ABSTRACT
Though, in the year 1770, lord Chatham had come forward, with an apparent determination, from thenceforth to take a regular share, in the parliamentary deliberations; he however found himself irresistibly baffled by the encroachments of disease. From his youth, he had been the martyr of an hereditary gout. Scarcely any person was ever subject to that painful distemper, in a greater degree. In the mean time, the ensuing summer appeared with the most serious and threatening aspect in America. Both parties were backward in proceeding to extremities. But the impending tempest, the more slowly it forms, and the longer it is brewing over the authors heads, grows so much blacker and blacker, and rushes upon them, at last, with more tremendous fury. In the mean time, the servants of the crown were so backward, in bringing out their American system, that the plan of conciliation, formed by lord Chatham, had the start of them.
