Twenty different explanations of this strange step were suggested.  Some attributed it to profound design, and some to sudden panic.  Some said that the lampoons of the Opposition had driven the Earl from the field; some that he had taken office only in order to bring the war to a close, and had always meant to retire when that object had been accomplished.  He publicly assigned ill health as his reason for quitting business, and privately complained that he was not cordially seconded by his colleagues, and that Lord Mansfield, in particular, whom he had himself brought into the Cabinet, gave him no support in the House of Peers.  Mansfield was, indeed, far too sagacious not to perceive that Bute’s situation was one of great peril and far too timorous to thrust himself into peril for the sake of another.  The probability, however, is that Bute’s conduct on this occasion, like the conduct of most men on most occasions, was determined by mixed motives.  We suspect that he was sick of office; for this is a feeling much more common among ministers than persons who see public life from a distance are disposed to believe; and nothing could be more natural than that this feeling should take possession of the mind of Bute.  In general, a statesman climbs by slow degrees.  Many laborious years elapse before he reaches the topmost pinnacle of preferment.  In the earlier part of his career, therefore, he is constantly lured on by seeing something above him.  During his ascent he gradually becomes inured to the annoyances which belong to a life of ambition.  By the time that he has attained the highest point, he has become patient of labour and callous to abuse.  He is kept constant to his vocation, in spite of all its discomforts, at first by hope, and at last by habit.  It was not so with Bute.  His whole public life lasted little more than two years.  On the day on which he became a politician he became a cabinet minister.  In a few months he was, both in name and in show, chief of the administration.  Greater than he had been he could not be.  If what he already possessed was vanity and vexation of spirit, no delusion remained to entice him onward.  He had been cloyed with the pleasures of ambition before he had been seasoned to its pains.  His habits had not been such as were likely to fortify his mind against obloquy and public hatred.  He had reached his forty-eighth year in dignified ease, without knowing, by personal experience, what it was to be ridiculed and slandered.  All at once, without any previous initiation, he had found himself exposed to such a storm of invective and satire as had never burst on the head of any statesman.  The emoluments of office were now nothing to him; for he had just succeeded to a princely property by the death of his father-in-law.  All the honours which could be bestowed on him he had already secured.  He had obtained the Garter for himself, and a British peerage for his son.  He seems also to have imagined that by quitting the Treasury he should escape from danger and abuse without really resigning power, and should still be able to exercise in private supreme influence over the royal mind.