The failure of the proceedings against Warren Hastings, and the strong sympathy with the French Revolution--at least in its beginning--displayed by the Whigs and by most of those with whom Burke had acted in politics, had an unfortunate effect on his temper. He broke off his friendship with Fox and others of his oldest associates and greatest admirers. He became hopeless and out of conceit with the world around him. One might have set down some of this at least to the effect of advancing years and declining health, if such onslaughts on revolutionary ideas as his 'Reflections on the French Revolution' and his 'Letters on a Regicide Peace' did not reveal the continued possession of all the literary qualities which had made the success of his earlier works. Their faults are literally the faults of youth: the brilliancy of the rhetoric, the heat of the invective, the violence of the partisanship, the reluctance to admit the existence of any grievances in France to justify the popular onslaught on the monarchy, the noblesse, and the Church. His one explanation of the crisis and its attendant horrors was the instigation of the spirit of evil. The effect on contemporary opinion was very great, and did much to stimulate the conservative reaction in England which carried on the Napoleonic wars and lasted down to the passage of the Reform Bill in 1832. There were, however, other causes for the cloud which came over Burke's later years. In spite of his great services to his party and his towering eminence as an orator and writer, he never obtained a seat in the Cabinet. The Paymastership of the Forces, at a salary of $20,000 a year, was the highest reward, either in honor or money, which his party ever bestowed on him. It is true that in those days the Whigs were very particular in reserving high places for men of rank and family. In fact, their government was, from the Revolution of 1688 on, a thorough oligarchy, divided among a few great houses. That they should not have broken through this rule in Burke's case, and admitted to the Cabinet a man to whom they owed so much as they did to him, excited wonder in his own day, and has down to our own time been one of the historical mysteries on which the students of that period love to expend their ingenuity. It is difficult to reconcile this exclusion and neglect of Burke with the unbounded admiration lavished on him by the aristocratic leaders of the party. It is difficult too to account for Burke's quiet acquiescence in what seems to be their ingratitude. There had before his time been no similar instance of party indifference to such claims as he could well make, on such honors and rewards as the party had to bestow.