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assured them, that they might remain in office if
they chose.
The most wary gave in their adhesion; even
Charles Yorke went to
Grenville and declared his support, and
Gilbert Elliott did the like.
‘Our cause is in your hands,’ said the Bedfords to
Grenville, ‘and you will do it justice.’
This was the moment of his greatest pride and political importance; he was at the head of the Treasury; he had defeated his sovereign's efforts to change the ministry; he was looked up to and owned by the Bedfords as their savior and protector.
His ambition, his vanity, and his self — will were gratified.
The king had been complaining in strong terms of
the little business done, and especially of ‘the neglect of the colonies and new conquests;’ and the indefatigable
Grenville applied himself earnestly to American measures.
Bishops were to be engrafted on a plan which he favored for an ecclesiastical establishment in
Canada.
On the fourth of July, he proposed a reform in the courts of admiralty; in the following days, he, with Lord North, settled the emoluments of the officers charged with carrying into execution the
American stamp act; made an enumeration of the several districts for inspection; provided for supplying vacant places among the stamp distributors; and on the ninth, his very last day in office, consulted about removing incidental objections to the measure, in which he gloried as his own.
Meantime Cumberland had succeeded in forming an administration out of the remnants of the old whig aristocracy and their successors; and on the tenth Grenville was summoned to St. James's to surrender the seals of his office.
‘By what means have I drawn ’
