manifested their own principles. The Whigs dread the prerogative being used _against_ the people; the Tories, it should seem, _for_ the people. The schism raised in the Opposition by the Duke of Bedford’s defection, and the general inclination attached to the late Ministers to close with Lord Chatham, had discouraged almost all thoughts of opposition. Grenville and his dozen of followers in vain attempted to rekindle it, and though Lord Rockingham wished to figure as leader of a party even out of place, and Burke, an adventurer, was to push his way by distinguishing himself as a formidable antagonist; yet the decency of that set of men was such, even of Lord John Cavendish, that they did not care to fly out. They retained much deference for Mr. Conway; and too many of their friends remained still in place, whom they might displease and lose, and without whom their numbers would be inconsiderable. They had acted, too, with such recent animosity to George Grenville, that it was a bitter resource to join his standard: nor were he and Lord Rockingham compatible, the Treasury being the object which neither would cede to the other. So forlorn a prospect deadened all factious spirit: Lord Temple went out of town. The Dukes of Bedford and Richmond were to go on the 19th; and though some scanty forces might rally after Christmas, all who waited to judge from the size of the majority whether duration might be expected to the present Ministry, would probably by that time have enlisted themselves in the troops of the Court. This moment, fortunate beyond all calculation, did Lord Chatham pitch upon to do the wildest of acts for the silliest of reasons. Without waiting to let so prosperous a conjuncture ripen into a system, he seemed to take a fortuitous concurrence of circumstances for established power; and though the predominant influence of the Court preserved him from falling, he involved himself in such a labyrinth of difficulties, that he found no other way of extricating himself than by a conduct more preposterous than the series of