On the 21st, Dowdeswell proposed to reduce the sixteen thousand seamen to eleven thousand, but without effect. On the contrary, Charles Townshend spoke for the larger number in warm terms, and declared he had always approved the peace. This desertion did not surprise me: nor was it owing solely to his fickleness. He was now influenced by Lord George Sackville, who, dissatisfied with Lord Bute for not supporting him, had joined the Opposition: Oppositions are always great whitewashers. But the declining state of the Opposition, by deaths and other causes which I have mentioned, had alarmed Lord George, and he began to look towards Grenville, who would want all manner of strength to support himself against the Favourite. On Jan. 23rd, the day of voting the army for the year, there happened a very spirited debate.[45] Beckford began it, by declaring that if any man would second him, he would oppose so large a number as 16,000 men, because we were in no danger of being attacked by surprise; and because he apprehended there was an intention of modelling the army, which he concluded from the dismission of General Conway. He mentioned, too, an expression dropped by Charles Townshend, which he said had made his ears tingle; it was that the _Colonies were not to be emancipated_. The Colonies, said Beckford, are more free than Ireland, for America had not been conquered: on the contrary, it was inhabited by the conquerors. Townshend ridiculed Beckford’s alarm, affirming he had only meant that the Colonies were not to be emancipated from their dependence on the supremacy of this country. Beckford told him he had expressed a single idea by a multitude of circumlocutions, and was troubled with a _diarrhœa of words_--an expression with which Townshend was much hurt. Nicholson Calvert and George Onslow opened on the dismission of Conway in very strong terms. The former said, Grenville[46] had avowed it was for parliamentary conduct when he owned he had thought himself turned out for a similar cause. Onslow called the Ministers profligate and abandoned; and Lord Strange attempting to defend them, was so roughly handled on his own tergiversations by Onslow, Sir George Saville, and Thomas Townshend, that he who was wont to be all spirit, quickness, and fire, was quite abashed, and showed at least the sensibility of virtue. Thomas Townshend went farther, mentioned a list of sixteen officers, carried into the closet for dismission by Lord Sandwich: and seeing the latter sitting under the gallery, he turned towards him, and said he would tell that Minister to his face in any private company, that he was a profligate Minister. Onslow added, that they had been so cowardly as to wait for the end of the session, and skulk behind the recess.