first volume of the biography before us comes, most tantalizingly, to a
close. We stand on the threshold of the ever-memorable events of the war
of independence, and our appetite is keenly whetted for the feast of
freshly interesting details which, though Mr. Bancroft has enjoyed most
liberal access to the papers at Lansdowne House, may confidently be
expected to be brought to light by one possessed of the opportunities,
and, as the volume before, us abundantly shows, the diligence and
judgment of Lord Shelburne's present biographer. The main outlines of
Shelburne's career throughout the war are familiar, doubtless, to most
American readers. How he dissented from his colleagues' treatment of
the American difficulty, and was driven, in consequence, to resign his
office; how, in opposition, he struggled with all the energy of his
character against the policy of North; how, when that policy received
its deathblow in the surrender of Cornwallis, he had the quiet triumph
of seeing the king come over to the views which he had so long vainly
advocated; how, placed at the head of affairs, he arranged and got the
king's consent to preliminaries of peace; and how, before he had time to
finish his work, he was overthrown by the most disgraceful coalition
that British parliamentary government has seen;--are not all these
things written in a hundred history books? But pending the detailed and
authentic narrative of these things that we shall look for in a future
volume of this new life of Shelburne, we have here, by anticipation, a
most powerful sketch, by Shelburne's own hand, of one of the
principal--we cannot add famous--actors in the conduct of the war; we
mean the notorious Lord George Sackville, who, after being cashiered for
cowardice at Minden, was whitewashed by the first Rockingham ministry,
and thenceforward so boldly held up his head again, and traded on his
plausible gravity of manner and family connections, that in the heat of
the war the court actually got him appointed to the peculiarly
responsible post of American secretary. Shelburne is terribly severe
upon his conduct. "He sent out (writes Shelburne) the greatest force
which this country ever assembled, both of land and sea forces, which
together perhaps exceeded the greatest effort ever made by any nation,
considering the distance and all other circumstances, but was totally
unable to combine the operations of the war, much less to form any
general plan for bringin