The King, too, took heart again at the increase of his influence in the House of Commons. "I can never suppose this country so far lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant American Independence,"[188] he wrote to Lord North in March, 1780; but everybody else realised that peace must be made at any cost. Though Parliament had been bought, the country was aroused; and, although the position of the Government was temporarily strengthened in October by the victory of Cornwallis over Gates in South Carolina, the surrender of the English General at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, sealed the fate of the ministry. The news arrived in England on November 25, 1781, two days before the meeting of Parliament, but even now the King would not yield: "The getting a peace at the expense of a separation from America is," he still declared, "a step to which no difficulties shall ever get me to be in the smallest degree an instrument."[189] Indeed, the only visible sign of his distress on receiving the news was shown by the omission in a letter to Lord George Germaine of the mention of the hour and minute of his writing, an observance he never omitted. "I have received, with sentiments of the deepest concern, the communication which Lord George Germaine has made me, of the unfortunate result of the operations in Virginia," he wrote. "I particularly lament it, on account of the consequences connected with it, and the difficulties which it may produce in carrying on the public business, or in repairing such a misfortune. But I trust that neither Lord George Germaine, nor any member of the Cabinet, will suppose, that it makes the smallest alteration in those principles of my conduct which have directed me in past time, and which will always continue to animate me under every event, in the prosecution of the present contest."[190] [188] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._ [189] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._ [190] Wraxall: _Historical Memoirs of My Own Times_.