prevail on the more simple mind of Mr. Oswald, was not likely to find favour in the eyes of any British statesman. Mr. Oswald, however, undertook to return with it to England, and to lay it before his chief; Dr. Franklin at his departure expressing an earnest hope, that all future communications to himself might pass through the same hands.

Under these circumstances, the Cabinet determined that Mr. Oswald should go back to France, and carry on the treaty with Franklin, though by no means with such concessions as the American philosopher desired. It was laid down as the basis of this negotiation, that the Independence of the United States should be admitted, and that other matters should be restored as they stood at the Peace of 1763. It was also resolved to send another agent to Paris, to treat, on the same basis, with M. de Vergennes; and for this second mission Fox selected his friend Mr. Thomas Grenville.*

It might have been foreseen that, with negotiations so concurrent, the two negotiators must inevitably clash. The letters of Mr. Grenville to Fox were filled with complaints of Mr. Oswald's interposition, and of Lord Shelburne's secret views; and thus was the keenest jealousy fomented between both the holders of the Seals. Yet it does not follow that either Shelburne or Fox was to be blamed. The censure so freely cast on the one or on the other of them may, with far greater justice, be transferred to the system under which they acted. At that time, the old and perplexing division of the Northern and Southern departments, which had prevailed through

viii. p. 301.) Lord Shelburne wholly disapproved it; as, notwithstanding some vague surmises to the contrary, is plain from his own "Memorandums" of Instruction to Mr. Oswald, April 28. 1782. The original MS. of these is preserved among the papers at Lansdowne House, and they were first made public by a very accurate and able expositor of this whole transaction, in the Edinburgh Review, No. CCI. p. 35., January 1854.

The correspondence of Mr. Thomas Grenville at Paris is given fully in the "Courts and Cabinets of George III." (vol. i. pp. 27—64.) as published in 1853 by the Duke of Buckingham. In Franklin's Works (vol. ix. pp. 238-351., ed. 1844), will be found a clear and excellent Journal of the negotiation, up to the 1st of July, with original letters interspersed.

1782.

DEATH OF LORD ROCKINGHAM.

181

the earlier portion of the century, was at an end. When the third Secretaryship was abolished, the partition of business between the two remaining Secretaries was made on the same principle as the Home and Foreign Offices of the present day, but with this difference, that the Colonies - and, in the eye of the law, the United States were Colonies still- -were added to the Home. Lord Shelburne had been appointed the Home Secretary, and Mr. Fox the Foreign. Thus the negotiation with America was as clearly in Lord Shelburne's province, as those with France, and Spain, and Holland were in Mr. Fox's.

Such was the state of things at Paris, when the news came of our great victory in the West Indies. Mr. Oswald told Dr. Franklin that, as he thought, some of our Ministers were a little too much elated by it; yet they all hastened to declare that it left their desire for peace entirely unchanged. Franklin, on his part, did his best to inspirit Comte d'Estaing and other naval officers whom he met at dinner, and found in some degree dejected. By way of encouragement, he told them the observation of the Turkish Bashaw, who was taken with his fleet, by the Venetians at Lepanto - Ships are like my master's beard; you may cut it, but it will grow again. He has cut off from your Government the Morea, which is like a limb, that you can never re66 cover. And his words," added Franklin, "proved "true."

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Of still greater significance in this negotiation, was the illness of Lord Rockingham. He was only fifty-two years of age, yet his health had for some time been declining. He suffered from water on the chest, and was now, moreover, attacked by Influenza; a disorder of recent introduction, but at that period widely prevalent in London.* On the last and indeed as it would seem the only occasion during his own Ministry when Lord Rockingham took any part in the House of Lords - this

*The first appearance of Influenza in London is described by Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to his Son (July 9. 1767). In June 1782, Lady Rodney writes to her husband:- "This disorder has "been so severe and so universal, that the public places have been obliged to be shut up."

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was on the 3rd of June-he declared himself so ill "that "at times he was not in possession of himself." Still his friends were under no apprehensions of his danger, till near the end of the month, when he grew much worse, and on the 1st of July he expired.

On the day preceding his decease, the Cabinet having met without him, Fox pressed his colleagues with much eagerness, and for the second time, that in the negotiations at Paris the Independence of America might freely and at once be conceded, even without a treaty for a peace. But the majority of the Cabinet were for a treaty accompanying the surrender of the claim, though perfectly willing that Independence should, in the first instance, be allowed as the basis to treat on. This decision not coming up to Fox's views, he declared, with many expressions of regret, that his part was taken to quit his office, and that he held it on for the present solely in consideration of Lord Rockingham's illness.* Thus, at the moment of the Prime Minister's decease, his Government was in truth already in a state of dissolution. It was plain that both the sections composing it, if even they could by any means be kept united, would at all events in the choice of his successor be warmly striving for the mastery.

