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332 the sake of effect which had always been ingredients in his character and were now stimulated by disease.

To this opinion Shelburne himself seems to have inclined. He in any case keenly felt the invidiousness of his own position: the representative of Chatham in the Cabinet, yet unable to obtain even the shortest interview with him; anxious himself to resign, yet desired to stay, and called upon to decide questions of great difficulty, yet without any certainty that he would not be thrown over by his principal. The bitter remembrance of this passage in his career, when unsupported and alone he had on the one hand to resist the attacks of the King and the intrigues of his colleagues, and on the other to suffer under the obstinate silence or empty declamations of his leader, made him in the evening of life paint his picture of the great Earl in darker colours than the facts justified, and without adequate recognition of those great qualities which once had saved and once again might have saved the country,—qualities which he either thought too well known to need detailed description, or would have described had he lived to revise his own work.

The ministerial changes did not actually take place till January, when Hillsborough entered on the administration of the American Colonies, and Weymouth succeeded to the management of Home Affairs and of the Northern