With great unwillingness, and, it is said, not without tears, George III.

consented to the bill being so drawn as to exclude her, and it passed the Lords in such a form.

But when it reached the Commons it was found that if the leaders of the Opposition hated Bute much, they hated Grenville more.

They moved the insertion of the name of the Princess Dowager as one of the members of the royal family whom the King might nominate Regent, if it should please him.

Even Grenville had not the boldness publicly to disparage his royal master's royal mother; the Princess's name was inserted by a unanimous vote in the list of those from whom the King was empowered to select the Regent, and the amendment was gladly accepted by the House of Lords.[18] In spite, however, of the unanimity of the two Houses on the question, it will probably be thought that the authors of the amendment, by which it was proposed to address the King with an entreaty to name in the bill the person to whom he desired to intrust the Regency, acted more in the spirit of the constitution than those who were contented that the name should be omitted; indeed, that statesmen of the present century agree in holding that an arrangement of such importance should be made by the Houses of Parliament, in concurrence with the sovereign, and not by the sovereign alone, is shown by the steps taken to provide for a Regency in the event of the demise of the reigning sovereign while the heir was a minor, in the last and in the present reign, the second bill (that of 1840) being in this respect of the greater authority, since Lord Melbourne, the Prime-minister, did not propose it without previously securing the approval of the Duke of Wellington, in his character of leader of the Opposition.
We pass over for a moment the administration of Lord Rockingham, as we have already passed over the taxation of our North American Colonies by Mr.Grenville, because it will be more convenient to take all the transactions relating to that subject together when we arrive at the time when the troubles arising out of the policy of the different administrations toward those Colonies were brought to a head by the breaking out of civil war.