Admiral of course, Martin, Stanhope, and Ellis, were very bad:  Doddington was well, but very acceding:  Dr. Hay by no means answers his reputation; it was easy but not striking.  Lord Egmont was doubting, absurd, and obscure.  Sir G. Lee and Lord Barrington were much disliked; I don’t think so deservedly.  Poor Alstone was mad, and spoke ten times to order.  Sir George(636) our friend, was dull and timid.  Legge was the latter.  Nugent roared, and Sir Thomas rumbled.  My uncle did justice to himself, and was as wretched and dirty as his whole behaviour for his coronet has been.  Mr. Fox was extremely fatigued, and did little.  Geo. Grenville’s was very fine and much beyond himself, and very pathetic.  The Attorney-general(637) in the same style, and very artful, was still finer.  Then there was a young Mr. Hamilton,(638) who spoke for the first time, and was at Once perfection:  his speech set, and full of antithesis, but those antitheses were full of argument:  indeed his speech was the most argumentative of the whole day; and he broke through the regularity of his own composition, answered other people, and fell into his own track again with the greatest ease.  His figure is advantageous, his voice strong and clear, his manner spirited, and the whole with the ease of an established speaker.  You will ask, what could be beyond this?  Nothing, but what was beyond what ever was, and that was Pitt!  He spoke at past one, for an hour and thirty-five minutes:  there was more humour, wit, vivacity, finer language, more boldness, in short, more astonishing perfections, than even you who are used to him, can conceive.  He was not abusive, yet very attacking on all sides:  he ridiculed my Lord Hillsborough, crushed poor Sir George, terrified the Attorney, lashed my Lord Granville, painted my Lord of Newcastle, attacked Mr. Fox, and even hinted up to the Duke.(639) A few of the Scotch were in the minority, and most of the Princess’s people, not all:  all the Duke of Bedford’s in the majority.  He himself spoke in the other House for the address (though professing incertainty about the treaties themselves), against my Lord Temple and Lord Halifax, without a division.  My Lord Talbot was neuter; he and I were of a party:  my opinion was strongly with the opposition; I could not vote for the treaties; I would not vote against Mr. Fox.  It is ridiculous perhaps, at the end of such a debate, to give an account of my own silence; and as it is of very little consequence what I did, so it is very unlike me to justify myself.  You know how much I hate professions of integrity; and my pride is generally too great to care what the generality of people say of me:  but your heart is good enough to make me wish you should think well of mine.

You will want to know what is to be the fate of the ministry in opposition:  but that I can’t tell you.  I don’t believe they have determined what to do, more than oppose, nor that it is determined what to do with them.  Though it is clear that it is very humiliating to leave them in place, you may conceive several reasons why it is not eligible to dismiss them.  You know where you are, how easy it is to buy an opposition who have not places; but tell us what to do with an opposition that has places?  If you say, Turn them out; I answer, That is not the way to quiet any opposition, or a ministry so constituted as ours at present.  Adieu!