follower that could, he pushed back the most admired orator of the age. Such was the able commander under whom the campaign opened on one side! The general on the Court side (the Duke of Grafton) did not yield to him in trifling. How confounded was the avidity with which all mankind pressed for a sight of the King’s speech, when they found not a word said on the petitions; but instead of them, a lamentation about the horned cattle.[26] The first draught of the speech had run in a style of commendation of the House of Commons: this, as too insulting, Mr. Conway had obtained to be laid aside. He did not guess that the imagination of the Duke of Grafton could furnish nothing more to the purpose, or more interesting to the public, than the distemper amongst the cattle! A preface so ridiculous could not detain men long from the serious business in question. In the Upper House, Lord Chatham, after descanting on the ambition of the House of Bourbon, turned to the election of Lutterell, and proposed an amendment of the address, to assure the King that they would immediately inquire into grievances, especially those on the Middlesex election. This motion, calculated to create a breach between the two Houses, was not agreeable even to several of the Opposition;[27] but he had drawn it himself,[28] and persisted in it, telling the House he would not have appeared but on so extraordinary an occasion. The Chancellor spoke strongly on the same side, and declared for the amendment; as did Lord Temple, Lord Lyttelton, and Lord Shelburne; the latter chiefly on the alarming posture of Europe, where we had not, could not get, an ally. The Duke of Grafton replied to the foreign part of the debate, answered for the tranquillity of Europe, and said we had not a difference there which could not easily be settled. Lord Mansfield and Lord Marchmont entered largely into the case of the Middlesex election; and the former urged, that though the House of Commons should have done wrong, a breach between the two Houses would be much more fatal. Lord Chatham replied, but with so little precision and logic, as was usual with him when reduced to argue, that Lord Denbigh and Lord Sandwich, both keen, and the former brutal enough, when his brutality to opponents would be flattery at court, ridiculed him severely; and Sandwich professed he did not comprehend what Lord Chatham had meant, and defied any single Lord to give an account of what he had said. Lord Weymouth told the Chancellor sharply, that if it was so wrong as his Lordship had urged, to incapacitate Wilkes, his Lordship ought not to have set the Great Seal to the new writ--the Chancellor could only reply that he had not read the writ.[29] At ten at night, one hundred Lords to thirty-six rejected Lord Chatham’s amendment. Lord Dartmouth conscientiously voted against his friends; the Duke of Northumberland, for popularity, against the Court.[30]