Mr. Townshend was the "delight and ornament" of the House, as
Edmund Burke said. Never was a man in any country of "more
pointed and finished wit, or (where his passions were not
concerned) of a more refined, exquisite, and penetrating
judgment"; never a man to excel him in "luminous explanation and
display of his subject," nor ever one less tedious or better able
to conform himself exactly to the temper of the House which he
seemed to guide because he was always sure to follow it. In 1765
Mr. Townshend had voted for the Stamp Act, but in 1766, when the
Stamp Act began to be no favorite, he voted for the repeal, and
would have spoken for it too, if an illness had not prevented
him. And now, in 1767, Mr. Townshend was Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and as such responsible for the revenue; a man without
any of that temperamental obstinacy which persists in opinions
once formed, and without any fixed opinions to persist in; but
quite disposed, according to habit, to "hit the House just
between wind and water," and to win its applause by speaking for
the majority, or by "haranguing inimitably on both sides" when
the majority was somewhat uncertain.

In January, 1767, when Lord Chatham was absent and the majority
was very uncertain, Mr. Grenville took occasion, in the debate
upon the extraordinaries for the army in England and America, to
move that America, like Ireland, should support its own
establishment. The opportunity was one which Mr. Townshend could
not let pass. Much to the astonishment of every one and most of
all to that of his colleagues in the ministry, he supported Mr.
Grenville's resolution, declaring himself now in favor of the
Stamp Act which he had voted to repeal, treating "Lord Chatham's
distinction between internal and external taxation as