succeeded in making a mixture that might at any time dissolve into its
component parts. It was composed {109} of men of all parties and all
principles. The amiable Conway and the unamiable Grafton remained on
from Rockingham's Ministry. So did the Duke of Portland and Lord
Bessborough, so did Saunders and Keppel. Pitt did not forget his own
followers. He gave the Great Seal to Lord Camden, who, as Justice
Pratt, had liberated Wilkes from unjustifiable arrest. He made Lord
Shelburne one of the Secretaries of State. The Chancellorship of the
Exchequer was given to a politician with a passion for popularity that
made him as steadfast as a weathercock, Charles Townshend.

[Sidenote: 1766--Pitt as Earl of Chatham]

By this time Pitt was no longer the Great Commoner. The House of
Commons was to know him no more. Under the title of Earl of Chatham he
had entered the Upper House. Such an elevation did not mean then, as
it came later to mean, something little better than political
extinction. But Pitt's elevation meant to him a loss of popularity as
immediate as it was unexpected. Though he was no longer young, though
he was racked in mind and body, though he sorely needed the repose that
he might hope to find in the Upper House, he was assailed with as much
fury of vituperation as if he had betrayed the State. A country that
was preparing to rejoice at his return to power lashed itself into a
fury of indignation at his exaltation to the peerage. In the twinkling
of an eye men who had been devoted yesterday to Pitt were prepared to
believe every evil of Chatham. His rule began in storm and gloom, and
gloomy and stormy it remained. The first act of his Administration
roused the fiercest controversy. A bad harvest had raised the price of
food almost to famine height. Chatham took the bold step of laying an
embargo on the exportation of grain. The noise of the debates over
this act had hardly died away when Pitt's malady again overmastered
him, and once more he disappeared from public life into mysterious
melancholy silence and seclusion. It was an unhappy hour for the
country which deprived it of the services of Chatham and left the helm
of state in the hands of Charles Townshend.

Charles Townshend was the erratic son of a singularly {110} erratic
mother. The beautiful Audrey Harrison married the third Marquis
Townshend, bore him five children, and then separated from him to carry
her beauty, her insolence,