It was generally thought that North's administration would be short-lived. The opposition was strong and apparently united, and it had a large part of the people at its back. The public expectation was ill-grounded. The king's influence in parliament was not to be overborne; as many as 192 members of the house of commons held office under government.[82] North was a first-rate leader and the king was industrious and determined. Yet the strength of the ministry was largely derived from the conduct of their opponents. The violence of the extreme section of the popular party led to a revulsion of feeling in the country. In parliament Chatham was not effective, for his declamatory speeches and dictatorial manner were out of place in the lords; and in the commons Burke was apt to weary the house, and lost ground through constant breaches of good taste. Above all, the two parties in the opposition, the extreme section, with which Chatham had much sympathy, and the Rockingham whigs, did not work well together. In the spring of 1770 Burke published his _Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents_, a masterly exposition of the existing political abuses and of the remedies appropriate to them. Its rejection of proposals for organic changes in the constitution annoyed Chatham, who declared that it had done much harm to the cause. He was soon irritated with the whigs generally. "Moderation, moderation," said he, "is the burthen of their song;" he would be "a scarecrow of violence to the gentle warblers of the grove, the moderate whigs and temperate statesmen". He tried to force the whigs to follow his lead, but Rockingham had no mind to court Chatham's loud-voiced supporters in the city, or to adopt violent measures in order to assure the people that he was true to their cause. Chatham thought it possible that it might be expedient to separate himself from "so unorthodox a congregation" as the whig party, and accused Burke and the Rockinghams of a spirit of connexion. So bitter were his feelings, that he and his friends rejoiced when Dowdeswell and Burke, "those positive gentlemen," were defeated in an attempt to vindicate the rights of juries, because they adopted a method of procedure of which he did not approve; they were, his friend Calcraft wrote to him, "completely disgraced," and Chatham styled their bill "a compound of connexion, tyranny and absurdity".[83] While the opposition was in this distracted state the ministerial party was united. In three years' time at most opposition in parliament was practically dead, and the ministry was thoroughly popular in the country.[84] [Sidenote: _A DIVIDED OPPOSITION._]