Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/91

Rh purpose, was kept in office by the help of a majority which had no faith in its efficiency, and longed to see it superseded by the man whose retirement had made its existence possible. The Whigs were powerless to shake the Government; it fell by the hands of its own friends. On the 10th of May, 1804, Pitt once more took the seals of office, and formed his second and last administration. The changes in the Ministry were neither numerous nor important. Cut off from the Whigs, the Premier was compelled to look to his old Tory friends and those of Addington for support. He was thus once more shut up within the narrowest range of policy. This had been rendered inevitable when he once more sacrificed his own convictions—this time on the Catholic question—to the prejudices and obstinacy of his sovereign. The most interesting of the new appointments were two minor ones. Canning was made treasurer of the navy, and Huskisson one of the secretaries to the treasury. These two men were hereafter to exercise an important influence upon the fortunes of their party, introducing ideas which were fatal to its unity, and opening the way for the introduction of Radical principles, which were opposed to the traditions of both the old schools of politicians. At present they were both, and Canning especially, moved by a strong personal devotion to the chief who had placed them in office. Windham did not rejoin the Government; he returned to opposition, strong in his adhesion to those opinions of hatred to France and the Revolution, and of dislike of constitutional changes at home, which he had imbibed from Burke and held with a sort of religious fervour, and which separated him, as it had done his great teacher, from sympathy with popular feeling. He remained a typical Whig, as distinguished from Liberals like Fox and Grey.

Although Pitt had been recalled to office because, in the opinion of people and Parliament, he was the only man capable of conducting the nation through the stormy and dangerous times which lay before it, his personal power was by no means so great as it had been during his first administration. No doubt his position on the Catholic question had