The Duke now saw only one way of delivering his nephew. An administration must be formed of the Whigs in opposition, without Pitt's help. The difficulties seemed almost insuperable. Death and deserHis majesty's natural resentment showed tion had grievously thinned the ranks of itself in every look and word. In his ex- the party lately supreme in the state. tremity, he looked wistfully towards that Those among whom the Duke's choice lay Whig connection, once the object of his might be divided into two classes, men too dread and hatred. The Duke of Devon-old for important offices, and men who had shire, who had been treated with such un-never been in any important office before. justifiable harshness, had lately died, and The cabinet must be composed of broken had been succeeded by his son, who was invalids or of raw recruits.

This was an evil, yet not an unmixed | by common public objects, by mutual esevil. If the new Whig statesmen had little teem. That they desired to obtain, by experience in business and debate, they honest and constitutional means, the direcwere, on the other hand, pure from the tion of affairs, they openly avowed. But, taint of that political immorality which though often invited to accept the honors had deeply infected their predecessors. and emoluments of office, they steadily reLong prosperity had corrupted that great fused to do so on any conditions inconsisparty which had expelled the Stuarts, lim- tent with their principles. The Bedford ited the prerogatives of the Crown, and party, as a party, had, as far as we can curbed the intolerance of the Hierarchy. discover, no principle whatever. Rigby Adversity had already produced a salutary and Sandwich wanted public money, and effect. On the day of the accession of thought that they should fetch a higher George the Third, the ascendency of the price jointly than singly. They therefore Whig party terminated; and on that day acted in concert, and prevailed on a much the purification of the Whig party began. more important and a much better man The rising chiefs of that party were men than themselves to act with them. of a very different sort from Sandys and It was to Rockingham that the Duke of Winnington, from Sir William Younge Cumberland now had recourse. The Marand Henry Fox. They were men worthy quis consented to take the treasury. Newto have charged by the side of Hampden castle, so long the recognized chief of the at Chalgrove, or to have exchanged the Whigs, could not well be excluded from last embrace with Russell on the scaffold the ministry. He was appointed keeper of in Lincoln's-Inn Fields. They carried in- the privy seal. A very honest clear-headed to politics the same high principles of vir- country gentleman, of the name of Dowdestue which regulated their private dealings, well, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. nor would they stoop to promote even the General Conway, who had served under noblest and most salutary ends by means the Duke of Cumberland, and was strongly which honor and probity condemn. Such attached to his royal highness, was made men were Lord John Cavendish, Sir George Secretary of State, with the lead in the Saville, and others whom we hold in honor House of Commons. A great Whig nobleas the second founders of the Whig party, man, in the prime of manhood, from whom as the restorers of its pristine health and much was at that time expected, Augustus energy, after half a century of degeneracy. Duke of Grafton, was the other Secretary. The chief of this respectable band was The oldest man living could remember the Marquis of Rockingham, a man of no government so weak in oratorical talsplendid fortune, excellent sense, and stain-ents and in official experience. The genless character. He was indeed nervous to eral opinion was, that the ministers might such a degree, that, to the very close of his hold office during the recess, but that the life, he never rose without great reluctance first day of debate in Parliament would be and embarrassment to address the House the last day of their power. Charles of Lords. But, though not a great orator, Townshend was asked what he thought of he had in a high degree some of the quali- the new administration. 'It is," said he, ties of a statesman. He chose his friends'mere lutestring: pretty summer wear. It well; and he had, in an extraordinary de- will never do for the winter.' gree, the art of attaching them to him by ties of the most honorable kind. The cheerful fidelity with which they adhered to him through many years of almost hopeless opposition, was less admirable than the disinterestedness and delicacy which they showed when he rose to power.

