f
all obstacles, however, Pitt succeeded in forming a Ministry, the best he
could manage under the conditions. To Shelburne he offered nothing, and
this omission adds a mystery greater than that of Temple's resignation to
Pitt's administration. It must have surprised Shelburne, as it surprised
every observer then and since. Pitt has been accused of ingratitude to
the man who had been his father's friend and to whom he himself had owed
so short a time before the leadership of the House of Commons. But Pitt
was not ungrateful. He was merely astute. He read Shelburne as perhaps
no other of his contemporaries was able to read him, and he gauged him at
his true value or want of value. Shelburne's glittering unreality, his
showy unreliability, were to have no place in Pitt's scheme of things.
Abandoned by Temple, abandoning Shelburne, Pitt went his own way, doing
the best he could in the face {237} of tremendous odds and doing it very
well. One of his first acts of office was to bring in an India Bill of
his own, which was decisively defeated in the Commons. For some months
Pitt fought his hard and thankless fight as a minister with a minority
behind him. At last, in the end of March, he saw his opportunity for a
dissolution and resolved to take it. A singular episode threatened to
delay his purpose. [Sidenote: 1784--The disappearance of the Great Seal]
The Great Seal of England was stolen from the house of the Lord
Chancellor in Great Ormond Street, and was never recovered. It may have
been purloined by some political partisan who believed, as James the
Second believed, that by making away with the Great Seal he could
effectively embarrass his opponents. But this "curious manoeuvre," as
Pitt himself called it, was nullified by the promptitude with which
another Great Seal was made.

The result of the dissolution was as gratifying to Pitt as it was
disastrous to Fox. More than one hundred and sixty of Fox's friends lost
their seats and earned instead the sobriquet of Fox's Martyrs, and Fox
himself had very great difficulty in getting elected for the new
Parliament. So ended the unfortunate episode of the Coalition Ministry.
Much as Fox had suffered from the sins of youth, he was destined to
suffer even more from this error of his manhood. For the rest of his
life, save for a few months towards its close, he was destined to remain
out of office, conscious of the great deeds he would have done and denied
the po