asserting the full sovereignty of the mother country, and reprobating the resistance which had been offered to the stamp act. Nothing was said as to the repeal of that act.

On the 13th of February, Conway writes: "As to politics I can scarce say what it is in my power to tell you. Our divisions in the two houses respectively you have heard their consequences are not easily ascertained. His majesty had told Lord Rockingham and the duke of Grafton that he was for the repeal; but he on Tuesday told Lord Strange that he was not so now-that he wished his opinion to be known, and his lordship might declare it. This ran through the house of commons and the town, and has had an odd effect. Our ministerial lives were not thought worth three days' purchase. His majesty has been pleased to explain himself to us; that he always was for the repeal, when contrasted with enforcing the whole act, but not as compared with modification. We told his majesty this distinction was unfortunately not explained to us; and that in consequence we had, as he had allowed Lord Rockingham particularly to do, declared his majesty to be for the repeal; and that on all accounts we were engaged and obliged to push that measure. It was very mortifying to us, and very unhappy, that it now appeared to be against his majesty's sentiments, which put us into an odd predicament, being under a necessity of carrying on a great public measure against his majesty's declared sentiments, and with great numbers of his servants acting against us. He was not displeased he said with our freedom-thought we acted like honest men -had no design of parting us-always foresaw the difficulties which might attend this business-but, that once over, he hoped all things would go smoothly again. You see that this might branch out into very long details, had I time for them; but this is the substance.

'Tis a whimsical situation, and what will be the event I don't know. I think the bill of repeal will probably pass, because our disposition for it is too strong in the house of commons for any thing now to conquer ; and the lords, I think, with submission, dare not resist it."

On the 21st of February a committee of the whole house determined that a bill should be brought in for the repeal of the stamp act. On bringing up the report an amendment upon the resolution was rejected by a majority of 240 to 133. Mr Conway, writing to his brother on the 27th, says: "Our act of repeal is read the second time to-day, together with that of right—if they'll permit us; but the determined opposition hitherto given, and promised as we proceed in any stage of this bill, makes it impossible to determine the progress we shall make." In a subsequent letter, dated the 5th of March, he writes: "I don't wonder you are puzzled with our politics: they never were more a riddle. However, on Tuesday the repeal bill passed our house by a majority of 250 to 122, though under the same disadvantages as to the parties engaged against it. Nothing could more strongly mark this than a ridiculous incident which happened that night in the house; for Mr B. Gascoigne for what reasons he perhaps may know-read a letter in the house which he said was writ to a person at Liverpool. In it was an account of one of our former debates and divisions, which, it said, was carried by a great majority, notwithstanding there were joined in the opposition to it all Lord Bute's friends, the duke of Bedford's, Mr Grenville's, and the tories; and the letter ended by saying that Mr

Pitt must soon be at the head of affairs. You may imagine the effect so strange a circumstance must produce, the gross impropriety of reading a private letter, the direct denomination of persons,-and the awkwardness to the parties concerned. However, the novelty of the thing, the curiosity, and the satisfaction of the majority in the house, and the conscious shame in others, were so prevalent, that the absurdity of the fact was lost and forgot: the more, as Mr Pitt, with infinite cleverness, seized the opportunity,-talked of the history of the times, -the supposed conjunction of parties, at least the attempts towards it, -and the conferences that a bird sung' had been held, alluding to the well-known conversations between the duke of Bedford and Grenville, and my lord Bute, in which he (Pitt) said, if the bird sung true,' that nobleman, in refusing to enter into any combinations, had done himself honour, and showed himself a friend to his king, and to the true interest of his country, &c. I suppose you know that Lord Bute and his friends have published, that in these conferences the duke of Bedford and George Grenville actually recanted all their former abuse and behaviour, and proposed friendship and alliance; and that his lordship, with great dignity, said, 'It was pleasing to any man to have justice done him, and that he had no objection to their friendship which they offered; but that, if they meant to go farther, and to propose any kind of political connection, or any factious engagement, he was resolved to have no part in it, &c.' You may imagine, then, how these explanations embarrassed the Grenville and Bedford party. Mr Grenville showed it to the greatest degree,-spoke in great anger, and called upon Mr Pitt for farther explanation, but gave none himself; and Mr Pitt, who replied in the same strain of temper and humour he had spoke in before, only said coolly, he saw no reason the gentleman had to be angry; and that, having told all he had heard of the story, he did not see how any farther explanation was wanting. The bill was carried up yesterday the repeal by me, and the bill of right by our chairman, Mr Rose Fuller. To-morrow the lords will take the latter into consideration; the other, I think, probably not till Monday, and I have no doubt of its being carried there. For the rest, our affairs are still critical in the ministerial light. I think, however, I see daylight for some solid settlement; I wish I could say it was clearer. Mr Pitt is not averse to coming in, but sees great difficulties, he says, almost to impracticability." The repeal bill encountered great opposition in the house of lords, but eventually passed. The dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, and the chancellor, who shortly before had seemed adverse to the measure, with Lords Camden and Shelburne, supported the bill. On the other hand, it was opposed by Viscount Townshend, Lord Mansfield, the duke of Bedford, Lord Lyttleton, and Earl Temple. When the house divided, the numbers were found to be: contents, 105; not contents, 71. The minority recorded on the journals their hostility to the measure in a long protest, which was signed by thirty-three peers. Among the reasons assigned by the noble lords for their dissent were the following: "Because it appears to us, that a most essential branch of that authority, the power of taxation, cannot be equitably or impartially exercised, if it does not extend itself to all the members of the state, in proportion to their respective abilities, but suffers a part to be exempt from a due share of those burdens which the public exigencies

