Pitt had now been living many months in retirement.There had been a general election since he had spoken in Parliament; and there were two hundred members who had never heard him.It was known that on this occasion he would be in his place; and curiosity was wound up to the highest point.Unfortunately the short-hand writers were, in consequence of some mistake, shut out on that day from the gallery, so that the newspapers contained only a very meagre report of the proceedings.But several accounts of what passed are extant; and of those accounts the most interesting is contained in an unpublished letter, written by a very young member, John William Ward, afterwards Earl of Dudley.When Pitt rose, he was received with loud cheering.At every pause in his speech there was a burst of applause.The peroration is said to have been one of the most animated and magnificent ever heard in Parliament."Pitt's speech," Fox wrote a few days later, "was admired very much, and very justly.Ithink it was the best he ever made in that style." The debate was adjourned; and on the second night Fox replied in an oration which, as the most zealous Pittites were forced to acknowledge, left the palm of eloquence doubtful.Addington made a pitiable appearance between the two great rivals; and it was observed that Pitt, while exhorting the Commons to stand resolutely by the executive government against France, said not a word indicating esteem or friendship for the Prime Minister.
War was speedily declared.The first consul threatened to invade England at the head of the conquerors of Belgium and Italy, and formed a great camp near the Straits of Dover.On the other side of those Straits the whole population of our island was ready to rise up as one man in defence of the soil.At this conjuncture, as at some other great conjunctures in our history, the conjuncture of 1660, for example, and the conjuncture of 1688, there was a general disposition among honest and patriotic men to forget old quarrels, and to regard as a friend every person who was ready, in the existing emergency, to do his part towards the saving of the state.A coalition of all the first men in the country would, at that moment, have been as popular as the coalition of 1783 had been unpopular.Alone in the kingdom the King looked with perfect complacency on a cabinet in which no man superior to himself in genius was to be found, and was so far from being willing to admit all his ablest subjects to office that he was bent on excluding them all.
A few months passed before the different parties which agreed in regarding the government with dislike and contempt came to an understanding with each other.But in the spring of 1804 it became evident that the weakest of ministries would have to defend itself against the strongest of oppositions, an opposition made up of three oppositions, each of which would, separately, have been formidable from ability, and which, when united, were also formidable from number.The party which had opposed the peace, headed by Grenville and Windham, and the party which had opposed the renewal of the war, headed by Fox, concurred in thinking that the men now in power were incapable of either making a good peace or waging a vigorous war.Pitt had, in 1802, spoken for peace against the party of Grenville, and had, in 1803, spoken for war against the party of Fox.But of the capacity of the cabinet, and especially of its chief, for the conduct of great affairs, he thought as meanly as either Fox or Grenville.Questions were easily found on which all the enemies of the government could act cordially together.The unfortunate First Lord of the Treasury, who had, during the earlier months of his administration, been supported by Pitt on one side, and by Fox on the other, now had to answer Pitt, and to be answered by Fox.Two sharp debates, followed by close divisions, made him weary of his post.It was known, too, that the Upper House was even more hostile to him than the Lower, that the Scotch representative peers wavered, that there were signs of mutiny among the bishops.In the cabinet itself there was discord, and, worse than discord, treachery.It was necessary to give way:
the ministry was dissolved; and the task of forming a government was entrusted to Pitt.
Pitt was of opinion that there was now an opportunity, such as had never before offered itself, and such as might never offer itself again, of uniting in the public service, on honourable terms, all the eminent talents of the kingdom.The passions to which the French revolution had given birth were extinct.The madness of the innovator and the madness of the alarmist had alike had their day.Jacobinism and anti-Jacobinism had gone out of fashion together.The most liberal statesman did not think that season propitious for schemes of parliamentary reform; and the most conservative statesman could not pretend that there was any occasion for gagging bills and suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act.The great struggle for independence and national honour occupied all minds; and those who were agreed as to the duty of maintaining that struggle with vigour might well postpone to a more convenient time all disputes about matters comparatively unimportant.Strongly impressed by these considerations, Pitt wished to form a ministry including all the first men in the country.The Treasury he reserved for himself;and to Fox he proposed to assign a share of power little inferior to his own.
