By education and early political alliance Fox was a Tory, and it is not singular therefore that the Government of Lord North hastened to avail itself of his talents. In 1770 he was made a Junior Lord of the Admiralty, and a little later found a seat on the bench of the Treasury. But his wayward spirit would not brook control. He even went so far as to take the floor in opposition to the Prime-Minister. This violation of party discipline brought its natural result, and in 1774 Fox was contemptuously dismissed.

The blow was deserved, and was even needed for the saving of Fox himself. His excesses in London and on the continent had become so notorious that the public were fast coming to regard him simply as a reckless gambler, whose favor and whose opposition were alike of no importance. It was this contempt on the part of the ministry and the public which stung him into something like reform. Though he did not entirely abandon his old methods, he devoted himself to his work in the House with

extraordinary energy. All his ambition was now directed to becoming a powerful debater. He afterward remarked that he had literally gained his skill "at the expense of the House," for he had sometimes tasked himself to speak on every question that came up, whether he was interested in it or not, and even whether he knew any thing about it or not. The result was that in certain important qualities of a public speaker, he excelled all other men of his time. Burke even said of him, that "by slow degrees he rose to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw." While this process of rising "by slow degrees was going on, Fox was also acquiring fixed ideas in regard to governmental affairs. The contemptuous dismissal of Lord North probably stimulated his natural inclinations to go into the opposition. As the American question was gradually developed, Fox found himself in warm sympathy with the colonial cause. He denied the right of the mother country to inflict taxation, and was the first to denounce

the policy of the Government in the House of Commons. He enjoyed the friendship of the ablest men among the Whigs, and he resorted to them, especially to Burke, for every kind of political knowledge. Indeed, his obligations to that great political philosopher were such, that in 1791, at the time of their alienation on the question of England's attitude toward the French Revolution, he declared in the House that "if he were to put all the political information which he had learned from books, all he had gained from science, and all which any knowledge of the world and its affairs had taught him, into one scale, and the improvement which he had derived from his right honorable friend's instruction and conversation in the other, he should be at a loss to decide to which to give the preference." Under this influence all his aspirations came to be devoted, as he once said "to widen the basis of freedom, -to infuse and circulate the spirit of liberty." This subject it was that in one form or another drew forth the most inspiring strains of his eloquence.

Fox's political morality is not without one very dark stain. For some years he had been the leader of the opposition to Lord North's administration. Under his repeated and powerful blows the great Tory ministry was obliged to give way. Fox had been so conspicuously at the head of the opposition that everybody looked to see him elevated to the position of First Minister. scandalized by the irregularities of Fox's life, and probably was quite willing to find an excuse for not calling so able a Whig into power. Lord Shelburne was appointed instead, and Fox refused to take office under him. But that was not all. He not only refused to support Shelburne, but within six months even formed a coalition against him with Lord North. Cooke, in his "History of Party," characterizes his action as "a precedent which strikes at the foundation of political morality, and as a weapon in the hands of those who would destroy all confidence in the honesty of public men." This characterization is not too

But the king had been

severe; for the ability and the lofty integrity of Lord Shelburne were such as to forbid us to suppose that Fox's action was the result of any other motive than that of personal pique and disappointment. He carried his ardent followers with him; and so shocked were the thinking men of the time, that there was a general outcry either of regret or of indignation.

Lord Shelburne was of course defeated, and the Coalition ministry, which it was afterward the great work of Pitt to break, came into power. The popular sentiment was shown in the fact that, in the first election that followed, a hundred and sixty of Fox's friends lost their seats in the House, and became, in the language of the day, "Fox's Martyrs."

The views of Fox in regard to the French Revolution were so opposed to those of Burke, that in 1791 their intimacy and even their friendship were broken violently asunder. Of that memorable and painful incident it is not necessary here to speak, other than to say that both of the orators were wrong and both of