He was so delighted at having got rid thus easily
of the great obstacle to his own authority that he could readily
consent to lend to the act of parting a gracious air of regret. Much
was done to lighten Pitt's fall. Very liberal offers were made by the
King, offers which seemed to many to mask a hope, and more than a hope,
of undermining the popularity of the great leader. Pitt declined
several offers that were personal to himself, but expressed his
readiness to accept some signs of the royal favor on behalf of his wife
and his family. A barony was conferred upon Pitt's wife and a pension
of three thousand a year upon Pitt for three lives. There was nothing
unworthy in Pitt's action. He was notoriously poor; he was no less
notoriously honest; it was perfectly certain that, in an age when a
successful politician was for the most part a peculator, no shilling of
public money had ever stuck to Pitt's fingers. If he was instantly
attacked by libels and pamphlets that were {28} probably paid for by
Bute, or that at least were inspired by a desire to please Bute, the
attacks did Pitt more good than harm. They produced a prompt reaction,
and only had the effect of making Pitt more dear to the people than
before. His pictures had an enormous sale, and his partisans on the
press poured out caricatures and lampoons upon Bute and his Scotchmen
in greater volume and with greater violence than ever.

Bute was not content with the overthrow of Pitt. He wished to stand in
isolated splendor, and to accomplish this Newcastle too must go. The
great briber of yesterday had to give way to the great briber of
to-day, and Bute stood alone before the world, the head of the King's
Ministry, the favorite of the King, the champion of a policy that
promised peace abroad and purity at home, and that resulted in a
renewal of war under conditions of peculiar disadvantage and a renewed
employment of the basest forms of political corruption. Bute had
gained the power he longed for, but Bute was soon to learn that power
need not and did not mean popularity. "The new Administration begins
tempestuously," Walpole wrote on June 20, 1762. "My father was not
more abused after twenty years than Lord Bute is after twenty days.
Weekly papers swarm, and, like other swarms of insects, sting." Bute
affected an indifference to this unpopularity which he did not really
feel. It is not flattering to a statesman's pride to be unable to go
abroad wit