This nation, Sir, never thought of departing from that choice until the period immediately on the close of the last war.  Then a scheme of government, new in many things, seemed to have been adopted.  I saw, or thought I saw, several symptoms of a great change, whilst I sat in your gallery, a good while before I had the honor of a seat in this House.  At that period the necessity was established of keeping up no less than twenty new regiments, with twenty colonels capable of seats in this House.  This scheme was adopted with very general applause from all sides, at the very time that, by your conquests in America, your danger from foreign attempts in that part of the world was much lessened, or indeed rather quite over.  When this huge increase of military establishment was resolved on, a revenue was to be found to support so great a burden.  Country gentlemen, the great patrons of economy, and the great resisters of a standing armed force, would not have entered with much alacrity into the vote for so large and so expensive an army, if they had been very sure that they were to continue to pay for it.  But hopes of another kind were held out to them; and in particular, I well remember that Mr. Townshend, in a brilliant harangue on this subject, did dazzle them by playing before their eyes the image of a revenue to be raised in America.

Here began to dawn the first glimmerings of this new colony system.  It appeared more distinctly afterwards, when it was devolved upon a person to whom, on other accounts, this country owes very great obligations.  I do believe that he had a very serious desire to benefit the public.  But with no small study of the detail, he did not seem to have his view, at least equally, carried to the total circuit of our affairs.  He generally considered his objects in lights that were rather too detached.  Whether the business of an American revenue was imposed upon him altogether,—­whether it was entirely the result of his own speculation, or, what is more probable, that his own ideas rather coincided with the instructions he had received,—­certain it is, that, with the best intentions in the world, he first brought this fatal scheme into form, and established it by Act of Parliament.

No man can believe, that, at this time of day, I mean to lean on the venerable memory of a great man, whose loss we deplore in common.  Our little party differences have been long ago composed; and I have acted more with him, and certainly with more pleasure with him, than ever I acted against him.  Undoubtedly Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country.  With a masculine understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied.  He took public business, not as a duty which he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he seemed to have no delight out of this House, except in such things as some way related to the business that was to be done within it.  If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain.  It was to raise himself, not by the low, pimping politics of a court, but to win his way to power through the laborious gradations of public service, and to secure himself a well-earned rank in Parliament by a thorough knowledge of its constitution and a perfect practice in all its business.