The King cut the knot asunder. Next day, he sent for Lord Shelburne, and offered him the First Lordship of the Treasury; an honour which the Earl saw no reason to decline. But Lord Shelburne accompanied this announcement with such communications to Fox as might, he hoped, make it not unwelcome. Lord Keppel, conversing with the Duke of Grafton, only a few days afterwards, acknowledged that the share of power offered by Lord Shelburne was all that Mr. Fox could desire, "to assist his management of the House of Commons, "and was equal to anything that could in justice be re

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quested, or with propriety granted." But the great orator was not to be so appeased. He held a meeting with Lord John Cavendish and a few more of his close friends, at which it was agreed to recommend the Duke of Portland to His Majesty, as the most fitting successor to

*MS. Memoirs of the Duke of Grafton. See the extracts in my Appendix.

1782.

RESIGNATION OF FOX.

183

Lord Rockingham. Failing to attain this object, Fox and Cavendish resigned, as did also the Duke of Portland at Dublin, and several in the lower ranks of office, more especially Burke and Sheridan.

The conduct of Fox in these transactions is not easily defended. He had broken with the Cabinet majority on a most narrow point, on a mere splitting of hairs, and even on that point Lord Shelburne, it appears, was willing to give way. His other grievances against his brother Secretary, though we may allow them some degree of just foundation, appear greatly overstrained. Such is the case, even with the main one-the imputed failure of Shelburne to make known without delay the secret hints of Franklin on the subject of Canada, since might not those hints be best baffled the more secret and less official they remained? Nay more, considering that America was in the department which Lord Shelburne held, the truth really seems to be that, if one Secretary had cause to complain of the other for encroaching on his official province in the negotiations at Paris, that complaint which was made by Fox might more justly have proceeded from his colleague. In the next place, had Fox desired to put himself in competition with Shelburne for the Treasury, his pre-eminent abilities and his well-won lead in the House of Commons would have warranted his claim. But to run all risks of discord and division by proposing another man whose main merit lay in this, that he was the Lord of Welbeck, and had married a daughter of the House of Devonshire to put forward in his own stead a mere Ducal puppet whose strings others were to pull-seems a course which, however conformable to the precedents of his party, was, and I trust ever will be, repugnant to the spirit of his nation. How true and just the reflection which, at that crisis, Horace Walpole makes: "It is very entertain"ing, that two or three great families should persuade "themselves that they have an hereditary and exclusive " right of giving us a head without a tongue!"*

But further still, even if it was deemed indispensable that the choice should be confined to men of the highest

* Letter to the Rev. W. Mason, July 10. 1782, ed. 1851.

rank, one might have been selected far superior to Portland, at least in talent and Parliamentary standing, though destitute of a Cavendish connection. The Duke of Richmond, whom Fox and Burke now concurred in passing by, might have been, at least, according to their own previous estimation, no unworthy chief. *

It is, therefore, no matter of surprise that in the public opinion of the time, Fox was deemed to have no sufficient cause for throwing up his office, and breaking up his party. Many fewer placemen than he had expected joined him in his resignation; many fewer independent Members approved it. Fox was further embarrassed by this difficulty, that in the causes he assigned he could not speak freely of the pending negotiations which were still mysteries of State. "Lord George Cavendish," writes Walpole on the 8th of July, "owned to me that "there might be reasons that could not be given. I "said: "My Lord, will worse reasons satisfy the country?'" And two days later Walpole adds: "They "will receive another blow as sensible as any they have "experienced; Sir George Savile disapproves their proud "retreat."

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The business of the Session had been already so far advanced, that the House could be prorogued on the 11th after the required explanations. In these Burke took part with a degree of passion which approached to fury; exclaiming that if Lord Shelburne was not already a Catiline or a Borgia in morals, the cause could only be ascribed to his understanding! But here the retort was easy, since you thought him so why did you consent to serve in the same government? Shelburne himself in the other House spoke with spirit and temper. "It "would be strange indeed," he said, "if I had given up "to the two colleagues who have now thought proper to "retire all those Constitutional ideas which for seventeen

*We find Burke, who was so ready to put aside the Duke of Richmond in 1782, speak of him in 1780 with the utmost exuberance of eulogy. Coupling him with Savile, he terms them "the first men "of their age and their country." (Corresp. vol. ii. p. 386.) In his principles and public views, as detached from party, Burke is always admirable; but whenever we come to persons, it is curious to compare his verdicts with those of posterity.