The difference must have been indeed great between mediocrities like Suffolk and Weymouth, or men of indecision and indolence like Lord North, and a man of first-rate ability and keen energy such as was Fox when he attained Cabinet office for the first time. Since Carteret there had not been a Foreign Minister of England so well fitted by his attainments and genius to play a leading part in continental politics.

The Ministry kissed hands on their appointment on the 27th of March. On April 8th Parliament re-assembled, and Fox was immediately called upon to deal with the complicated affairs of Ireland. England's necessity in those days of tyranny was ever Ireland's opportunity, and the closing years of the American War had seen grow up in Ireland a strong and united force of public opinion in favour of legislative freedom, which it was impossible for England to resist. Led by Grattan and supported by the organisation of the volunteers under Charlemont, the Irish nation demanded freedom and self-government. Legislative subjection, apart from legislative union, had ever been the policy of England. By Poyning's Law, the Declaratory Act of George I., and the Permanent Mutiny Act, Irish law, Irish administration of justice, and the Irish army, were all made subject to the control of the English Ministers. The repeal of these measures, the grant of self-government to Ireland, which, without impairing the authority of the Crown, should take away the control of the English Council and House of Lords, was being ardently pressed upon the Ministers as the only alternative to complete independence. On the day of the meeting of Parliament, April 8th, a debate on Irish affairs was introduced by Mr. Eden, the Secretary to Lord Carlisle, who had come to England to tender his own and his chief's resignation. Thinking that the

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Lord Lieutenant had been unhandsomely treated by the present Ministry, he determined to embarrass them as much as he could by suddenly demanding, as the only security for peace, that the whole of the Irish demand should be at once granted. Fox replied with great skill, pointing out the factious nature of the proposal, and promising that Irish affairs should receive the prompt attention of the Ministry. On May 17th, he redeemed his promise and brought in a bill for the repeal of the Declaratory Act of George I., which he advocated on the general ground of the injustice of legislating for those who were not represented. At the same time a motion. was proposed which authorised the Crown to make such administrative changes as would carry out the policy of self-government adopted by the Irish Parliament. Thus, by the combined action of the two Legislatures, Ireland received the legislative freedom which she was demanding. It is interesting to notice that Lord Loughborough was the only member of either House of Parliament who voted against the most revolutionary proposal which had been brought before Parliament since the Revolution of 1688. The Duke of Portland, who succeeded Lord Carlisle as Lord Lieutenant, though strongly disliking the alteration, was convinced that it was absolutely necessary. "The powers legislative and jurisdictive," he wrote, "claimed by England are become impracticable. If the Irish demands were now refused there would be an end of all government.”

A few days before, the Ministers had redeemed their second great pledge. On May 5th, Burke brought in his scheme of economical reform, which was to diminish and render harmless for the future the corrupt influence of the Crown. Here the ice over which the zealous reformer had to glide was of a much more treacherous description.

Shelburne and Thurlow, without actually opposing the scheme, managed in the interests of the King to cut it down in the Cabinet, and Burke soon found that he could not carry out to the full the programme of his famous speech of 1780. Nevertheless the measure, though not perhaps complete, was an exceedingly valuable one. It destroyed a large number of useless posts, and effected a saving to the country of £72,000 a year, but besides this it tolled the knell of systematised parliamentary corruption. It was the first time that Parliament had really set itself to put its house in order, and to make an honest attempt to cure the evil. Its passing is no doubt rather the proof than the cause of the improvement which is noticeable after the American War. That improvement was due to more than one cause. The higher standard of private morality which marked the last decade of the century, and the greater publicity of political life through the increased importance of the press, had no doubt their share in diminishing corruption. But the cause which had most effect was the return of Mr. Pitt to power in 1784 by so unmistakable a majority. It destroyed corruption by taking away the reasons for it, since it was sheer waste to shower gifts and pensions on those who were certain in any case to vote on the right side. Still Burke's bill marks the beginning of a new era of purity, and it emanated from a Ministry who were more free from corruption than any Ministry which England had yet seen during the century.

On the question of parliamentary reform the Ministry were much divided. Rockingham and Burke were for leaving things alone, thinking that, as it was impossible to redress all anomalies, it was safest not to attempt to redress any. The Duke of Richmond, on the contrary, was in favour of annual parliaments, manhood suffrage,

and equal electoral districts. On the 7th of May Pitt, who, during the two years in which he had sat in Parlialiament, had been rapidly growing in reputation, brought in a motion for a committee to consider the reform of the representation, and Fox supported him on the double ground that the county members had always proved themselves much more independent in character than the representatives of the boroughs, and that it was for the welfare of the nation that all interests which had any stake in the country should be represented in Parliament. The motion was lost by a small majority of only twenty in a fairly full House, and the reformers were never again so near victory until 1832.

During these weeks, when the Ministry were so successful in Parliament, their internal dissensions were growing worse and worse. The greater ability Fox showed in the House of Commons, the greater the jealousy Shelburne displayed in private, and the more numerous the intrigues which he undertook. The more active was Shelburne in the Cabinet, the more did he arouse the suspicions of Fox. On the 12th of April, before the Ministry had been three weeks in office, Fox had already sniffed the coming

storm.

"We had a Cabinet this morning," he writes to Fitzpatrick; "in which, in my opinion, there were more symptoms of what we had always apprehended than had ever hitherto appeared. The subject was Burke's bill, or rather the message introductory to it. Nothing was concluded, but in Lord Chancellor there was so marked an opposition, and in your brother-in-law so much inclination to help the Chancellor, that we got into something very like warm debate."

On the 15th he writes again :

"We have had another very teasing and wrangling Cabinet. . . . Lord Chancellor, as you may imagine, dislikes it (i.e. Burke's bill); Lord Shelburne seems more bothered about it than anything else, does not understand it, but, in conjunction with Lord Ashburton, throws difficulties in its way."

On the 28th he adds:

"With respect to affairs here, they are really in such a state as is very difficult to describe. I feel them to be worse than they were, and yet I do not know what particular circumstance to state as to the cause of this feeling. Shelburne shows himself more and more every day, is ridiculously jealous of my encroaching upon his department, and wishes very much to encroach upon mine. He hardly liked my having a letter from Grattan or my having written one to Charlemont. He affects the Minister more and more every day, and is, I believe, perfectly confident that the King intends to make him so."

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By the 11th of May the uneasy feeling had grown, Fox was much disheartened at the scanty attendance at the House and hurt at a personal attack made on him by Dundas. Looking to the future, he saw in the coalition of Shelburne and Pitt a danger of losing the latter. later letter from Mr. Hare, one of Fox's most attached friends, mentions the suspicion that Dundas's attack was "systematical and concocted not a hundred miles from Berkeley Square." When mutual suspicion and distrust were so rife, it did not require much to produce a serious quarrel, and in the course of the peace negotiations at Paris the necessary materials for a very gravemisunderstanding were not long in making their appear

ance.

Seldom had English Foreign Minister a more thankless and difficult task before him than had Fox. When he assumed the seals of office England was at war with France, Spain, and Holland, in addition to her revolted colonies in America. The northern Powers under the leadership of Russia, though not at war, were in a condition of decided hostility under the provisions of the Armed Neutrality, since their doctrine of free ships, free goods, was directed against the English claim to seize enemies' goods carried in neutral bottoms. The maritime nations of Europe had, in fact, taken advantage of England's