demerits of lord North as a minister may be supposed to have been, he is
perhaps, in a thousand other respects, the fittest man in the world to
occupy the second place in a junction of this sort. The union of the
Rockingham connexion with the earl of Shelburne last year, was, I will
admit, less calculated to excite popular astonishment, and popular
disapprobation, than the present. In the eye of cool reason and sober
foresight, I am apt to believe, it was much less wise and commendable.
Lord Shelburne, though he has been able to win over the good opinion of
several, under the notion of his being a friend of liberty, is really,
in many respects, stiffly aristocratical, or highly monarchical. Lord
Shelburne is a man of insatiable ambition, and who pursues the ends of
that ambition by ways the most complex and insidious. The creed of lord
North, whatever it may be, upon general political questions, is
consistent and intelligible. For my own part, I do not believe him to be
ambitious. It is not possible, with his indolent and easy temper, that
he should be very susceptible to so restless a passion. In the heroical
sense of that word, he sits loose to fame. He is undoubtedly desirous,
by all the methods that appear to him honourable and just, to enrich and
elevate his family. He wishes to have it in his power to oblige and to
serve his friends. But I am exceedingly mistaken, if he entered into the
present alliance from views of authority and power. Upon the conditions
I have mentioned, it was a scheme, congenial only to a man of a dark and
plotting temper. But the temper of lord North is in the highest degree
candid, open and undisguised. Easy at home upon every occasion, there is
not a circle in the world to which his presence would not be an
addition. It is calculated to inspire unconstraint and confidence into
every breast. Simple and amiable is the just description of his
character in every domestic relation; constant and unreserved in his
connexions of friendship. The very versatility and pliableness, so
loudly condemned in his former situation, is now an additional