While the eyes of all Europe were fixed on Paris, Pitt ostentatiously averted his gaze. He was deaf to the shrieks of rage and panic that arose from the convulsions of France. He determinedly set himself, to use the phrase of Candide, to cultivate his own garden and ignore all others. Let France settle her internal affairs as she chooses, was his unvarying principle. It is strange to read the uneventful record of the flat prosperous years as they passed in England from July 1789 to January 1793, and to contrast them with the contemporary stress and tumult in Europe.

The history of England and of Pitt during this period hardly fills a page. Pitt's budgets -- to him the most important events of the year -- are, with one exception, brief. The salient questions are questions of emancipation. There are two personal episodes, great but not equal: the final dismissal of the intolerable Thurlow, and the heroic quarrel between Fox and Burke. Thurlow had, as Pitt's Chancellor, both publicly and privately, led the opposition to Pitt's Government.

The origin of the grudge that produced this scandal cannot now be ascertained -- some unguarded phrase had probably rankled. Thurlow relied absolutely on the King, and thought himself royally impervious to ministerial change. He had been Chancellor with North, with Fox, and with Shelburne; he could well afford to snap his fingers at Pitt.

He was therefore taken by surprise, but blurted out the cynical truth: "I did not think that the King would have parted with me so easily. As to that other man (Pitt) he has done to me just what I should have done tohimif I could." The schism between Fox and Burke is not merely one of the most dramatic scenes and one of the most interesting personal passages in history, but it marks a great epoch in party growth.

A thick crust of Whiggism was sloughed off, and there appeared a first, raw, callow germ of the Liberalism that was to grow in silence for forty years, and then assume a sudden and overwhelming preponderance. There were some revolutionary symptoms in the country, notably in Scotland, where they were most justifiable; but systematised repression had hardly yet begun. It was difficult to listen to Pitt, and believe that there was anything more stirring in the world than the tax on female servants, or the subjection of tobacco to excise.

There was indeed in 1790 a dissolution of the Parliament which had now lived six years; but it was uneventful, as it fully renewed the mandate to Pitt. Tranquillity was only occasionally interrupted by the sonorous voice of the Minister, proclaiming, as from a muezzin's minaret, the continued peace and prosperity of the Empire. Historians have hardly done justice to the dogged determination with which Pitt ignored the French Revolution.

So far from this being a period of coercion, it was one of almost competing liberalism. Attempts were madereluctantly opposed by the Minister under the pressure of the bishops-to repeal, in the interest of nonconformists, those obsolete clauses of the Test Act which still remained on the statute-book. The demand of Roman Catholics for the abolition of some of the disabling enactments by which they were oppressed, was actually acceded to.

Fox introduced a Bill, substantially the same as one that had been ineffectually proposed by Chatham, for enabling juries to give a verdict as to the character of an alleged libel as well as to the fact of its publication, He naturally received the warm support of Pitt; and the warm support of Pitt as naturally ensured the bitter hostility of Pitt's chancellor. Thurlow, however, was only able to delay the measure for a single session.

On an even nobler stage than that of domestic emancipation, Fox and Pitt were able to display a generous rivalry in the cause of freedom. In 1788 the physicians declared that Wilberforce could not live a fortnight. On his death-bed, as he believed, Wilberforce exacted from Pitt a solemn promise to undertake the cause of the abolition of the Slave Trade.

In May, therefore, of that year Pitt, ardently supported by Burke and Fox, induced the House of Commons to resolve unanimously to take the question of the Slave Trade into consideration during the next session; and a Bill for its provisional regulation was actually carried. In 1789 Wilberforce was able to exert his own mellifluous eloquence in the cause. But it was in 1792 that Pitt set an imperishable seal on his advocacy of the question, by the delivery of a speech which all authorities concur in placing before any other effort of his genius; and certainly no recorded utterance of his touches the imaginative flight of the peroration. He rose exhausted, and immediately before rising was obliged to take medicine to enable him to speak. But his prolonged and powerful oration showed no signs of disability; indeed, for the last twenty minutes he seemed, said shrewd critics, to be nothing less than inspired. He burst as it were into a prophetic vision of the civilization that shall dawn upon Africa, and recalled the not less than African barbarism of heathen Britain; exclaiming, as the first beams of the morning sun pierced the windows of Parliament, and appeared to suggest the quotation:

Nos . . . primus equis Oriens afflavit anhelis, Illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.

