an Earl.  Instantly the feast was countermanded.  The lamps were taken down.  The newspapers raised the roar of obloquy.  Pamphlets, made up of calumny and scurrility, filled the shops of all the booksellers; and of those pamphlets, the most galling were written under the direction of the malignant Temple.  It was now the fashion to compare the two Williams, William Pulteney and William Pitt.  Both, it was said, had, by eloquence and simulated patriotism, acquired a great ascendency in the House of Commons and in the country.  Both had been intrusted with the office of reforming the Government.  Both had, when at the height of power and popularity, been seduced by the splendour of the coronet.  Both had been made earls, and both had at once become objects of aversion and scorn to the nation which a few hours before had regarded them with affection and veneration.

The clamour against Pitt appears to have had a serious effect on the foreign relations of the country.  His name had till now acted like a spell at Versailles and Saint Ildefonso.  English travellers on the Continent had remarked that nothing more was necessary to silence a whole room full of boasting Frenchmen than to drop a hint of the probability that Mr. Pitt would return to power.  In an instant there was deep silence:  all shoulders rose, and all faces were lengthened.  Now, unhappily, every foreign court, in learning that he was recalled to office, learned also that he no longer possessed the hearts of his countrymen.  Ceasing to be loved at home, he ceased to be feared abroad.  The name of Pitt had been a charmed name.  Our envoys tried in vain to conjure with the name of Chatham.

The difficulties which beset Chatham were daily increased by the despotic manner in which he treated all around him.  Lord Rockingham had, at the time of the change of ministry, acted with great moderation, had expressed a hope that the new Government would act on the principles of the late Government, and had even interfered to prevent many of his friends from quitting office.  Thus Saunders and Keppel, two naval commanders of great eminence, had been induced to remain at the Admiralty, where their services were much needed.  The Duke of Portland was still Lord Chamberlain, and Lord Besborough Postmaster.  But within a quarter of a year, Lord Chatham had so deeply affronted these men, that they all retired in disgust.  In truth, his tone, submissive in the closet, was at this time insupportably tyrannical in the Cabinet.  His colleagues were merely his clerks for naval, financial, and diplomatic business.  Conway, meek as he was, was on one occasion provoked into declaring that such language as Lord Chatham’s had never been heard west of Constantinople, and was with difficulty prevented by Horace Walpole from resigning, and rejoining the standard of Lord Rockingham.