The Duke of Grafton's administration, composed as it was of the most heterogeneous materials, contained within itself the elements of its dissolution ; and its fall was accelerated by the proceedings of the House of Commons relating to John Wilkes, and the measures respecting America, both of which had excited a violent fermentation in the public mind. Upon the opening of the session of 1770, Lord Camden declared in the House of Lords his opposition to government, and actually voted for Lord Chatham's amendment to the ministerial address. Such a declaration by the lord chancellor, accompanied by an unequivocal act of hostility to the government, necessarily led to his removal from the woolsack.
Lord Camden as judge in the court of chancery has won high praise from the profession. Only one of his decisions was reversed, and that reversal Lord Eldon is said by Lord Campbell to have pronounced probably wrong. His manner iu the court was simple, unaffected, perhaps a little too informal; at any rate it was considered to contrast unfavourably with what has been termed 'the lofty dignity' of Lord Mansfield. In conveying his ideas he has been charged with the adoption of too colloquial a style and with the greater fault of prolixity; but then, on the other hand, his statements were always luminous, and his prolixity arose from the desire he evinced to satisfy those interested by viewing the question at issue in every conceivable light.
With the surrender of the seals in 1770, Lord Camden's judicial career finally closed; and during the remaining twenty-four years of his life he was entirely a political character. His general parliamentary conduct during the remarkable session of 1770, consisted in a strenuous opposition to the policy of Lord North's administration ; and Lord Mansfield was on most occasions his personal antagonist. The doctrine asserted by Lord Mansfield on the trials of Woodfall and Miller, that the jury, in cases of libel, were to decide upon the fact of publication only (a question which was not finally determined until the passing of Mr. Fox's Libel Act in 1792), was warmly repro bated by Lord Camden in the House of Lords; and upou this and upon other occasions he indulged in a degree of personal bitterness towards the chief justice which is variously accounted for by con temporary writers, but which certainly derogates from the dignity and general merit of Lord Camden's character. Lord Camden also
uniformly opposed the ill-advised policy of Lord North respecting America; and in 1778 he signed, and is said to have framed the protest of the Lords against the rejection of Lord Rockingham's motion for an address to the king, praying him to disavow the obnoxious manifesto of the American commissioners. On the recal of Lord Rockingham and the Whigs to power in 1782, Lord Camden was appointed president of the council; but was displaced upon the forma tion of the Coalition•ministry in 1783. To this administration he placed himself in zealous opposition; and in the debate on Mr. Fox's India Bill in the House of Lords, he distinguished himself by an able and eloquent speech against the measure. The fate of this bill put an end to the short existence of the Coalition-ministry; and soon after the formation of Mr. Pitt's administration, Lord Camden was rein stated iu the office of president of the council, which he continued to bold during the remainder of his life. Though now upwards of seventy years of age, and though his health was considerably impaired by repeated attacks of gout, he continued his attendance in the House of Lords, and actively assisted in the several debates upon the Indian Judicature Bill, the Wino Excise Bill, and several other important measures which were introduced during the early part of Mr. Pitt's administration ; and upon the occasion of the king's derangement in 1788, he introduced the plan proposed by government for the establish ment of a regency. In 1786 he was created Earl Camden, and received the additional title of Viscount Bayham, of Bayham Abbey, in the county of Kent. The last occasion upon which he took a part in the debates was upon the discussion of Mr. Fox's celebrated Libel Act, in 1792. The question of the province of juries in cases of libel was one which during the whole of his life had deeply interested him: in his defence of Owen, in 1752, he had warmly asserted the popular doctrine upon this subject; and on the introduction of this bill into the House of Lords he particularly distinguished himself by the animation and eloquence with which, in advanced age, he maintained the principle which in his early years he had often zealously espoused. Lord Camden died April 13th, 1794, in the eightieth year of his age.