comparison of Chatham even in the vigour of his intellect to Rockingham,[1] gives " his clear opinion that no time or occasion can probably occur in which in the way of consultation or communication it would be right to have anything to do with the Shelburne corps,"[2] and laments "the unsystematic conduct of many of his own friends,"[3] when, for example, they refused to agree with him in such proposals as the following, viz.: "that as the House of Commons was more easily approachable by its feelings than by its reason, all the proprietors of Indian stock that can be got together should make a procession from the India House to Westminster, and should stand in all the avenues, and in the most humble manner request the members not to take away the legal rights of their countrymen."[4]
"We have been too ready," the Duke of Richmond at length writes to him, "in taking up the cudgels for everybody the Ministers please to attack, and the consequence of our readiness has been, that people think we attack only for the sake of opposition, and to get ourselves into place."[5] Such was the lamentable result of the advice of Burke. Can much blame be attached to those who, not being like Richmond and Rockingham attached to the philosopher as a friend, refused, as Shelburne did, to accept him as a political guide?
The differences of opinion between the two sections of the Whig party increased yet further, when, towards the end of 1773, it became known that the Irish Parliament was likely to send over the heads of a Bill, imposing a tax of two shillings in the pound on the estates of absentee landowners, and that it was the intention of the Ministry to advise the King to let them pass the English Privy Council. Among the persons most affected by the proposed tax were the great Whig landowners, and as soon as the intention of the Irish Parliament became
