e could not be in the place where
parliamentary talents were most needed. It was necessary to find some
member of the House of Commons who could confront the great orators of
the opposition; and Pitt alone had the eloquence and the courage which
were required. He was offered the great place of Chancellor of
the Exchequer; and he accepted it. He had scarcely completed his
twenty-third year.

The Parliament was speedily prorogued. During the recess, a negotiation
for peace which had been commenced under Rockingham was brought to a
successful termination. England acknowledged the independence of her
revolted colonies; and she ceded to her European enemies some places
in the Mediterranean and in the Gulf of Mexico. But the terms which she
obtained were quite as advantageous and honourable as the events of
the war entitled her to expect, or as she was likely to obtain by
persevering in a contest against immense odds. All her vital parts, all
the real sources of her power, remained uninjured. She preserved even
her dignity: for she ceded to the House of Bourbon only part of what she
had won from that House in previous wars. She retained her Indian
empire undiminished; and, in spite of the mightiest efforts of two great
monarchies, her flag still waved on the rock of Gibraltar. There is not
the slightest reason to believe that Fox, if he had remained in office,
would have hesitated one moment about concluding a treaty on such
conditions. Unhappily that great and most amiable man was, at this
crisis, hurried by his passions into an error which made his genius
and his virtues, during a long course of years, almost useless to his
country.

He saw that the great body of the House of Commons was divided into
three parties, his own, that of North, and that of Shelburne; that none
of those three parties was large enough to stand alone; that,
therefore, unless two of them united, there must be a miserably feeble
administration, or more probably, a rapid succession of miserably
feeble administrations, and this at a time when a strong government was
essential to the prosperity and respectability of the nation. It was
then necessary and right that there should be a coalition. To every
possible coalition there were objections. But, of all possible
coalitions, that to which there were the fewest objections was
undoubtedly a coalition between Shelburne and Fox. It would have been
generally applauded by the followers of both. It might have