After losing his post on the Board of Trade he still hoped
for Government employ, "either a secure seat at the Board of Customs
or Excise," or in a diplomatic capacity. He was disappointed. If Lord
Sheffield is to be believed, it was his friend Fox who frustrated his
appointment as secretary of embassy at Paris, when he had been already
named to that office.
The way in which Gibbon acted and afterwards spoke in reference to the
celebrated Coalition gives perhaps the best measure of his political
calibre. He voted among the rank and file of Lord North's followers
for the Coalition with meek subserviency. He speaks of a "principle of
gratitude" which actuated him on this occasion. Lord North had given
him his seat, and if a man's conscience allows him to think rather of
his patron than of his country, there is nothing to be said, except
that his code of political ethics is low. We may admit that his vote
was pledged; but there is also no doubt that any gratitude that there
was in the matter was stimulated by a lively sense of favours to come.
The Portland ministry had not been long in office when he wrote in the
following terms to his friend Deyverdun: "You have not forgotten that
I went into Parliament without patriotism and without ambition, and
that all my views tended to the convenient and respectable place of a
lord of trade.
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