he value,
and secure the aid, of an ally, who, to eloquence surpassing the
eloquence of Pitt, and to industry which shamed the industry of
Grenville, united an amplitude of comprehension to which neither Pitt
nor Grenville could lay claim. A young Irishman had, some time before,
come over to push his fortune in London. He had written much for the
booksellers; but he was best known by a little treatise, in which the
style and reasoning of Bolingbroke were mimicked with exquisite skill,
and by a theory, of more ingenuity than soundness, touching the
pleasures which we receive from the objects of taste. He had also
attained a high reputation as a talker, and was regarded by the men of
letters who supped together at the Turk's Head as the only match in
conversation for Dr. Johnson. He now became private secretary to Lord
Rockingham, and was brought into Parliament by his patron's influence.
These arrangements, indeed, were not made without some difficulty. The
Duke of Newcastle, who was always meddling and chattering, adjured the
first lord of the treasury to be on his guard against this adventurer,
whose real name was O'Bourke, and whom his Grace knew to be a wild
Irishman, a Jacobite, a Papist, a concealed Jesuit. Lord Rockingham
treated the calumny as it deserved; and the Whig party was strengthened
and adorned by the accession of Edmund Burke.

The party, indeed, stood in need of accessions; for it sustained about
this time an almost irreparable loss. The Duke of Cumberland had formed
the government, and was its main support. His exalted rank and great
name in some degree balanced the fame of Pitt. As mediator between the
Whigs and the Court, he held a place which no other person could fill.
The strength of his character supplied that which was the chief defect
of the new ministry. Conway, in particular, who, with excellent
intentions and respectable talents, was the most dependent and
irresolute of human beings, drew from the counsels of that masculine
mind a determination not his own. Before the meeting of Parliament the
Duke suddenly died. His death was generally regarded as the signal of
great troubles, and on this account, as well as from respect for his
personal qualities, was greatly lamented. It was remarked that the
mourning in London was the most general ever known, and was both deeper
and longer than the Gazette had prescribed.

In the meantime, every mail from America brought alarming tidings. The
crop whi