information concerning the Indian appointment, he told her that she had an opportunity of obliging him by telling him anything she knew concerning it. She answered very quickly and in a very bad humour, 'Oh, it is all settled; Lord Amherst is appointed.' She then put into his hand a letter which Canning had received that morning from the Duke of Portland, declining his offer of the Private Secretaryship for John and George, alleging as a reason the hostile politics of Lord William and Titchfield. Mrs. Canning said that she had no idea that they would not have supported Canning, that she was aware they differed on some matters of minor importance, but that she had imagined their general opinions to be similar; that she had conceived Lord William's opposition to have been directed against Lord Londonderry, and that it would have ceased with his death; that 'the present must be considered as a new Administration, and that Canning must be virtually Minister of the country.' Lord William replied that he could not view it in that light, that he thought it likely the introduction of Canning into the Cabinet might effect a beneficial influence on the measures of Government, and more particularly that a system of foreign policy might be adopted more congenial to his sentiments upon that subject; that it would give him the greatest pleasure to see such a change of measures as would enable him to give his support to a Government of which Canning was so conspicuous a member, but that he could not think that to be a new Administration which was composed (with the sole exception of Canning) of precisely the same persons of which it consisted before he joined them. [14] [Mrs. Canning was the younger sister of Henrietta, wife of the fourth Duke of Portland, both of them being the daughters and coheiresses of Major-General John Scott of Balcomie. Lord William Bentinck, the Duke's brother, was therefore a near connection, and Lord George Bentinck and Lord John Bentinck, the Duke's sons, were by their mother's side Mrs. Canning's nephews. Lady Charlotte Greville, Mr. Charles Greville's mother, was of course connected with Mrs. Canning in the same degree as her brother Lord William Bentinck.]