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Updated: April 30, 2025
Upon this Fox rather hastily maintained that the United States were put at once into the position of an independent and foreign power, so that the business of negotiating with them passed from Shelburne's department into his own.
See ante, iii. 265, for Lord Shelburne's statement on this subject. See ante, ii. 339, and iii. 205, note 4. See ante, iii. 46. The passage quoted by Dr. Johnson is in the Character of the Assembly-man; Butler's Remains, p. 232, edit. 1754: 'He preaches, indeed, both in season and out of season; for he rails at Popery, when the land is almost lost in Presbytery; and would cry Fire!
Lord Shelburne's obtaining, or accepting, call it which you will, of the office of first lord of the treasury, upon the demise of lord Rockingham, without the privity of his fellow Ministers, was contrary to every maxim of ingenuous conduct, and every principle upon which an association of parties can be supported.
"American historians," remarks Lord Shelburne's biographer, "have seen in the policy thus pursued a deliberate intention of closing the West against further emigration, from the fear that remote colonies would claim the independence which their position would favor. The statesmen of the eighteenth century have follies enough to answer for without charging them with this in addition.
The coxswain's voice went past Deacon's ear like a bullet. "Both away together and now a little ahead at forty-two to the minute. But down now. Down down down down! That's it thirty-two to the minute. It's a long race, remember. Shelburne's dropping the beat, too. You listen to Papa, all of you; he'll keep you wise.
But Pitt was not ungrateful. He was merely astute. He read Shelburne as perhaps no other of his contemporaries was able to read him, and he gauged him at his true value or want of value. Shelburne's glittering unreality, his showy unreliability, were to have no place in Pitt's scheme of things.
No more emphatic justification of Shelburne's conduct of this business could possibly have been obtained. The coalition ministry did not long survive the final signing of the treaty. The events of the next few months are curiously instructive as showing the quiet and stealthy way in which a political revolution may be consummated in a thoroughly conservative and constitutional country.
The story goes, but on what authority history saith not, that Bute afterward owned to Fox that Shelburne's conduct in this transaction had been a "pious fraud," and that Fox retorted, "I can see the fraud plainly enough, but where is the piety?"
Moreover the indemnification was "uppermost in Lord Shelburne's mind," because, unlike other matters, it seemed a point of honor. With what face could the ministry meet Parliament with a treaty deserting all those who had been faithful to their king? It was indeed a delicate position, and the English were stubborn; but no less so was Franklin, upon the other side.
On the great question of parliamentary reform, which was brought up in May by the young William Pitt, the government was hopelessly divided. Shelburne's party was in favour of reform, and this time Fox was found upon the same side, as well as the Duke of Richmond, who went so far as to advocate universal suffrage.
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