o
his feelings. Yet the coalition, after all, was more discreditable to
the Whigs than to Lord North, who may be pardoned for accepting it as a
tribute to his personal weight, and a recantation, in some sort, of all
the odium the Whigs had industriously heaped upon him during the whole
period of his Administration. If they really believed him to be the base
and dangerous person they had all along described him to be, the shame
was theirs for consenting to associate themselves with him, and to work
under him in the Government.

The Administration of Lord North lasted for twelve years--from 1770 to
1782. The most important consequence it effected, so far as political
parties were concerned, was to throw the Whigs into opposition, and to
draw the Tories into closer relations with the throne. This complete
exchange of position exactly suited the principles of the two great
factions; the loyalty and courtly aspirations of the Tories (now that
all hope of restoring the Stuarts was at an end) rendering them highly
acceptable in the councils of the monarch, while the popular doctrines
of the Whigs pointed to the benches of the Opposition as the appropriate
place for a party which is always more usefully employed in representing
the people than in exercising the functions of Government. Sixty years
elapsed before the Whigs recovered the ground which they had lost under
the Ministry of Lord North.

The American war--for the management of which the severest reproaches
were cast upon the Government--the state of Ireland, and Parliamentary
Reform, were the principal public questions that agitated the term of
Lord North's Administration. Amongst the Whigs who took a prominent part
in these proceedings were the Grenvilles. Connected by marriage with the
Pitt family, and distinguished by their own hereditary claims and high
talents, they exerted as conspicuous an influence out of office as they
had previously done when they had the reins of Government in their
hands. It will be necessary to retrace briefly the political heraldry of
the Grenvilles for the purpose of bringing the reader acquainted with
the character of the three brothers whose intimate correspondence forms
the substance of these volumes.

Richard Grenville succeeded his brother in the Earldom of Temple in
1752, and took an active part in the Administration of the elder Pitt
(Lord Chatham), who was married to his sister, Lady Hesther, the mother
of the "Great Commoner.