Lady Shelburne's very obliging remembrance. We both join in sincere congratulations on the happy domestic event,[1] and offering many respectful compliments, I am, my dear Lord, &c.,
The session of 1766 was opened with a Royal speech which painfully revealed the doubts and hesitations of the Ministers. It required afterwards the fierce partizanship of Burke to see the repeal of the Stamp Act, "very sufficiently crayoned out,"[2] when the King said: "If any alterations should be wanting in the commercial economy of the plantations which may tend to enlarge and secure the mutual and beneficial intercourse of my kingdoms and colonies, they will deserve your most serious consideration. In effectuating a purpose so worthy of your wisdom and public spirit, you may depend upon my most hearty concurrence and support."[3] These words were uttered on January 14th, and on that same day Pitt pronounced a speech against all internal taxation of America by Parliament, which shook to the centre the tottering edifice of the Rockingham Administration. "He had come up to town," as he afterwards sarcastically said, "upon the American affair, a point on which he feared they might be borne down."[4] His eloquence, disingenuous as it was in many respects, once more turned the Ministers, though "extremely unwilling to admit the Trojan horse," into suppliants at his feet.[5]
Many years afterwards George III. himself gave an account of what passed about this period to Lord Ashburton, "with a view to impress the latter with an idea of his never having given any of his Ministers on
- ↑ Lord Shelburne's son and heir, Lord Fitzmaurice, was born on the 6th of the month : the Lord Wycombe mentioned in a later portion of this book.
- ↑ Speech of April 19th, 1774. How completely Burke was thrown off his mental balance in the course of this speech may be seen by a comparison of his denunciations of political compromise as "the constant resource of weak undeciding minds," with his praises of it as "the foundation of Government" in the speech on Conciliation with America, March 22nd, 1775, and in the Reflections on the French Revolution.
- ↑ King's Speech, Parl. Hist. xvi., January 14th, 1766.
- ↑ Autobiography of the Duke of Grafton, 66.
- ↑ Hardwicke to C. Yorke. January 1765.
