DUKE OF GRAFTON.
Henry Augustus Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, was born 1735. He was educated at Cambridge, where he was notoriously profligate. In July, 1766, the Rockingham administration was dissolved, and the Duke of Grafton was made first lord commissioner of the treasury, which office he held until January, 1770. He has received an unenviable notoriety from the strictures of Junius. His administration was composed of men of different political principles and parties. Junius, in a letter addressed to the duke, thus narrates, and severely animadverts upon, the circumstances of his grace's appointment to the premiership: "The spirit of the favorite (Lord Bute) had some apparent influence upon every administration; and every set of ministers preserved an appearance of duration as long as they submitted to that influence; but there were certain services to be performed for the favorite's security, or to gratify his resentments, which your predecessors in office had the wisdom, or the virtue, not to undertake. A submissive administration was, at last, gradually collected from the deserters of all parties, interests, and connexions; and nothing remained but to find a leader for these gallant, well-disciplined troops. Stand forth, my lord, for thou art the man! Lord Bute found no resource of dependence or security in the proud, imposing superiority of Lord Chatham's abilities; the shrewd, inflexible judgment of Mr. Grenville; nor in the mild, but determined integrity of Lord Rockingham. His views and situation required a creature void of all these properties; and he was forced to go through all his division, resolution, composition, and refinement of political chemistry, before he happily arrived at the caput mortuum of vitriol in your grace. Flat and insipid in your retired state, but brought into action, you become vitriol again. Such are the extremes of alternate indolence or fury, which have governed your whole administration!"