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

an alarming majority of 1. But they persevered in
the face of these disasters, and, sustained in office by the tenacity of the
King, refused to submit to the constitutional warning of Parliament.
Three months before, the Duke of Richmond, writing to Lord
Rockingham, anticipated the obstinacy of the Cabinet, expressing his
conviction, that "no essential change of measures was meant, and none
of men if it could be avoided. When I say the Ministry," he added, "I
mean the King; for his servants are the merest servants that ever were."
Nor was it only by 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 Barré, in
other offices; Thurlow (the only Tory