sent out in 1763 as Commander-in-Chief and GovernorGeneral, in consequence of the renewed outbreak of serious trouble. Still, even when supporting candidates on whose election he considered the future honest management of the Company to depend, he felt an aversion to such interference. In subsequent years, he said, alluding to this question: "I interfered a good deal at one time in the affairs of the Company, but upon its taking a very corrupt turn, I scrupulously shut my door against them. It was always my maxim to avoid all personal canvassing. I have always felt it a petite guerre, a poor means of securing friendship or animosity. Besides, what a slavery does it make of political friendship!"[1]
Early in the following year Walpole writes to Mann: "There is an approaching wedding notified between Lord Shelburne and Lady Sophia Carteret, the only child of our old friend Lady Sophia Fermor by Lord Granville. Her face is like the beauty of neither, and is like her halfsisters,[2] but her air and person would strike you from the strong resemblance to her mother.[3] Their children will have the seeds in them of some extraordinary qualities, look whither you will." An illustrious modern author has supposed Shelburne, in consequence of this marriage, to have been influenced by the political opinions of his deceased father-in-law.[4] They both undoubtedly shared that dislike of the old Whigs for which Granville had suffered at more than one period of his chequered career, and which was to play so great a part in the life of Granville's son-in-law.
The Stamp Act was passing through Parliament at the time that the statesman, whose whole career was to be so affected by it, was being married. But though Shelburne himself was absent from the House of Lords, his opinions were represented in the Commons by Barré, who putting aside the question (as at the moment of subordinate importance) of the right of Parliament to tax America,
