hemselves with a discredited and defeated politician like Lord North,
the results of that alliance were as unsatisfactory to the high
contracting parties as the most rigid believer in poetic justice could
desire. The Coalition Ministry was unlucky enough in its enterprises to
satisfy George himself, who had talked of going back to Hanover rather
than accept its services, and had only been dissuaded from self-exile by
the sardonic reminder of Lord Thurlow that it might be easier for the
{229} King to go to Hanover than to return again to England. Burke
inaugurated his new career at the Pay Office by an unhappy act of
patronage. He insisted upon restoring to their offices two clerks, named
Powell and Bembridge, who had been removed and arraigned for
malversation, and he insisted upon defending his indefensible action in
the House of Commons with a fury that was as diverting to his opponents
as it was distracting to his colleagues. Fox, who had earned so large a
share of public admiration for his advocacy of what now would be called
liberal opinions, was naturally held responsible by the public for the
successful opposition of the Coalition Ministry to Pitt's plan of
Parliamentary reform.

[Sidenote: 1783--Legislation of the Coalition Ministry]

Pitt's proposal was not very magnificent. He asked the House to declare
that measures were highly necessary to be taken for the future prevention
of bribery and expense at elections. He urged that for the future, when
the majority of voters for any borough should be convicted of gross and
notorious corruption before a select committee of the House appointed to
try the merits of any election, such borough should be disfranchised and
the minority of voters not so convicted should be entitled to vote for
the county in which such borough should be situated. He suggested that
an addition of knights of the shire and of the representatives of the
metropolis should be made to the state of the representation. He left
the number to the discussion and consideration of the House, but for his
own part he stated that he should propose an addition of one hundred
representatives. Pitt's scheme was scarcely a splendid measure of
reform; but at least it was a measure of reform, and it met with small
mercy at the hands of the coalition, being defeated by a majority of 293
to 149. This was not an auspicious beginning for the new Ministry, and
it was scarcely surprising that many of Fox's adh