George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 3, 15th edition.

It is to the honor of Walpole, that he dared to resist the clamor of the mercantile interest, and, opposing the imbecile duke of Newcastle, boldly advocated the acceptance of the convention. ‘It requires no great abilities in a minister,’ he exclaimed, ‘to pursue such measures as may make a war unavoidable. But how many ministers have known the art of avoiding war by making a safe and honorable peace?’—‘The convention,’ said William Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, —giving an augury, in his first speech on American affairs, that his political career might be marked by energy, but not by an elevated political faith,—‘The convention is insecure, unsatisfactory, and dishonorable: I think, from my soul, it is nothing but a stipulation for national ignominy. The complaints of your despairing merchants, the voice of England, has condemned it. Be the guilt of it upon the head of the advisers; God forbid that this committee should share the guilt by approving it.’ What judgment posterity would form of Pulteney, was foreshadowed in the poetry of Akenside; but there was no need of awaiting the judgment of posterity, or listening to the indignation of contemporary patriotism; Pulteney and his associates stand self-condemned. The original documents demonstrate ‘the extreme injustice’ of their opposition. ‘It was my fortune,’ said Edmund Burke, ‘to converse with those who principally excited that clamor. None of them, no, not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify their conduct.’

In an ill hour for herself, in a happy one for Amer-