George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 6, 10th edition.

[354] North seemed hardly satisfied with his success; and

Chap. XLIV.} 1770. March

reserved to himself liberty to accede to the repeal on some agreement with the East India Company;¹ with fatal weakness of purpose, delaying the measure which his good sense and humanity approved.

The decision came from the King who was the master of the House of Commons, and the soul of the Ministry, busying himself even with the details of all important affairs. He had many qualities that become a sovereign,—temperance, regularity, and industry; decorous manners, and unaffected piety; frugality in his personal expenses, so that his pleasures laid no burden on his people; a moderation which made him ever averse to wars of conquest; courage, which dared to assume responsibility, and could even contemplate death serenely; a fortitude that met accumulated dangers without flinching and rose with adversity.

But his mind was bigoted, narrow, and without comprehensiveness, morbidly impatient of being ruled, and yet himself incapable of reconciling the demands of civilization with the establishments of the past. He was the great founder and head of the New Tory or Conservative party, which had become dominant through his support. To that cause all his instincts were blindly true; so that throughout his career, he was consistent in his zeal for authority, his hatred of reform, and his antipathy to philosophical freedom of inquiry and to popular power. On these points he was inflexibly obstinate and undisguised; nor could he be justly censured for dissimulation, except for that ²