George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[453] judgment of mankind, out of England, then and ever

chap. XX.} 1762.

since, has pronounced on it similar decisions. For once, to the surprise of every body, Bute spoke well, rising in its defence in the House of Lords. ‘I wish,’ said he, ‘no better inscription on my tomb than that I was its author.’

On the morning of the ninth of December, the very day on which the preliminaries were to be discussed in parliament, Charles Townshend resigned his place as secretary at war. The opposition, on his resigning, had great hopes of his joining with them. But, always preserving intimate relations with George the Third, he still aspired to the management of the plantations as third secretary of state; and when Pitt spoke against the peace for three hours and twenty minutes,—for the first hour admirably, then with flagging strength, ‘though even in his scrawls showing the masterly hand of a Raphael,’ and an ‘indisputable superiority to all others,’—Charles Townshend, in a speech of but twenty-five minutes, made an answer ‘with great judgment, wit, and strength of argument,’ on the side of humanity.¹

On the division the opponents of the treaty were but sixty-five against three hundred and nineteen. ‘Now,’ said the princess dowager, on hearing the great majority, ‘my son is indeed king of England.’ Yet Townshend, who had so much contributed to swell the vote, in the progress of his own ambition, had for a rival Halifax, his old superior at the Board of Trade, who was equally desirous of the department of the colonies, with the rank of a secretary of state.

In the first days of January, 1763, it was publicly