Though the chief business of the session turned on the great affair of what was to be gotten from the Company, yet as what was gotten, was at least peaceably obtained without violence or any Parliamentary decision on their rights; and as I avow myself extremely unversed in those and all other transactions of money and revenue, I shall, as much as I can, avoid details on that subject, both in favour of my own ignorance, and to avoid misleading the reader; the spirit of the times, and the characters of the men who gave colour to events, being almost my sole objects in these Memoirs. The reader has seen, and will see, through what a labyrinth of faction, self-interest, and misconduct we were led into such a chaos of difficulties, as God knows whether I shall live to see surmounted;[335] or whether I must not leave these pages a sad memorial of those errors whose consequences posterity may trace back to their several sources. If I pause a moment to make this reflection, it is because I think at this period Lord Chatham, by a wise and vigorous exertion of himself, might still have established some permanent system, with the support of the Crown and the Favourite, without too disgraceful dependence on the latter. I think so, because even the remnant of this system, when Lord Chatham was withdrawn, still maintained its superiority. That Lord Chatham might have done much more service nine months earlier, before his wanton defiance of the Rockingham party, and his other wild actions of passion and scorn, is past a doubt with me. It will appear at a period not much later, that had his successor and pupil not been endued with almost as great impracticability, and scarce less haughtiness, the distractions that followed had never happened. They indeed dated from a subsequent Parliament; but the seeds were sown in that complaisant and prostitute one of which I am speaking, and which yet, if well conducted, might have remedied many of the evils it had countenanced; but managed as it was, it left nothing but the dis-esteem it had raised to be copied by, and stigmatised in, the Parliament that succeeded.