THE

CHAPTER VI.

REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT.

1766.

HE Rockingham party will be always memorable because its leader was the patron of Ed

mund Burke, the most profoundly influential of English political thinkers, who, in 1765, at the age of thirty-six, was returned to Parliament as member for Wendover. Dr. Johnson declared that he had only known two men who had risen very considerably above the common level, Lord Chatham and Edmund Burke. Although Burke was a poor man and unconnected, from the first his influence. over the passive and unoriginal intellect of Rockingham was commanding and decisive. How far Burke's ideas on the subject of party were coloured by the special circumstances of the Rockingham connection, or how far the policy of the party was the fruit of Burke's ideas, it is not easy to say. But Burke was their great protagonist and originator; his eloquence and fame have shed glory upon their commonplace personalities. The antagonism between Pitt and this section of the Whigs, which was

never wholly subdued, was the result mainly of Pitt's idiosyncrasies, but it was stimulated and embittered from the other side by Burke's dislike for Pitt, by his distrust of Pitt's popular tendencies, his prejudice against a man who would not bow the knee to the prevailing deity of the Whigs, but acted with confidence in himself and an arrogant disregard of great connections. Burke's belief in party government has been substantiated by the history of politics since the great democratic revolution which Burke feared so greatly, but in the eighteenth century it was only dimly realised. Rockingham was a typical Whig, and his small party represented all that remained of the great majority which Newcastle had consolidated and Pitt had borrowed. They had passed unscathed through the hard ordeal of Fox's systematic corruption, and deserved the highest credit for their resistance to that Minister. They still preserved the old Whig faith in government by the House of Commons, though they never had a majority of their own. The great principles of uniform policy in the Council, and uniform action under one leader, which Burke ascribed to them in later years, may have reposed in the bosom of Rockingham, but they were from the first disregarded by his colleagues. The new Premier was a man of good sense and genuine character, but he was lacking in experience and in training; destitute of all greater qualifications for statesmanship, with no superior knowledge and no remarkable strength of will, he failed to impress Parliament, or his colleagues, or the nation, with any belief in his value, any desire for

his return. He owed his position to his great territorial possessions, and up to the time when he became Premier had held no responsible office of state, though as Lord Lieutenant he had been distinguished by dismissal, at the same time as Devonshire and Newcastle. It was only after long resistance that he yielded to the pressure of his friends and took the Treasury. It is difficult to share in the enthusiasm of Burke for this blameless but uninspiring chief, and the regard of his contemporaries never passed beyond the esteem which is felt for all those who do their duty in that station to which it has pleased God to call them.

Rockingham's chief colleagues were Conway and Grafton. Conway had served with distinction, and very conspicuous bravery, under Prince Ferdinand. Horace Walpole cherished for him a warm and constant affection, and has portrayed his character in the most attractive light. His speeches were ready and graceful, delivered with much charm of manner, and spiced with considerable wit; his honesty was undoubted, his incorruptibility proverbial, his intentions excellent. But of initiative in political action he had none, and too often, even in the pages of his admirer, he presents the confusing spectacle of a politician not knowing his own mind. An admirable lieutenant, he needed a leader. The other Secretary of State was the Duke of Grafton, who at this time. was barely thirty years of age. Like the Duke of Richmond and Fox, he was descended from Charles II. His estate, inherited at an early age, combined with unusual ability, made him prominent long