Fox's term of adherence to North and to North's policy was not too happy a time for the nominal superior. A hot-headed young Lord of the Admiralty resigned his office in a huff, and was not without difficulty persuaded to return to office as Commissioner of the Treasury. The breach between Fox and North was bridged over, but the bridge was frail. The two men eyed each other with disfavor. Fox asserted his independence by occasionally voting against the minister, by consorting with Burke. After the death of Lord Holland, North revenged himself by dismissing Fox from office in a letter famous for its insolent brevity. For a time Fox still accorded to the ministry an uncertain support, but he was drifting in thought and speech and action in the inevitable direction of his genius. The hour came when he took his seat on the Opposition benches, and asserted himself as a {146} formidable opponent of the Government. A quarrel across the Atlantic gave him the opportunity to prove that the principles which men of to-day would call Liberal principles had gained one of their greatest and one of their most eloquent champions. {147} CHAPTER LII. ON THE CHARLES RIVER. [Sidenote: 1765-74--Lord Hillsborough] While the battle had been raging over Wilkes at home, the cloud of trouble had been growing larger and larger abroad. The discontent of the American colonies increased in direct ratio with the determination of the home Government to ignore or to override that discontent. The King was fortunate, or believed himself to be fortunate, in finding among his ministers the aptest instrument he could desire for striking at the Americans. Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, was one of those men who appear to be inspired by a very genius of perversity. He had a power of misunderstanding a political situation and underestimating a political crisis which, if it could only have been reversed, would have earned him a foremost place among the statesmen of his time. But his perversity was of like temper with the perversity of the King, and Lord Hillsborough was admirably qualified to interpret the King's dislike of his American subjects and to make himself the mouthpiece of the anti-Colonial feeling which had been steadily growing up in the House of Commons since the days when the repeal of the Stamp Act had known its season of brief popularity.