Fox was loud in his generous admiration. Windham, an even more hostile critic, avowed that, for the first time, he understood the possible compass of human eloquence Sheridan, most hostile of all, was even passionate in his praise. Grey, who ceded to none in the bitterness and expression of his enmity, ceded also to none in his enthusiasm of eulogy. To those who consider Pitt a sublime parliamentary hack, greedy of power and careful only of what might conducive to power, his course on the Slave Trade, where he had no interest to gain, and could only offend powerful supporters, may well be commended.

Europe

It is now, however, necessary to turn from the recital of home politics to the position abroad, where Europe was watching with awe and apprehension the gathering portents which presaged some unknown horror of convulsion.

It is doing Pitt no injustice to say that, in the earlier Years of his administration, his mind was given rather to domestic questions than to foreign affairs. The peace of 1783 found the vessel of the State, to resume the ancient and imperishable metaphor, in so grievous a condition that the first object of the captain was neces. sarily to repair and refit her, so that at some future date she might once more take the seas, though with a less imperial bearing. He had, indeed, to restore vital warmth and consistence to the shattered fragments of empire. He had, therefore, at once applied himself to place on a permanent and workable footing those novel relations, which had been hurriedly adjusted with Ireland under the pressure of calamitous defeat.

He had strained every nerve to restore the ruined finance of the country, which was always the darling object of his political life. And, moreover, at the head of a passive and silent host, he had to maintain his position against the most powerful artillery of debate ever directed against a Treasury Bench. What wonder, then, if he had but little attention to give to those external complications in which Great Britain could at the best play so subordinate a partl Even during the grave crisis in Holland, which first forced foreign affairs upon his notice, the only letter for months that he addressed to our minister at the Hague was to inquire as to the operation of the Dutch succession duties, in the hope that an analogous tax might furnish him with a new financial resource.

At the same time it would be unfair to Chatham to suppose that foreign policy, on which he so largely built his own fame, occupied a secondary place in the training of his favourite son. It cannot be doubted that Pitt would learn from his father that a foreign policy required firmness and purpose ; that in that, as in other things, vacillation was the one unpardonable sin; but that the arm of this country should never be put further forward than it could be maintained.

Even in those days of exhaustion, our means were less inadequate to our ends than now; we were less scattered over the world; and our army, relatively to the armies of the Continent, was respectable, and even powerful. Nevertheless Pitt, as we shall see, had to draw back, although his first steps on the Continent were marked with something of the happy audacity of Chatham.

Holland

It was in Holland that his first complication arose. On that familiar board all the great powers of Europe were moving their pawns-the fitful philanthropist, Joseph the Second, who had opened the game with his usual disastrous energy; the old fox at Berlin; the French monarchy, still bitten with its suicidal mania of fomenting republics against Great Britain; and the crafty voluptuary of St. Petersburg.

The game lay ultimately between England and Prussia on one side, and France on the other, though it is hardly worth recalling now. Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, represented the English interest with consummate dexterity, but the final success lay with the big battalions of Prussia. Nevertheless, honour is due to the firm attitude of the British Government; and the treaties of alliance between Great Britain on the one side, and Prussia and Holland on the other, marked the first diplomatic success that England had achieved for a generation.

We obtain, too, in this transaction an interesting glimpse of Pitt's policy. Lord Malmesbury has preserved for us the minutes of a cabinet held on the 23d of May 1787. Pitt then said that, though war was only a possible and not a probable result of the affair, yet that the mere possibility should make England pause, and consider whether anything could compensate for arresting the growing affluence and prosperity of the country -- a growth so rapid as to make her in a few years capable of grappling with any force that France could raise.

He was, in fact, nursing England through the convalescence after the American War for the possibility of a great effort; and it was difficult, by any allurements of foreign success, to induce him to forsake the course which he had marked out, until the fullness of time should come.

Spain

A second complication arose with Spain. That great country seemed in the last state of decrepitude. Her monarchy and her religion, the bases of her former splendour, were fast rotting into superstitions; but she abated no jot of her highest historical pretensions. Her court was the common ground of priests and gamekeepers; her army, navy, and finance were a vast scene of ruin. Her princes burlesqued even the Bourbon passion for the chase, and shrank from no extravagance in the name of sport.

One day they would bombard with artillery the 100,000 head of large game that haunted the vast domains of Aranjuez; on another they would have a solemn battue of all the little birds that fluttered through the gardens and pecked at the fruit. And yet Spain was taken almost as seriously by others as by herself. Pitt himself, in giving his reasons for abandoning the Russian armaments, spoke of the gaining Spain as one of the chief objects of the concession. She was now governed by that king who was to hand over Spain and the Indies to Napoleon like a dish at breakfast, and vanish ingloriously out of history with his queen and their favourite at Bayonne.

