r owed anything to flattery or intrigue, he whose
eloquence and independent spirit had overawed two generations of slaves
and jobbers, he who had twice been forced by the enthusiasm of an
admiring nation on a reluctant Prince?

Unhappily the court had gained Pitt, not, it is true, by those ignoble
means which were employed when such men as Rigby and Wedderburn were to
be won, but by allurements suited to a nature noble even in its
aberrations. The King set himself to seduce the one man who could turn
the Whigs out without letting Grenville in. Praise, caresses, promises,
were lavished on the idol of the nation. He, and he alone, could put an
end to faction, could bid defiance to all the powerful connections in
the land united, Whigs and Tories, Rockinghams, Bedfords, and
Grenvilles. These blandishments produced a great effect. For though
Pitt's spirit was high and manly, though his eloquence was often exerted
with formidable effect against the court, and though his theory of
government had been learned in the school of Locke and Sidney, he had
always regarded the person of the sovereign with profound veneration. As
soon as he was brought face to face with royalty, his imagination and
sensibility were too strong for his principles. His Whiggism thawed and
disappeared; and he became, for the time, a Tory of the old Ormond
pattern. Nor was he by any means unwilling to assist in the work of
dissolving all political connections. His own weight in the state was
wholly independent of such connections. He was therefore inclined to
look on them with dislike, and made far too little distinction between
gangs of knaves associated for the mere purpose of robbing the public,
and confederacies of honorable men for the promotion of great public
objects. Nor had he the sagacity to perceive that the strenuous efforts
which he made to annihilate all parties tended only to establish the
ascendency of one party, and that the basest and most hateful of all.

It may be doubted whether he would have been thus misled, if his mind
had been in full health and rigor. But the truth is that he had for some
time been in an unnatural state of excitement. No suspicion of this sort
had yet got abroad. His eloquence had never shone with more splendor
than during the recent debates. But people afterwards called to mind
many things which ought to have roused their apprehensions. His habits
were gradually becoming more and more eccentric. A horror of all l