of sea; and to deal with the attitude of Ireland became even a more pressing need of the Ministry which followed that of Lord North than the need of dealing with America. [Sidenote: End of the war.] The blow which had shattered the attempt of England to wield an autocratic power over her Colonies had shattered the attempt of its king to establish an autocratic power over England itself. The Ministry which bore the name of Lord North had been a mere screen for the administration of George the Third, and its ruin was the ruin of the system he had striven to build up. Never again was the Crown to possess such a power as he had wielded during the past ten years. For the moment however there was nothing to mark so decisive a change; and both to the king and his opponents it must have seemed only a new turn in the political game which they were playing when in March 1782 the Whigs returned to office. Rockingham was still at the head of the party; and on Rockingham fell the double task of satisfying Ireland and of putting an end, at any cost, to the war with the United States. The task involved in both quarters a humiliating surrender; for neither Ireland nor America would be satisfied save by a full concession of their claims. It needed the bitter stress of necessity to induce the English Parliament to follow Rockingham's counsels, but the need was too urgent to suffer their rejection. The Houses therefore abandoned by a formal statute the judicial and legislative supremacy they had till then asserted over the Parliament of Ireland; and from this moment England and Ireland were simply held together by the fact that the sovereign of the one island was also the sovereign of the other. The grant of independence to the one great dependency made it easier to recognise the freedom of the other. Rockingham in fact took office with the purpose of winning peace by a full acknowledgement of the independence of the United States, and negotiations were soon entered into for that purpose. [Sidenote: The Peace.]