chap. XV.} 1765. July. |
But younger men also came into power, giving hope for the future. In place of Grenville, the able debater, the learned jurist, the post of head of the treasury was assigned to the marquis of Rockingham. He was an inexperienced man of five and thirty, possessing no great natural abilities, of a feeble constitution, and a nervous timidity which made him almost incapable of speaking in public; acquainted with race-courses, and the pedigree of horses; unskilled in the finances of his country, and never before proposed for high office. But he had clear and sagacious sense and good feeling, unshaken fortitude, integrity, kindness of nature, and an honest and hearty attachment to liberty within established limits. His virtues were his arts, and they were his talents also. Had he been untitled and less opulent, he never would have been heard of; but being high in rank, of vast wealth, and generous without wastefulness, he was selected at the moment when the power of the oligarchy was passing its culmination, to lead its more liberal branch; and such was his own ambition of being first in place, such his sincerity, such his fidelity to his political connections, that from this time till the day of his death he remained their acknowledged standard-bearer.
His deficiencies in knowledge and in rhetoric, the minister compensated by selecting as his secretary and
