[133] Governor Johnstone’s subsequent actions were far from setting his character in a better light. During half the American war he voted in Parliament as condemning it, and in private paid great court to the Duke of Richmond as a principal opponent; not without the Duke’s being cautioned by his friends, who suspected Johnstone for an allowed spy of the Court,--a jealousy that seemed well founded, as Johnstone on a sudden was appointed by the Minister one of the commissioners to treat for peace with America. In that department he augmented the suspicion of his double-dealing, but without adding any credit to his judgment. Soon after he was entrusted, as Commodore, with five ships, which he boasted should effect the most desperate service--but effected nothing; and he terminated his naval campaign with such flagrant tyranny and injustice to one of his captains, whom he also despatched to the East Indies in hopes of his complaints, that a court of law, on the poor gentleman’s return, gave him damages to the amount of some thousand pounds; and Johnstone appealing from the verdict, all he obtained was an increase of his fine: however, on another appeal, the sentence was set aside. [134] As these Memoirs will not be continued, it may be worth while to give a short abstract of the rest of Lord George’s life. Though in Opposition, he kept a door open for his return to Court without his associates, by not joining them against the American war. When that war grew more and more hopeless, Lord George was offered to undertake that province, and most injudiciously accepted it. This was the more surprising to _me_, as, besides his having retrieved his character by the affair with Johnstone, and acquired a large fortune from Lady Elizabeth Germaine, with the additional favourable circumstance of changing his name, whence his sons, if dropping that of Sackville, might avoid great part of the disgrace that had fallen on their father, he himself not three years before, in a conversation, in which he had given me many instances of the King’s duplicity, had said to me, “_Sir, whoever lives to see the end of this reign, will see one of the most unfortunate that ever was in England!_” The position of the American war certainly countenanced his prediction. Yet his native ambition, or the vanity of supposing that he could give a new turn to affairs, overpowered his judgment, and shut his eyes on the torrent of abuse that would again be let loose against him--and was. He did recommence his career with great spirit and activity, but with no success at all; and it was only in his deportment that he did show spirit. In Parliament he was browbeaten by daily insults; and his former parts so entirely forsook him, that younger men, who had not seen his outset, would not believe what was attested to them of his precedent abilities. Disappointed of the glory he had promised to himself, and quarrelling with Lord Sandwich, the head of the Admiralty, who counteracted or