To the former class belonged Pratt, now Lord Camden, who accepted the great seal, and Lord Shelburne, who was made one of the Secretaries of State.  To the latter class belonged the Duke of Grafton, who became First Lord of the Treasury, and Conway, who kept his old position both in the Government and in the House of Commons.  Charles Townshend, who had belonged to every party, and cared for none, was Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Pitt himself was declared Prime Minister, but refused to take any laborious office.  He was created Earl of Chatham, and the Privy Seal was delivered to him.

It is scarcely necessary to say, that the failure, the complete and disgraceful failure, of this arrangement, is not to be ascribed to any want of capacity in the persons whom we have named.  None of them was deficient in abilities; and four of them, Pitt himself, Shelburne, Camden, and Townshend, were men of high intellectual eminence.  The fault was not in the materials, but in the principle on which the materials were put together.  Pitt had mixed up these conflicting elements, in the full confidence that he should be able to keep them all in perfect subordination to himself, and in perfect harmony with other.  We shall soon see how the experiment succeeded.

On the very day on which the new Prime Minister kissed hands, three-fourths of that popularity which he had long enjoyed without a rival, and to which he owed the greater part of his authority, departed from him.  A violent outcry was raised, not against that part of his conduct which really deserved severe condemnation, but against a step in which we can see nothing to censure.  His acceptance of a peerage produced a general burst of indignation.  Yet surely no peerage had ever been better earned; nor was there ever a statesman who more needed the repose of the Upper House.  Pitt was now growing old.  He was much older in constitution than in years.  It was with imminent risk to his life that he had, on some important occasions, attended his duty in Parliament.  During the session of 1764, he had not been able to take part in a single debate.  It was impossible that he should go through the nightly labour of conducting the business of the Government in the House of Commons.  His wish to be transferred, under such circumstances, to a less busy and a less turbulent assembly, was natural and reasonable.  The nation, however, overlooked all these considerations.  Those who had most loved and honoured the Great Commoner were loudest in invective against the new-made Lord.  London had hitherto been true to him through every vicissitude.  When the citizens learned that he had been sent for from Somersetshire, that he had been closeted with the King at Richmond, and that he was to be first minister, they had been in transports of joy.  Preparations were made for a grand entertainment and for a general illumination.  The lamps had actually been placed round the monument, when the Gazette announced that the object of all this enthusiasm was