In 1789 an English vessel was seized off Vancouver Island by two Spanish ships of war, and her crew imprisoned on the ground that a trespass had been committed against the sovereign rights of Spain. This was not a matter which the most pacific minister could afford to ignore; one who loved peace less might have easily fanned England into as fierce a flame as was roused by the alleged loss of Jenkins's ears. But Pitt kept his negotiations as secret as he could.

At last, in 1790, a vote of credit had to be asked, and the usual measures taken as for a possibly immediate war. The situation was further complicated by the French Government- then a government half-way between the Monarchy and the Terror -fitting out a fleet as a measure of precaution. This menace had at least the advantage of showing the anxiety of Pitt to avoid all interference or contact with France. He pursued a firm but conciliatory course, and the Court of Spain, after one or two mysterious lurches, agreed to a convention honourable to England and not dishonourable to herself.

So far all had been well. Without war the minister had raised his reputation, and England had once more raised her head. It is true that peace had been preserved in the main by the interior complications of France.

Spain had appealed to France for aid under the Family Compact of 1762; but the French Assembly, in considering the question, had wandered off into constitutional discussions, which indirectly landed her in peace; to which conclusion a naval mutiny at Brest may also have contributed. On this abstention Florida Blanca, the Spanish minister, had grounded the necessity of his concession to England. It is also true that Pitt had spent over three millions in naval preparations.

Yet it seems clear that the powerful fleet, thus produced "in the readiest and most perfect state ever known in the annals of Great Britain," as Auckland writes, was scarcely less effective than the neutrality of France in determining the attitude of Spain; and the heaviest peaceful expenditure of this sort is much less costly than the smallest European war.

Russo-Turkish War 1791

So far, then, all had been smooth and peaceful and cheap. But now a change was to come. Pitt was to put out his hand too far, and to be compelled to withdraw it with some appearance of discomfiture. If there is one point on which history repeats itself, it is this: that at certain fixed intervals the Russian Empire feels a need of expansion; that that necessity is usually gratified at the expense of the Turk; that the other Powers, or some of them, take alarm, and attempt measures for curtailing the operation, with much the same result that the process of pruning produces on a healthy young tree.

One of these periods had occurred in 1791. The war declared by Catherine II. was running the usual course. The Russians had gained several decisive victories, and were preparing to reap the fruit of them.

During the three years and a half that the war had lasted, Pitt had not been inactive. A main result of the operations in the Netherlands had been the conclusion of an offensive and defensive alliance between Holland, Prussia, and Great Britain.

In 1788 these powers had by their attitude averted the destruction which Gustavus III. of Sweden had brought on himself, at the hands of the Danes and Russians, in rashly attacking the Muscovite Empire. Again, in 1790, they had had no difficulty in detaching Austria, then governed by Leopold II., not merely a prince but a statesman, from the Russian alliance.

And now, in 1791, their object was to induce Russia to content herself with a smaller share of recent conquests than was agreeable to her, and more especially to insist on the cession by her of the fortress of Oczakow at the entrance of the Dnieper into the Black Sea, which she had taken with an appalling loss of life at the close of 1788.

In this policy of the triple alliance, it is necessary to note that Prussia took an eager part, but Holland none. Pitt himself was strenuous. Chatham had avowed himself Cc quite a Russ," and the traditions of the Whig party had pointed in the same direction. But foreign policy necessarily varies with the varying importance of states.

There is, indeed, no such a thing as a traditional foreign policy in the sense of its being necessary and inevitable, any more than, in all conditions of the atmosphere, a ship carries the same traditional sails, or a man wears the same traditional clothes. The instinct of self-preservation guides the European powers with the same certainty as weather moves sheep on the hill; it has at different periods produced combinations against the dominion of Charles V. and against the dominion of the Ottomans, against France and against Russia, against Venice and against the Pope. On this occasion there was no necessity for Whigs to be friendly to Russian policy.

The Empire of Catherine the Second was a very different affair to the Empire of Peter the Great. It was absorbing Poland, it was threatening the Mediterranean, it had swallowed the Crimea, it had become a European Power. Nevertheless, it might well be questioned, if war, without Austria, and with the aid only of Prussia and the disabled Porte; war which would certainly check the recovery of Great Britain and lose the gains of eight years; and which must be carried on in regions so remote, under circumstances so unfavourable, could be justified by any such exigency as had arisen.

