ations of duplicity which he never succeeded in entirely
dissipating. The king himself wrote of him as "the Jesuit of Berkeley
Square," alluding, no doubt, to the nickname "Malagrida" (the name of a
prominent Italian Jesuit of the day) which somebody had fastened upon
him, and which served Goldsmith as the text of that deliciously
maladroit remark of his to the earl: "Do you know, I never could
conceive the reason why they call your lordship Malagrida, _for
Malagrida was a very good sort of man_."

Bute, however, obviously retained undiminished confidence in his
favorite agent, for in his arrangements for the formation of a new
ministry under the ostensible headship of George Grenville in the
spring of 1763, he not only employed Shelburne in negotiations with no
less than seven politically important personages, but he even wished to
get him the seals of secretary of state. This, however, was more than
Grenville would consent to. He objected that the old peers would be
jealous of the elevation of the representative of a family which,
however great its note in Ireland, was a comparatively recent addition
to the peerage of Great Britain; and also--reasonably enough, one is
inclined to say--that Shelburne's youth and total inexperience of office
rendered it advisable that he should at least try his 'prentice hand in
one of the lower administrative offices. Shelburne was at this time, it
must be remembered, only five-and-twenty years of age. A man of his
parts and rank and opportunities might rise rapidly in those days, but
he had hitherto had absolutely no official training; and the English
Parliament had not yet seen, what it was soon to see in the younger
Pitt, a chancellor of the exchequer of the almost undergraduate age of
three-and-twenty. However, Bute persisted in forcing upon his
friend--who appears to have been not unwilling to stand for the time
aside--a place in the new ministry, and he accordingly accepted the
presidency of the Board of Trade, was sworn a privy councillor, and
entered the cabinet of the so-called "Triumvirate" administration.
Immediately he found himself called upon to face American questions in
which he was destined to play so important a part. Some time before he
took office, Fox, in one of his shrewd letters to Bute, had marked out
Shelburne as a man pre-eminently fitted to effect "that greatest and
most necessary of all schemes, the settlement of America;" and he had
hardly been a month at t