agitate and depress as he pleased. On the 25th the plan was first intimated to the House by Lord Chatham’s confident, Alderman Beckford, who moved to take into consideration the state of the East India Company’s affairs. Men were amazed to see a machine of such magnitude entrusted to so wild a charioteer. Wedderburne and Charles Yorke opposed the motion. The Whigs deserted Mr. Conway who supported it, by the mouth of their spokesman, Lord John Cavendish, though he paid profuse compliments to the latter. Burke and Grenville appeared as opponents, too, and the violation of property was sounded high. Yet the motion was carried by 129 to 76, Charles Townshend speaking for it, and the Duke of Bedford’s friends staying away.[306] The wind, however, of this transaction, and the dissensions that had sprung up from the dismission of Lord Edgcumbe, brought Lord Temple back to town. Grenville painted the East Indian business to Rigby as a mine in which Lord Chatham must blow himself up; and that idea was impressed more deeply by Lord Northington, who said to Lord Gower, “There are four parties, Bute’s, Bedford’s, Rockingham’s, and Chatham’s, and we (the last) are the weakest of the four.” On the 27th of November the Duke of Portland, Lord Scarborough, Lord Besborough, and Lord Monson resigned their employments. The King immediately appointed Lord Hertford Lord Chamberlain; but told him that, knowing his brother’s delicacy on the preferment of his relations, he had hidden the stick and key, while Mr. Conway, who had just been with him, was in the closet. This defection of the Rockingham party, of whom scarce a dozen[307] remained in connection with the Court, reduced Lord Chatham, who had defeated his own purpose of dividing them, to look out for new strength. There remained Lord Bute’s and the Duke of Bedford’s factions. He approached towards both; but so coldly, and with such limited steps, that he acquired neither, and fixed the last in more open opposition. By preferring a few of the Favourite’s creatures, he drew odium on himself, without doing enough to engage their real attachment, the very rock on which his predecessors had split, though their more reluctant offers having arrived too late, they had escaped the imputation of stooping to servile conditions. Lord Chatham’s conduct towards the Bedfords was as void of dexterity as his treatment of the Rockingham party.