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152 view was to be a mere phantom or imaginary person, and any proposed arrangement, they said, ought to have proceeded from the recommendation of the King's principal servants. This opinion was shared by all the friends of the deceased minister. It cannot however be considered to have been a constitutional opinion. The King has an undoubted right to choose his own advisers. In practice, indeed, this part of the prerogative has become limited, owing to there generally being some statesman whose position in the country clearly points him out as the successor of an outgoing or deceased Prime Minister. In such cases the King has no difficulty in his choice. When however no such person is clearly indicated by the voice of Parliament and of the nation, the King has to exercise his own discretion, guided by whatever counsel he may think fit to seek. He ought however under no circumstances to submit to the dictation of the remaining ministers, or of any other self-appointed junto. What the Whig aristocracy aimed at in 1782 was to obtain the right of themselves nominating the head of the Administration.

Besides Shelburne, there were three persons who could be looked upon as candidates for the succession to Rockingham: Fox, Grafton, and Richmond. The Whigs themselves did not propose Fox. Grafton by his conduct at the Treasury in 1767 seems to have deprived even his friends of any wish to see him return there. Richmond, owing to his opinions on Parliamentary Reform, was unpopular with the old Whigs. The Whig junto accordingly, after some discussion of the claims of Lord Fitzwilliam and the Duke of Devonshire, put all these candidates aside in favour of the Duke of Portland, who was perhaps wanting in every possible qualification for the important place for which he was designated. "Nobody," says Walpole, "recollected that he had been Lord Chamberlain in Lord Rockingham's First Administration. From that time he had lived in the most stately but most domestic privacy, often in the country, latterly in Burlington House. … His