Gibbon, with
entire good humour, acknowledges the justice of Burke's indictment,
and says he was "heard with delight, even by those whose existence he
proscribed." After all, he only enjoyed the emolument of his office
for three years, and he places that emolument at a lower figure than
Burke did. He could not have received more than between two and three
thousand pounds of public money; and when we consider what manner of
men have fattened on the national purse, it would be churlish to
grudge that small sum to the historian of the _Decline and Fall_. The
misfortune is that, reasonably or otherwise, doubts were raised as to
Gibbon's complete straightforwardness and honourable adhesion to party
ties in accepting office. He says himself: "My acceptance of a place
provoked some of the leaders of opposition with whom I had lived in
habits of intimacy, and I was most unjustly accused of deserting a
party in which I had never enlisted." There is certainly no evidence
that those who were most qualified to speak, those who gave him the
place and reckoned on his vote, ever complained of want of allegiance.
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