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of the ministry of Lord North to renew it was conceded even by themselves. In the calm hours of the winter recess, members of the house of commons reasoned dispassionately on the strife with their ancient colonists. The estimates carried by the ministry through parliament for America were limited to defensive measures, and the house could no longer deceive itself as to the hopelessness of the contest. Accordingly, on the twenty-second of February, a motion against continuing the American war was made in the house of commons by Conway; was supported by Fox, William Pitt, Barré, Wilberforce, Mahon, Burke, and Cavendish; and was nega tived by a majority of but one. Five days later, a resolution by Conway for an address to the king of the same purport obtained a majority of nineteen.

On the twenty-eighth Edmund Burke wrote to Franklin: "I congratulate you as the friend of America; I trust not as the enemy of England; I am sure as the friend of mankind; the resolution of the house of commons, carried in a very full house, was, I think, the opinion of the whole. I trust it will lead to a speedy peace between the two branches of the English nation."

The address to the king having been answered in equivocal terms, on the fourth of March Conway brought forward a second address, to declare that the house would consider as enemies to the king and country all those who would further attempt the prosecution of a war on the continent of America for the purpose of reducing the revolted colonies to obedience; and, after a long discussion, it was adopted without a division. With the same unanimity, leave was the next day granted to bring in a bill "enabling" the king to make a peace or a truce with America. The bill for that purpose was accordingly introduced by the ministers; but more than two and a half months passed away before an amended form of it became a law under their successors. A former secretary of legation repaired to France as the agent of the expiring ministry, to parley with Vergennes on conditions of peace, which did not essentially differ from those of Necker in a former

year.

Fox, in the debate of the fourth, denounced Lord North

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and his colleagues as "men void of honor and honesty," a coalition with any one of them as an infamy; but on the seventh he qualified his words so as to except Lord Thurlow. William Pitt, now in the days of his youth, which were his greatest days, stood aloof, saying: "I cannot expect to take any share in a new administration, and I never will accept a subordinate situation." The king toiled to retard the formation of a ministry till he could bring Rockingham to accept conditions, but the house of commons would brook no delay. On the twentieth more members appeared than on any occasion since the accession of the king, and the crowds of spectators were unprecedented. Lord North, having a few days before narrowly escaped a vote of censure, rose at the same moment with a member who was to have moved a want of confidence in the ministers. The two parties in the house shouted wildly the names of their respective champions. The speaker hesitated; when Lord North, gaining the floor on a question of order, with good temper but visible emotion, announced that his administration was at an end.

The outgoing ministry was the worst which England had known since parliament had been supreme. "Such a bunch of imbecility," said the author of "Taxation no Tyranny,” and he might have added, of corruption, "never disgraced the country;" and he "prayed and gave thanks" that it was dissolved. Posterity has been toward Lord North more lenient and less just. America gained, through his mismanagement, independence, and can bear him no grudge. In England, no party claimed him as their representative, or saw fit to bring him to judgment; so that his scholarship, his unruffled temper, the purity of his private life, and good words from Burns, from Gibbon, and more than all from Macaulay, have retained for him among his countrymen a less evil repute as minister than he deserved. English opinion has decided that his administration no more deserves to be recognised as the expression of the British mind on the fit methods of colonial gov ernment, than the policy of James II. to be accepted as the exponent of English liberty.

The people were not yet known in parliament as a power; and outside of them three groups only could contribute mem

bers to an administration. The new tory or conservative party, toward which the whigs represented by Portland and Burke were gravitating, had at that time for its most conspicuous and least scrupulous defender the chancellor, Thurlow. The fol lowers of Chatham, of whom it was the cardinal principle that the British constitution recognises a king and a people no less than a hereditary aristocracy, and that to prevent the overbearing weight of that aristocracy the king should sustain the people, owned Shelburne as their standard-bearer. In point of years, experience, philosophic culture, and superiority to ambition as a passion, he was their fittest leader, though he had never enjoyed the intimate friendship of their departed chief. It was he who reconciled George III. to the lessons of Adam Smith, and recommended them to the younger Pitt through whom they passed to Sir Robert Peel; but his habits of study, and his want of skill in parliamentary tactics, had kept him from political connections as well as from political intrigues. His respect for the monarchical element in the British constitution invited the slander that he was only a counterfeit liberal, at heart devoted to the king; but in truth he was very sincere. His reputation has comparatively suffered with posterity, for no party has taken charge of his fame. Moreover, being more liberal than his age, his speeches sometimes had an air of ambiguity, from his attempt to present his views in a form that might clash as little as possible with the prejudices of his hearers. The third set was that of the old whigs, which had governed England from the revolution till the coming in of George III., and which deemed itself invested with a right to govern forever. Its principle was the paramount power of the aristocracy; its office, as Rockingham expressed it, "to fight up against king and people." They claimed to be liberal, and many of them were so; but they were more willing to act as the trustees of the people than with the people and by the people. Like the great Roman lawyers, the best of them meant to be true to their clients, but never respected them as their equals. An enduring liberal government could at that time be established in England only by a junction of the party then represented by Shelburne and the liberal wing of the supporters of Rock

