Losing the American Colonies

In the last weeks of his life Lord North, we are told, expressed anxiety about his place in history - ‘how he stood and would stand in the world'. This, he owned, ‘might be a weakness, but he could not help it'. It was a weakness one suspects that he shared with most men in public life. But behind it one can surely detect fear that the verdict would be harsh. And, indeed, it has been. The Gentleman's Magazine, in its obituary notice, struck a chord that has been heard ever since: ‘fatally wedded to the destructive plan of subduing the republican spirits of the Americans, his administration will not only stand marked in the pages of history with an immense waste of public treasure, but it will appear besprinkled with the kindred blood of thousands of British subjects.' [1] In modern times the taunt - ‘the worst prime minister since Lord North' - has become part of the stock-in-trade of politicians.

One must resist the temptation to over-react. That Lord North has been, in my judgment, extravagantly attacked in the past is no reason for extravagantly defending him now. But a more balanced assessment is certainly necessary. Consider the kind of appraisal he has sometimes been given. He was - to paraphrase older historians - the man chosen by George III to carry out his design of subverting the constitution: chosen because he was servile and adaptable - a ‘henchman' to one historian, a ‘mouthpiece' to another, a ‘puppet minister' to a third, a ‘tool' to a fourth. His twelve years' tenure of office as first minister was, we were told, based on the unblushing use of patronage to build up the party of the King's Friends, who would stick at nothing to serve their royal master. The last forty years have seen the whole of this context dismantled, piece by piece - the evil intentions of the King, the extent of government patronage, the role and nature of the King's Friends. North, as one recent and not unkind commentator has remarked, remains ‘stranded on the shore of history like a deflated frog'. [2]