Whatever may have been his motives, he retired.  Fox at the same time took refuge in the House of Lords; and George Grenville became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

We believe that those who made this arrangement fully intended that Grenville should be a mere puppet in the hands of Bute; for Grenville was as yet very imperfectly known even to those who had observed him long.  He passed for a mere official drudge; and he had all the industry, the minute accuracy, the formality, the tediousness, which belong to the character.  But he had other qualities which had not yet shown themselves, devouring ambition, dauntless courage, self-confidence amounting to presumption, and a temper which could not endure opposition.  He was not disposed to be anybody’s tool; and he had no attachment, political or personal, to Bute.  The two men had, indeed, nothing in common, except a strong propensity towards harsh and unpopular courses.  Their principles were fundamentally different.  Bute was a Tory.  Grenville would have been very angry with any person who should have denied his claim to be a Whig.  He was more prone to tyrannical measures than Bute; but he loved tyranny only when disguised under the forms of constitutional liberty.  He mixed up, after a fashion then not very unusual, the theories of the republicans of the seventeenth century with the technical maxims of English law, and thus succeeded in combining anarchical speculation with arbitrary practice.  The voice of the people was the voice of God; but the only legitimate organ through which the voice of the people could be uttered was the Parliament.  All power was from the people; but to the Parliament the whole power of the people had been delegated.  No Oxonian divine had ever, even in the years which immediately followed the Restoration, demanded for the King so abject, so unreasoning a homage, as Grenville, on what he considered as the purest Whig principles, demanded for the Parliament.  As he wished to see the Parliament despotic over the nation, so he wished to see it also despotic over the Court.  In his view the Prime Minister, possessed of the confidence of the House of Commons, ought to be mayor of the Palace.  The King was a mere Childeric or Chilperic, who well might think himself lucky in being permitted to enjoy such handsome apartments at Saint James’s, and so fine a park at Windsor.

Thus the opinions of Bute and those of Grenville were diametrically opposed.  Nor was there any private friendship between the two statesmen.  Grenville’s nature was not forgiving; and he well remembered how, a few months before, he had been compelled to yield the lead of the House of Commons to Fox.

We are inclined to think, on the whole, that the worst administration which has governed England since the Revolution was that of George Grenville.  His public acts may be classed under two heads, outrages on the liberty of the people, and outrages on the dignity of the Crown.