scene of anarchy which ensued it was left for the strongest man to seize the helm. Unfortunately in the absence of Chatham that man was unquestionably the chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend’ (ib. iv. 105). In November he openly flouted Chatham's authority by declaring that the East India Company ‘had a right to territorial revenue,’ of which Chatham was then promoting a measure to deprive it. At the same time he afforded a glaring example of the prevalent political corruption by using his position as chancellor of the exchequer to secure for himself a large share in a public loan (Erskine May, Const. Hist. i. 383–4). But the most disastrous results of Townshend's predominance were seen in America.
Parliament met on 16 Jan. 1767, and Townshend presented his first budget. It included the usual land tax of four shillings in the pound; but his rivals, Grenville and Dowdeswell, combined to defeat it and reduce the tax to three shillings. Their motion was carried by 204 to 188 votes, and, according to long-standing precedent, a ministry defeated on a money bill should have resigned. Instead, Townshend set to work to devise means for meeting the deficiency of half a million thus created. On 26 Jan. he declared himself a firm advocate of the principle of the Stamp Act repealed a few months before by Rockingham's ministry, of which he had himself been a member; and, to the astonishment of his colleagues, ‘pledged himself to find a revenue in America nearly sufficient for the purposes that were required.’ This pledge was perfectly unauthorised, ‘but, as the Duke of Grafton afterwards wrote, no one in the ministry had sufficient authority in the absence of Chatham to advise the dismissal of Townshend, and this measure alone could have arrested his policy’ (Lecky, iv. 108; Chatham Corresp. iii. 178–9, 188–9, 193; Grenville Papers, iv. 211, 222).
Meanwhile the East India Company's affairs again came before the house, and on 8 May Townshend made his famous ‘champagne speech,’ which, to judge from the accounts of contemporaries, must have been one of the most brilliant speeches ever delivered in the House of Commons. It had little relevance to the question at issue, but its wit and satire produced an extraordinary effect on those who heard it; even so critical an observer as Horace Walpole said ‘it was Garrick writing and acting extempore scenes of Congreve’ (Memoirs of George III, iii. 17–19). After its delivery Townshend went to supper at Conway's, where ‘he kept the table in a roar till two o'clock in the morning’ (ib.) Five days later Townshend introduced his measures for dealing with America. The legislative functions of the New York assembly were to be suspended; commissioners of customs were to be established in America to superintend the execution of the laws relating to trade; and a port duty was imposed on glass, red and white lead, painters' colours, paper, and tea. The Americans received the news of these proposals with a burst of fury; anti-importation associations were formed, riots broke out, and the loyalist officials were reduced to impotence. Townshend did not live to see these developments. In July the city of London conferred its freedom upon him for his behaviour on the East India bill, and on 4 Sept. he died, at the premature age of forty-two, ‘of a neglected fever.’
Townshend was one of those statesmen whose abilities are the misfortune of the country they serve. He impressed his contemporaries as a man of unrivalled brilliance, yet to obtain a paltry revenue of 40,000l. he entered a path which led to the dismemberment of the empire. Burke lavished upon him a splendid panegyric (Select Works, ed. Payne, i. 147–9), and ‘the most gorgeous image in modern oratory,’ when he said (Speech on American Taxation, 19 April 1774) ‘even before this splendid orb [Chatham] was entirely set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary [Townshend], and, for his hour, became lord of the ascendant.’ He was, declared Burke, ‘the delight and ornament of this house, and the charm of every private society which he honoured with his presence.’ According to Walpole ‘he had almost every great talent and every little quality … with such a capacity he must have been the greatest man of this age, and perhaps inferior to no man in any age, had his faults been only in a moderate proportion’ (Memoirs of George III, iii. 72). These faults are set forth in Smollett's character of him in ‘Humphrey Clinker:’ ‘He would be a really great man if he had any consistency or stability of character. … There's no faith to be given to his assertions, and no trust to be put in his promises. … As for principle, that's out of the question.’ ‘Nothing,’ says Mr. Lecky, ‘remains of an eloquence which some of the best judges placed above that of Burke and only second to that of Chatham, and the two or three pamphlets which are ascribed to his pen hardly surpass the average of the political literature of the time. Exuberant animal spirits, a brilliant and ever ready wit, bound-
