assertion of the supremacy of the mother country. Its retention was
enough to prevent any thorough restoration of good feeling. A series of
petty quarrels went on in almost every colony between the popular
assemblies and the Governors appointed by the Crown, and the colonists
persisted in their agreement to import nothing from the mother country.
As yet however there was no prospect of serious strife. In America the
influence of George Washington allayed the irritation of Virginia; while
Massachusetts contented itself with quarrelling with its Governor and
refusing to buy tea so long as the duty was levied.

The temper of the colonists was in the main that of the bulk of English
statesmen. Even George Grenville, though approving the retention of the
duty in question, abandoned all dream of further taxation. But the king
was now supreme. The reappearance and attack of Chatham at the opening
of 1770 had completed the ruin of the ministry. Those of his adherents
who still clung to it, Lord Camden, the Chancellor, Lord Granby, the
Commander-in-Chief, Dunning, the Solicitor-General, resigned their
posts. In a few days they were followed by the Duke of Grafton, who
since Chatham's resignation had been nominally the head of the
administration. All that remained of it were the Bedford faction and the
dependents of the king; but George did not hesitate to form these into a
ministry, and to place at its head the former Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Lord North, a man of some administrative ability, but
unconnected with any political party, steadily opposed to any
recognition of public opinion, and of an easy and indolent temper which
yielded against his better knowledge to the stubborn doggedness of the
king. The instinct of the country at once warned it of the results of
such a change; and the City of London put itself formally at the head of
the public discontent. In solemn addresses it called on George the Third
to dismiss his ministers and to dissolve the Parliament; and its action
was supported by petitions to the same effect from the greater counties.
In the following year it fought, as we have seen, a battle with the
House of Commons which established the freedom of the press. But the
efforts of the country failed before the paralysis of political action
which resulted from the position of the Whigs and the corruption of
Parliament. The deaths of Grenville and Bedford broke up two of the Whig
factions. Rockingham with the res