I beg leave to add once more, in the fourth place, that, whatever the demerits of lord North as a minister may be supposed to have been, he is perhaps, in a thousand other respects, the fittest man in the world to occupy the second place in a junction of this sort.  The union of the Rockingham connexion with the earl of Shelburne last year, was, I will admit, less calculated to excite popular astonishment, and popular disapprobation, than the present.  In the eye of cool reason and sober foresight, I am apt to believe, it was much less wise and commendable.  Lord Shelburne, though he has been able to win over the good opinion of several, under the notion of his being a friend of liberty, is really, in many respects, stiffly aristocratical, or highly monarchical.  Lord Shelburne is a man of insatiable ambition, and who pursues the ends of that ambition by ways the most complex and insidious.  The creed of lord North, whatever it may be, upon general political questions, is consistent and intelligible.  For my own part, I do not believe him to be ambitious.  It is not possible, with his indolent and easy temper, that he should be very susceptible to so restless a passion.  In the heroical sense of that word, he sits loose to fame.  He is undoubtedly desirous, by all the methods that appear to him honourable and just, to enrich and elevate his family.  He wishes to have it in his power to oblige and to serve his friends.  But I am exceedingly mistaken, if he entered into the present alliance from views of authority and power.  Upon the conditions I have mentioned, it was a scheme, congenial only to a man of a dark and plotting temper.  But the temper of lord North is in the highest degree candid, open and undisguised.  Easy at home upon every occasion, there is not a circle in the world to which his presence would not be an addition.  It is calculated to inspire unconstraint and confidence into every breast.  Simple and amiable is the just description of his character in every domestic relation; constant and unreserved in his connexions of friendship.  The very versatility and pliableness, so loudly condemned in his former situation, is now an additional recommendation.  Is this the man, for whose intrigues and conspiracies we are bid to tremble?

Another charge that has been urged against the coalition, is, that it was a step that dictated to the sovereign, and excluded all, but one particular set of men, from the national councils.  The first part of this charge is somewhat delicate in its nature.  I shall only say respecting it, that, if, as we have endeavoured to prove, there were but one connexion, by which the business of administration could be happily discharged, the friend of liberty, rejoicing in the auspicious event, will not be very inquisitive in respect to the etiquette, with which they were introduced into the government.  In the mean time, far from intending an exclusion, they declared publicly, that they would be happy to receive into their body any man of known integrity and abilities, from whatever party he came.  The declaration has never been contradicted.—­Strangers to the remotest idea of proscription, they erected a fortress, where every virtue, and every excellence might find a place.