We know that all the correspondence of the colonies had been, until within a few years, carried on by the Southern Secretary of State, and that this department has not been shunned upon account of the weight of its duties, but, on the contrary, much sought on account of its patronage.  Indeed, he must be poorly acquainted with the history of office who does not know how very lightly the American functions have always leaned on the shoulders of the ministerial Atlas who has upheld that side of the sphere.  Undoubtedly, great temper and judgment was requisite in the management of the colony politics; but the official detail was a trifle.  Since the new appointment, a train of unfortunate accidents has brought before us almost the whole correspondence of this favorite secretary’s office since the first day of its establishment.  I will say nothing of its auspicious foundation, of the quality of its correspondence, or of the effects that have ensued from it.  I speak merely of its quantity, which we know would have been little or no addition to the trouble of whatever office had its hands the fullest.  But what has been the real condition of the old office of Secretary of State?  Have their velvet bags and their red boxes been so full that nothing more could possibly be crammed into them?

A correspondence of a curious nature has been lately published.[43] In that correspondence, Sir, we find the opinion of a noble person who is thought to be the grand manufacturer of administrations, and therefore the best judge of the quality of his work.  He was of opinion that there was but one man of diligence and industry in the whole administration:  it was the late Earl of Suffolk.  The noble lord lamented very justly, that this statesman, of so much mental vigor, was almost wholly disabled from the exertion of it by his bodily infirmities.  Lord Suffolk, dead to the state long before he was dead to Nature, at last paid his tribute to the common treasury to which we must all be taxed.  But so little want was found even of his intentional industry, that the office, vacant in reality to its duties long before, continued vacant even in nomination and appointment for a year after his death.  The whole of the laborious and arduous correspondence of this empire rested solely upon the activity and energy of Lord Weymouth.

It is therefore demonstrable, since one diligent man was fully equal to the duties of the two offices, that two diligent men will be equal to the duty of three.  The business of the new office, which I shall propose to you to suppress, is by no means too much to be returned to either of the secretaries which remain.  If this dust in the balance should be thought too heavy, it may be divided between them both,—­North America (whether free or reduced) to the Northern Secretary, the West Indies to the Southern.  It is not necessary that I should say more upon the inutility of this office.  It is burning daylight.  But before I have done, I shall just remark that the history of this office is too recent to suffer us to forget that it was made for the mere convenience of the arrangements of political intrigue, and not for the service of the state,—­that it was made in order to give a color to an exorbitant increase of the civil list, and in the same act to bring a new accession to the loaded compost-heap of corrupt influence.