s," says Horace Walpole, "his flatteries,
duplicity, insincerity, arrogance, contradictions, neglect of his
friends, with all the kindred of all these faults, were the daily
topics of contempt and ridicule; and his folly shut his eyes, nor did
he perceive that so very rapid a fall must have been owing to his own
incapacity." This is the testimony of a hostile witness. It is borne
out, however, by a circumstance of striking significance. When the
king recovered the reins at the end of 1783, not only did he send
for Pitt instead of for Shelburne, but Pitt himself neither invited
Shelburne to join him, nor in any way ever consulted him then or
afterwards, though he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in
Shelburne's own administration.

Whatever the causes may have been, the administration fell in the
spring of 1783. It was succeeded by the memorable ministry of the
Coalition, in which Fox and Lord North divided the real power under
the nominal lead of the Duke of Portland. Members saw Lord North
squeezed up on the Treasury bench between two men who had a year
before been daily menacing him with the axe and the block; and it was
not North whom they blamed, but Burke and Fox. Burke had returned to
the Pay-Office. His first act there was unfortunate. He restored to
their position two clerks who had been suspended for malversation, and
against whom proceedings were then pending. When attacked for this in
the House, he showed an irritation which would have carried him to
gross lengths, if Fox and Sheridan had not by main force pulled him
down into his seat by the tails of his coat. The restoration of the
clerks was an indefensible error of judgment, and its indiscretion was
heightened by the kind of defence which Burke tried to set up. When
we wonder at Burke's exclusion from great offices, this case of Powell
and Bembridge should not be forgotten.

The decisive event in the history of the Coalition Government was the
India Bill. The Reports of the various select committees upon Indian
affairs--the most important of them all, the ninth and eleventh,
having been drawn up by Burke himself--had shown conclusively that the
existing system of government was thoroughly corrupt and thoroughly
inadequate. It is ascertained pretty conclusively that the Bill for
replacing that system was conceived and drawn by Burke, and that to
him belongs whatever merit or demerit it might possess. It was Burke
who infected Fox with his own ardour,