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and wormwood" to the King and to Walpole. The Prince of Wales, as so often has happened in English history, was at the head of the opposition to the government. This opposition had been so strenuous as to provoke the energetic displeasure of the King and of the First Minister. King George's animosity had gone so far as to forbid the moving of the congratulatory address by the Minister of the Crown. This fact gave to Pitt an opportunity which he turned to immediate account. Though there was not a syllable in the speech that could be regarded as disrespectful or improper, the orator so managed the subject as to give to his compliments all the effect of the keenest irony. His glowing utterances on the "filial virtues " of the son, and the "tender paternal delight" of the father, showed to his astonished auditors that he was concealing under the cover of faultless phrases an able and a dangerous opposition. Walpole was filled with anxiety and alarm. He is said to have remarked: "We must at all events muzzle that terrible cornet of horse." It is

probable that the arts of bribery were attempted in order to win over the young officer; but it is certain that, if the effort was made, it met with failure, for Pitt remained inflexibly attached to the Prince and the opposition. Walpole could at least throw him into disgrace. Within two weeks after his speech, Pitt was deprived of his commission.

The effect was what an acute politician should have foreseen. It made the Court more odious; it created a general sympathy for the young orator; it put him at the head of the new party known as the Patriots. Walpole, from this moment, was obliged to assume the defensive, and his power steadily declined till his fall in 1741. It was in a succession of assaults upon Walpole that the great abilities of Pitt forced themselves into universal recognition.

The sources of his power were two-fold. In the first place he made himself the avowed champion of what may be called the popular part of the Constitution. His effort was to

rescue the government from those corruptions which had kept Walpole so long in place, and had so long stifled all the popular sentiments of the nation. In the interests of this purpose he was the first to propose a reform of the House of Commons, as a result of which there might be something like a true representation of popular interests. The other source of his power was in the methods and characteristics of his eloquence. He was not in a true sense a great debator. His ability lay not in any power_to analyze a difficult and complicated subject and present the bearings of its several parts in a manner to convince the reason. His peculiarities were rather in his way of seizing upon the more obvious phases of the question at issue, and presenting them with a nobility of sentiment, a fervor of energy, a loftiness of conception, and a power of invective that bore down and destroyed all opposition.

During much of the time between 1735 and 1755 Pitt was in the opposition. When, on the fall of Walpole in 1741, Carteret came into

power, Pitt assailed his narrow views and sordid methods with such energy that after three years he was given up as an object of merited reprobation. Pelham was now called to the head of affairs; but he would accept the office of First Minister only on condition that Pitt would take office under him. The King for a long time resisted; but, after a vain attempt to have a government formed under Pulteney, he gave his assent. Thus Pitt became Paymaster of the Forces in 1746, an office which he held till the death of Pelham in 1754.

But on the accession of Pelham's brother, the Duke of Newcastle, he once more fell into the opposition. The two years that followed were the most brilliant period of his oratory. The ministry gave him ample opportunities, and he took every occasion to improve them. Disasters abounded in every quarter of the British Empire. The loss of Minorca, the capture of Calcutta, the defeat of Gen. Braddock, the threatened invasion of England by the French, were themes well calculated to call

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