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Updated: May 9, 2025
The two men whose genius and whose eloquence had been the most potent factors in the fall of North a year before were now the means of bringing the discredited and defeated statesman back again into the exercise of a power which, as none knew better than they, he had so shamefully misused. Fox and North between them swept Shelburne out of the field.
Fox and Shelburne were almost as hostile to each other as were both to Lord North; and each was aiming to control the coming negotiations with the States. Which should secure it was a nice question. For English purposes of classification the States, until independence was acknowledged, remained colonies, and so within the charge of Shelburne.
The unfortunate Shelburne was driven out of power, pursued by an angry outcry from persons altogether incapable of appreciating the sound statesmanship and the wise forecast of the future advantage of England which he had shown in preferring to give the colonies a chance to become a great, English-speaking, English-sympathizing, commercial people, rather than to feed fat the aspirations of France and Spain.
He knocked off one of the hunches, and carrying it home, or to a camp, or wherever he lived, he put it on the fire, and incited it down into clear lead. He sought for the spot again and again, but could never find it. Mr. Leach's brother is a student at Shelburne Falls.
Lord Shelburne was the only English minister competent to the task; he was the only public man who had the previous knowledge requisite to form accurate conclusions on such a conjuncture: his remaining speeches on the subject attest the amplitude of his knowledge and the accuracy of his views: and in the rout of Jena, or the agony of Austerlitz, one cannot refrain from picturing the shade of Shelburne haunting the cabinet of Pitt, as the ghost of Canning is said occasionally to linger about the speaker's chair, and smile sarcastically on the conscientious mediocrities who pilfered his hard-earned honours.
The tavern at Shelburne Falls was about the worst I ever saw, there being hardly anything to eat, at least nothing of the meat kind.
When, accordingly, in 1781, both Shelburne and Fox of the Rockingham Ministry sought to open negotiations with the American representatives, while pushing on vigorously the war against France and Spain, they interjected an embarrassing element into the situation.
The Peace made by that very able statesman, the Earl of Shelburne, now Marquis of Lansdown, which may fairly be considered as the foundation of all the prosperity of Great Britain since that time. BOSWELL. In the winter of 1782-83, preliminary treaties of peace were made with the United States, France, and Spain; and a suspension of arms with Holland.
Lord Shelburne proposed them to his august colleague, and the marquis, whose faults, if he had any, were an excess of mildness, and an unsuspecting simplicity, perhaps too readily complied. But let it be remembered, that not one of his friends accepted, or to not one of his friends were these emoluments extended.
Even if Shelburne had been a much better leader than he was he had not the following which would entitle him to form a Ministry on his own account. And Shelburne was by no means a good leader. To the Liberal politician of to-day Shelburne seems a much more desirable and admirable statesman than Rockingham.
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