Then ensued eleven weeks of bickering and dispute, during which, in the midst of a great war, England was left without a government.  It became clear that none was possible without Pitt; and none with him could be permanent and strong unless joined with those influences which had thus far controlled the majorities of Parliament.  Therefore an extraordinary union was brought about; Lord Chesterfield acting as go-between to reconcile the ill-assorted pair.  One of them brought to the alliance the confidence and support of the people; the other, Court management, borough interest, and parliamentary connections.  Newcastle was made First Lord of the Treasury, and Pitt, the old enemy who had repeatedly browbeat and ridiculed him, became Secretary of State, with the lead of the House of Commons and full control of the war and foreign affairs.  It was a partnership of magpie and eagle.  The dirty work of government, intrigue, bribery, and all the patronage that did not affect the war, fell to the share of the old politician.  If Pitt could appoint generals, admirals, and ambassadors, Newcastle was welcome to the rest.  “I will borrow the Duke’s majorities to carry on the government,” said the new secretary; and with the audacious self-confidence that was one of his traits, he told the Duke of Devonshire, “I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody else can.”  England hailed with one acclaim the undaunted leader who asked for no reward but the honor of serving her.  The hour had found the man.  For the next four years this imposing figure towers supreme in British history.

He had glaring faults, some of them of a sort not to have been expected in him.  Vanity, the common weakness of small minds, was the most disfiguring foible of this great one.  He had not the simplicity which becomes greatness so well.  He could give himself theatrical airs, strike attitudes, and dart stage lightnings from his eyes; yet he was formidable even in his affectations.  Behind his great intellectual powers lay a burning enthusiasm, a force of passion and fierce intensity of will, that gave redoubled impetus to the fiery shafts of his eloquence; and the haughty and masterful nature of the man had its share in the ascendency which he long held over Parliament.  He would blast the labored argument of an adversary by a look of scorn or a contemptuous wave of the hand.

The Great Commoner was not a man of the people in the popular sense of that hackneyed phrase.  Though himself poor, being a younger son, he came of a rich and influential family; he was patrician at heart; both his faults and his virtues, his proud incorruptibility and passionate, domineering patriotism, bore the patrician stamp.  Yet he loved liberty and he loved the people, because they were the English people.  The effusive humanitarianism of to-day had no part in him, and the democracy of to-day would detest him.  Yet to the middle-class England of his own time, that unenfranchised England which had little representation