The motives which induced the chancellor to attempt the overthrow of the Rockingham administration seem to be sufficiently manifest. Between him and his colleagues no kindly feeling had ever existed. The latter no less disliked him on account of his coarse and overbearing manners than they feared him as a bold and unscrupulous politician, and especially because of his superior influence with the king. Moreover, the charges which he openly brought against them, of irresolution and incompetency, must have given them the deepest offence. He complained, likewise, that his colleagues not only excluded him from their deliberations, but that they even refrained from consulting him in matters which were immediately within his own jurisdiction. Lastly, motives of self-interest, no less than of personal dislike, evidently influenced the conduct of the chancellor. It was said of him, at the time, that he had found means to enrich himself by every political distress and by every party change. Satisfied, therefore, that the days of the Rockingham Ministry were numbered, and that the accession of Pitt to unlimited power must, sooner or later, be the his request. Two or three very characteristic anecdotes of Lord Northington are narrated by Grose, the antiquary, which seem to have escaped the notice of Lord Campbell. 'The chancellor's conduct during the progress of the Regency Bill had earned for him the gratitude of his sovereign. "There is no man in my dominions," writes the king to Pitt, on the 7th of July, “on whom I so thoroughly rely." consequence of its fall, the chancellor resolved so far to turn existing events to his own advantage as to secure for himself the gratitude of the future minister. Accordingly, having established a decent pretext for quarrelling with his colleagues by differing with them on the subject of a new Constitution for Canada, he repaired, as he had long threatened to do, to the royal closet, where he pressed upon the king his conviction that ministers could maintain their ground no longer; at the same time urgently recommending him to summon Pitt to the palace. The advice, as we shall presently find, was promptly followed, and produced the desired result. Such appear to have been the real circumstances which broke up, after an existence of only twelve months' duration, one of the most upright and well-intentioned administrations by which this country has ever been governed. As usual, Bute, and Bute alone, was popularly supposed to be the author of the mischief. For instance, in Walpole's opinion he is still "the idol that keeps behind the veil of the sanctuary." "The Scotch Thane," writes Lord Hardwicke to Lord Rockingham, "is always hovering between I 'Lord Bute was commonly spoken of in the lampoons of the day as the "Thane." The chancellor's familiar designation was "Tom Tilbury." "I see by the papers that 'old Tilbury' has hobbled up to town again." "I always expect some mischief when I hear of the interposition of that sorry fellow." Again Lord Hardwicke writes to Lord Rockingham, on the 30th |