[108] The debate is reported by Cavendish, vol. i. p. 5–17. The disunion that prevailed among the Opposition, some treating the riots as most alarming, others as comparatively unimportant, gave the Government great advantage in the discussion. It may be inferred from the Duke of Grafton’s MS. Memoirs that the Government had been taken by surprise. He says, “It was extraordinary that this combination of the seamen was not foreseen by the merchants in a case wherein they were so much interested; for if the slightest information had reached the Admiralty, a few frigates and light vessels brought up the river would have easily supported the civil power in preventing any outrage.”--E. [109] Mr. Harley was the fourth son of Edward, third Earl of Oxford. He had been bred a merchant, his father having succeeded to the title late in life through a collateral limitation on the death of the second Earl without male issue. His success in business, and his personal worth, and perhaps still more, his birth, made him a considerable person in the City. As a politician he seems to have given an unvarying and indiscriminate support to almost every Administration. In 1776 he had the good fortune to extricate himself from City politics by being elected Member for Herefordshire, where he had a large estate, and he continued to represent the county almost till the time of his death, at an advanced age, in 1804.--E. [110] See Cavendish, vol. i. pp. 21–26. After Lord Barrington, as Secretary at War, had moved for leave to bring in the bill, Lord North said that he did not know whether he should or should not oppose the motion! On the second discussion, when the measure was virtually dropped, Lord Barrington assured the House that the bill did not proceed from any consultation of the Ministers, but from himself as a Minister of the Crown, and on that ground he protested against the Opposition claiming a triumph from its withdrawal,--a declaration that enabled Mr. Burke to say fairly enough that there could be no triumph over such weak and broken troops. If, however, the statement made by Lord Barrington was correct, it strengthens the suspicion elsewhere expressed in these notes that he acted on this as on other occasions at the King’s instigation. See p. 273.--E.