At this conjuncture Lord Rockingham had the wisdom to discern the value, and secure the aid, of an ally, who, to eloquence surpassing the eloquence of Pitt, and to industry which shamed the industry of Grenville, united an amplitude of comprehension to which neither Pitt nor Grenville could We are inclined to think that the use lay claim. A young Irishman had, some and the abuse of party cannot be better time before, come over to push his fortune illustrated than by a parallel between two in London. He had written much for the powerful connections of that time, the booksellers; but he was best known by a Rockinghams and the Bedfords. The little treatise, in which the style and reaRockingham party was, in our view, exact-soning of Bolingbroke were mimicked with ly what a party should be. It consisted of exquisite skill, and by a theory, of more men bound together by common opinions, ingenuity than soundness, touching the

pleasures which we receive from the objects] Nottingham, it was said that three artisans of taste. He had also attained a high repu- out of every ten had been turned adrift. tation as a talker, and was regarded by the Civil war seemed to be at hand; and it men of letters who supped together at the could not be doubted, that, if once the Turk's Head as the only match in conver- British nation were divided against itself. sation for Dr. Johnson. He now became France and Spain would soon take part in private secretary to Lord Rockingham, the quarrel. and was brought into Parliament by his patron's influence. These arrangements, indeed, were not made without some difficulty. The Duke of Newcastle, who was always meddling and chattering, adjured the first lord of the treasury to be on his guard against this adventurer, whose real name was O'Burke, and whom his Grace knew to be a wild Irishman, a Jacobite, a Papist, a concealed Jesuit, Lord Rockingham treated the calumny as it deserved; and the Whig party was strengthened and adorned by the accession of Edmund Burke.

The party, indeed, stood in need of accessions; for it sustained about this time an almost irreparable loss. The Duke of Cumberland had formed the government, and was its main support. His exalted rank and great name in some degree balanced the fame of Pitt. As mediator between the Whigs and the court, he held a place which no other person could fill. The strength of his character supplied that which was the chief defect of the new ministry. Conway, in particular, who, with excellent intentions and respectable talents, was the most dependent and irresolute of human beings, drew from the counsels of that masculine mind a determination not his own. Before the meeting of Parliament the Duke suddenly died. His death was generally regarded as the signal of great troubles, and on this account, as well as from respect for his personal qualities, was greatly lamented." It was remarked that the mourning in London was the most general ever known, and was both deeper and longer than the Gazette had prescribed.

Three courses were open to the ministers. The first was to enforce the Stamp Act by the sword. This was the course on which the King, and Grenville, whom the King hated beyond all living men, were alike bent. The natures of both were arbitrary and stubborn. They resembled each other so much that they could never be friends; but they resembled each other also so much, that they saw almost all important practical questions in the same point of view. Neither of them would bear to be governed by the other; but they perfectly agreed as to the best way of governing the people.

Another course was that which Pitt recommended. He held that the British Parliament was not constitutionally competent to pass a law for taxing the colonies. He therefore considered the Stamp Act as a nullity, as a document of no more validity than Charles's writ of ship-money, or James's proclamation dispensing with the penal laws. This doctrine seems to us, we must own, to be altogether untenable.

Between these extreme courses lay a third way. The opinion of the most judicious and temperate statesmen of those times was, that the British constitution had set no limit whatever to the legislative power of the British King, Lords, and Commons, over the whole British Empire. Parliament, they held, was legally competent to tax America, as Parliament was legally competent to commit any other act of folly or wickedness, to confiscate the property of all the merchants in Lombard Street, or to attaint any man in the kingdom of high treason, without examining witnesses against him, or hearing him in his own defence. The most atrocious act of confiscation or of attainder is just as valid an act as the Toleration Act or the Habeas Corpus Act. But from acts of confiscation and acts of attainder, lawgivers are bound, by every obligation of morality, systematically to refrain.

