f the Forces. To be a great magnitude on small
pay had its disadvantages, and Mr. Townshend, after remaining home all
day in great distress of mind, begged Mr. Pitt to be allowed to retain
the office of Paymaster; which was no sooner granted than he changed his
mind and begged Mr. Pitt to be allowed to accept the Exchequer place,
which Mr. Pitt at first refused and was only persuaded to grant finally
upon the intercession of the Duke of Grafton. The day following, Mr.
Townshend accordingly informed the King that he had decided, in view of
the urgent representations of the Earl of Chatham, to accept the office
of Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Majesty's new ministry.

No one supposed, least of all himself, that this delightful man would
have any influence in formulating the policies of the Chatham ministry.
Lord Chatham's policies were likely to be his own; and in the present
case, so far as America was concerned, they were not such as could be
readily associated with Mr. Townshend's views, so far as those views
were known or were not inconsistent. For dealing with America, the
Earl of Shelburne, because of his sympathetic understanding of colonial
matters, had been brought into the ministry to formulate a comprehensive
and conciliatory plan; as for the revenue, always the least part of Lord
Chatham's difficulties as it was the chief of Mr. Grenville's, it was
thought that the possessions of the East India Company, if taken over by
the Government, would bring into the Treasury sums quite sufficient to
pay the debt as well as to relieve the people, in England and America
at least, of those heavy taxes which Mr. Grenville and his party had
thought necessarily involved in the extension of empire. It was a
curious chapter of accidents that brought all these well laid plans
to nought. Scarcely was the ministry formed when the Earl of Chatham,
incapacitated by the gout, retired into a seclusion that soon became
impenetrable; and "even before this resplendent orb was entirely set,
and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory,
on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, and, for
his hour, became lord of the ascendant." This luminary was Mr. Charles
Townshend.

Mr. Townshend was the "delight and ornament" of the House, as Edmund
Burke said. Never was a man in any country of "more pointed and finished
wit, or (where his passions were not concerned) of a more refined,
exquisite, and