subjected to the insulting and wearisome lectures of George Grenville; assailed and held up to public obloquy by the leaders of the two formidable parties in opposition, Lord Rockingham and Chatham; despising the former on account of his want of firmness and administrative ability, and incensed against the latter on account of his recent violent language in Parliament, there was possibly not one of the king's subjects, who, knowing the state of his feelings, would have enIvied him his diadem. There was a still stronger motive which induced the king to cling to his present incompetent ministers. Next to being held in bondage by the overbearing Whig grandees, he looked upon the dominion of the mob with the greatest abhorrence. These two elements, as far as he could gather from the language of Lord Chatham in the House of Peers, threatened ere long to be united, and consequently it was only to be expected that the king should rebel against an alliance which, in his judgment, and in that of the Tory party, was pregnant alike with insult to the Crown, and with peril to the Constitution. A change of ministry, as he was well aware, must entail a dissolution of Parliament. A new Parliament would assuredly reverse the unconstitutional proceedings against Wilkes. That mischievous firebrand would again. be returned to the House of Commons, and thus, in the king's opinion, would the triumph of faction |