mentary reform had cooled down in the usual way. Fox and Sheridan were the only men among them who warmly supported Pitt's proposal. Lord Rockingham, Lord John Cavendish, and the ultra-radical Duke of Richmond had suddenly been seized with fears for the safety of the Constitution; and Burke not only withheld his support, but "attacked William Pitt in a scream of passion, and swore parliament was, and always had been, precisely what it ought to be."* The division, however, was more favourable to the reformers than might have been expected. Though the motion was rejected, it was by a majority of twenty only. Fifty years passed before they had so good a division again.†

Lord Rockingham died in 1782. His cabinet had lasted about three months. Lord Shelburne took his place at the head of the Treasury; and Fox and Burke having resigned, Pitt was regarded as the fittest person to supply the deficit of genius thus occasioned in the party. He had scarcely completed his twenty-third year, but his colleagues proposed to him, and he accepted, without hesitation, the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer.§ A minister of finance at such an age was a wonder among men. Adam Smith, in his person, was on the steps of power.

He was known to be on good

*R. B. Sheridan to Fitzpatrick, May 20, 1782.

+ Lord Macaulay's "Biographies-Pitt," p. 156.

July 1, ætat 52. "Lord Stanhope," vol. vii. pp. 181-2.

§ Lord Stanhope, vol. vii. p. 185.

| Goldwin Smith's "Lectures on Pitt," p. 54.

terms with Fox, and was deputed to invite his return to the government he had forsaken. But his mediation was of no avail. Fox disliked and distrusted Shelburne. He would not act with him; Pitt would not betray him. They parted, and never met again in a private room. Perhaps they accomplished the ends of their being better apart than they could have done together. There is a gain in individual development greater than that which comes of mutual compromise.

Before the close of 1782* Lord Shelburne and his colleagues were compelled to negotiate for peace with France, Spain, and Holland, and to recognise the independence of the thirteen American colonies. Often had the premier declared that he would never do this. More than once he had said in parliament that the minister who should sign the independence of America “would consummate the ruin of his country, and must be a traitor." The sun of England, he believed, would set for ever if her Western Colonies rose into self-governed states. It is difficult to conceive how wise men could talk such nonsense, as if great nations had never flourished after dismemberment, and even derived new life from it.

Turning away from Pitt, his natural ally, Fox declined on North, a most unnatural one. Nine months before, he and Burke had threatened Lord North with impeachment, and had upbraided him as the type of imbecile and arbitrary ministers. To unite with such a statesman was

* Speech from the Throne, December 5, 1782.

to forfeit his claim to consistency, and to incur the charge of indulging private pique, and of being restlessly ambitious to regain power. He is defended on the ground of his anxiety to infuse new mental vigour into the Whigs; but his best friends allow that his conduct in this matter was deeply to be regretted. During seven years he had declaimed against the American war, and he now joined with its promoters in censuring the treaty of peace. .* In January, 1783, his intention of uniting with them closely became more apparent than ever, and Pitt, who was recovering from illness, and spoke when the House was tired, lost his good humour. Forgetting how dangerous it is to attack a wit, he advised Sheridan to confine himself to the amusement of audiences at the theatre. This advice

provoked an admirable retort. "After what I have seen and heard to-night," said Sheridan, "I really feel strongly tempted to venture on a competition with so great an artist as Ben Jonson, and to bring on the stage a second Angry Boy." The laugh was turned against the petulant young Chancellor, and for some time he went by the name of the Angry Boy.

But he was not the man to be silenced by repartee. 'Not many days after, he assailed the Coalition in all its weakest points. It was hated by the King, distrusted even by its friends, and repudiated by the people; it * Jesse's "George III.," vol. ii. pp. 398–408.

+ See Moore's "Life of Sheridan," vol. i. pp. 388-90; Ben Jonson's Alchymist.

February 21, 1783.

stultified the personal antecedents of its chiefs; it was an ill-omened and unnatural marriage, and if it were not yet consummated, he knew of a just and lawful impediment, and in the name of the public weal he forbade the banns. But in spite of the enormous disparity, the political lovers were pledged, and their incongruous union was duly sealed. They saw that Shelburne and his colleagues could not stand. They defeated them twice in the teeth of Pitt's strenuous resistance. They compelled them to resign, and thus stormed their way into the presence of a reluctant master. Often did the King entreat Pitt to become premier, but as often did the juvenile orator refuse. He knew how to resist importunity, and could bear to be called faint-hearted by his sovereign. His hour was coming, but it was not yet come. He grasped at no transient elevation, but aspired to a permanent seat. He had a life before him. Let Fox disport himself for an hour on the dizzy height, his partner would soon drag him over the precipice, and his fall would be great!

When did so young an aspirant for political power ever resist thus the importunities of a king? Not satisfied with plying him through Dundas, the Lord Advocate, and Rigby, George III. wrote several times to Pitt with his own hand,* revealing his distress, and urging him to accept the premiership. Already he had sounded Earl Gower and William Wyndham (afterwards Lord Grenville) in vain; public affairs were in confusion; the Treaty of

* From March 23 to March 25, 1783.

Peace with France was not yet signed;* the Treasury was locked up; arrears of wages owed by the government were unpaid; soldiers and sailors were in mutiny; when two youths of twenty-four years of age each declined the service of his Majesty as premiers, and the King was compelled to write to William Pitt, saying briefly :

"MR. PITT,

"I am much hurt to find you are determined to decline at an hour when those who have any regard for the Constitution, as established by law, ought to stand forth against the most daring and unprincipled faction that the annals of this kingdom ever produced.

"G. R."

The Whigs, therefore, under Fox and the Duke of Portland, were installed in April, 1783, and Lord North, the former representative of absolutism and regal obstinacy, was numbered among them. He had been for many years the King's most intimate adviser and friend. He knew his master's weaknesses, and was regarded by him as a traitor. He now adopted several of Fox's axioms, maintained that no Sovereign of England ought to be his own minister, and that the King should have only the semblance of power. The Duke of Portland, whom he and Fox thought it convenient to place at the head of the cabinet, was a mere cipher, "a fit block," as

*It was signed by Franklin, September 3, 1783, on which occasion he wore the spotted velvet coat in which he was abused by Wedderburn.(See Diary of William Wilberforce.)