art.

The Grenville ministry was dismissed and replaced by an administration
of rather heterogeneous elements, under Lord Rockingham, not a great
statesman, but combining unblemished character and solid gifts with rank
and wealth. Burke became his private secretary and influential adviser,
being at the same time elected a member for Wendover. Matters then were
in a very critical state: while discontent was fast rising in America
and commerce trembling for its colonial trade, two parties were fiercely
opposed in Parliament. Pitt deemed it treason against the Constitution
and to the colonies to tax America without its consent. Grenville
declared it treason to crown and legislature to abandon that right.
Burke, though in principle more inclining to Pitt, advised a middle
course by redressing the grievances of the colonies, while maintaining
the dignity of the crown. The government proposed (January, 1766) to
repeal Grenville's Stamp Act, but to guard the constitutional rights of
the mother-country by a "Declaratory Act." In the debate on these bills
Burke made his maiden speech, which called forth universal admiration; a
friend wrote to him, "You have made us hear a new eloquence." The bills
passed, but the ministry, mined by both parties, soon afterward was
obliged to resign. Burke summed up its activity in an excellent
pamphlet, "A Short Account of a Late Short Administration," and now
entered into opposition against Lord Chatham's ministry, which he called
"a tessellated pavement without cement." On the other hand, he
victoriously refuted the attacks of the Grenvilles against Rockingham,
in his "Observations on the Present State of the Nation," exhibiting the
emptiness of his opponents' declamations on the declining wealth of the
country, and proving that its resources were fast increasing.

Burke rises still higher in the "Thoughts on the Causes of the Present
Discontents" (1770), a powerful plea for the British Constitution in its
development from 1688, and exhibiting the full maturity of his talent.
He denies that the prevailing discontents are due to some factious
libellers exciting the people, who have no interest in disorder, but are
only roused by the impatience of suffering. The discontents were real,
and their cause was a perversion of the true principles on which the
Constitution rested. As hitherto, business had gone alternately through
the hands of Whigs and Tories, the opposition controlling the
government