Like so many good things, this one could have some fairly lousy consequences.

Just like the United States, if not quite to the same extent, Britain after the War of American Independence was pushing forward the notion of limited government. The king, while still powerful, couldn’t do just what he wanted. So while he’d campaigned hard to get his man, William Pitt the Younger as Prime Minister, it had been made clear that Pitt saw himself as his own man.

Similarly Pitt, despite a big majority in the House of Commons, couldn’t get everything his own way either. He had some wins, but he had some big losses too. Which is a good thing, if you’re not keen on any individual having too much power.

On the other hand, it was a pity that Pitt’s big losses were on a measure which might have gone a long way to fixing the relationship between England and Ireland, and on starting to reform parliament and doing away with some of its worst abuses, which was long overdue.

A pity that British parliamentarians decided that those were the issues on which to limit the power of the British government…

Illustration: Cicero in Catilinam by James Sayers, published by Thomas Cornell by 17 March 1785. Pitt is standing and speaking at the dispatch box in the House of Commons. Opposite him, the obese Fox is listening and the nearly-blind Lord North is peering at a document.

National Portrait Gallery 12236

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License