A certain dissatisfaction began already to manifest itself among the opposing majority. The violence of Fox had surpassed all bounds; in the opinion of the country, it counterbalanced the recent violence of the king. The young minister gained ground; a proof of his rare disinterestedness had impressed the minds of the people most favorably. Sir Edward Walpole, youngest son of the great minister, had just died. He held the clerkship of Pells, a life sinecure, which was worth £3000 per year. Pitt had no fortune; his friends urged him to appropriate this revenue. The minister refused, and profited by this conjuncture to provide for Col. Barré, who previously had from the Rockingham Ministry a pension of ^3,200. Barré renounced his pension and became clerk of the Pells. "I avow," said Lord Thurlow, some weeks later, in the House of Lords, "I had the baseness to counsel Mr. Pitt to appropriate this office, which had so honorably fallen to him, and I believe that it will not be to my discredit, since so many high in authority have done likewise." {343} Some independent members made advances to Pitt; they had conceived vain projects of conciliation: they failed. A struggle to the death had begun. "The question was," said Dr. Johnson, "who should govern England: the sceptre of George III. or the tongue of Charles Fox?" Two addresses, begging him to dismiss his ministers, were successively sent to the king. Fox was vanquished in advance, and by his own fault; he had attacked that equilibrium of the Constitution, dear to all good citizens, and to honest men who are not irrevocably bound in the dangerous bonds of party spirit. He threatened to suspend the supplies, and proposed to limit to two months the duration of the mutiny act, usually voted for a year. In vain did he employ, in order to defend his conduct, all the marvellous resources of his eloquence. A great remonstrance to the king, that he had prepared with care, passed by the majority of a single voice. The supply and the mutiny bills were passed without difficulty. "The enemy seems to be upon its back," wrote Pitt to the Duke of Rutland, on the 10th of March, 1784; and to his mother on the 16th, he wrote, "I regard our actual situation as a triumph in comparison with what it was. My joy is doubled by the thought that it extends even to you, and gives you satisfaction."