Once, indeed, a crisis occurred which put the Scottish people nearly out in their calculations. This was in March 1801, when Pitt resigned office, and Dundas along with him, and a new ministry was formed under Pitt’s temporary substitute, Mr. Addington, afterwards Lord Sidmouth. Dundas out of power was a conception totally new to the Scottish mind,—an association, or rather a dissociation, of ideas utterly paralysing. “For a while,” says Lord Brougham, “all was uncertainty and consternation; all were seen fluttering about like birds in an eclipse or a thunderstorm; no man could tell whom he might trust; nay, worse still, no man could tell of whom he might ask anything.” Dundasism, which had hitherto meant participation in place and patronage, now seemed in danger of losing that meaning; and the bulk of the Scottish population feared that they might have to choose between the name and the thing. They were faithful to Dundas, however; and they were rewarded. The Addington ministry, which had come into power principally to conclude peace with France by the Treaty of Amiens, came to an end after that Treaty had been rendered nugatory by the recommencement of the war; and in May 1804 Pitt returned to the helm. Dundas, who had in the interim been raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Melville, then resumed his place in his friend’s cabinet, to yield his Parliamentary service thenceforward in the Upper House, and official service mainly in the First Lordship of the Admiralty. Scotland then rolled herself up comfortably once more for her accustomed slumber,—the only difference being that her bedside guardian had to be thought of no longer as her Harry Dundas, but less familiarly now as her Lord Melville. So for another year; but then what a reawakening! It was in April 1805 that, in consequence of the report of a Committee of the House of Commons that had been appointed for the investigation of alleged abuses in the naval service, the Whigs, through Mr. Whitbread as their spokesman, opened an attack on Lord Melville on charges of malversation of office, and misappropriation of public moneys, during his former Treasurership of the Navy, either directly, or by collusion with his principal financial subordinate. The attack grew fiercer and fiercer, as well as more extensive in its scope; and, although it was evidently inspired mainly by the political vindictiveness of a party made furious by long exclusion from office, it became more formidable from the fact that some of Pitt’s own friends either abetted it fully or thought that the irregularities in account-keeping which had been disclosed ought not to pass without Parliamentary censure. Pitt reeled under such a blow at once to his private feelings and his administration; and, after doing his best to resist, he had to consent that Lord Melville should quit office, and that Lord Melville’s name should be struck off from the list of His Majesty’s Privy Council till