the more
popular tendencies of which Shelburne was justly regarded as the
representative. To Pitt, on the other hand, these tendencies were the
chief ground of confidence in the new Ministry; and, young as he was, he
at once entered office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. But his tenure of
this post was a brief one. The Shelburne Ministry in fact only lasted
long enough to conclude the final peace with the United States on the
base of their independence; for in the opening of 1783 it was overthrown
by the most unscrupulous coalition known in our history, a union of the
Whig followers of Fox with the Tories who still clung to Lord North. In
Parliament such a coalition was irresistible, and the resignation of
Shelburne at once made way for an administration in which both the
triumphant parties were represented. But the effect on England at large
was very different. Whatever new credit the Whigs had gained with the
country during their long exclusion from office had been due to their
steady denunciation of the policy and temper of Lord North's
administration. That they should take office hand in hand with men whom
they had for years denounced as the worst of Ministers shocked even
their most loyal adherents; and the shock was the greater that a new
seriousness in politics, a longing for a deeper and more earnest
treatment of political questions, was making mere faction intolerable to
Englishmen. But behind all this was the sense that something more than
mere faction had really brought the two parties together. It was their
common dread of the popular tendencies which Shelburne's Ministry
represented, their common hatred of parliamentary reform, which hushed
for the moment the bitter hostility between the followers of Rockingham
and the followers of North. Yet never had the need of representative
reform been more clearly shown than by a coalition which proved how
powerless was the force of public opinion to check even the most
shameless faction in Parliament, how completely the lessening of royal
influence by the measures of Burke and Rockingham had tended to the
profit not of the people but of the borough-mongers who usurped its
representation. The turn of public opinion was quick in disclosing
itself. Fox was the most popular of the Whigs, but he was hooted from
the platform when he addressed his constituents at Westminster. Pitt, on
the other hand, whose attacks on the new union rose to a lofty and
indignant eloquence, was