That the crisis should have overcome the passionate peacefulness of Pitt, his rooted economy, and his devotion to domestic policy, shows at least his overwhelming sense of its importance.

On the 28th of March 1791 a short message was brought from the King to the House, stating the failure of his Government to bring abput peace between Russia and Turkey, and demanding an augmentation of the navy "to add weight to his representations." Fox received this announcement with unusual solemnity, and asked for further information. Pitt haughtily refused to afford more than was furnished in the message-an amazing reticence, when the circumstances are considered; and one which the Foreign Secretary, Leeds, himself denounced, after he had resigned.

The next afternoon was fixed for the discussion; and before the dawn of another day Pitt had discovered his mistake. The country had had enough of war; the taste of the American campaigns was still hot in the mouth. It had never heard of Oczakow, and was not prepared to renew its sacrifices that that swampy spot might remain a Turkish possession. More than that, the Baltic trade was of enormous extent; its annual value was computed at three millions sterling; the commercial classes were ablaze. Woronzow, the Russian ambassador, finding out from Leeds what was in contemplation, had gone to Fox and excited all the energies of Opposition.

Nor was the Cabinet by any means united. The measure, planned outside it, had, so to speak, been rushed upon it; and its ministerial opponents remained unconvinced. Richmond, one of Pitt's ablest colleagues, was hostile; Grenville, whose influence over the Premier appeared then to be on the increase, always cold, waxed colder; the mutes trembled and wavered. Pitt, his brother, and the Chancellor had been the strongest advocates for action.

But Pitt, in spite of his enormous majorities on the message -- 97 to 34 in the House of Lords, and 228 to 135 in the House of Commons -- resolved to recede. He had received some of the secret warnings that forebode the cyclones in which Governments go down. Camden, indeed, thought the Government would go down. Grafton made his sons, both members of Parliament, refuse their support. The action, so hurriedly determined, was as hurriedly withdrawn. On the 22d of March, 1791, the Cabinet had agreed to send fleets to the Baltic and the Black Sea, and to make a representation jointly with Prussia at St. Petersburg, stating that the two allies were under the necessity of at once taking part in the war against Russia, should satisfactory assurances respectin Oczakow not be received within a certain definite time.

The messenger, with the joint representation, set off for Berlin on the 27th; the royal message was delivered to Parliament on the 28tb, discussed and voted on the 29th. On the 30th the Cabinet met, and showed a disposition to retreat. On the 31st two Cabinets were held, at the second of which there was a general collapse; so general, that Thurlow feigned sleep to avoid being a party to it. It was determined to send a messenger to Berlin to stop the joint representation. Leeds with spirit declared that, if such a despatch must go, it must go without his signature.

This, however, constituted the least of obstacles; the despatch went, and Leeds resigned. The whole transaction, from the very inception of the policy to its withdrawal, including the parliamentary debate, had taken just nine days. Able writers speak of Pitt's being warned to recede by his declining majorities on this subject. Nothing can be more erroneous. The rapidity of action with him had been equalled, as we have seen, by the rapidity of reaction.

He resolved to recede in a space of twentyfour hours, during which the one division taken gave him a crushing majority. The cool promptitude and courage of his retreat, after a lease of power which would have made most men headstrong, was rare and admirable. Still, it was retreat, absolute and avowed. To drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs, Fawkener was sent to St. Petersburg to try what he could effect by expostulation. It needs no great experience of affairs to know that, when menace has been attempted and has failed, expostulation is only an opportunity for insult. It was an opportunity that Catherine was fully qualified to appreciate.

Fortunately for her purpose, Adair, the friend of Fox, happened to be at St. Petersburg. On him she heaped every compliment and caress, while Fawkener was sent empty away.

The whole transaction is noteworthy for many reasons. The shortness of time during which the policy was framed and reversed is sufficiently remarkable. So, tooi is the unreality of the great majorities in its favour. For it is clear that these votes were reluctantly given, and would have been turned against the Government had the pressure been less, or had the Government proceeded further. The weakness of the support was evidently due to the sudden force of public opinion; which acted with a celerity and a completeness rare in the eighteenth century, and amazing under the circumstances.

The most astonishing circumstance, however, is the undoubted fact that the Government, with all its overwhelming majority, was in imminent danger of dissolution. Storer, a keen watcher of men and events, wrote that, had not Fox been impossible, he could easily have got into office. Auckland, at least equally acute, thought the same: so, as we have seen, did Camden. Pitt himself acknowledged it. In a letter which he addressed to Berlin in explanation of his change of policy, he admits that, had he not receded, he must have fallen. So great, indeed, was the loss of prestige that nothing in all probability saved Pitt, but the fact that Fox was the only alternative.

