YONGE STREET AND DUNDAS STREET. 627 



Lord Cockburn, in the " Memoi-ials of His Times," writing from 

 the Wliig point of view, speaks of Dundas as absolute Dictator of 

 Scotland, as Proconsul, as Harry the Ninth. " The suppression of 

 independent talent and of ambition," he says, " was the tendency of the 

 times. Every Tory principle being absorbed in the horror of inno- 

 vation, and that party casting all its cares upon Henry Dundas, no 

 one could, without renouncing all his hopes, commit the treason of 

 dreaming an independent thought. There was little genuine attrac- 

 tion for real talent, knowledge or eloquence on that side, because 

 these qualities can seldom exist in combination with abject submis- 

 sion. And indeed," he then candidly adds, " there was not much 

 attraction for them among the senior and dominant Whigs, among 

 whom there was a corresponding loyalty to the Earl of Lauderdale." 

 And again, Lord Cockburn writes : " In addition to all the ordinary 

 sources of government influence, Henry Dundas, an Edinburgh man, 

 and well calculated by talent and manners to make despotism popular, 

 was the absolute dictator of Scotland, and had the means of rewarding 

 submission, and of suppressing opposition, beyond what was ever exer- 

 cised in modern times by one person in any portion of the empire." 

 " A country gentleman," he says, " with any public principle except 

 devotion to Henry Dundas, was viewed as a wonder, or rather as a 

 monster. This was the creed also of all our merchants, all our remov- 

 able office holders, and all oiir public corporations." 



When Loi'd North's administration at length fell, and that of Lord 

 E-ockingham came into power, Henry Dundas still retained the office 

 of Lord Advocate of Scotland; and when Lord Rockingham died, and 

 Lord Shelburne succeeded, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy ; 

 but on the formation of the Coalition Ministry very soon after, he 

 resigned, and became Pitt's right-hand man in the Opposition. Lord 

 North, the head of the Coalition, resigned on the rejection of his 

 India Bill by the Lords; when Pitt became pi-emier, with Dundas 

 as Treasurer of the Navy. Dundas materially assisted Pitt in the 

 elaboration of the new India Bill, which passed, and under the arrange- 

 ments of virhich he became President of the Board of Control ; and he 

 fully believed, as he expressed himself to the House, that the new 

 measure would be a means of prodigiously lightening, if it did not 

 finally extinguish, the national debt, so large would be the surplus 

 revenue accruing in futiire from India. 



