The Rockingham ministry remained in office for a year and twenty days (1765-66).  About the middle of this term (December 26, 1765) Burke was returned to Parliament for the borough of Wendover, by the influence of Lord Verney, who owned it, and who also returned William Burke for another borough.  Lord Verney was an Irish peer, with large property in Buckinghamshire; he now represented that county in Parliament.  It was William Burke’s influence with Lord Verney that procured for his namesake the seat at Wendover.  Burke made his first speech in the House of Commons a few days after the opening of the session of 1766 (January 27), and was honoured by a compliment from Pitt, still the Great Commoner.  A week later he spoke again on the same momentous theme, the complaints of the American colonists, and his success was so marked that good judges predicted, in the stiff phraseology of the time, that he would soon add the palm of the orator to the laurel of the writer and the philosopher.  The friendly Dr. Johnson wrote to Langton that Burke had gained more reputation than any man at his first appearance had ever gained before.  The session was a great triumph to the new member, but it brought neither strength nor popularity to the administration.  At the end of it the king dismissed them, and the Chatham Government was formed—­that strange combination which has been made famous by Burke’s description of it as a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed, such a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tessellated pavement without cement, that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand upon.  There was no obvious reason why Burke should not have joined the new ministry.  The change was at first one of persons rather than of principles or of measures.  To put himself, as Burke afterwards said, out of the way of the negotiations which were then being carried on very eagerly and through many channels with the Earl of Chatham, he went to Ireland very soon after the change of ministry.  He was free from party engagements, and more than this, he was free at the express desire of his friends; for on the very day of his return the Marquis of Rockingham wished him to accept office under the new system.  Burke “believes he might have had such a situation, but he cheerfully took his fate with his party.”  In a short time he rendered his party the first of a long series of splendid literary services by writing his Observations on the Present State of the Nation (1769).  It was a reply to a pamphlet by George Grenville, in which the disappointed minister accused his successors of ruining the country.  Burke, in answering the charge, showed a grasp of commercial and fiscal details at least equal to that of Grenville himself, then considered the first man of his time in dealing with the national trade and resources.  To this easy mastery of the special facts of the discussion, Burke added the far rarer art of lighting them up by broad principles, and placing himself and his readers at the highest and most effective point of view for commanding their general bearings.