George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

The triumvirate, of whom not one was beloved by the people, became ‘a general joke,’² and was laughed at as a three-headed monster,³ quieted by being gorged with patronage and office. The business of the session was rapidly brought to a close. Grenville's bill for the effectual enforcement of the acts of navigation received the royal assent. The scheme of taxing the colonies did but lie over for the next session; but at the prorogation, the king's speech announced the purpose of improving the revenue, which, as the de bates during the session explained, had a special reference to America. It was not ‘the wish of this man or that man;’⁴ each house of parliament, and nearly every body in Great Britain, was eager to throw a part of the public burdens on the increasing opulence of the New World.

The new ministry, at the outset, was weakened by its own indiscreet violence. In the speech at the close of the session, the king vauntingly arrogated merit for the peace which Frederic of Prussia had concluded, after being left alone by England. Wilkes, a man who shared the social licentiousness of his day, in the forty-fifth number of a periodical paper called the North Briton, exposed the fallacy. The king, thinking one