sympathy and support of many of his old friends, and of a large part of that public opinion which had been his greatest strength. On the 1st of July the Marquis of Rockingham died. His was the only influence which could keep the two sections of the Cabinet united, and at his death the quarrel between Fox and Shelburne, which had long smouldered, burst into flame. Both these great men have been defended by friends and advocates for the part they took on this occasion. We have less to do with the causes of the dispute than with its results, which, as regarded the fortunes of Liberalism in Parliament and the country, were most disastrous. Burke and other old Whig leaders went with Fox, and it was soon seen that Shelburne could not form a Ministry from what was left of the old connection. When, however, the time came for the King to have any voice in the appointment of a Cabinet, Fox was certain to be excluded, and so Shelburne became Premier, and William Pitt was, at the age of twenty-three, made Chancellor of the Exchequer. It must be remembered, however, that the young minister was at that time a Whig in opinions, with even Radical tendencies, and was supposed especially to feel the desire which his father had always manifested, to give increased effect in Parliament to the popular will. His joining a Whig Ministry was therefore in itself no injury to the cause of Liberalism. The evil effects were subsequently developed. The first of these was the commencement of that separation between Pitt and Fox, which afterwards became so complete and so bitter; and this could not but have a bad effect on Pitt, if only because it kept him from the influence of that enthusiasm for the cause of freedom and popular progress which all contemporaries agree to have been almost irresistible by those who came into close and intimate relations with Fox. Another consequence was the beginning of that alliance between Pitt and the court party which was so soon to manifest itself in defiance of the precedents of Parliamentary rule, and that close personal devotion to the Sovereign to which Pitt often sacrificed not only his own wishes, but his opinion of what was right towards
