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The Creevey Papers
Thomas Creevey to James Currie, 13 April 1805
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Introduction
Vol. I. Contents
Ch. I: 1793-1804
Ch. II: 1805
Ch. III: 1805
Ch. IV: 1806-08
Ch. V: 1809
Ch. VI: 1810
Ch. VII: 1811
Ch. VIII: 1812
Ch. IX: 1813-14
Ch X: 1814-15
Ch XI: 1815-16
Ch XII: 1817-18
Ch XIII: 1819-20
Vol. II. Contents
Ch I: 1821
Ch. II: 1822
Ch. III: 1823-24
Ch. IV: 1825-26
Ch. V: 1827
Ch. VI: 1827-28
Ch. VII: 1828
Ch. VIII: 1829
Ch. IX: 1830-31
Ch. X: 1832-33
Ch. XI: 1833
Ch. XII: 1834
Ch XIII: 1835-36
Ch XIV: 1837-38
Index
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“April 13, 1805.

“. . . We have had indeed most famous sport with this same Leviathan, Lord Melville. His tumbling so soon was as unexpected by all of us as it was by himself or you. It was clear from the first that he was ruined sooner or later, but no one anticipated his defeat upon the first Attack, and supported as he was by the Addingtons as well as Pitts, and with the nostrum held out, too, of further enquiry by a secret Committee. The history of that celebrated night presents a wide field of attack upon Pitt under all the infinite difficulties of his situation; a clamour for reform in the expenditure of the publick money is at last found to be the touchstone of the House of Commons and of the publick. . . . Grey is to give notice immediately when we meet to bring in a bill appointing Commissioners to examine into abuses in the Army, in the Barracks—the Ordnance—the Commissariat Departments. This plan, if it is worth anything . . . must place Pitt in the cursedest dilemma possible. Can he refuse enquiry when it is so loudly called for? or, if he grants it, what must become of the Duke of York and the Greenwoods and Hammersleys and Delaneys, &c., &c., &c., whose tricks with money in these departments would whitewash those of Trotter by comparison. . . . I have no hesitation in saying that Pitt must be more than man to stand it. . . . You can form no notion of his fallen crest in the House of Commons—of his dolorous, distracted air. He betrayed Melville only to save himself, and so the Dundas’s think and say. His own ruin must come next, and that, I think, at no great distance. You may have perceived I have not deserted from my enquiries into less important jobs, although old Fordyce* got such assistance from Fox. The latter, I have reason to believe, repents most cursedly of that business. Grey and Whitbread have acted with unparalleled kindness to me. I mean to have another touch at Fordyce when we meet again. . . . At our

* John Fordyce, Esq., of Ayton, Berwickshire, Receiver-General of Land Tax in Scotland. He married Miss Catherine Maxwell of Monreith, sister of Jane, Duchess of Gordon.

1805.]THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOBS.35
first dinner after my motion about Fordyce, about three days after, there were, I daresay, fifty or sixty people, Fox in the chair. I was sulky and getting pretty drunk, when Fox call’d upon me for a toast—a publick man—and so I gave ‘Fordyce.’ This brought on a jaw, during which I got more and more drunk, but never departed from my creed that I was a betrayed man. However, say nothing of this, I beg. With reference to my own interest, I am sure I have been a gainer by all this.”