The Tory party, long buried, showed signs of resurrection.
There were those among its members who, even in a king of
the hated line of Hanover, could recognize and admire the
same spirit of arbitrary domination that had marked their
fallen idols, the Stuarts; and they now joined hands with the
discontented Whigs in opposition to Pitt. The horrors of war,
the blessings of peace, the weight of taxation, the growth of
the national debt, were the rallying cries of the new party; but
the mainspring of their zeal was hostility to the great Minister.
Even his own colleagues chafed under his spirit of mastery;
the chiefs of the Opposition longed to inherit his power; and
the King had begun to hate him as a lion in his path. Pitt held
to his purpose regardless of the gathering storm. That purpose,
as proclaimed by his adherents, was to secure a solid and lasting peace,
which meant the reduction of France to so low an estate that she
could no more be a danger to her rival. In this he had the sympathy
of the great body of the nation.
Early in 1761 the King, a fanatic for prerogative, set his
enginery in motion. The elections for the new Parliament were
manipulated in his interest. If he disliked Pitt as the representative
of the popular will, he also disliked his colleague, the
shuffling and uncertain Newcastle, as the representative of a
too powerful nobility. Elements hostile to both were introduced into
the Cabinet and the great offices.
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