the midst of this chaos of plots and counterplots ... that the
firmness of that noble person [Lord Rockingham] was put to the
proof. He never stirred from his ground; no, not an inch.--BURKE
(1766).

I

The atmosphere in London became thick and hot with political passion.
Veteran observers declared that our generation had not seen anything like
it. Distinguished men of letters and, as it oddly happened, men who had
won some distinction either by denouncing the legislative union, or by
insisting on a decentralisation that should satisfy Irish national
aspirations, now choked with anger because they were taken at their word.
Just like irascible scholars of old time who settled controversies about
corrupt texts by imputing to rival grammarians shameful crimes, so these
writers could find no other explanation for an opinion that was not their
own about Irish government, except moral turpitude and personal
degradation. One professor of urbanity compared Mr. Gladstone to a
desperate pirate burning his ship, or a gambler doubling and trebling his
stake as luck goes against him. Such strange violence in calm natures,
such pharisaic pretension in a world where we are all fallen, remains a
riddle. Political differences were turned into social proscription. Whigs
who could not accept the new policy were specially furious with whigs who
could. Great ladies purified their lists of the names of old intimates.
Amiable magnates excluded from their dinner-tables and their country
houses once familiar friends who had fallen into the guilty heresy, and
even harmless portraits of the heresiarch were sternly removed from the
walls. At some of the political clubs it rained blackballs. It was a
painful demonstration how thin after all is our social veneer, even when
most highly polished.

When a royal birthday was drawing near, the prime minister wrote to Lord
Granville, his unfailing counsellor in every difficulty political and
social: "I am becoming seriously perplexed about my birthday dinner.
Hardly any peers of the higher ranks will be available, and not many of
the lower. Will the seceding colleagues come if they are asked? (Argyll,
to whom I applied privately on the score of old friendship, has already
_refused_ me.) I am for asking them; but I expect refusal. Lastly, it has
become customary for the Prince of Wales to dine with me on that day, and
he brings his eldest son now that the young Prince is of age. Bu