Mr. George Grenville was more successful with a bill that the profligacy of the times loudly demanded, and which even that profligacy could not defeat. It was to take the trials of contested elections from the judicatory of the House, and vest them in a smaller number of examiners to be chosen by ballot. Important as the nature of elections is, and sacred as the property of legal votes, of the right of counties and boroughs to choose their representatives, and of the elected to his seat, yet all was overlooked, and petitions were heard and decided solely by favour or party. Nor was this accidental, but constant and universal. Grenville’s bill was generally liked. Rigby and Dyson opposed it, and at last Lord North, who endeavoured to put it off for two months; but he was defeated by 185 to 133.[80] The resistance of the House to the power of the Administration on those two bills, proved, with some instances I have mentioned, that that House of Commons was not implicitly servile on all occasions like the last. Grenville’s bill passed on the 2nd of April, but not without a remarkable conversation rather than a debate on political creeds and secret influence. Grenville and Dowdeswell declared they had been under none when they were in place. Samuel Martin desired the House to take notice of that declaration. It was evidence, he said, that Lord Bute was falsely accused; and that such rumours were raised to excite the mob against him on his return from abroad. Colonel Barré said the _two gentlemen_ had only declared they had not been influenced _themselves_: but Lord Chatham had solemnly affirmed to the Lords that even in six weeks his schemes had been controlled; and it was evident where the secret influence lay, when Martin and Jenkinson, the servants of the Princess of Wales, and when Dyson and Sir Gilbert Elliot, were so much consulted. That was the cabinet that governed the Cabinet.[81] Lord North declared that he would be nominal no longer than he was real Minister. There wanted no better proof of the secret influence than that Lord Bute had the credit to maintain Oswald, Elliot, Dyson, and Jenkinson, or some of them, in the Treasury through every Administration subsequent to his own, by which he might be master of all the secrets of that important board which influences the whole Government,--at least they were agents whom he had recommended to the King; and if the Earl himself did not preserve the same degree of credit with his Majesty, the King acted on the plan in which he had been initiated, and had cunning enough, as most Princes have, to employ and trust those only who were disposed to sacrifice the interest of the country to the partial and selfish views of the Crown; views to which his Majesty so steadily adhered on every opportunity which presented itself, that, not having sense enough to discover how much the glory and power of the King is augmented by the flourishing state of the