The best achievements of the brief government of Lord SHELBURNE were (first) the resolute defence, in its diplomacy at Paris and Versailles, of our territories in Canada, and (secondly) its consistent assertion of the principle that underlay a sentence contained in a former speech of the [Sidenote: MERITS OF THE SHELBURNE MINISTRY.] Premier—a sentence which, at one time, was much upon men’s lips:—‘I will never consent,’ he had said, ‘that the King of England shall be a King of the Mahrattas.’ The merits, I venture to think, of that short Ministry, have had scant acknowledgment in our current histories. And the reason is, perhaps, not far to seek. The popular history of GEORGE THE THIRD’S reign has been, in a large degree, imbued with Whiggism. The historians most in vogue have had a sort of small apostolical succession amongst themselves, which has had the result of giving a strong party tinge to those versions of the course of political events in that reign which have most readily gained the public ear. When the full story shall come to be told, in a later day and from a higher stand-point, Lord SHELBURNE, not improbably, will be one among several statesmen whose reputation with posterity (in common—in some measure—with that of their royal master himself, it may even be) will be found to have been elevated, rather than lowered, by the process. [Sidenote: _Debates_, vol. xix, col. 850.] But, be that as it may, party intrigue, rather than ministerial incapacity, had to do, confessedly, with the rapid overthrow of the Government of July, 1782. Personally, Lord SHELBURNE was in a position which, in several points of view, bears a resemblance to that in which another able statesman, who had to fight against a powerful coterie, was to find himself forty years later. But in SHELBURNE’S case, the struggle of the politician did not, as in CANNING’S, break down the bodily vigour of the man. Lord SHELBURNE had twenty-two years of retirement yet before him, when he resigned the premiership in 1783. And they were years of much happiness. [Sidenote: THE CLOSING YEARS OF LORD LANSDOWNE’S LIFE.] Part of that happiness was the result of the domestic union just adverted to. Another part of it accrued from the rich Library which the research and attention of many years had gradually built up, and from the increased leisure that had now been secured, both for study and for the enjoyment of the choice society which gathered habitually at Lansdowne House and at Bowood.