may, we think, be regarded as the wisest settlement both of the law and
of the practice. It asserted the law in a manner which offended no one;
and it made a precedent for placing the spirit of statesmanship above
the letter of the law, and for forbearing to put forth in its full
strength the prerogatives whose character was not fully understood by
those who might be affected by them, and also could plead that
Parliament itself had contributed to lead them to misunderstand it by
its own conduct in never before exerting it.

For the moment, then, contentment and tranquillity were restored in the
Colonies. Unhappily, they were not lasting. The same year which saw the
triumph of the Rockingham administration in the repeal of the Stamp Act,
witnessed also its fall before a discreditable intrigue. And the
ministry which succeeded it had not been a year in office before the new
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townsend, revived the discontents
in America which Lord Rockingham had appeased. It cannot be said,
however, that the blame should all belong to him; or that the Rockingham
party in the House of Commons were entirely free from a share in it.
They were--not unnaturally, perhaps--greatly irritated at the intrigue
by which Lord Chatham had superseded them, and were not disinclined to
throw difficulties in the way of their successors, for which the events
of the next year afforded more than one opportunity. Lord Chatham, as
has been mentioned, was universally recognized as the chief of the new
ministry, though he abstained from taking the usual office of First Lord
of the Treasury, and contented himself with the Privy Seal; but he had
constructed it of such discordant elements[43] that no influence but his
own could preserve consistency in its acts or harmony among its members,
as nothing but his name could give it consideration either in Parliament
or in the country. In the first months of the next year, 1767, he was
attacked with an illness which for a time disabled him from attending