Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third | Page 5

attempts were made to foment the popular passions; but the dignified firmness of the Sovereign, and the moderate bearing of the favourite, speedily tranquillized the public mind, and enabled Lord North to carry on the Government with energy and success.
In his private character, Lord North was irreproachable; as a debater, he displayed some valuable qualities--patience and endurance, facility of resources on occasions of emergency, great calmness and courage, and a playful wit, which never startled by its brilliancy, but seldom failed of its point. He betrayed no ostentation or vainglory in his position; never offended by any undue exhibition of the powers he wielded; and restricted himself severely to the discharge of his duties as an adviser of the Crown, deprecating the title of Prime Minister, which he declared was an office unknown to the Constitution of this country. As a statesman, he never achieved a high or distinguished reputation. The American war was the blot upon his career; nor can even his devotion to the Sovereign entirely excuse him for remaining in office at His Majesty's entreaty to pursue a course of colonial policy which his reason and his conscience disapproved. This was a political fault, which no circumstances can palliate. Others have done worse, no doubt, from meaner motives; but the mere desire of serving the King does not absolve the Minister from censure for having acted contrary to his own convictions on a question of such grave importance.
Lord North continued to retain the royal favour until he entered into the coalition with the Whigs. This was a step the King could not forgive. No extremity could reconcile him to a measure so repulsive to his feelings. Yet the coalition, after all, was more discreditable to the Whigs than to Lord North, who may be pardoned for accepting it as a tribute to his personal weight, and a recantation, in some sort, of all the odium the Whigs had industriously heaped upon him during the whole period of his Administration. If they really believed him to be the base and dangerous person they had all along described him to be, the shame was theirs for consenting to associate themselves with him, and to work under him in the Government.
The Administration of Lord North lasted for twelve years--from 1770 to 1782. The most important consequence it effected, so far as political parties were concerned, was to throw the Whigs into opposition, and to draw the Tories into closer relations with the throne. This complete exchange of position exactly suited the principles of the two great factions; the loyalty and courtly aspirations of the Tories (now that all hope of restoring the Stuarts was at an end) rendering them highly acceptable in the councils of the monarch, while the popular doctrines of the Whigs pointed to the benches of the Opposition as the appropriate place for a party which is always more usefully employed in representing the people than in exercising the functions of Government. Sixty years elapsed before the Whigs recovered the ground which they had lost under the Ministry of Lord North.
The American war--for the management of which the severest reproaches were cast upon the Government--the state of Ireland, and Parliamentary Reform, were the principal public questions that agitated the term of Lord North's Administration. Amongst the Whigs who took a prominent part in these proceedings were the Grenvilles. Connected by marriage with the Pitt family, and distinguished by their own hereditary claims and high talents, they exerted as conspicuous an influence out of office as they had previously done when they had the reins of Government in their hands. It will be necessary to retrace briefly the political heraldry of the Grenvilles for the purpose of bringing the reader acquainted with the character of the three brothers whose intimate correspondence forms the substance of these volumes.
Richard Grenville succeeded his brother in the Earldom of Temple in 1752, and took an active part in the Administration of the elder Pitt (Lord Chatham), who was married to his sister, Lady Hesther, the mother of the "Great Commoner." He resigned office with Pitt in 1761, on the question of the war with Spain. This circumstance estranged him from his political connection with his only brother, George Grenville, who remained in office under Lord Bute, as Treasurer of the Navy. Lord Temple, espousing the cause of Wilkes (for which he was dismissed from his Lieutenancy of the county of Bucks) continued in opposition till he was finally reconciled to his brother in 1765. He afterwards had a serious difference with Pitt on the formation of the Cabinet in 1766; but a reconciliation having been effected between them in 1768, they subsequently acted in concert except upon the taxation of America, Lord Temple invariably supporting the policy of his brother and the