In the mean time, every mail from America brought alarming tidings. The crop which Grenville had sown, his successors had now to reap. The colonies were in a state bordering on rebellion. The stamps were burned. The revenue officers were tarred and feathered. All traffic between In the same manner ought the Brithe discontented provinces and the mother tish legislature to refrain from taxing the country was interrupted. The Exchange American colonies. The Stamp Act was of London was in dismay. Half the firms indefensible, not because it was beyond the of Bristol and Liverpool were threatened constitutional competence of Parliament, with bankruptcy, In Leeds, Manchester, but because it was unjust and impolitic, DECEMBER, 1844. 32

sterile of revenue, and fertile of discon-single touch of which the fidelity is not provtents. These sound doctrines were adopted by facts of unquestionable authenticity. ed by Lord Rockingham and his colleagues, The public generally regarded the King's and were, during a long course of years, friends as a body of which Bute was the diinculcated by Burke, in orations, some of recting soul. It was to no purpose that the which will last as long as the English lan- Earl professed to have done with politics, guage. that he absented himself year after year The winter came; the Parliament met; from the levee and the drawing-room, that and the state of the colonies instantly be- he went to the north, that he went to came the subject of fierce contention. Pitt, Rome. The notion, that, in some inexwhose health had been somewhat restored plicable manner, he dictated all the measby the waters of Bath, reappeared in the ures of the court, was fixed in the minds, House of Commons, and, with ardent and not only of the multitude, but of some who pathetic eloquence, not only condemned had good opportunities of obtaining inthe Stamp Act, but applauded the resist- formation, and who ought to have been suance of Massachusetts and Virginia; and perior to vulgar prejudices. Our own bevehemently maintained, in defiance, we lief is that these suspicions were unfoundmust say, of all reason and of all authority, ed, and that he ceased to have any commuthat, according to the British constitution, nication with the King on political matters the supreme legislative power does not in- some time before the dismissal of George clude the power to tax. The language of Grenville. The supposition of Bute's inGrenville, on the other hand, was such as fluence is, indeed, by no means necessary Strafford might have used at the council- to explain the phenomena. The King, in table of Charles the First, when news came 1765, was no longer the ignorant and inexof the resistance to the liturgy at Edin-perienced boy who had, in 1760, been burgh. The colonists were traitors; those managed by his mother and his groom of who excused them were little better. Frig- the stole. He had, during several years, ates, mortars, bayonets, sabres, were the proper remedies for such distempers.

observed the struggles of parties, and conferred daily on high questions of state with The ministers occupied an intermediate able and experienced politicians. His way position; they proposed to declare that the of life had developed his understanding and legislative authority of the British Parlia- character. He was now no longer a pupment over the whole Empire was in all pet, but had very decided opinions both of cases supreme; and they proposed, at the men and things. Nothing could be more same time, to repeal the Stamp Act. To natural than that he should have high nothe former measure Pitt objected; but it tions of his own prerogatives, should be imwas carried with scarcely a dissentient patient of opposition, and should wish all voice. The repeal of the Stamp Act Pitt public men to be detached from each other strongly supported; but against the govern- and dependent on himself alone; nor could ment was arrayed a formidable assemblage any thing be more natural than that, in the of opponents. Grenville and the Bedfords state in which the political world then was, were furious. Temple, who had now allied he should find instruments fit for his purhimself closely with his brother, and sepa-poses. rated himself from Pitt, was no despicable Thus sprang into existence and into note enemy. This, however, was not the worst. a reptile species of politicians never before The ministry was without its natural and never since known in our country. strength. It had to struggle, not only These men disclaimed all political ties, exagainst its avowed enemies, but against the cept those which bound them to the throne. insidious hostility of the King, and of a set They were willing to coalesce with any parof persons who, about this time, began to be ty, to abandon any party, to undermine any designated as the King's friends. party, to assault any party, at a moment's notice. To them, all administrations and all oppositions were the same. They regarded Bute, Grenville, Rockingham, Pitt, without one sentiment either of predilection or of aversion. They were the King's friends. It is to be observed that this friendship implied no personal intimacy. These people had never lived with their

