always acceptable to those who envy the greatness which they cannot aspire to emulate, and misconstrue actions which they cannot comprehend.

Such was the man whom George III. most feared, most hated, and most exerted his kingcraft to disarm; and such, unhappily, was his momentary success in this long-headed enterprise against the liberties of his people and their champions; for Lord Chatham's popularity, struck down by his pension, was afterwards annihilated by his peerage.

49

LORD NORTH.

THE minister whom George III. most loved was, as has been already said, Lord North, and this extraordinary favour lasted until the period of the Coalition. It is no doubt a commonly-received notion, and was at one time an article of belief among the popular party, that Lord Bute continued his secret adviser after the termination of his short administration; but this is wholly without foundation. The King never had any kind of communication with him, directly or indirectly; nor did he ever see him but once, and the history of that occurrence suddenly puts the greater part of the stories to flight which are current upon this subject. His aunt, the Princess Amelia, had some plan of again bringing the two parties together, and on a day when George III. was to pay her a visit at her villa of Gunnersbury, near Brentford, she invited Lord Bute, whom she probably had never informed of her foolish intentions. He was walking in the garden when she took her nephew down stairs to view it, saying there was no one there but an old friend of his, whom he had not seen for some years. He had not time to ask who it might be, when, on entering the garden, he saw his former minister walking up an alley. The King instantly turned back to avoid him, reproved the silly old woman sharply, and declared that, if ever she repeated such experiments, she had seen him for the last time in her house. The assertion that the common reports are utterly void of all foundation, and that no communication whatever of any kind or upon any matter, public or private, ever

VOL. III.

took place between the parties, we make upon the most positive information, proceeding directly both from George III. and from Lord Bute. But we go farther: the story is contrary to all probability; for that Prince, as well as others of his family, more than suspected the intimacy between his old governor and his royal mother, and, according to the nature of princes of either sex, he never forgave it. The likelihood is, that this came to his knowledge after the period of his first illness, and the Regency Bill which he, in consequence of that circumstance, proposed to parliament; for it is well known that he then had so much regard for the Dowager Princess as to turn out George Grenville because he passed her over as Regent. Consequently, the discovery which we are supposing him to have made must have been some time after Lord Bute's ministry closed. Certain it is that the feeling towards him had become, for some reason or other, not neutral, negative, or passive; but such as rules men, and still more princes, when favour is succeeded by dislike; for we may then say what was so wittily observed respecting Louis XV. on a very different occasion-"Il n'y a rien de petit chez les grands." His correspondence with his other ministers, to which we have had access, speaks the same language; a very marked prejudice is constantly betrayed against Scotchmen and Scotch politics.

The origin of Lord North's extraordinary favour was his at once consenting to take the office of prime minister when the Duke of Grafton, in a moment of considerable public difficulty and embarrassment, of what, in those easy days of fair weather, was called danger, suddenly threw up the seals, and retired to his diversions and his mistress at Newmarket. Lord North was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the House of Commons. He had thus already the most arduous by far of the government duties cast upon him; and his submitting to bear also

the nominal functions and real patronage and power of the First Lord of the Treasury seemed but a slender effort of courage or self-devotion. As such, however. the King considered it; nor during the disastrous and really difficult times which his own obstinate bigotry and strong tyrannical propensities brought upon the country, did he ever cease to feel and to testify the lively sense he always felt of the obligation under which Lord North had laid him personally, by coming to his assistance upon that emergency. In fact, responsibility, which, to almost all official personages, proves the greatest trial, is the most heavily felt, and the most willingly shunned, presses with peculiar weight upon the great public functionary who by law is wholly exempt from it, and in practice never can know it, unless during the interval between one ministry and another. The less he is in general accustomed to this burthen, the more hard does he find it to bear when he has no minister to cast it upon. Accordingly kings are peculiarly helpless, extremely anxious, and not a little alarmed, when any event has, as they term it, “left them without a government." The relief is proportionably great which they experience when any one, after such an interregnum in times of difficulty, "comes (as they also term it) to their assistance," and "consents to stand by them." This Lord North did for George III. in 1772; and his conduct never was forgotten by that Prince. Indeed, the gratitude and personal affection is very remarkable which he showed ever after; at least till the fatal Coalition on which so many political reputations were shipwrecked, and so total a loss was made of both court and popular favour; and it forms one of the not very numerous amiable traits in his character. A striking instance has already been given in speaking of this monarch.

It must be acknowledged that he was singularly fortunate in the minister whom he thus obtained, and indeed in the change which he made. The Duke of

Grafton, though a man endowed with many valuable qualities for his high station, remarkable for a liberality on ecclesiastical matters rare in any rank, and any one thing rather than the character painted by the persevering malice and audacious calumnies of Junius, who made him and the Duke of Bedford, together with Lord Mansfield, the choice objects of his unsparing and systematic abuse, was nevertheless of no great weight in debate, and of habits which the aristocratic life in those days had little fitted to meet the unceasing claims of official duty upon a statesman's time and attention. The industry of professional slanderers, too, being counteracted by no brilliant political achievements, had concurred with the discontents prevailing at home, and dissensions yet more formidably showing themselves in the colonies, to lower his reputation in the country, and to make the task of government such as he plainly shrank from.

The helm, thus abandoned, fell into the hands of Lord North, then in the vigour of his faculties, in no respect disadvantageously known to the country, and an undoubted favourite with the House, which for some time he had led. His success there was very considerable. Few men in Few men in any station have, indeed, left behind them a higher reputation as a debater, and above all, as the representative of the government. We now speak of his fame after his accession to the chief command in the public councils, as well as the warfare of parliament, had consolidated his authority, exhibited his debating powers, and multiplied his victories. It was his lot to maintain the conflict in times of unprecedented difficulty, and against antagonists such as no minister ever had to meet, if we except Mr. Addington, who was speedily overthrown in the rencounter. resistance of our whole American empire had ended in a general rebellion, and all the military prowess failed to quell it, as all the political measures of the government had failed to prevent it, or rather had ripened dis

The