280 CORRESPONDENCE. [1815. 



to procure you, not a temporary, but a permanent 

 seat there. Ever truly yours, GREY." 



TO EAEL GREY. 



"TEMPLE, January 27, 1815. 



" DEAR LORD GREY, I am equally obliged for your 

 kind and friendly recommendation of me, and vexed 

 to find you have had a third attack. Of course, I 

 declined the proposition. As for your manner of 

 speaking, as if you had little more to do with politics, 

 it is quite out of the question to entertain such 

 thoughts. These spasms are, though painful, mere 

 spasms, and will go off, and lead to nothing. You 

 have thirty years good yet, of which twenty may be 

 as active as you please and like. You are the only 

 keystone that keeps things together ; and I have the 

 more especial interest in this matter because I really 

 (under the sort of interdict or excommunication which 

 the party generally lays on me) am compelled to con- 

 sider you as my only ground or pretext for continuing 

 personally connected with it, however much our prin- 

 ciples may agree. Therefore my allegiance is gone, 

 and I am a sort of outlaw or outcast the moment you 

 are out of the question. This may plead my excuse 

 for the anxiety I always feel when you talk of giving 

 up political life. 



" Being on this subject, pray do not imagine that I 

 ever intended to insinuate to any one, least of all to 

 you, a doubt as to Lauderdale's deserving your confi- 

 dence. I only mentioned, as I had been desired, that 

 he corresponds on Princess Charlotte's affairs with the 

 Pavilion a thing very credible, after the warm part 

 he took last summer and, indeed, no sort of charge 



