Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/95

i8o;.] From Irish Union to Dismissal of Grenville. 8 1 writers. It had secured good divisions in both Houses of Par- liament, and although the King was an enemy to all changes, his opposition could have been overcome on this as it had been by Chatham and Rockingham on other subjects. Fox at this time had weakened his own influence with his natural followers by his coalition with North ; but the amount of dislike which he thereby incurred is a measure of the strength of the public feeling on the other side, and the allegiance of the reformers was not lost to the cause, but was transferred to Pitt, who had made himself its special champion. He had brought forward the subject of electoral reform more than once in the House of Commons, and on one occasion was within twenty votes of carrying his resolution. There seemed every probability that a very considerable measure of reform might then have been carried without any serious conflict between the various classes and parties in the State. Without Pitt no permanent administration could have been secured on the anti-reform basis. The circumstances and conditions under which he accepted place, and the character of the support on which he consented to depend, soon changed the aspect of affairs. In the memorable contest which he waged against the members of the coalition and the majority of the House of Commons, he found arrayed against him nearly every section of independent politicians, Whig and Tory alike. His chief supporters were the court and the people called " the King's friends." The courage and the vigour with which he carried on the struggle won for him a good deal of public sympathy ; and, outside the close Parliamentary ranks of his opponents, he still commanded much of the confidence and inspired something of the hope amongst reformers which, by the coalition, Fox for the time seemed to have betrayed and destroyed. Still, when the long fight was over and the dis- solution came, court influence, patronage, and money were largely responsible for the greatness of the majority, and on more than one occasion afterwards it was seen to be the following rather of the monarch than the minister. Pitt amply justified the trust and paid for the support which he G