Many persons blamed the conduct of Pitt on this occasion as disrespectful to the King.  Indeed, Pitt himself afterwards owned that he had done wrong.  He was led into this error, as he was afterwards led into more serious errors, by the influence of his turbulent and mischievous brother-in-law, Temple.

The events which immediately followed Pitt’s retirement raised his fame higher than ever.  War with Spain proved to be, as he had predicted, inevitable.  News came from the West Indies that Martinique had been taken by an expedition which he had sent forth.  Havanna fell; and it was known that he had planned an attack on Havanna.  Manilla capitulated; and it was believed that he had meditated a blow against Manilla.  The American fleet, which he had proposed to intercept, had unloaded an immense cargo of bullion in the haven of Cadiz, before Bute could be convinced that the Court of Madrid really entertained hostile intentions.

The session of Parliament which followed Pitt’s retirement passed over without any violent storm.  Lord Bute took on himself the most prominent part in the House of Lords.  He had become Secretary of State, and indeed Prime Minister, without having once opened his lips in public except as an actor.  There was, therefore, no small curiosity to know how he would acquit himself.  Members of the House of Commons crowded the bar of the Lords, and covered the steps of the throne.  It was generally expected that the orator would break down; but his most malicious hearers were forced to own that he had made a better figure than they expected.  They, indeed, ridiculed his action as theatrical, and his style as tumid.  They were especially amused by the long pauses which, not from hesitation, but from affectation, he made at all the emphatic words, and Charles Townshend cried out, “Minute guns!” The general opinion however was, that, if Bute had been early practised in debate, he might have become an impressive speaker.

In the Commons, George Grenville had been intrusted with the lead.  The task was not, as yet, a very difficult one for Pitt did not think fit to raise the standard of opposition.  His speeches at this time were distinguished, not only by that eloquence in which he excelled all his rivals, but also by a temperance and a modesty which had too often been wanting to his character.  When war was declared against Spain, he justly laid claim to the merit of having foreseen what had at length become manifest to all, but he carefully abstained from arrogant and acrimonious expressions; and this abstinence was the more honourable to him, because his temper, never very placid, was now severely tried, both by gout and calumny.  The courtiers had adopted a mode of warfare, which was soon turned with far more formidable effect against themselves.  Half the inhabitants of the Grub Street garrets paid their milk scores, and got their shirts out of pawn, by abusing Pitt.  His German war, his subsidies, his pension, his wife’s