The fraudulent Foxes
From Alistair Cooke
Sir: Charles James Fox's support for Napoleon could hardly have stemmed from anger that his father 'had not received a peerage', as Frank Johnson asserts (Shared opinion, 18 September). Fox pere was the first Lord Holland. The anger arose from his failure, after years of pleading, to secure the earldom which he thought he deserved to cap his achievement in embezzling a fortune from his country when he was Paymaster General in the 1760s. '£49,500,000, the equivalent of a third of the national debt, passed through his hands', as his biographer Christopher Hobhouse (the boyfriend of Harold Nicolson) made clear. Simple, oldfashioned Whig corruption looked for its reward and, when thwarted, turned hopefully to Bonaparte.
Alistair Cooke
London SW I
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