s merely the outcome of the officious meddling of
his physician, Addington, and one of Bute's friends.[136] No one was
more anxious than North for a change of ministry. He begged the king in
vain to accept his resignation. On the 17th he brought in two bills for
a scheme of conciliation to which George had at last given his sanction.
He proposed an express repeal of the tea duty, the surrender of all
taxation except for the regulation of trade, and the appointment of
commissioners to be sent to America with full powers to put an end to
hostilities, grant pardons, and treat with congress on any terms short
of independence. His proposals did not materially differ from those made
by Burke three years before. He declared that he was not responsible for
American taxation, that it was the work of his predecessors, and that he
had always desired conciliation. He was heard with general
consternation: his own party felt that he was turning his back on the
policy which they had supported under his leadership; the opposition,
that he was, as it were, stealing their thunder. The bills were carried
and the king appointed the commissioners. They arrived in America in
June. Congress refused to listen to any offers short of independence;
the commissioners appealed to the American people, and their manifesto
was treated with contempt.

[Sidenote: _THE KING'S CONDUCT EXAMINED._]

When the Franco-American alliance was announced, North was urging the
king to invite Chatham to take office and to allow him to retire, and
Shelburne was sounded as to the terms on which Chatham would come in. He
replied that he would insist on "an entire new cabinet". George, who had
unwillingly agreed to this negotiation, was prepared to accept any men
of talent with a view of strengthening the existing ministry, but not of
forming another in its place, or of changing its measures. He would not
commission Chatham or any opposition leader to form a new ministry: "no
advantage to this country nor personal danger to himself" would, he
wrote to North, induce him to do so; he would rather "lose his crown".
"No consideration in life," he wrote again, "shall make me stoop to the
opposition;" he would not give himself up "to bondage". His
determination has been pronounced equally criminal with the acts which
brought Charles I. to the scaffold.[137] According to our present ideas
he should certainly have been guided by the assurance of his first
minister that the gove