I io Life of Count Rumford. 



for the year 1780, records that in September, " B. 

 Thompson, Esq., was made Under-Secretary of State 

 for the Northern Department." The oversight of all 

 the practical details for recruiting, equipping, trans- 

 porting, and victualling the British forces, and of many 

 other incidental arrangements, was thus committed to 

 him. Though he discharged the duties of this office in 

 person but little more than one year, his influence 

 would naturally be felt while the administration of 

 which he was a subordinate remained in power. The 

 tenor of his counsels has not transpired, nor are we 

 sufficiently well informed about the matter to say 

 whether he had any special theory, plan, or policy; 

 whether he was a prime originator, or only a subservient 

 agent, of measures the results of which could have 

 afforded but little satisfaction to those who were re- 

 sponsible for them. If he often attended the debates 

 in Parliament, as doubtless he did, he had full oppor- 

 tunities of watching how the tide turned to ebb at the 

 very moment before it seemed to have reached a full 

 flood; and if he was discerning in the interpretation of 

 signs, he must have known that his official service 

 would be brief. As we shall see, he availed himself 

 of a graceful occasion for resignation, most probably in 

 full foresight of an alternative method of release. The 

 exercise of his genius and the way in which he could 

 best serve his fellow-men that being afterwards the 

 great aim of his life lay in a direction quite different 

 from his present employments. No one, therefore, 

 biographer or critic, need be concerned to plead for him 

 in an office where success would have been worse than 

 failure. He first signed official papers October 27, 1780. 

 Thompson has left an interesting token of his of- 



