proposals took shape, it became clear that Addington did not wish to
be openly superseded by Pitt, but preferred that they should serve
together as secretaries of state under a third person; and Addington
even suggested Pitt's brother, the Earl of Chatham, then master-general
of the ordnance, as a suitable prime minister. Pitt's reply,
communicated to Addington by Dundas, now Viscount Melville, in a letter
dated March 22, 1803, was to the effect that Pitt would not accept any
position in the government except that of prime minister, with which was
to be coupled the office of chancellor of the exchequer. Addington
readily acceded to Pitt's claim to this position, but Grenville refused
to serve in a ministry where Addington and Hawkesbury held "any
efficient offices of real business," and Addington declined to abandon
ministerial office for a speakership of the house of lords, which Pitt
proposed to create for him. Finally, on April 10, Pitt at a private
conference with Addington proposed as an indispensable condition of his
own return to office that Melville, Spencer, Grenville, and Windham
should become members of his cabinet. This meant a reconstruction of the
whole ministry, and Pitt stipulated that the changes should be made by
the king's desire and on the recommendation of the existing ministry.

The situation had become an impossible one. Nothing was more reasonable
than that Pitt, the friend and protector of the existing ministry,
should assume the direction of affairs now that the nation appeared to
be on the brink of war. But Pitt could not honourably desert those
former colleagues, who had resigned with him on the catholic question.
Two of these, however, Grenville and Windham, though doubtless men of
the highest capacity, had bitterly attacked the existing ministry; and
it was not to be expected that that ministry, supported as it still was
by overwhelming majorities in both houses of parliament, supported as it
had hitherto been by Pitt himself, should consent to admit its opponents
to a share of office. It is highly improbable that Grenville and Windham
would then have co-operated with Addington and Hawkesbury, and their
admission to office would have ruined the cohesion of the cabinet,
unless it had been accompanied by the retirement of the leading members
of the existing ministry which Pitt's previous attitude, together with
the actual balance of parties in parliament, rendered it impossible to
demand. How