The character of this faction has been drawn by Burke with even more than his usual force and vivacity. Those who know how strongly, through his whole life, his judgment was biassed by his passions, may not unnaturally suspect that he has left us rather a caricature than a likeness; and yet there is scarcely, in the whole portrait, a

Nevertheless, Lord Rockingham and his adherents went on resolutely with the bill for repealing the Stamp Act. They had on their side all the manufacturing and commercial interests of the realm. In the debates the government was powerfully supported. Two great orators and statesmen, belonging to two different generations, repeatedly put forth all their powers in defence of the bill. The House of Commons heard Pitt for the last time, and Burke for the first time, and was in doubt to which of them the palm of eloquence should be assigned. It was indeed a splendid sunset and a splendid dawn.

master, as Dodington at one time lived with {tion, their rear was assailed by a large body his father, or as Sheridan afterwards lived of those whom they had regarded as auxwith his son. They never hunted with himiliaries. in the morning, or played cards with him in the evening; never shared his mutton, or walked with him among his turnips. Only one or two of them ever saw his face, except on public days. The whole band, however, always had early and accurate informatiou as to his personal inclinations. None of these people were high in the administration. They were generally to be found in places of much emolument, little labor, and no responsibility; and these places they continued to occupy securely while the cabinet was six or seven times reconstructed. Their peculiar business was not to support the ministry against the opposition, but to support the King against For a time the event seemed doubtful. the ministry. Whenever his Majesty was In several divisions the ministers were induced to give a reluctant assent to the hard pressed. On one occasion, not less introduction of some bill which his consti- than twelve of the King's friends, all men tutional advisers regarded as necessary, in office, voted against the government. It his friends in the House of Commons were was to no purpose that Lord Rockingham sure to speak against it, to vote against it, remonstrated with the King. His Majesty to throw in its way every obstruction com- confessed that there was ground for compatible with the forms of Parliament. If his Majesty found it necessary to admit into his closet a Secretary of State or a First Lord of the Treasury whom he disliked, his friends were sure to miss no opportunity of thwarting and humbling the obnoxious minister. In return for these services, the King covered them with his protection. It was to no purpose that his responsible servants complained to him that they were daily betrayed and impeded by men who were eating the bread of the government, He sometimes justified the of fenders, sometimes excused them, sometimes owned that they were to blame, but It was in the first dim twilight of a Febsaid that he must take time to consider ruary morning that the doors were thrown whether he could part with them. He open, and that the chiefs of the hostile parnever would turn them out; and, while ties showed themselves to the multitude. every thing else in the state was constant- Conway was received with loud applause. ly changing, these sycophants seemed to have a life-estate in their offices.

It was well known to the King's friends, that though his Majesty had consented to the repeal of the Stamp Act, he had cousented with a very bad grace, and that though he had eagerly welcomed the Whigs, when, in his extreme need and at his earnest entreaty, they had undertaken to free him from an insupportable yoke, he had by no means got over his early prejudices against his deliverers. The ministers soon found that, while they were encountered in front by the whole force of a strong opposi

plaint, but hoped that gentle means would bring the mutineers to a better mind. If they persisted in their misconduct, he would dismiss them.

At length the decisive day arrived. The gallery, the lobby, the Court of Requests, the staircases, were crowded with merchants from all the great ports of the island. The debate lasted till long after midnight. On the division, the ministers had a great majority. The dread of civil war, and the outcry of all the trading towns of the kingdom, had been too strong for the combined strength of the court and the opposition.

But when Pitt appeared, all eyes were fixed on him alone. All hats were in the air. Loud and long huzzas accompanied him to his chair, and a train of admirers escorted him all the way to his home. Then came forth Grenville. As soon as he was recognized, a storm of hisses and curses broke forth. He turned fiercely on the crowd, and caught one man by the throat. The bystanders were in great alarm. If a scuffle began, none could say how it might end. Fortunately the person who had been collared only said, 'If I may not hiss, sir, I hope I may laugh,' and laughed in Grenville's face.