Admiralty.

At once Fox made his mark in the House as a brilliant debater with
an intellectual power and an industry that made him master of the
subjects he discussed. Still also he was scattering money, and
incurring debt, training race-horses, and staking heavily at
gambling tables. When a noble friend, who was not a gambler,
offered to bet fifty pounds upon a throw, Fox declined, saying, "I
never play for pence."

After a few years of impatient submission to Lord North, Fox broke
from him, and it was not long before he had broken from Lord North's
opinions and taken the side of the people in all leading questions.
He became the friend of Burke; and joined in the attack upon the
policy of Coercion that destroyed the union between England and her
American colonies. In 1774, at the age of twenty-five, Fox lost by
death his father, his mother, and his elder brother, who had
succeeded to the title, and who had left a little son to be his
heir. In February of that year Lord North had finally broken with
Fox by causing a letter to be handed to him in the House of Commons
while he was sitting by his side on the Treasury Bench.


"His Majesty has thought proper to order a new commission of the
Treasury to be made out, in which I do not perceive your name.
NORTH."


By the end of the year he was member for Malmesbury, and one of the
chiefs in opposition. When Lord North opened the session of 1775