thousand pounds, and though it
was proposed that the whole of the sum should be spent in America, it
was as mischievous in its result as if it had been more malevolently
aimed. [Sidenote: 1766--Death of Townshend] Townshend himself did not
live long enough to learn the unhappy consequences of his folly. A
neglected fever proved fatal to him in the September of 1767, in the
forty-third year of his age. Walpole lamented him with an ironical
appreciation. "Charles Townshend is dead. All those parts and fire
are extinguished; those volatile salts are evaporated; that first
eloquence of the world is dumb; that duplicity is fixed, that cowardice
terminated heroically. He joked on death as naturally as he used to do
on the living, and not with the affectation of philosophers who wind up
their works with sayings which they hope to have remembered."
Townshend had passed away, but his policy remained, a fatal legacy to
the country.

Townshend was immediately succeeded in the Chancellorship of the
Exchequer by a young politician who had been for some years in
Parliament and had held several offices without conspicuously
distinguishing himself. When Lord North entered the House of Commons
as member for Banbury, his record was that of any intelligent young
{114} nobleman of his time. He had written pleasing Latin love poems
at Eton, he had been to Oxford, he had studied at Leipzig. George
Grenville saw great promise in North. He even predicted that if he did
not relax in his political pursuits he was very likely to become Prime
Minister. Unhappily for his country, North did not relax in his
political pursuits. There was an ironic fitness in the fact that North
should be admired by Grenville and should succeed to Townshend, for no
man was better fitted to carry on the fatal policy of the two men who
had outraged the American colonies by the Stamp Act and the tax on tea.

{115}

CHAPTER XLIX.

WILKES REDIVIVUS.

[Sidenote: 1767--The return of Wilkes]

While the King's Government was preparing for itself an infinity of
trouble abroad, it was not destined to find itself idle for want of
trouble at home. Great and grave trouble came upon the King and his
friends suddenly, and out of a quarter from which they least expected
it. If they were confident of anything, they were confident that they
had dealt the final blow to the audacious demagogue who for a time had
fluttered the town with the insolences of the _No