Grenville and his party had thought
necessarily involved in the extension of empire. It was a curious
chapter of accidents that brought all these welllaid 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 penetrating
judgment"; never a man to excel him in "luminous explanation and
display of his subject," nor ever one less tedious or better able
to conform himself exactly to the temper of the House which he
seemed to guide because he was always sure to follow it. In 1765
Mr. Townshend had voted for the Stamp Act, but in 1766, when the
Stamp Act began to be no favorite, he voted for the repeal, and
would have spoken for it too, if an illness had not prevented
him.
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