temptible as he is odious' (George III, Letters to North, i. 170). North was reluctantly compelled to inform him on the 24th that the king had dismissed him from office. Meanwhile his money difficulties had come to a crisis. For four years he had played constantly and for high stakes, and his losses were very heavy. Although his horses were generally beaten on the turf, his bets were judicious, and in 1772 he won 16,000l. on a single race. Nor was he a loser in games that required skill, such as whist and picquet. He was ruined by his losses at hazard, and it seems tolerably certain that the 'immoderate, constant, and unparalleled advantages' jgained over him at the gaming-table were the result of unfair play (Memorials, i. 91). In order to pay his gambling debts he had recourse to Jewish money-lenders, and, always light-hearted, used to call the room where these men waited for him his 'Jerusalem chamber.' Friends, and especially Lord Carlisle, paid large annuities on his behalf. In the summer of 1773 his difficulties induced him to put faith in an adventuress who promised to procure him a wife with 80,OOOl. In that year the wife of his elder brother bore a son, and the money-lenders refused to give him further credit. 'My brother Ste's son,' he said, 'is a second Messiah, born for the destruction of the Jews' (Gibbon, Miscell. Works, ii. 132). He thought of reading for the bar, in the hope of retrieving his fortune by professional industry. Lord Hollland paid his debts in the winter of 1773-4, 'at a cost of 140,000l. He did not give up the habit of gambling (Last Journals, i. 7, 283 ; Wraxall, Memoirs, ii. 9 ; Early Life, pp. 478-92). In the course of 1774 Fox lost his father, mother, and elder brother. He received King's Gate, near Margate, from his father, and on his brother's death succeeded to the Irish clerkship of the pells, which was worth 2,000l. a year for life ; he shortly afterwards sold both the house and the clerkship (Wraxall, Memoirs, ii. 8).
At the time of Fox's dismissal the dispute with the American colonies had reached a critical stage ; the tea riot in Boston took place in December 1773, and Gage landed in May 1774 to put in force the Boston Port Bill. Fox now began to act with the Rockingham party ; he carried on a constant opposition to the war, and his speeches, hitherto occasional and for the most part misdirected, were during this period the most effective expositions of the policy of the Rockingham whigs. His jealousy for the rights of parliament, hitherto exhibited in unworthy measures against the liberty of the press, now took a nobler turn, and on 24 March he declared that the quarrel with Massachusetts was with the parliament not with the crown, and that it therefore belonged to parliament to decide on the restoration of the port of Boston (Speeches, i. 27). On 19 April he voted for the repeal of the tea duty, declaring that the tax was a mere assertion of a right which would force the colonists 'into open rebellion' (ib. p. 28). It is said that in December an attempt was made to negotiate between Fox and North, but that Fox's demands were too high (Last Journals, i. 437). Fox upheld Burke, on 23 Jan. 1775, in complaining of the disregard shown to the merchants' petition, and pointed out that Gage's troops were in a ridiculous position. He made a violent attack on North on the 27th, and when the minister complained that Fox and Burke were threatening him, declared that he would join Burke in bringing him to answer for his conduct. In moving an amendment to a ministerial address on 2 Feb. 'he entered into the whole history and argument of the dispute, and made the greatest figure he had yet done in a speech of an hour and twenty minutes' (ib. p. 455) ; 'taking the vast compass of the question' he 'discovered power for regular debate which neither his friends hoped, nor his enemies dreaded' (Gibbon, Miscell. Works, ii. 132). On the 20th he exposed the hollowness of North's plan of conciliation, as, according to his ideas, 'carrying two faces on its very first appearance' (Speeches, i. 37). The affair at Lexington took place in April. When parliament met on 26 Oct. Fox supported the amendment to the address, censuring the ministers for increasing the discontent in America. The ministers, he said, 'have reason to triumph. Lord Chatham, the king of Prussia, nay, Alexander the Great never gained more in one campaign than thd noble lord has lost — he has lost a whole continent.' The colonists, he admitted, had gone too far, though he denied that they were aiming at independence, they were aiming at freedom, and he urged that they should be placed in the same position as in 1763 (ib. i. 49). On 20 Feb. 1776 he moved for a committee on the war, contending that the ministers lacked wisdom and integrity, parliament public spirit, and the commanders either military skill or liberty to carry out what they were sent to do. The motion was lost by 240 to 104. Speaking in support of the amendment to the address on 31 Oct. he denied that it was 'not for the interest of Spain and France to have America independent;' injury to the trade of this free country must be advantageous to old corrupted governments. If, however, the question lay between conquering and abandoning
