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Rh Charter. But the merits and the demerits of the East India Bill were in reality only the stalking-horse of politicians. Men and not measures were alone regarded throughout the events of 1782 and 1783, and, as Lord Grantham observed, Lord Shelburne always trusted too much to the latter.

Of the three persons most concerned in settling the new Ministry, the King, as he himself told Temple, was hostile to Shelburne, for having as he considered abandoned the situation in February, when it was tenable, while Temple accused him of being impracticable, and of having shown vanity and arrogance in refusing to court an alliance with North at the same period. Of the friends of Pitt, Rose was bitterly hostile to Shelburne, for having refused him a personal favour, while Dundas, now as ever a worshipper of the rising sun, was as ready to desert Shelburne for Pitt as he had been to desert North for Shelburne. His present protestations, as Shelburne wrote to Orde, were "too plain." Pitt himself was probably not very anxious to give himself a colleague with opinions as decided and a will as strong as his own. It was certainly one of Pitt's distinguishing characteristics, only to care for power when undivided and absolute, and he consequently surrounded himself with colleagues either personally devoted to him, or else mere cyphers. It