"Under them, the interefts of our northern and fouthern colonies, before that time jarring and diffonant, were understood, compared, adjusted, and perfectly reconciled. The paffions and animofities of the colonies, by judicious and lenient measures, were allayed and compofed, and the foundation laid for a lafting agreement amongst them.

"Whilst that administration provided for the liberty and commerce of their country, as the true basis of its power, they confulted its interefts, they afferted its honour abroad, with temper and with firmnefs; by making an advantageous treaty of commerce with Ruffia; by obtaining a liquidation of the Canada bills, to the fatisfaction of the proprietors; by reviving and raising from its afhes the negociation for the Manilla ranfom, which had been extinguished and abandoned by their predeceffors.

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They treated their fovereign with decency; with reverence. They discountenanced, and, it is hoped, for ever abolished, the dangerous and unconstitutional practice of removing military officers for their votes in parliament. They firmly adhered to those friends of liberty, who had run all hazards in its cause, and provided for them in preference to every other claim.

"With the earl of BUTE they had no perfonal connection; no correfpondence of councils. They neither courted him nor perfecuted him. They practifed no corruption, nor were they even fufpected of it. They fold no offices. They obtained no reversions or pensions, either coming in or going out, for themfelves, their families, or their dependents.

"In the profecution of their measures they were traversed by an oppofition of a new and fingular character; an oppofition of place-men and penfioners. They were fupported by the confidence of the nation. And having held their offices under many

difficulties

difficulties and difcouragements, they left them at the express command, as they had accepted them at the earnest request, of their royal master.

“These are plain facts; of a clear and public nature; nei~ ther extended by elaborate reafoning, or heightened by the colouring of eloquence. They are the fervices of a fingle year.

"The removal of that adminiftration from power is not to them premature; fince they were in office long enough to accomplish many plans of public utility; and, by their perfeverance and refolution, rendered the way fmooth and eafy to their fucceffors; having left their king and their country in a much better condition than they found them. By the temper they manifeft, they seem to have now no other wifh, than that their fucceffors may do the public as real and as faithful fervice as they have done.”

A few days after, when this plain, and ferious, but very impreffive appeal to the nation might be fuppofed to have produced its full effect, the following humorous reply to it appeared, in order to catch the laughing part of the multitude,---to point the ftings of irony at thofe objects against which it would not have been fo fafe to employ the fword of reason,---and to tickle, in the manner of the Roman fatirist, while it probed the wound.

"TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

"In the multitude of counsellors there is fafety, fays the wifeman. If SOLOMON means privy-counfellors, this nation ought to be fafe beyond all others, fince none can boaft fuch a variety of minifters, and none can fuch a multitude of privy-counsellors.

Minifters, now-a-days, are pricked down for the year like fheriffs; and if none were to make more of their offices than the

laft

laft did, I fancy we should fee them fine off, or demand a poll, before they confented to ferve. In my younger days, CHAMBERLAYN's Prefent State of England would last you feven years, and needed no more to be renewed annually, than a family bible or a whole duty of Man; but now you can no more guess who is in office to-day, by the court-kalendar of last year, than you can tell the present price of stocks by LLOYD's Lift of Christmas 1745.

"But the main design of my taking pen in hand, was to refute the filly author of a late filly publication, called, A short Account of a late fhort Adminiftration.

"This half-fheet accountant shows his ill humour in the very title: he calls one year and twenty days a short administration : whereas I can prove, by the Rule of Three Direct, that it is as much as any ministry in these times has a right to expect.

"Since the happy acceffion of his present majesty, to this day, we have worn out no less than five complete sets of honest, able, upright ministers; not to speak of the present, whom G---d long preferve.

"Firft, we had Mr. PITT's adminiftration;

"Next, the duke of NEWCASTLE'S;

"Then, lord BUTE's;

"Then, Mr. GRENVILLE'S;

"And, laftly, my lord ROCKINGHAM'S.

"Now, Sir, if you will take a bit of chalk, and reckon from the feventh of October 1760, to the thirtieth of July 1766, you will find five year, nine months, and thirty days! which, divided by five, the total of adminiftrations, gives exactly one year and fixty days each, on an average, as we fay in the city, ---and one day more, if they have the good fortune to serve in leap year.

* How

"How spiteful, then, to cavil about a few days! for you see, by this calculation, the accountant's friends were, at moft, only forty days short of their allowance; befides, I am told by a beef-eater at court, that, from their killing in, to their being kicked out, was really one morning, or fix hours, more than one year and twenty days; a circumftance which he has maliciously suppressed.

"To proceed in my criticisms on this author, I must take notice. of the compliments he pays his friends, at the expence of the duke of CUMBERLAND. He fays, "they came into employment: under that prince's mediation," when the fact is, they came in by his pofitive commands. He conjured them, required them, on their allegiance, to accept: fo that they have only the merit of pressed men; and like them too, though they are liable to be shot for desertion, as well as volunteers, yet, according to every rule of military justice, they may be whipt out of the service at any time, and have no title to the king's bounty for enlisting.

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"The author's spite against the right hon. WILLIAM, earl of CHATHAM, in the county of Kent, viscount PYNSENT, in the county of Somerset, appears in the fame paragraph. He fays, they [the late minifters] were removed by a plan fettled by that nobleman." How little expreffive of his operations is the word fettled! when we know full well, that, when only a great commoner, he refused to be refponsible for any measures which he did not abfolutely guide. The accountant, therefore, fhould. have faid dictated by the earl of CHATHAM, as more fuitable to his character, and to real fact, as is confirmed by the Enquiry just published, as 'tis said, by his quondam friend earl TEMPLE.*

The account of the conference at Hampstead, which we have already quoted, was then generally fuppofed to be the compofition of lord TEMPLE, though it afterwards. proved to have been written by Mr. COTES, from his lordship's communications. " Thefe.

« These two cronies, it seems, quarrelled about dictation; and the very man who a few years ago was glad to play Bowman to the great commoner at a city feast, stooping and rifing for half an hour together, like the Chelsea water-works, on this occafion ftood straight as a may-pole, and refused bowing either to him, or for him, in the front of the stage, while he fat skulking in a fide-box..

"On the whole, it is next to fcandalum magnatum, to alledge that the earl of CHATHAM did any thing less than dictate the late changes. He has, once more, deigned to take the reins of government in his own hand, and will, no doubt, drive with his wonted speed, and raise a deal of duft around him.. His horfes are all matched to his mind; but as fome of them are young and skittish, it is said he has adopted the new contrivance lately exhi bited by fir FRANCIS DELAVAL on Westminster Bridge: whenever they begin to fnort, and tofs up their heads, he touches the fpring, throws them loose, and away they go, leaving his lordship safe and fnug, and as much at ease, as if he fat on a wool-pack.

"In the long bead-roll of fervices done by the late ministry, which the author presents to our belief, one after the other, like the thirty-nine articles, there is one I cannot avoid laughing at, the refusing to grant patents and reverfions. Their friends fay,. they had the POWER, and WOULD NOT: the more fools they:--their enemies fay, they had the INCLINATION, and COULD NOT: tant pis pour eux. But my lord CHATHAM has already fhewn, that he had both inclination and power, by granting patents, in the first week of his administration, to lord NORTHINGTON, lord CAMDEN, and the hon. Mr. STUART MACKENZIE, brother german to the earl of BUTE, and brother in office to himself, par nobile fratrum, which ever way you take it. Reversions were unemployed?

K