ad in his final attack declared his belief that
Pitt in similar circumstances would have died rather than connive at
such an irregularity.[711] This statement may be set against the Bacchic
outburst of Creevey, after the hostile vote in Parliament, that Pitt had
betrayed Melville in order to save himself from ruin.[712]

Pitt, seconded in this by Grenville, urged the appointment of Middleton,
whose sagacity and long experience at the Admiralty had of late
furnished the First Lord with invaluable counsel. True, he was eighty
years of age, but neither had his frame lost vigour nor his mind
alertness. Seeing that his reputation as a naval expert was unequalled,
Pitt little expected to encounter the stiff opposition of Lords Sidmouth
and Buckinghamshire to the appointment, which they designed for
Buckinghamshire, Hawkesbury, or Charles Yorke. The King, too, probably
influenced by Sidmouth, expressed his disapproval of Middleton,
preferring those just named, or Castlereagh, or even Chatham. In a
matter which concerned the safety of the nation Pitt was inexorable,
facing for several days the threats of resignation of his two colleagues
and the disapproval of the King. Finally he carried his point, the two
lords being pacified by the assurance that Middleton's appointment would
be temporary. The King also consented to raise him to the peerage as
Lord Barham, adding, however, the proviso that he should attend the
Cabinet only during the discussion of naval affairs. In this grudging
way did the Monarch and Sidmouth permit Middleton to reap the reward of
life-long service and the nation to benefit by his unique experience.
Only of late has the work done by Barham during the Trafalgar campaign
been duly set forth; and it is therefore possible now to estimate the
service rendered by Pitt in insisting on his appointment even at the
risk of the secession of the Addingtonian group.[713]

Before referring to naval affairs, we must glance at the efforts of Pitt
to frame a Coalition of the Powers against France. In the middle of
January 1805 he had important interviews with Novossiltzoff, the envoy
whom the Czar Alexander had despatched to London on an important
mission. For this ardent young reformer Alexander had drawn up secret
instructions which the curious may read in the Memoirs of his Minister,
Czartoryski.[714] They illustrate the mingling of sentimentality and
statecraft, of viewiness and ambition, which accounts for the strange