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Rh upon reference to it for advice or information on the part of the Secretary of State." The latter was the course now adopted, and Shelburne, who held the seals of the Southern department, was directed to carry it out in conjunction with Hillsborough the President of the Board. Hillsborough appears to have been ready not only to accept his office reduced to even a smaller degree of importance than it had occupied before the minute of 1752, which was now revoked, but to have insisted on the new commission being made out in terms which could leave no loophole to the Board for advancing claims to independent action at any future time. Freed from this embarrassment Shelburne was able to give undivided attention to his department.

Ever since the peace, Choiseul and Grimaldi had been scheming how to win back what they had lost. They had gained Austria to their alliance; they were intriguing in Stockholm, and plotting in Copenhagen; they were fishing in the troubled waters of Polish politics; their emissaries traversed the English Colonies; their spies surveyed the defences of the English coast; Portsmouth was to be destroyed, and Gibraltar to be seized by a coup de main; Avignon was to be annexed to France, and Portugal to Spain; Corsica was to be invaded; Geneva was threatened. But the time for overt action had not yet arrived, and the two ministers resolved to wait, until