not the political exit of Lord Chatham incline you to remain at the head of affairs?"[182] [181] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_. [182] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._ After Chatham's death, Lord North, Burke, and Fox united to pay tribute to his career, while Parliament undertook to pay his debts, settled £4,000 a year for ever to the title of Chatham, and voted a public funeral. "I was rather surprised the House of Commons have unanimously voted an address for a public funeral and a monument in Westminster Abbey for Lord Chatham," wrote the ungenerous monarch, "but I trust it is voted as a testimony of gratitude for his rousing the nation at the beginning of the last war ... or this compliment, if paid to his general conduct, is rather an offensive measure to me personally."[183] The King's feelings were well known, with the result that the Court was sparsely represented at the funeral, and as Gibbon said indignantly, "Government tried to secure the double odium of suffering the thing to be done, and of not doing it with a good grace." [183] _Ibid._ "I should have been greatly surprised at the inclination expressed by you to retire," George III had written to Lord North on January 31, 1778, "had I not known that, however you may now and then despond, yet that you have too much personal affection for me, and sense of honour, to allow such a thought to take any hold on your mind."[184] Now that Chatham had gone, North could no longer point with clearness to a successor. "The small party which Chatham had headed could not hope to form a government of themselves since they had lost their chief. The Whigs, under Lord Rockingham, had, in great measure, at least committed themselves to the independence of America, and on that ground Lord North could not but deprecate their return to power. There was henceforth no great statesman to lead to that middle path, that course of conciliation without compromise, which Chatham had pointed out, and perhaps might have trodden."[185] Circumstances alter cases, and the difficulty of naming a successor was so great that North yielded again to the King's commands and entreaties, and was prevailed upon to remain in office. [184] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._ [185] Mahon: _History of England_. Slowly the rights which had caused the breach were abandoned. "I assure you, at least so it appears to me, that American politics are very much altered," Anthony Storer wrote to Lord Carlisle, on December 14, 1775. "Taxation and the exercise of it are totally renounced. You never hear the right mentioned, but in order to give it up."[186] The whole power of the Opposition was put forward to force the Government into a pacific path. "We have tried our strength," said Lord Camden; "we find ourselves incapable of conquest; and as we cannot subdue, we are determined to destroy." [186] _Selwyn: His Life and Letters._