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Though Rockingham stood coldly aside, some of his fellow-ministers accepted Pitt's offers, and they were reinforced by Lords Shelburne and Camden, the young Duke of Grafton, and the few friends who still clung to the Great Commoner. Such a ministry however rested for power not on Parliament but on public opinion.
And once when he was speaking of the benighted condition of the king of Timbuctoo, and the number of his wives who were likewise in darkness, some gipsy miscreant from the crowd asked, "How many is there at Queen's Crawley, Young Squaretoes?" to the surprise of the platform, and the ruin of Mr. Pitt's speech. Crawley, by threatening the old gentleman, forced the latter to send them to school.
Sitting close thereafter they talked in whispers for an hour or more, and all the while those dulled wits of Pitt's were sharpening themselves anew upon this precious whetstone of hope. They would need to recruit others into their enterprise, a half-dozen at least, a half-score if possible, but no more than that.
They passed through the hall and the small oak parlour, on the table of which stood the three tumblers and the empty rum-bottle which had served for Sir Pitt's carouse, and through that apartment into Sir Pitt's study, where they found Miss Horrocks, of the guilty ribbons, with a wild air, trying at the presses and escritoires with a bunch of keys.
How much that honorable gentleman was consulted in the original frame and fabric of the bill, commonly called Mr. Pitt's India Bill, is matter only of conjecture, though by no means difficult to divine.
Hence the origin of Mr Pitt's famous and long-misconceived plans of parliamentary reform. Was he sincere, is often asked by those who neither seek to discover the causes nor are capable of calculating the effects of public transactions. Sincere! Why, he was struggling for his existence!
And more than once, when bills to limit or wholly suppress the trade had been passed by the Commons, the same mischievous influence defeated them in the Lords. The last years of Pitt's first administration were too fully occupied with the affairs of Ireland, negotiations with foreign powers, and the great war with France, to enable him to keep pace with his friend's zeal on the subject.
Superior as commercial prosperity and the preservation of peace were to most other motives in the interest of Pitt's mind, he doubtless would have admitted, along with his most earnest opponents, that the fostering of the national carrying trade, as a nursery to the navy and so contributory to national defence, took precedence of purely commercial legislation.
Pitt's eloquence was of a loftier and simpler type, Fox's was more impetuous and spontaneous; Peel's range of political knowledge was far wider; Gladstone excelled all, not only in length of experience but in readiness and dialectical resource.
"Yes, sir, the house of my father, Mr Deane, is situated to the south there, on the farther side of the market-place, and with your leave, sir, I will accompany you and your daughter thither, after which I must be allowed to go in search of Widow Pitt's cow, and carry the animal back to her. I shall have time to do that and give a few of the apprentices a drubbing before dinner-time."
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