George Earl
Spencer, one of those chiefs of the Whig party who, in the great schism
caused by the French Revolution, had followed Burke. Lord Spencer,
though inferior to many of his colleagues as an orator, was decidedly
the best administrator among them. To him it was owing that a long
and gloomy succession of days of fasting, and, most emphatically, of
humiliation, was interrupted, twice in the short space of eleven months,
by days of thanksgiving for great victories.

It may seem paradoxical to say that the incapacity which Pitt showed in
all that related to the conduct of the war is, in some sense, the most
decisive proof that he was a man of very extraordinary abilities. Yet
this is the simple truth. For assuredly one-tenth part of his errors
and disasters would have been fatal to the power and influence of any
minister who had not possessed, in the highest degree, the talents of
a parliamentary leader. While his schemes were confounded, while his
predictions were falsified, while the coalitions which he had laboured
to form were falling to pieces, while the expeditions which he had sent
forth at enormous cost were ending in rout and disgrace, while the
enemy against whom he was feebly contending was subjugating Flanders and
Brabant, the Electorate of Mentz, and the Electorate of Treves, Holland,
Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, his authority over the House of Commons was
constantly becoming more and more absolute. There was his empire. There
were his victories, his Lodi and his Arcola, his Rivoli and his Marengo.
If some great misfortune, a pitched battle lost by the allies, the
annexation of a new department to the French Republic, a sanguinary
insurrection in Ireland, a mutiny in the fleet, a panic in the city, a
run on the bank, had spread dismay through the ranks of his majority,
that dismay lasted only till he rose from the Treasury bench, drew up
his haughty head, stretched his arm with commanding gesture, and
poured forth, in deep and sonorous tones, the lofty language of
inextinguishable hope and inflexible resolution. Thus, through a long
and calamitous period, every disaster that happened without the walls of
Parliament was regularly followed by a triumph within them. At length he
had no longer an opposition to encounter. Of the great party which had
contended against him during the first eight years of his administration
more than one half now marched under his standard, with his old
competitor the Duke of