and the moral infamy in the individuals who are thus induced to multiply gain, suppressed. This trade, great as it is, is not above twenty or twenty-five years' standing. Another thing they are in great want of is an assaymaster, which is allowed both at Chester and York; but it is very hard on a manufacturer to be obliged to send every piece of plate to Chester to be marked, without which no one will purchase it, where the great object of the whole trade is to make a quantity and thus to reduce the profits as low as 'tis possible. It would be of infinite public advantage if silver plate came to be manufactured here as watches lately are, and that it should be taken out of the imposing monopoly of it in London."
June 16th.—Bowood. As soon as breakfast was over we took a walk and were vastly pleased with the effect of the water which flows into a magnificent river, and only wants now to rise to its proper height, which it comes nearer to every day.
July 14th.—This morning at seven o'clock Mr. Taylor knocked at the door and brought in a letter for my Lord, come by an express. It was from Mr. Pitt.
To understand the contents of this letter it is necessary to leave Lady Shelburne and return to politics.
There are some victories which are fatal to those that win them. Such was the victory of the Rockingham administration on the question of the Stamp Act. The popular belief was that they had not consented to the repeal of the obnoxious tax till "bullied into it" by Pitt. Years after, Burke himself witnessed to the intensity of that feeling,[1] the justice of which has been proved by evidence which not all the eloquence of all the orators can put out of court. It was in that belief that the voice of the nation, notwithstanding the imperfect condition of the means by which it would make itself heard, demanded that Pitt should be again called to the head of the affairs. Rockingham bowed to the storm. Already he saw his colleagues deserting him; but though conscious that
- ↑ Burke, speech on American taxation, April 19th, 1774.
