[371] Not less gloomy was the view which George Grenville, a minister eminently diligent and practical, took of our financial situation.

The nation must, he conceived, sink under a debt of a hundred and forty millions, unless a portion of the load were borne by the American colonies.

The attempt to lay a portion of the load on the American colonies produced another war.

That war left us with an additional hundred millions of debt, and without the colonies whose help had been represented as indispensable.

Again England was given over; and again the strange patient persisted in becoming stronger and more blooming in spite of all the diagnostics and prognostics of State physicians.