Chatham's withdrawal.]

The ministry of 1766 in fact was itself such a defiance; for it was an
attempt to found political power not on the support of the Whigs as a
party, but on the support of national opinion. But as Parliament was
then constituted, it was only through Chatham himself that opinion could
tell even on the administration he formed; and six months after he had
taken office Chatham was no more than a name. The dread which had driven
him from the stormy agitation of the Lower House to the quiet of the
House of Peers now became a certainty. As winter died into the spring of
1767 his nervous disorganization grew into a painful and overwhelming
illness which almost wholly withdrew him from public affairs; and when
Parliament met again he was unable either to come to town or to confer
with his colleagues. It was in vain that they prayed him for a single
word of counsel. Chatham remained utterly silent; and the ministry which
his guidance had alone held together at once fell into confusion. The
Earl's plans were suffered to drop. His colleagues lost all cohesion,
and each acted as he willed. Townshend, a brilliant but shallow
rhetorician whom Pitt had been driven reluctantly to make his Chancellor
of the Exchequer, after angering the House of Commons by proposals for
an increase of the land-tax, strove to win back popularity among the
squires by undertaking to raise a revenue from America. That a member of
a ministry which bore Pitt's name should have proposed to reopen the
question of colonial taxation within a year of the repeal of the Stamp
Acts was strange enough to the colonists; and they were yet more
astonished when, on its neglect to make provision for compensating those
who had suffered from the recent outbreak in due conformity to an Act of
the British Parliament, the Assembly of New York was suspended, and when
Townshend redeemed his pledge by laying duties on various objects
brought into American ports. But these measures were the result of
levity and disorganization rather than of any purpose to reopen the
quarrel. Pitt's colleagues had as yet no design to reverse his policy.
The one aim of the ministry which bore his name, and which during his
retirement looked to the Duke of Grafton as its actual head, was simply
to exist. But in the face of Chatham's continued withdrawal, of
Townshend's death in 1767, and of the increasing hostility of the
Rockingham Whigs, even existence was difficult; and Grafto