As these proceedings got out of doors, Glasgow and Manchester, and, I
think, Liverpool, began to move, but in a manner much more slow and
languid than formerly. Nothing, in my opinion, would have been less
difficult than entirely to have overborne their opposition. The London
West India trade was, as on the former occasion, so on this, perfectly
liberal and perfectly quiet; and there is abroad so much respect for the
united wisdom of the House, when supposed to act upon a fair view of a
political situation, that I scarcely ever remember any considerable
uneasiness out of doors, when the most active members, and those of most
property and consideration in the minority, have joined themselves to
the administration. Many factious people in the towns I mentioned began,
indeed, to revile Lord North, and to reproach his neutrality as
treacherous and ungrateful to those who had so heartily and so warmly
entered into all his views with regard to America. That noble lord,
whose decided character it is to give way to the latest and nearest
pressure, without any sort of regard to distant consequences of any
kind, thought fit to appear, on this signification of the pleasure of
those his worthy friends and partisans, and, putting himself at the head
of the _posse scaccarii_, wholly regardless of the dignity and
consistency of our miserable House, drove the propositions entirely out
of doors by a majority newly summoned to duty.
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