require to be imposed upon the whole: a partiality, directly repugnant to the trust reposed by the people in every legislature, and destructive of that confidence on which all government is founded. Because the ability of our North American colonies to bear, without inconvenience, the proportion laid on them by the stamp act, appears unquestionable. Its estimated produce of sixty thousand pounds per annum, if divided amongst twelve hundred thousand people, being little more than onehalf the subjects of the crown in North America, would be only one shilling per head a-year. Because not only the right, but the expediency and necessity, of the supreme legislature's exerting its authority to lay a general tax on the colonies, whenever the wants of the public make it fitting and reasonable that all the provinces should contribute in a proper proportion to the defence of the whole, appear undeniable. Such a general tax could not be regularly imposed by their own separate provincial assemblies. Because the reasons assigned in the public resolutions of the provincial assemblies, in the North American colonies, for their disobeying the stamp act, viz. That they are not represented in the parliament of Great Britain,' extends to all other laws of what nature soever, which that parliament has enacted, or shall enact; and may, by the same reasoning, be extended to all persons in this island, who do not actually vote for members of parliament: nor can we help apprehending, that the opinion of some countenance being given to such notions by the legislature itself, in consenting to this bill for the repeal of the stamp act, may greatly promote the contagion of a most dangerous doctrine, destructive to all government, which has spread itself over all our North American colonies, that the obedience of the subject is not due to the laws and legislature of the realm, farther than he, in his private judgment, shall think it conformable to the ideas he has formed of a free constitution. Because we think it no effectual guard against this danger, that the parliament has declared in a bill, that such notions are ill founded; as men will look always more to deeds than words, and may therefore incline to believe that the insurrections in the colonies, excited by those notions, having attained the very point at which they aimed, without any previous submission on their part, the legislature has, in fact, submitted to them, and has only more grievously injured its own dignity and authority by verbally asserting that right which it substantially yields up to their opposition; and this at a time when the strength of our colonies, as well as their desire of a total independence on the legislature and government of their mother country, may be greatly augmented; and when the circumstances and dispositions of the other powers of Europe may render the contest far more dangerous and formidable to this kingdom."

The formidable dangers and embarrassments by which Lord Rockingham and his colleagues were surrounded on all sides, have been forcibly sketched by Mr Burke in his great speech in 1774: "The noble lord who then conducted affairs, and his worthy colleagues, whilst they trembled at the prospect of such distresses as you have since brought upon yourselves, were not afraid steadily to look in the face that glaring and dazzling influence at which the eyes of eagles have blenched. He looked in the face of one of the ablest-and, let me say, not the most scrupulous-oppositions, that perhaps ever was in this house; and withstood it, unaided by even one of the usual supports of

administration. He did this when he repealed the stamp act. He looked in the face of a person he had long respected and regarded, and whose aid was then particularly wanting: I mean Lord Chatham. He did this when he passed the declaratory act."—"I confess, when I look back to that time, I consider him as placed in one of the most trying situations in which, perhaps, any man ever stood. In the house of peers there were very few of the ministry, out of the noble lord's own particular connexion-except Lord Egmont, who acted, as far as I could discern, an honourable and manly part-that did not look to some other future arrangement, which warped his politics. There were in both houses new and menacing appearances, that might very naturally drive any other than a most resolute minister from his measure or from his station. The household-troops openly revolted. The allies of the ministry-those, I mean, who supported some of their measures, but refused responsibility for any-endeavoured to undermine their credit, and to take ground that must be fatal to the success of the very cause which they would be thought to countenance. The question of the repeal was brought on by ministry, in the committee of this house, in the very instant when it was known that more than one court-negotiation was carrying on with the heads of the opposition. Every thing, upon every side, was full of traps and mines. Earth below shook; heaven above menaced; all the elements of ministerial safety were dissolved. It was in the midst of this chaos of plots and counterplots,—it was in the midst of this complicated warfare against public opposition and private treachery, that the firmness of that noble person was put to the proof. He never stirred from his ground-no, not an inch; he remained fixed and determined in principle, in measures, and in conduct; he practised no managements; he secured no retreat; he sought no apology."

