situations I never can acquire, nor, if acquired, keep, without making sacrifices that I will never make.” In the summer of 1778, he rejected Lord Weymouth’s overtures to join the ministry, and took his station as the leading commoner in the Rockingham party, to which he had become attached on principle long before he enlisted permanently in its ranks. The conspicuous features of that party, and of Mr. Fox’s public character, were the love of peace with foreign powers, the spirit of conciliation in home management, an ardent attachment to civil and religious liberty. The day of triumph came at last, when a resolution against the further prosecution of the American war was carried in the Commons. The King was compelled, reluctantly, to part with the supporters of his favourite principles, and had nothing left but to sow the seeds of disunion between the Rockingham and Chatham or Shelburne party, united on the subject of America, but disagreeing on many other points both of external and internal policy. In this he was but too successful. We have neither space nor inclination to unravel the web of court intrigue; but we may remark that Lord Rockingham’s demands were too extensive to be palatable: they involved the independence of America, the pacification of Ireland, bills for economical and parliamentary reform, to be brought into Parliament as ministerial measures. But the untimely death of Lord Rockingham frustrated his enlightened and enlarged designs, by dissolving the ministry over which he had presided. Mr. Fox has been blamed for the precipitancy of his resignation. The tone of sentiment in a letter before quoted will both account and apologise for the rashness if it were such; and it is obvious that the sacrifice of personal feeling, or even of political consistency, could not long have deferred it, amidst the cabals and clashing interests of party. Mr. Fox’s policy was to detach Holland and America from France, and to form a continental balance against the House of Bourbon. Lord Shelburne’s system was to conciliate France, and to treat her allies as dependent powers. Lord Shelburne had the ear of the King. He strengthened himself with some of the old supporters of the American war, to fill the vacant offices, and made Mr. Pitt, just rising into eminence, his Chancellor of the Exchequer. There were now three parties in the Commons; the ministerial, the Whig or Rockingham, and the third consisting of those members of the late war ministry who had not been invited to join the present. A coalition of some two of these three parties was almost unavoidable: the public would have most approved of a reunion among the Whigs; but there had been too much of mutual recrimination and dispute to admit of reconciliation. Nothing, therefore, remained but a junction of the two parties in opposition. A judicious friend of Mr. Fox said, “that to undertake the government with Lord North, was to risk their credit on very unsafe grounds.