th increasing
uneasiness on the weak and languid cabinet which would have to contend
against an enemy who united more than the power of Louis the Great to
more than the genius of Frederick the Great. It is true that Addington
might easily have been a better war minister than Pitt, and could not
possibly have been a worse. But Pitt had cast a spell on the public
mind. The eloquence, the judgment, the calm and disdainful firmness,
which he had, during many years, displayed in Parliament, deluded the
world into the belief that he must be eminently qualified to superintend
every department of politics, and they imagined, even after the
miserable failures of Dunkirk, of Quiberon, and of the Helder, that he
was the only statesman who could cope with Bonaparte. This feeling was
nowhere stronger than among Addington's own colleagues. The pressure put
on him was so strong that he could not help yielding to it; yet, even in
yielding, he showed how far he was from knowing his own place. His first
proposition was, that some insignificant nobleman should be First Lord
of the Treasury and nominal head of the administration, and that the
real power should be divided between Pitt and himself, who were to be
secretaries of state. Pitt, as might have been expected, refused even
to discuss such a scheme, and talked of it with bitter mirth. "Which
secretaryship was offered to you?" his friend Wilberforce asked.
"Really," said Pitt, "I had not the curiosity to inquire." Addington
was frightened into bidding higher. He offered to resign the Treasury
to Pitt, on condition that there should be no extensive change in the
government. But Pitt would listen to no such terms. Then came a dispute
such as often arises after negotiations orally conducted, even when the
negotiators are men of strict honour. Pitt gave one account of what had
passed; Addington gave another: and though the discrepancies were not
such as necessarily implied any intentional violation of truth on either
side, both were greatly exasperated.

Meanwhile the quarrel with the First Consul had come to a crisis. On
the 16th of May, 1803, the King sent a message calling on the House of
Commons to support him in withstanding the ambitious and encroaching
policy of France; and, on the 22d, the House took the message into
consideration.

Pitt had now been living many months in retirement. There had been a
general election since he had spoken in Parliament; and there were
two hundred