That Shelburne might with his own opinions have carried the day and forced his policy on the King, as Lord Rockingham did afterwards, is indeed possible, but it is far more probable that the Declaratory Act would have been a fatal stone of offence, and that a fresh ministerial crisis would have taken place in consequence.
There was another circumstance connected with the advent of the Rockingham Administration which was profoundly distasteful to him as well as to Pitt. Among those who now reappeared on the scene was the famous, or as Shelburne would have said, the "infamous," Lord George Sackville.[1] Shelburne had many opportunities of forming an opinion on both the military and political career of the new Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. The nature of that opinion may be gathered from the following picture, which though in some respects anticipating a subsequent portion of the narrative, may here be read with interest:
Account of Lord George Sackville.
"Lord George Sackville was third son of Lionel, Duke of Dorset. His mother was the daughter of a Scotch gentleman of a private family.
"The old Duke of Dorset was born and bred in Queen Anne's time; he was in all respects a perfect English courtier, and nothing else. A large grown full person, which together with some other circumstances procured him the friendship of Lady Betty Germain, who proved her attachment to him by leaving away from her own relations to his third son a very considerable property, upon condition of his taking the surname "Germain," but to revert to them in case of his inheriting the Dukedom. He had the good fortune to come into the world with the Whigs, and partook of their good fortune to his death. He never had an opinion about public matters, which together with his qualifications as a Courtier and his being of an old Sussex family, a circumstance which
- ↑ See supra, pp. 75, 82.
