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From that and abundant other similar indications throughout the secretary's letters, we gather that his opinion of the amiable, rather ingenuous, entirely unfortunate young nobleman whom he had the honour to serve was not very exalted. A secretary, after all, is a sort of valet, an intellectual valet; and to their valets, we know, few men can succeed in being heroes. But with the broader outlook which distance lends us, we now perceive that Mr. Innes did his lordship less than justice. After all, no man may bear a burden beyond his strength, and the burden imposed upon the young colonial Governor in that time of crisis by a headstrong, blundering Government at home was one that he could not even lift. Therefore, like a wise man—in spite of Mr. Innes—he contemplated it with rueful humour, and temporized as best he could, whilst waiting for events that should either lessen that burden or increase his own capacity.

There is also the fact that whilst, like a dutiful servant of the Crown, he was quite ready where possible to afford an obedience that should be unquestioning, it was beyond nature that this obedience should be enthusiastic. He had examined for himself the lamentable question that was agitating the Empire; and the fact that he was married to a colonial lady may have served to counteract the bias of his official position, leading him to adopt in secret the view of the majority—not merely in the colonies, but also at home—that disaster must attend the policy of the Ministry, driven by a wilful, despotic monarch who understood the cultivation of turnips better than the husbandry of an empire. He cannot have avoided the reflection that the Government he served was determined to reap the crop that Grenville had sown with the Stamp Act, determined to pursue the obstinate policy which—the phrase is Pitt's, I think—must trail the ermine of the British King in the blood of British subjects. Lord William perceived—indeed, it required no very acute perception—how oppression was provoking resistance, and how resistance was accepted as provocation for further oppression. Therefore, he remained as far as possible supine, thankful, perhaps, in his secret heart that he was without the means to execute the harsh orders reaching him from home, and obstinately hoping that conciliatory measures might yet be adopted to restore harmony between the parent country and the children overseas whom she had irritated into insubordination. Towards this he may have thought that he could best contribute by bearing himself with careless affability, as an appreciative guest of the colony he was sent to govern. He showed himself freely with his colonial wife at race-meetings, balls, and other diversions, as Mr. Innes records, and he affected an amiable blindness to anything that bore the semblance of sedition.