It appears that so early as the end of February an attempt to open a negotiation with Pitt had been made by Lord Rockingham himself. On the 29th of April, Mr Conway writes: "We are in a most embarrassed situation here, and all business either moves slowly, or stands still. While I was ill Mr Pitt took a fit of rest, because he was not applied to nor treated with; he came down one day, picked a German quarrel, and fell upon the ministry pretty roughly; since that, he has continued much in the same strain, though still professing not to act hostilely, and speaking with particular regard of the duke of Grafton and myself. He has not, however, done any thing directly hostile, except on the militia affair; but Lord Shelburne's brother voted against Mr Dowdeswell on the tax, last day. Barré was now absent; but Beckford, Cooke, &c., voted for it. I went with the duke of Grafton, last night, to Mr Pitt, as I have been absent all this time, and not yet at the house, to see if there was a possible means yet of doing anything with him, and to express my opinion and inclinations, and my vexation for what had happened during my illness, when he thought himself slighted and neglected. He was exceedingly civil, and I think, too, as much disposed to come in; but then the insuperable bar of his going immediately to the king remains; he makes it a sine qua non; and his majesty is strongly resolved against it. So there, I think, it ends. The duke of Grafton on this has taken his absolute resolution to resign; and it seems doubtful for the rest whether we shall or can go on. Lord Bute's

people have still been shy, and none of them have given any support; which if it does not alter, it is ridiculous to continue; it must immediately be resolved."

On the 1st of August, 1766, the administration of Lord Rockingham was declared to be at an end. A summary of its services, shortly after drawn up by Mr Burke, and published under the title of A Short Account of a Short Administration,' thus concludes: "The removal of that administration from power is not to them premature, since they were in office long enough to accomplish many plans of public utility, and by their perseverance and resolution rendered the way smooth and easy to their successors; having left their king and their country in a much better situation than they found them. By the temper they manifest, they seem to have no other wish than that their successors may do the public as real and as faithful service as they have done."

During North's administration the marquess of Rockingham was regarded as the head of the opposition in the house of lords; but he did not take any violent part in the struggles of party.

In March, 1782, when the efforts of Fox had finally succeeded in overturning Lord North's administration, the marquess of Rockingham again took office as premier. Much was anticipated from his political integrity and liberal sentiments; but the hopes of the nation were disappointed by his sudden death on the 1st of July, which broke up the administration.

Sir Hyde Parker.

BORN A. D. 1711.-DIED A. D. 1782.

THIS gallant officer entered the navy about the year 1744. In 1748 he was appointed to the Lively frigate, whence he was promoted to the Squirrel. In 1760 he was sent, in the Norfolk, to the East Indies. In 1762 he had the good fortune, while cruising in the Argo, to capture the Santissima Trinidada, a Spanish frigate, with a cargo worth nearly £600,000. In 1778 he was made rear, and subsequently vice-admiral of the blue. While in charge of a convoy, on the 5th of August, 1779, he fell in with a Dutch squadron off the Dogger bank. "I was happy to find," he observes, in his despatches, "that I had the wind of them; as the great number of their large frigates might otherwise have endangered my convoy. Having separated the men-of-war from the merchant-ships, and made a signal to the last to keep their wind, I bore away with a general signal to chase. The enemy formed their line, consisting of eight two-decked ships, on the starboard tack :—ours, including the Dolphin, consisting of seven. Not a gun was fired on either side, until within the distance of half musket-shot. The Fortitude then being abreast of the Dutch admiral, the action began, and continued, with an unceasing fire, for three hours and forty minutes. By this time our ships were unmanageable. I made an effort to form the line, in order to renew the action, but found it impracticable. The Bienfaisant had lost her main-top-mast, and the Buffalo her fore-yard; the rest of the ships were not less shattered in their masts, rigging, and sails. The enemy appeared to be in as bad a condition. Both squadrons lay to,