214 
knowledge, was the qualification 
most to be desired in the ministers 
of a great country. And even 
among many who had not yet 
adopted this sentiment, the conti- 
nuance of the existing administra- 
tion, was ardently wished for, as 
the best pledge for the duration of 
the peace; an object for which 
every possible effort might be ex- 
pected from men, whose charac- 
ters and situations were so closely 
connected with it. 
But when it became manifest, 
even to the ministers themselves, 
that the war must immediately re- 
commence, their own situation was 
as much changed as that of the 
country, They found that they 
would have to encounter the re- 
proaches of many whom their as- 
surances had misled into a course 
of public conduct, or into projects 
of private speculation, neither of 
which had been justified by the 
¢vent—they would he called upon 
to publish the detail of negocia- 
tions, singularly defective in point 
of ability and knowledge: and the 
submissive tone of which could not 
but prove galling, to a great and 
high-spirited people —they would 
be required to justify the orders 
given for putting into the hands of 
the enemy, on the very eve of hos- 
tilities, those possessions, whose. 
chief value is found in war—and, 
above all, they would be obliged 
to account to parliament for a long 
session, actively employed under 
such circumstances, not in proposing 
new measures of defence, but in dis- 
charging, disemhodying, and de- 
stroying the already inadequate force 
which before existed! In addition to 
these embarrassments, they would 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 
1803. 
have to encounter the usual difficul- 
ties of a burthensome aud expensive 
war.—Difficulties much increased 
to them, by the continual reference 
which they must occasion to the 
errors of their past policy. 
In this situation of things, it was 
natural that the administration 
should look to some means of 
strengthening themselves in parlia- 
ment, and of retrieving the ground 
they had lost in the estimation of 
the public; among whom a sense of 
their insufficiency had, for some 
time past, been rapidly, though 
silently growing up. _There were, 
in parliament, three leading de- 
scriptions of public men, uncon- 
nected with the existing ministry 5 ; 
from each of whom separately, n mi- 
nisters had much to apprehend 5 
and whose union, even if it could 
be eflected for that single object, 
would manifestly be, at any mo- 
ment sufficient to overthrow the 
whole system of Mr, Addington’s 
government, Of these it was ge- — 
nerally understood that the party, 
at the head of which Mr. Pitt was 
placed, though much dissatisfied 
with the conduct of ministers, was 
however less alienated from them 
than those with whom either Mr. 
Fox or lord Grenyille acted.—To 
Mr. Pitt, therefore, their overtures 
were made. 
It appears not improbable, that, 
in a transaction of this nature, car- 
ried on in a great degree by verbal 
discussion, and embracing the per- 
sonal situations and interests of all 
those persons who were parties to 
it, some misapprehension may, even 
in the very outset, have prevailed: 
—the actual ministers may, per- 
haps, haye conceived themselves 
engaged 
