Pitt showed on this occasion a moderation and self-government which was not habitual to him.  He had found by experience, that he could not stand alone.  His eloquence and his popularity had done much, very much for him.  Without rank, without fortune, without borough interest, hated by the King, hated by the aristocracy, he was a person of the first importance in the State.  He had been suffered to form a ministry, and to pronounce sentence of exclusion on all his rivals, on the most powerful nobleman of the Whig party, on the ablest debater in the House of Commons.  And he now found that he had gone too far.  The English Constitution was not, indeed, without a popular element.  But other elements generally predominated.  The confidence and admiration of the nation might make a statesman formidable at the head of an Opposition, might load him with framed and glazed parchments and gold boxes, might possibly, under very peculiar circumstances, such as those of the preceding year, raise him for a time to power.  But, constituted as Parliament then was, the favourite of the people could not depend on a majority in the people’s own House.  The Duke of Newcastle, however contemptible in morals, manners, and understanding, was a dangerous enemy.  His rank, his wealth, his unrivalled parliamentary interest, would alone have made him important.  But this was not all.  The Whig aristocracy regarded him as their leader.  His long possession of power had given him a kind of prescriptive right to possess it still.  The House of Commons had been elected when he was at the head of affairs, The members for the ministerial boroughs had all been nominated by him.  The public offices swarmed with his creatures.

Pitt desired power; and he desired it, we really believe, from high and generous motives.  He was, in the strict sense of the word, a patriot.  He had none of that philanthropy which the great French writers of his time preached to all the nations of Europe.  He loved England as an Athenian loved the City of the Violet Crown, as a Roman loved the City of the Seven Hills.  He saw his country insulted and defeated.  He saw the national spirit sinking.  Yet he knew what the resources of the empire, vigorously employed, could effect, and he felt that he was the man to employ them vigorously.  “My Lord,” he said to the Duke of Devonshire, “I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody else can.”

Desiring, then, to be in power, and feeling that his abilities and the public confidence were not alone sufficient to keep him in power against the wishes of the Court and of the aristocracy, he began to think of a coalition with Newcastle.