That resignation had left Grafton in a minority in his own Cabinet. Of this an early proof was given. So threatening had the aspect of affairs in America become, that he submitted to his colleagues the propriety of repealing all the taxes imposed by Charles Townshend. By a majority of one the article of tea was excluded from the repeal.[1] It was the history of the Declaratory Act over again. Though absolutely useless as a fiscal measure the taxation of tea was retained "to keep up the right."[2] Nor was this all. Hillsborough despatched a Circular informing the Colonial Governors of the intentions of the Government, but avoided the use in it of the friendly terms agreed on by the Cabinet. His colleagues protested, but the King supported him. Grafton at once felt that self-respect counselled an early retirement from an impossible situation. Chatham, at the same time returning to public life, treated him with cold reserve, and Camden, thinking apparently that the Prime Minister had been wanting in decision, assumed a distant attitude, doubly painful at a moment when the proceedings against Wilkes, in and out of Parliament, were daily giving a greater importance to the cordial co-operation of the Chancellor.
While the Administration was thus divided against itself, the Opposition was for a moment more united than it had been for some time past. Soon after the refusal of Temple to serve with Pitt in 1766, a firm alliance had been formed between the former and George Grenville, and it was now suddenly announced that Chatham had acceded to that alliance.[3] The Middlesex Election, the question which immediately occupied the public mind, rendered co-operation between them easier than it otherwise would have been, for if Temple was personally identified with Wilkes, and Chatham was not, yet they could both agree on the unconstitutional character of his expulsion from the House of Commons, and of the subsequent proceedings also, which Grenville, the original enemy of Wilkes, condemned in one of his greatest Parliamentary
