John Morley: “It forms one of the best vindications of the cabinet system, and of the powers of the minister who created, guided…”

My desire is thoroughly to shake up all the materials of the question.

What I wish to insist upon is, not that that system was good, but that the statesman who undertook to overthrow it, should have had something to put in its place.

There lay Ireland,—squalid, dismal, sullen, dull, expectant, sunk deep in hostile intent.

What I endeavoured to show was that King George III., without changing his opinion of the justice of his war against the colonies, was obliged to give it up on account of a change of public opinion, and was not open to blame for so doing.