(144) John Robinson (1727-1802), the son of an Appleby tradesman. He grew wealthy by marriage and inheritance, and locally influential. He became member for Westmoreland in 1764. In 1770 he was appointed Secretary to the Treasury, which office he retained till Lord North's fall in 1782. He was the business manager of the Ministry, and had in his hands the distribution of the party funds and patronage. He was an honest, able, and cool man of affairs, who regarded politics wholly from a business point of view. (145) Lord Carlisle had this year been appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. CHAPTER 4. 1781 THE DISASTERS IN AMERICA A drum at Selwyn's--George, Lord Morpeth--Dr. Warner--Sale of the Houghton pictures--The House of Commons--Pitt's first speech--Selwyn unwell--Play at Brooks's--London gaieties--Fox and his new clothes --Gambling--The bailiffs in Fox's house--"Fish" Crawford--Montem at Eton--Mie Mie's education--Second speech of Pitt--Lord North--A Court Ball--Society and politics--The Emperor of Austria --Conversation with Fox--Personal feelings--American affairs--Lord North and Mr. Robinson--State of politics--London Society. The year 1781 will remain memorable as that in which the connection of England with her American Colonies was finally broken. The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19th impressed the Government with the futility of a contest which the country had already realised, and which would have at once caused a change of administration if the House of Commons had been truly representative of the opinion of the country; "a sense of past error," wrote the Duke of Grafton in his autobiography, "and a conviction that the American war might terminate in further destruction to our armies, began from this time rapidly to insinuate itself into the minds of men. Their discourse was quite changed, though the majorities in Parliament were still ready to support the American war, while all the world was representing it to be the height of madness and folly."(146) But though the country was oppressed by taxation, and disgusted at the want of success of its armies, society in St. James's Street took the national disasters with perfect composure. It troubled itself more about the nightly losses of money at the card-tables of Brooks's than of soldiers on the Delaware. It lived in the same kind of fatalism as the House of Commons and the King, who, with characteristic obstinacy, refused to bow to the force of events, and kept in office, but not in power, a minister who did not believe in the policy which he was compelled to support in Parliament. From contemporaries the cardinal events of history are obscured by the course of their ordinary social or political life. To us, who can see them so large and momentous, it appears strange that they do not fill a greater place in the public mind of the period. Selwyn constantly hearing of the course of the vital conflict between England and her