The weak side of this view was the weak side of all Burke's political philosophy. Like all great innovators, he was intensely conservative where he was not an advocate of change. With new views on every subject relating to the exercise of power, he shrank even from entertaining the slightest question relating to the distribution of power. He recommended to the British parliament the most self-denying wisdom, but he could not see that in its relation to the colonies the British parliament was so constituted as to make it entirely unprepared to be either wise or self-denying. It is true that if he had thought out the matter in this direction, he would have been led further than he or any other man in England or America was at that time prepared to go. If the British parliament was unfit to legislate for America, and if, as was undoubtedly the case, it was impossible to create a representative body which was fit to legislate, it would follow that the American colonies could only be fairly governed as practically independent states, though they might possibly remain, like the great colonies of our own day, in a position of alliance rather than of dependence. It was because the issues opened led to changes so far greater than the wisest statesman then perceived, that Pitt's solution, logically untenable as it was, was preferable to Burke's. Pitt would have given bad reasons for going a step in the right direction. Burke gave excellent reasons why those who were certain to go wrong should have the power to go right. Ministry of Lord Chatham. Scarcely were the measures relating to America passed when the king turned out the ministry. The new ministry was formed by Pitt, who was created earl of Chatham (1766), on the principle of bringing together men who had shaken themselves loose from any of the different Whig cliques. Whatever chance the plan had of succeeding was at an end when Chatham's mind temporarily gave way under stress of disease (1767). Charles Townshend, a brilliant, headstrong man, led parliament in the way which had been prepared by the Declaratory Act, and laid duties on tea and other articles of commerce entering the ports of America. Wilkes and "The North Briton."