What was the cause of this catastrophe? High authorities say the Prussian alliance. But it is clear that there was too much reluctance at Berlin itself for this explanation to be adequate. The real rival and enemy on which Prussian ministers kept their eyes fixed then and for near a century afterwards, reigned not at St. Petersburg but at Vienna.

The cause was in reality twofold. Pitt saw the danger to the balance of power in Europe from the constantly growing strength of Russia; and emboldened by his pacific successes in Spain and in Holland, did not doubt that the armies of Prussia and the fleets of Great Britain would awe Catherine, then entirely without allies, into acquiescence. It is not impossible that his calculation was correct. Twice had he played the game of brag successfully, and on the whole he had a right to calculate on a third triumph. But his whole plan was nipped in the bud by the one element on which he had not calculated, the hostility of Parliament and of the country.

Pitt's Growing Isolation

Why then had this not entered into his calculations? There lies the second cause of his disaster: it was his growing isolation. Always secluded, he had become almost inaccessible. Dundas and Grenville were alone admitted to his confidence. An inner cabinet, indeed, is not unfamiliar to us; and, as the numbers constituting cabinets increase, it must become a recognised institution. But Pitt had not the excuse of numbers; nor, indeed, that of impracticable colleagues.

The real reason for the imitation of his confidences was probably his rooted distrust of Thurlow. It was scarcely worth while to summon a meeting of the Cabinet that he might be cursed and betrayed by Thurlow. Nevertheless, his solitude was a grave disability. He was not in touch with his colleagues, still less with the pulse of the people. Had it been otherwise he could scarcely have remained in absolute ignorance of the storm of opposition that his Russian policy was certain to evoke.

And so ends the Oczakow incident. Save a gigantic speech by Fox, it left little behind it. The place itself, like so many spots that have caused, or nearly caused great wars, is forsaken and forgotten. But as an epoch in Pitt's career, as an illustration of his weakness and his strength, the transaction possesses a vital interest, and deserves the most elaborate study. Its political effects endured for a considerable time. It relaxed if it did not dissolve that triple alliance of Prussia, Holland, and Great Britain, which had been so far Pitt's main achievement and object in foreign policy. It caused a grave disparagement on the Continent of Pitt's judgment and Pitt's power. Of this he reaped the fruits later.

As Thurlow remarked with complacency of his chief, there could now be no danger of war while Pitt was in office; for, as he had swallowed the disgrace, it was impossible to conceive one that he could scruple to digest in future.

Pitt's reputation did not merely suffer abroad; it was gravely compromised at home. He had rashly menaced and hurriedly retracted. To his proud spirit the mortification was undoubtedly deep. Burges, then under-secretary for foreign affairs, has left a curious record of a conversation he had with Pitt at this time (April 19, 1791).

Pitt assured him, "On my word of honour, that my sentiments, notwithstanding everything that has passed, are precisely the same as they were, and as the Duke of Leeds's are now. He has had the constancy and courage to act upon them in a manner which must ever do him honour. Circumstances, dreadful circumstances, have made it impossible for me to do the same. I am under the necessity of remaining as I am, in order to avoid consequences of the most Unpleasant nature; but the Duke has acted nobly both to the country and to myself."

The exact import of these expressions it is not necessary to seek; in the mouth of Pitt they are sufficiently remarkable.

Another result, as we have seen, was the resignation of Carmarthen, who had succeeded to the dukedom of Leeds in 1789. In itself the fact had no importance. Leeds was a cypher. He had little capacity. He was both vain and pompous. He was incurably indolent. It is not, therefore, surprising to find that he had become a mere channel and signature stamp for despatches drafted by Pitt. The importance of his retirement arises from the fact that his successor was Grenville. Some have thought that Leeds was slighted out of office, to make room for Grenville. But from the conversation between Pitt and Burges just quoted, it is clear that this is not so. Pitt was anxious to appease Burges, and to confide to him the name of his new chief.

But Pitt expressly declared "that from the variety of difficulties that have occurred, from the number of claims and interests to be discussed, and the multitude of things to be taken into consideration, it was impossible for him to tell with any certainty what that arrangement was likely to be."

