To such natures as his the sustaining power of high religious principle seems to be peculiarly necessary; and unfortunately Shrewsbury had, in the act of shaking off the yoke of that superstition in which he had been brought up, liberated himself also from more salutary bands which might perhaps have braced his too delicately constituted mind into stedfastness and uprightness.
Destitute of such support, he was, with great abilities, a weak man, and, though endowed with many amiable and attractive qualities, could not be called an honest man.

For his own happiness, he should either have been much better or much worse.

As it was, he never knew either that noble peace of mind which is the reward of rectitude, or that abject peace of mind which springs from impudence and insensibility.

Few people who have had so little power to resist temptation have suffered so cruelly from remorse and shame.
To a man of this temper the situation of a minister of state during the year which followed the Revolution must have been constant torture.
The difficulties by which the government was beset on all sides, the malignity of its enemies, the unreasonableness of its friends, the virulence with which the hostile factions fell on each other and on every mediator who attempted to part them, might indeed have discouraged a more resolute spirit.

Before Shrewsbury had been six months in office, he had completely lost heart and head.