oviding for the
gradual extinction of all decayed boroughs, disfranchised thirty-six at
once, and transferred their members to counties. He brought the king to
abstain from opposition, and strove to buy off the borough-mongers, as
the holders of rotten boroughs were called, by offering to compensate
them for the seats they lost at their market-value. But the bulk of his
own party joined the bulk of the Whigs in a steady resistance to the
bill, while it received no effective support from the general opinion of
the people without. The more glaring abuses, indeed, within Parliament
itself, the abuses which stirred Chatham and Wilkes to action, had in
great part disappeared. The bribery of members had ceased. Burke's Bill
of Economical Reform had just dealt a fatal blow at the influence which
the king exercised by suppressing a host of useless offices, household
appointments, judicial and diplomatic charges, which were maintained for
the purpose of corruption. But what was probably the most fatal obstacle
to any pressure for reform was the triumph of public opinion to which
Pitt owed his power. The utter overthrow of the Coalition, the complete
victory of public opinion, had done much to diminish the sense of any
real danger from the opposition which Parliament had shown till now to
the voice of the nation. England, then as now, was indifferent to all
but practical grievances; and the nation cared little for anomalies in
the form of representation so long as it felt itself represented.
"Terribly disappointed and beat," as Wilberforce tells us Pitt was by
the rejection of his measure, the temper of the House and of the people
was too plain to be mistaken, and though his opinion remained unaltered,
he never brought it forward again.

[Sidenote: Pitt's finance.]

The failure of his constitutional reform was more than compensated by
the triumphs of his finance. When he entered office public credit was at
its lowest ebb. The debt had been doubled by the American war, yet large
sums still remained unfunded, while the revenue was reduced by a vast
system of smuggling which turned every coast-town into a nest of
robbers. The deficiency in the revenue was met for the moment by new
taxes, but the time which was thus gained served to change the whole
face of public affairs. The first of Pitt's financial measures--his plan
for gradually paying off the debt by a sinking fund--was undoubtedly an
error; but it had a happy effect in resto