[Sidenote: 1783--Fox's coalition with Lord North]

The King's contempt for North since the failure to coerce America, the
King's dislike of Fox since Fox became an advanced politician, were
deepened now into uncompromising and unscrupulous enmity by the cavalier
conduct of the coalition. The King, with his doggedness of purpose and
his readiness to use any weapons against those whom he chose to regard as
his enemies, was a serious danger even to a coalition that seemed so
formidable as the coalition between Fox and North. Fox may very well
have thought that his unjustifiable league with North would at least have
the result of giving him sufficient time and sufficient influence to
carry into effect some of those schemes for the good of the country which
he had most nearly at heart. The statesman who makes some unhappy
surrender of principle, some ignoble concession to opportunity in order
to obtain power, makes his unworthy bargain from a conviction that his
hold of office is essential to the welfare of the State, and that a
little {227} evil is excusable for a great good. The sophistry that
deceives the politician does not deceive the public. Fox gravely injured
his position with the people who loved him by stooping to the pact with
North, and he did not reap that reward of success in his own high-minded
and high-hearted purposes which could alone have excused his conduct.
The great coalition which was to stand so strong and to work such wonders
was destined to vanish like a breath after accomplishing nothing, and to
condemn Fox with all his hopes and dreams to a career of almost unbroken
opposition for the rest of his life. If anything in Fox's checkered
career could be more tragic than the degradation of his union with the
politician whom he declared to be void of every principle of honor and
honesty, it was the abiding consequences of the retribution that followed
it. Fox had fought hard and with success to live down the follies of his
youth. He had to fight harder and with far less success to live down
what the world persisted in regarding as the infamy of his association
with North.

It is difficult to realize the arguments which persuaded Fox, which
persuaded Burke, to join their forces with the fallen minister whom their
own mouths, but a little while before, had, in no measured terms,
declared to be guilty of the basest conduct and deserving of the severest
punishment. All that we know of Fox, all th