the accession of Pitt to the office of Prime Minister
(December 1783) mark an important crisis in political history, and
they mark an important crisis in Burke's career and hopes. Lord
Rockingham had just been three months in office, when he died (July
1782). This dissolved the bond that held the two sections of the
ministry together, and let loose a flood of rival ambitions and sharp
animosities. Lord Shelburne believed himself to have an irresistible
claim to the chief post in the administration; among other reasons,
because he might have had it before Lord Rockingham three months
earlier, if he had so chosen. The king supported him, not from any
partiality to his person, but because he dreaded and hated Charles
Fox. The character of Shelburne is one of the perplexities of the
time. His views on peace and free trade make him one of the precursors
of the Manchester School. No minister was so well informed as to the
threads of policy in foreign countries. He was the intimate or the
patron of men who now stand out as among the first lights of that
time--of Morellet, of Priestley, of Bentham. Yet a few months of power
seem to have disclosed faults of character, which left him without a
single political friend, and blighted him with irreparable discredit.
Fox, who was now the head of the Rockingham section of the Whigs, had,
before the death of the late premier, been on the point of refusing to
serve any longer with Lord Shelburne, and he now very promptly refused
to serve under him. When Parliament met after Rockingham's death,
gossips noticed that Fox and Burke continued, long after the Speaker
had taken the chair, to walk backwards and forwards in the Court of
Bequests, engaged in earnest conversation. According to one story,
Burke was very reluctant to abandon an office whose emoluments were
as convenient to him as to his spendthrift colleague. According
to another and more probable legend, it was Burke who hurried the
rupture, and stimulated Fox's jealousy of Shelburne. The Duke of
Richmond disapproved of the secession, and remained in the Government.
Sheridan also disapproved, but he sacrificed his personal conviction
to loyalty to Fox.

If Burke was responsible for the break-up of the Government, then
he was the instigator of a blunder that must be pronounced not only
disastrous but culpable. It lowered the legitimate spirit of party
to the nameless spirit of faction. The dangers from which the old
liberties of the