Grenville, who played so considerable a part, has dropped out of history from sheer want of sympathy. It is due to that fatal deficiency, congenital and hereditary with him, that he is now barely remembered as a transient and unnoted premier, as the writer of an obsolete pamphlet, as a partner in a sumptuous edition of Homer, and for his behaviour to Pitt. He was not merely one of Pitts nearest relations, being by birth his first cousin, and having married a Pitt, but he owed everything to his great kinsman. Yet he pursued Pitt with the most truculent hostility, to the very death. What human feeling he possessed was reserved for the jobs and sulks of his brother Buckingham. It is strange to read his letters to that most contemptible Of human beings, who daily required incense or consolation or gossip or apology. It was a grievance against Grenville that, when Prime Minister, he did not daily pay his respects to the brother whose vassal he remained. Buckingham frowns; and Grenville's protestations of anguish and contrition and devotion rend the air. It was a grievance against Grenville when he did not, regardless of his oath, transmit cabinet secrets to this benignant relative; and again he has to kiss the dust. Great potentates have been found after death to have always worn some mortifying garment next the skin; Buckingham was Grenville's hair shirt.

Grenville was, or became, the typical Whig of his day; for Fox and Burke, with their blaze of 'passion and genius, were hardly Whigs; they were extremists, one way or another, and the pure Whig hated extremes. They were the gladiators and associates of those sublime personages; they were with them, not of them. Fox perhaps was rather a Liberal than a Whig; and Liberalism represents less the succession to, than the revolt against Whiggery: Burke was a unique and undefinable factor in politics, for both parties may claim him, and both with justice.

The Whig creed lay in a triple divine right: the divine right of the Whig families to govern the Empire; to be maintained by the Empire; to prove their superiority by humbling and bullying the sovereign of the Empire. Grenville was an admirable embodiment of this form of faith. By accident rather than by choice, he became the leader of the Whigs, and Fox's superior minister; he and his brothers each lived on enormous sinecures, Buckingham's amounting, it is said, to £ 25,000 a year; while his tactless treatment first of the King, and then of the Regent, had much to do with the. long exclusion of the Whigs from office. His pride and his principle were so equally unbending that he was apt to confound the two.

It is fair to say that it was not only kings that he treated like dirt; for, as he himself acknowledged, not prematurely, when he was Prime Minister, he was utterly incompetent to deal with men; and when he was Secretary of State our foreign relations suffered from that deficiency. Fox, when in the closest alliance with him, groaned under his impracticability.

By 1797 it is clear that Pitt found him extremely difficult to deal with. Wilberforce notes in July 1797, "Grenville and Pitt very like breaking friendship." The familiar allusions to Grenville in Pitt's private letters to Wellesley amply confirm this view. Most significant of Pitt's experience of him is the fact, that, in the sketch of a combined administration which he drew up in 1804, he substituted Fitzwilliam. as Secretary of State and relegated Grenville to the Presidency of the Council.

It was not only impediments of temper and character that caused Grenville to remain so long out of office. From the time of Pitt's death, it is clear that he ceased to care about politics. Perhaps that blow had really cut deeper than appeared on the surface. Be that as it may, Grenville was obviously not reluctant to leave office in 1807, and certainly never showed any wish to re-enter it.

He was not in harmony with his party as to the war. He had achieved all that his ambition sought. He was so amply, but so strangely, provided for by the State, that the very nature of his sinecure, the holder of which was supposed to audit the First Lord of the Treasury's accounts, was an obstacle to his holding the Premiership; while its income made life too easy. More than that, to so proud a man, the Buckingham system, of which he was a part, must have made politics unendurable.

To so guide a flying squadron of borough nominees as to compel the change of a marquis's coronet into a duke's, was more than Grenville, could stomach, but more than he could avoid. The enchanting shades, the rare shrubs, and the rare books of Dropmore became to him what St. Anne's had been to Fox. Poor devils like Sheridan might groan, but they were of no account. The oligarchy had made up its mind to remain in the country."

Lords Grey and Grenville "had issued their decrees, and would hardly deign to come to London to pick up the seals. It is to Grenville's freezing indifference that we mainly owe the long monopoly of the Tories; disastrous in training to the Whigs, and in loss of power to the country. To him we owe it that Horner never served the public as a minister; that Brougham never knew the cares and responsibilities of such service until too late to benefit by them; that Grey (though he himself was also to blame) was unable to complete his second year of office until he was sixty-six; and that a fair growth of political buds never blossomed at all. With many talents and some qualities, Grenville's career cannot be pronounced fortunate, either for himself or his country.

Chapter VII: The Shadow of the French Revolution