ingham. Such a union Chatham for twenty years had striven to bring about.

The king kept his sorrows, as well as he could, pent up in his own breast, but his mind was "truly torn to pieces" by the inflexible resolve of the house of commons to stop the war in America. He blamed them for having lost the feelings of Englishmen. Moreover, he felt keenly "the cruel usage of all the powers of Europe," of whom every one adhered to the principles of the armed neutrality, and every great one but Spain desired the perfect emancipation of the United States. The day after the ministry announced its retirement he proposed to Shelburne to take the administration with Thurlow, Gower, and Weymouth, Camden, Grafton, and Rockingham. This Shelburne declined as "absolutely impracticable," and, from an equal regard to the quiet of the sovereign and the good of the country, he urged the king to send for Rockingham. The king could not prevail with himself to accept the advice, and he spoke discursively of his shattered health, his agitation of mind, his low opinion of Rockingham's understanding, his horror of Charles Fox, his preference of Shelburne as compared with the rest of the opposition. For a day he contemplated calling in a number of principal persons, among whom Rockingham might be included; and, when the many objections to such a measure were pointed out, he still refused to meet Rockingham face to face, and could not bring himself further than to receive him through the intervention of Shelburne.

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In this state of things, Shelburne consented to be the bearer of a message from the king, with authority to procure “the assistance and co-operation of the Rockinghams, cost what it would, more or less." Necessity," relates the king, "made me yield to the advice of Lord Shelburne." Before accepting the treasury, Rockingham made but one great proposition, that there should be "no veto to the independence of America." The king, though in bitterness of spirit, consented in writing to the demand. "I was thoroughly resolved,” he says of himself, "not to open my mouth on any negotiation with America."

In constructing a ministry, Rockingham composed it of

members from both branches of the liberal party. His own connection was represented by himself, Fox, Cavendish, Keppel, and Richmond; but as chancellor he retained Thurlow, who bore Shelburne malice and had publicly received the glowing eulogies of Fox. Shelburne took with him into the cabinet Camden; and, as a balance to Thurlow, the great lawyer Dunning, raising him to the peerage as Lord Ashburton. Conway and Grafton might be esteemed as neutral, having both been members alike of the Rockingham and the Chatham administrations. Men of the next generation asked why Burke was offered no seat in the cabinet. The new tory party would give power to any man, however born, that proved himself an able defender of their fortress; the old whig party reserved the highest places for those cradled in the purple. "I have no views to become a minister," Burke said, "nor have I any right to such views. I am a man who have no pretensions to it from fortune;" and he was happy with the rich office of paymaster for himself, and lucrative places for his kin.

Franklin, in Paris, carefully watched the changes of opinions in the house of commons, and saw clearly that Shelburne must be a member of the new administration. Already, on the twenty-second of March 1782, through a traveller returning to England, he opened a correspondence with his friend of many years, assuring him of the continuance of his own ancient respect for his talents and virtues, and congratulating him on the returning good disposition of his country for America. "I hope," continued he, "it will tend to produce a general peace, which I am sure your lordship, with all good men, desires; which I wish to see before I die; and to which I shall with infinite pleasure contribute everything in my power."

This overture arrived most opportunely. Shelburne, as the elder secretary of state having his choice, elected the home department which then included America; so that he had by right the direction of all measures relating to the United States. On the fourth of April he instructed Sir Guy Carleton to proceed to New York with all possible expedition; and he would not suffer Arnold to return to the land which he had bargained to betray. On the same day he had an interview with Lau

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