office by Newcastle and the Whigs, and made the
return to office of the whole party, with the exception of Bedford, a
condition of his own. His aim, in other words, was to restore
constitutional government by a reconstruction of the ministry which had
won the triumphs of the Seven Years' War. But it was the destruction of
this ministry and the erection of a kingly government in its place on
which George prided himself most. To restore it was, in his belief, to
restore the tyranny under which the Whigs had so long held the Crown.
"Rather than submit," he cried, "to the terms proposed by Mr. Pitt, I
would die in the room I now stand in." The result left Grenville as
powerful as he had been weak. Bute retired into the country and ceased
to exercise any political influence. Shelburne, the one statesman in the
ministry, and who had borne a chief part in the negotiations for the
formation of a new Cabinet, resigned to follow Pitt. On the other hand,
Bedford, irritated by Pitt's exclusion of him from his proposed
ministry, joined Grenville with his whole party, and the ministry thus
became strong and compact.

[Sidenote: Grenville and Wilkes.]

Grenville himself was ploddingly industrious and not without financial
ability. But his mind was narrow and pedantic in its tone; and, honest
as was his belief in his own Whig creed, he saw nothing beyond legal
forms. He was resolute to withstand the people as he had withstood the
Crown. His one standard of conduct was the approval of Parliament; his
one aim to enforce the supremacy of Parliament over subject as over
king. With such an aim as this, it was inevitable that Grenville should
strike fiercely at the new force of opinion which had just shown its
power in the fall of Bute. He was resolved to see public opinion only in
the voice of Parliament; and his resolve led at once to a contest with
Wilkes as with the press. It was in the press that the nation was
finding a court of appeal from the Houses of Parliament. The popularity
of the _North-Briton_ made Wilkes the representative of the new
journalism, as he was the representative of that mass of general
sentiment of which it was beginning to be the mouthpiece; and the fall
of Bute had shown how real a power lay behind the agitator's diatribes.
But Grenville was of stouter stuff than the court favourite, and his
administration was hardly reformed when he struck at the growing
opposition to Parliament by a blow at its leader. In "N