Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/185

Rh were designedly hypocritical, and that his appointment to the Treasury had consequently entailed his own resignation. The patronage of that place he said, was so great, that whoever rilled it, must have much more power than any other member of the Cabinet. "It was natural to imagine," he went on to say, "in an Administration formed on the principles of the men distinguished by the name of the Rockinghams, that upon the decease of that great man whose virtues, whose nobleness of thinking, and whose firm integrity bound them together, the man would be sought and appointed to succeed him who most resembled him in character, in influence, in popularity such at least were his ideas—and the eyes of all men—were naturally turned to the Duke of Portland." His speech concluded with another fierce invective against the Ministers, and a repetition of his belief that they were capable of coalescing with Lord North. To this attack Conway again replied with much sense and good humour. For the merits, he said, of Lord Rockingham he had the most serious esteem. "But why degrade the living by an ill-timed compliment to the dead? The Earl of Shelburne was not less respectable because his predecessor was a man of uncommon worth. No; there was an instance of merit in Lord Shelburne that it was but justice to mention to the House. He, so far from renewing the old exploded politics, had been able to convince his royal master, that a declaration of American independence was, from the situation of the country, and the necessity of the case, the wisest and most expedient measure that the Government, from the pressure of present circumstances, could possibly adopt. This he observed was a satisfactory reason to his mind that nothing less than such a measure in its utmost latitude was certainly meant by the Cabinet." Fox again rose, and denied all merit to Lord Shelburne in the matter mentioned by Conway. It was mainly to the House of Commons, he said, that any alteration of opinion on the part of the King was owing. He therefore deemed