Conway himself was on the point of receiving a more real insult. The Duke of Grafton talked to him of destining the Mastership of the Ordnance to some great peer, not below him in the army. This pointed either at Lord Halifax or Lord Sandwich, neither of whom had ever served, but ranked as Lieutenant-Generals by having had commissions to raise regiments, which they never raised during the rebellion. Conway started, and declared firmly he would resign if such a person should be put over him. I doubt, however, whether it would not have been tried, if greater troubles had not intervened. Both the Earls were poor and impatient: the Bedfords, who had now most weight with Grafton, favoured them--at least, preferred them to Conway. It was not thought safe to send so unpopular a man as Sandwich to Ireland. Thither Lord Gower wanted to dispatch Lord Hertford once more, that he might himself recover the Chamberlain’s staff, the best introduction to personal familiarity with the King--but he could compass no one of his plans. Lord Chatham had stooped in the meantime to visit Lord Rockingham; in consequence of which interview, and driven on by his friends who were ashamed of their attachment to a mute, the Marquis moved the Lords to go into the state of the nation; delivering his proposal with all the ungracious hesitation of terrified spirits, and hobbling through the grievances of the nation, which he imputed to the Court’s design of governing by Ministers unwelcome to the people. Lord Chatham made one of his highest coloured orations, inflaming Lord Rockingham, whom he complimented largely, to pursue the recovery of the Constitution, and advising him to carry the pursuit even to extremes, the democratic part of the Constitution having been, he said, intentionally oppressed. In his own wild and indigested manner he threw out, that the House of Commons, wanted alteration; and to deliver it from the influence of the Crown by the power of the latter over the rotten part, the venal boroughs and burgage-tenures, he should advise the addition of a third member for every county. With his usual versatility, and with more meaning, he chanted next the sacredness of prerogative, and thence blamed the Crown’s yielding to bind itself not to recall the additional troops newly granted in Ireland thence, (by which concession alone that very requisite increase had been obtained); for himself, he declared he would never touch prerogative, he would not come near it, he would not pull a feather from that master-wing of the eagle. Of Corsica, he said, France had gained more in that pacific campaign than she had done in the most belligerent of the last war. He concluded with recommending union to the Opposition for the present purpose of redress of grievances. What might happen afterwards he did not know--an intimation that he had not been able to persuade Lord Rockingham to cede to Mr. Grenville his pretensions to the Treasury. The 25th was