Still, had the Opposition had sense or union, the weakness of the Ministers would have opened a fair field to their attempts. They adjourned over the day appointed for Wilkes’s appearance. Their two committees came to nothing. Lord George Germaine, Lord John Cavendish, and Frederick Montagu, whom out of candour they had added to the quorum, would not attend it, nor even a sufficient number of their own friends; nor though Thurlow and the stauncher courtiers suggested bills of pains and penalties, and would have disabled the prisoners from holding any office, would Lord North give in to any violence. As he had been more severe before he was a principal, and as he gave other subsequent proofs of wanting resolution, his moderation was, with some justice, imputed to timidity. On the 10th of April, when Lord North opened the budget, T. Townshend reflected on Lord Holland as author of the proscriptions at the beginning of the reign. Charles Fox said he did not believe his father had any hand in them; but if he had, it was right to break the power of the aristocracy that had governed in the name of the late King. Charles Fox asked me afterwards in private if the accusation against his father was just. I replied, I could not but say it was. In strict truth, heavy as the reproaches were that were cast on the Court, there was but too much foundation for them. Even the King’s virtues had a mischievous tendency. His piety was very equivocal, and calculated, in a great measure, to secure the influence of the clergy, and palliate his despotic views. His economy, such as it was, for great sums he wasted childishly, was the forced result of the expense he was at to corrupt the Parliament, and maintain a very unwilling majority. He now laid aside his intention of building a small palace he had begun at Richmond; and deferred as long as he could an installation of Knights of the Garter, and the establishment of a household for the Prince of Wales. Every post, every office, that could be bestowed on the Scots without immediate clamour, was heaped on them; and great gratitude must at least be allowed to them. They steadfastly supported the parts assigned to them, and acted upon a regular plan. In the beginning of the reign, Lady Charlotte Edwin, a sort of favourite lady of the bedchamber to the Princess of Wales, dropped this memorable expression to me:--“_Things are not yet ripe_.” The swarms of Scots that crowded and were gladly received into the army and into the corps of marines, a body into which few English deigned to enlist, were no doubt placed there to bring things to a maturity, or protect them when brought to it.