ABSTRACT
In the first days of the 1812 Session there were some interesting exchanges on general policy between Opposition and Ministers. Spencer Perceval met, with vigour, Opposition’s continued pessimism on the final war prospects in the Peninsula, and in regard to American dangers he was almost over-confident. There were other warm exchanges on Perceval’s policy of contriving to find offices with which to bind members to his cause, and two rising Oppositionists, Thomas Creevey and Henry Brougham, made a special point against the Paymastership of Widows’ Pensions, bestowed, by Perceval, on the Regent’s friend, Colonel M’Mahon. Despite the fact that some Commissions had reported on it as a sinecure, ripe for abolition at the first vacancy. In February 1812 the Regent did, indeed, make an indirect offer to admit Opposition into a Coalition Government but many contemporaries held that he would have been disappointed if the Opposition leaders had accepted, so pleased was he with Perceval and Perceval’s friends.
