While this process of rising “by slow degrees” was going on, Fox was also acquiring fixed ideas in regard to governmental affairs. The contemptuous dismissal of Lord North probably stimulated his natural inclinations to go into the opposition. As the American question was gradually developed, Fox found himself in warm sympathy with the colonial cause. He denied the right of the mother country to inflict taxation, and was the first to denounce the policy of the Government in the House of Commons. He enjoyed the friendship of the ablest men among the Whigs, and he resorted to them, especially to Burke, for every kind of political knowledge. Indeed, his obligations to that great political philosopher were such, that in 1791, at the time of their alienation on the question of England’s attitude toward the French Revolution, he declared in the House that “if he were to put all the political information which he had learned from books, all he had gained from science, and all which any knowledge of the world and its affairs had taught him, into one scale, and the improvement which he had derived from his right honorable friend’s instruction and conversation in the other, he should be at a loss to decide to which to give the preference.” Under this influence all his aspirations came to be devoted, as he once said “to widen the basis of freedom,—to infuse and circulate the spirit of liberty.” This subject it was that in one form or another drew forth the most inspiring strains of his eloquence. Fox’s political morality is not without one very dark stain. For some years he had been the leader of the opposition to Lord North’s administration. Under his repeated and powerful blows the great Tory ministry was obliged to give way. Fox had been so conspicuously at the head of the opposition that everybody looked to see him elevated to the position of First Minister. But the king had been scandalized by the irregularities of Fox’s life, and probably was quite willing to find an excuse for not calling so able a Whig into power. Lord Shelburne was appointed instead, and Fox refused to take office under him. But that was not all. He not only refused to support Shelburne, but within six months even formed a coalition against him with Lord North. Cooke, in his “History of Party,” characterizes his action as “a precedent which strikes at the foundation of political morality, and as a weapon in the hands of those who would destroy all confidence in the honesty of public men.” This characterization is not too severe; for the ability and the lofty integrity of Lord Shelburne were such as to forbid us to suppose that Fox’s action was the result of any other motive than that of personal pique and disappointment. He carried his ardent followers with him; and so shocked were the thinking men of the time, that there was a general outcry either of regret or of indignation.