Mr. Pitt himself, in the House of Commons, with much seeming modesty, assumed the honour that was due to his intelligence and foresight; and by disclaiming any triumph on the necessity into which the ministers had fallen of making war, asserted the right, to which his counsels had entitled him, of having pointed out the moment when the war ought to have commenced--a moment, lost by his enemies, without the benefit of having warded off the war with Spain. Lord North,[165] who seconded the address of thanks for the King’s speech, had injudiciously furnished Pitt with an opportunity of vindicating his measures, calling him an abdicated minister, and violently taxing him with a fondness for new hostilities. Nothing could be more cool or artful than Pitt’s reply. It was all panegyric; all gratitude for his Majesty’s resentment of Spain’s provoking conduct, and for the _caution_ with which he promised to engage in so large a war. In his own particular situation, he might be supposed not to like such firm, and yet such _cautious_ measures--but he did; he heartily thanked the ministers for their _caution_; and meaned to conciliate unanimity, which he hoped would spread from one end of the island to the other. Himself for five years had laboured successfully--but he did not mean to pride himself that way--yet he had proved not to have been so much in the wrong as his enemies had thought; and, however Lord North had disparaged his intelligence, activity, and discernment, he hoped his successors would not be endowed with worse or less; and that the people would place confidence in the administration, whose large and wide-spread connections must be followed by confidence and favour. A poor individual like himself could have no such favour and following! He should easily have been blamed, if any slip had appeared in his conduct. _Now_ it must be the King--it must be the Administration, the Parliament, nation, army, and navy, who were to carry on the war; and he prayed to God it might all be enough! Yet he thought us equal to the whole. However, he had not sought the Spanish war; and if it were not too much for a poor individual, _for an abdicated Minister_, to say, he hoped it would appear, that for five years together he had made much political court to Spain, and great persons had concurred with him in those counsels. The sacrifices he had offered would show how much he and they had been in the right; and that he had not been so haughty as was represented in rejecting Bussy’s memorial. He would never call for the papers which would exemplify the temper he had used towards Spain. If his Majesty should think they would satisfy the nation, would satisfy Europe, he knew he should appear to have had the unanimous approbation of the whole Cabinet to several of the papers he had sent to Spain. But what imported it what one man or another had thought three months before? Since that era he had received such