task either of concluding a peace or waging a war; and having thus a point of agreement and a common cause, it was natural and proper that Pitt should endeavour to combine their several talents in one compact and imposing ministry. An An enemy of giant stature was plotting and arming against our national existence; and little time was left for party politics or internal change. The cabinet which Pitt would form should include the first men of the time. There Grenville and Windham should unite under higher sanction than had hitherto united them; there Fox and Lord Eldon, despite their wide differences, should stand side by side; there Grey and Castlereagh should alike support the throne; while the wit and fancy of Canning and Sheridan would skirmish, like light cavalry, in the van of Pitt's heavier fire.

To most kings such a cabinet would have been highly acceptable, since it was to comprise all parties, and to convert opponents into friends. But George III. was unalterably prejudiced against Fox, and believed his liberal principles to be dangerous alike to religion and to the State. All who stood nearest to royalty feared that if Fox's admission to office were pressed upon him, it would cause a relapse into lunacy. On the 7th of May, Lord Eldon called on Pitt at his residence at No. 14, York Place, and took him in his own coach to Buckingham House. He would not be admitted into the royal presence till he had obtained from the physicians in attendance answers in writing to questions, written down also,

respecting the effect which his conversation might have on the King's health. He found George III., as we have already seen, compliant on all matters excepting Fox's return; and he was so complimentary, that, when Pitt congratulated him on his looking so much better than he did after his illness in 1801, he said: "It is not to be wondered at. I was then on the point of parting with an old friend, and I am now about to regain one."

Pitt was obliged to communicate to Fox the result of his interview with the King. Fox behaved well. He betrayed neither anger nor surprise. He was too old, he said, to care for office; but he should advise his faithful friends to support the administration, and he trusted that Pitt would be able to find places for them. To this the new premier readily assented, and a meeting was to take place between the "mighty chiefs" the next day. Unfortunately it never came off, for a gathering of Fox's friends was held the same evening at Carlton House— then the head-quarters of the Whig army-and at this they decided that, their leader being excluded from the government, they would take no part in it themselves. The King saw "with astonishment" that the Opposition assembled in the palace of his son and heir; but he need not have been apprehensive. It would have been a relief to him if he could have foreseen the perfidy which he would have ascribed to the Prince's returning wisdom.

Lord Grenville, afterwards prime minister, who had been Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1791, stood aloof

with Fox from the new administration; and Pitt was sorely puzzled how to construct a cabinet out of the poor materials left in his hands. Addington meanwhile delivered up the seals of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and refused the peerage for himself, and the pension for his wife, which the King earnestly pressed on his acceptance. It was not long before he was reconciled to Pitt, for whom he had always a strong affection. It was mortifying to him to be passed by his old friend in the parks without a bow; and when he found one day to his surprise that Pitt greeted him, he showed every disposition to meet his successor half way. In the December of 1804 they met at Combe Wood, the seat of Lord Hawkesbury, afterwards Lord Liverpool, which was situated between Pitt's villa on Putney Heath and Addington's residence in Richmond Park. Their interview passed off very pleasantly; and the redintegratio amorum was sealed by a conversation of three hours on the first day, and one hour on the second. "I am sure," Pitt said to Wilberforce very soon after, "you are glad to hear that Addington and I are one again. I think they are a little hard upon us in finding fault with our making it up, when we have been friends from our childhood, and our fathers were so before us; while they say nothing to Grenville for uniting with Fox, though they have been fighting all their lives."

William Pitt may well be placed beside those whom Juvenal and Johnson adduced as examples of the vanity of human wishes. His second administration brought

him down with sorrow to the grave. The prestige of his former rule was abated, and his majority was reduced. His burden of daily toil was increased by the incompetency of his fellow-labourers. He had not a single cabinet colleague ever heard in debate, nor indeed any auxiliary at all save Dundas, now Lord Melville,* who was charged with peculation, † censured by the House of Commons, and ejected from the Admiralty. It was a heavy blow for Pitt, whose feelings on such misdemeanours were highly sensitive. His voice faltered in parliament when he spoke of it, his lips quivered, and, calm as he was usually, he almost wept. Indeed, Lord Fitzharris distinctly saw the tears trickling down his cheeks when, in the course of the proceedings against Melville, the Speaker gave the casting vote against the government. Melville was his old friend, and the disgrace he incurred himself and brought on his colleagues tended, in Lord Fitzharris's opinion, to shorten Pitt's life. He was anything but a favourite with the public. Nobody thought well of him, according to Milner; duplicity and artifice were esteemed parts of his character as early as the year 1792.‡

War with Spain followed war with France; and disasters and disgraces trod on each other's heels. The

* Brougham's "Historical Sketches: Marquess Wellesley."

"Annual Register," 1805, chap. vii.

Dean of Carlisle to W. Wilberforce, April 9, 1792; "Life of Wilberforce," vol. ii. p. 27.

cess.

King became blind, or nearly so, in his sixty-seventh year. A cataract had formed over one eye by the end of June, 1805, and a second was forming over the other. But this affliction did not make him more compliant as regards the admission of Fox into the cabinet. On the 17th of September the premier made another effort to bend the royal purpose in this matter, but without sucAddington had in January been created Lord Sidmouth, and sworn in as President of the Privy Council; but he soon forgot his altered position, and took upon himself to interfere in the administration in a manner unsuited to Pitt's supremacy and haughty disposition. He almost quarrelled with the prime minister again; and because he could not have his own way in the appointment of Melville's successor as First Lord of the Admiralty, he resigned, with several of his friends.

Nothing could be more undignified than the mode of his retirement. He forced his conversation on the King for more than an hour. The Prince of Wales called him (with an emphatic past participle) "that insignificant puppy ;" and what George III. called him, when "plagued to death" with his prosiness, is only to be expressed by asterisks. It was necessary to fill up the vacant places, and the opportunity of restoring Fox to his natural eminence seemed admirable. But the blind old King was determined, he said, to have nothing more to do with Fox or Grenville: he could not trust them, and they could have no confidence in him. In the preceding May they