OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 181 
from that situation. But in the second stage we 
see a desperate political schemer, to the neglect of 
public interests and in defiance of all sound statesman- 
ship, pushing on a needless quarrel until it inevitably 
ends in war. This second stage we may call the 
Townshend-North stage. 
It was a curious fortune that provided George III. 
with two such advisers as Charles Townshend and 
Frederick North. Both were brilliant and frivolous 
young men without much political principle; both 
were inclined to take public life as an excellent joke. 
North lived long enough to find it no joke; Town- 
shend stayed upon the scene till he had perpetrated 
one colossal piece of mischief, and then died, leaving 
North to take the consequences. I do not believe 
Lord North would ever have originated such a meas- 
ure as the Revenue Act of 1767; there was no malice 
in his nature, but in Townshend there was a strong 
vein of utterly reckless diablerie. Nobody could have 
been more willing to please the king by picking a 
quarrel with the Americans, and nobody knew better 
how to do it. Townshend was exceptionally well 
informed on American affairs, and sinned with his 
eyes wide open. In his case it will not do to talk 
about the blundering of the British ministers. Gren- 
ville had blundered, but Townshend’s ingenuity was 
devoted to brushing every American hair the wrong 
way. , 
In the debates on the repeal of the Stamp Act the 
Americans had been charged with inconsistency in 
having allowed Parliament to tax them by means of 
port duties, while they refused to allow it to tax them 
by means of stamped paper. In reply the friends of 
