the most summary
account of Burke's life. Lord Rockingham came into office on the fall of
North. Burke was rewarded for services beyond price by being made paymaster
of the forces, with the rank of a privy councillor. He had lost his seat
for Bristol two years before, in consequence of his courageous advocacy of
a measure of tolerance for the Catholics, and his still more courageous
exposure of the enormities of the commercial policy of England towards
Ireland. He sat during the rest of his parliamentary life (to 1794) for
Malton, a pocket borough first of Lord Rockingham's, then of Lord
Fitzwilliam's. Burke's first tenure of office was very brief. He had
brought forward in 1780 a comprehensive scheme of economical reform, with
the design of limiting the resources of jobbery and corruption which the
crown was able to use to strengthen its own sinister influence in
parliament. Administrative reform was, next to peace with the colonies, the
part of the scheme of the new ministry to which the king most warmly
objected. It was carried out with greater moderation than had been
foreshadowed in opposition. But at any rate Burke's own office was not
spared. While Charles Fox's father was at the pay-office (1765-1778) he
realized as the interest of the cash balances which he was allowed to
retain in his hands, nearly a quarter of a million of money. When Burke
came to this post the salary was settled at L4000 a year. He did not enjoy
the income long. In July 1782 Lord Rockingham died; Lord Shelburne took his
place; Fox, who inherited from his father a belief in Lord Shelburne's
duplicity, which his own experience of him as a colleague during the last
three months had made stronger, declined to serve under him. Burke, though
he had not encouraged Fox to take this step, still with his usual loyalty
followed him out of office. This may have been a proper thing to do if
their distrust of Shelburne was incurable, but the next step, coalition
with Lord North against him, was not only a political blunder, but a shock
to party morality, which brought speedy retribution. Either they had been
wrong, and violently wrong, for a dozen years, or else Lord North was the
guiltiest political instrument since Strafford. Burke attempted to defend
the alliance on the ground of the substantial agreement between Fox and
North in public aims. The defence is wholly untenable. The Rockingham Whigs
were as substantially in agreement on public affairs with