But that which gave most effect to his declamation was the air of sincerity, of vehement feeling, of moral elevation, which belonged to all that he said.  His style was not always in the purest taste.  Several contemporary judges pronounced it too florid.  Walpole, in the midst of the rapturous eulogy which he pronounces on one of Pitt’s greatest orations, owns that some of the metaphors were too forced.  Some of Pitt’s quotations and classical stories are too trite for a clever schoolboy.  But these were niceties for which the audience cared little.  The enthusiasm of the orator infected all who heard him; his ardour and his noble bearing put fire into the most frigid conceit, and gave dignity to the most puerile allusion.

His powers soon began to give annoyance to the Government; and Walpole determined to make an example of the patriotic cornet.  Pitt was accordingly dismissed from the service.  Mr. Thackeray says that the Minister took this step, because he plainly saw that it would have been vain to think of buying over so honourable and disinterested an opponent.  We do not dispute Pitt’s integrity; but we do not know what proof he had given of it when he was turned out of the army; and we are sure that Walpole was not likely to give credit for inflexible honesty to a young adventurer who had never had an opportunity of refusing anything.  The truth is, that it was not Walpole’s practice to buy off enemies.  Mr. Burke truly says, in the Appeal to the Old Whigs, that Walpole gained very few over from the Opposition.  Indeed that great minister knew his business far too well.  He, knew that, for one mouth which is stopped with a place, fifty other mouths will he instantly opened.  He knew that it would have been very bad policy in him to give the world to understand that more was to be got by thwarting his measures than by supporting them.  These maxims are as old as the origin of parliamentary corruption in England.  Pepys learned them, as he tells us, from the counsellors of Charles the Second.

Pitt was no loser.  He was made Groom of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, and continued to declaim against the ministers with unabated violence and with increasing ability.  The question of maritime right, then agitated between Spain and England, called forth all his powers.  He clamoured for war with a vehemence which it is not easy to reconcile with reason or humanity, but which appears to Mr. Thackeray worthy of the highest admiration.  We will not stop to argue a point on which we had long thought that all well-informed people were agreed.  We could easily show, we think, that, if any respect be due to international law, if right, where societies of men are concerned, be anything but another name for might, if we do not adopt the doctrine of the Buccaneers, which seems to be also the doctrine of Mr. Thackeray, that treaties mean nothing within thirty degrees of the line, the war with Spain was altogether unjustifiable.