Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third | Page 9

protecting an unpopular Ministry that His Majesty showed his resolution to exercise his prerogative in direct opposition to public opinion. It was in the midst of these accumulating defeats and strong expressions of popular feeling, that His Majesty raised Lord George Germain to the peerage with the title of Viscount Sackville, in open indifference to the fact that his Lordship had been dismissed from the army by the sentence of a court-martial, and declared incapable of serving His Majesty in any military capacity, in consequence of his conduct at the battle of Minden. To such proceedings as these Walpole refers, when he observes at this time that "the power of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished; and it is diminished a good deal indeed." The diminution of its power, however, was visible only in the spirited resistance of Parliament, in the motion of Lord Carmarthen in the Upper House, that it was derogatory to the honour of the House of the Lords, that any person labouring under so heavy a sentence of a court-martial should be recommended to the Crown as worthy of a peerage, and in the successive motions which were brought forward in the Commons to force the Ministry to resign.
General Conway renewed his motion on the war on the 27th, and achieved a complete triumph, his minority of 1 being converted in five days into a majority of 19. But Lord North still clung to office, and it was not till the 6th of March, when he was beaten by a majority of 16 on the subject of the taxes, that he began to betray symptoms of a retreat. On the 8th the motion on the war was renewed, when Ministers, collecting the whole force of placemen and contractors, obtained a majority of 10, which was reduced afterwards to 9 on a vote of confidence. The crisis had now arrived. The Earl of Surrey had given notice in the Lords of a motion to the effect that Ministers no longer possessed the confidence of the country, when Lord North entered the House, and informed their Lordships that His Majesty had come to a determination to make an entire change of Administration.
This was on the 19th of March. But so far back as the 11th His Majesty had been in negotiation with the Marquis of Rockingham, through the agency of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who detained his Lordship in the House for an hour and a half after it had adjourned to converse with him, by His Majesty's desire, upon the practicability of forming an Administration "on a broad bottom." The negotiation with Thurlow spread over an entire week, and entirely failed on the plan proposed by His Majesty, who wished to limit Lord Rockingham in the first instance to the nomination of a Cabinet whose policy should lie over for future consideration. "I must confess," observes Lord Rockingham, in one of his letters to the Lord Chancellor, "that I do not think it an advisable measure, first to attempt to form a Ministry by arrangement of office--afterwards to decide upon what principles or measures they are to act."
The day this letter was written Lord North resigned; and in two days afterwards His Majesty renewed the negotiation with Lord Rockingham, finally agreeing to the whole of his propositions, and reserving only the household in his own hands. While these negotiations were in progress, Lord Temple wrote to Lord Rockingham, expressing his earnest hope that the "cards should be dealt only into those hands where he so much wished them, from every motive of public and private regard." Before the end of the month the cards were dealt into the hands in which Lord Temple wished to see them, and the new Ministry was completed, with Lord Rockingham as First Lord of the Treasury; Lord Shelburne and Mr. Fox as Secretaries of State; Lord John Cavendish, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Admiral Keppel, at the head of the Admiralty; General Conway (much to the King's dissatisfaction), at the Horse Guards; with the additional strength of the Dukes of Richmond and Grafton, and Lords Camden and Ashburton, Burke, Sheridan, and Colonel Barr��, in other offices; Thurlow (the only Tory in the Cabinet) still continuing as Lord Chancellor.
One of the earliest measures of the new Government was to negotiate a peace with America; and Mr. Thomas Grenville was appointed upon a mission for that purpose to Paris, to meet Dr. Franklin. The history of that mission is contained in a series of deeply interesting letters, which, independently of the flood of light they throw upon the American business, possess a permanent value as illustrations of the personal characters of the writers (especially those of Sheridan, to whose rashness Mr. Grenville makes express allusion), and as showing that, even