[
46]
disposition of its territorial revenue; and as Towns-
hend crossed his plans and leaned to the East India Company, he proposed to
Grafton the dismissal of
Townshend as ‘incurable.’
1 Burke indulged in sarcasm at ‘the great person, so immeasurably high’ as not to be reached by argument, and travestied the litany in a solemn invocation to ‘the
Minister above.’
‘Have mercy upon us,’ he cried, while the Opposition applauded the parody; ‘doom not to perdition the vast public debt, seventy millions of which thou hast employed in rearing a pedestal for thy own statue.’
2 And the very next day, in the House of Lords,
Chatham marked his contempt of the bitter mockery of
Rockingham's partisans by saying to the
Duke of
Richmond, ‘When the people shall condemn me, I shall tremble; but I will set my face against the proudest Connection of this country.’
‘I hope,’ cried
Richmond, ‘the Nobility will not be browbeaten by an insolent Minister,’ and
Chatham retorted the charge of insolence.
3
But it was the last time during his Ministry that he appeared in the House of Lords.
His broken health was unequal to the conflict which he had invited.
On the eighteenth of December,4 he repaired to Bath with a nervous system so weak that he was easily fluttered, and moved to tears; yet still in his infirmities he sent to the Representatives of Massachusetts his friendly acknowledgment of their vote of gratitude.
Townshend saw his opportunity, and no longer
