Prime Minister
Grenville's first act was to prosecute John Wilkes for publishing in The North Briton newspaper an article deriding King' George III's speech made on 23 April 1763. Wilkes was prosecuted for "seditious libel" and, after a duel with a Grenville supporter Samuel Martin, fled to France. Wilkes was later elected and re-elected by the Middlesex constituency. He was continually refused admission to parliament by parliament, and proved a problem to several successive governments.
As Britain was trying to recover from the costs of the Seven Years War and now in dire need of finances for the British army in the American colonies, Grenville's most immediate task was to restore the nation's finances. He also had to deal with the fall-out from Pontiac's Rebellion, which erupted in North America in 1763. Prominent measures of his administration included the prosecution of John Wilkes and the passing of the American Stamp Act 1765, which led to the first symptoms of alienation between American colonies and Great Britain.
Further information: Grenville MinistryRead more about this topic: George Grenville
Famous quotes related to prime minister:
“One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Being prime minister is a lonely job.... you cannot lead from the crowd.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“If one had to worry about one’s actions in respect of other people’s ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)