IN the course of the session of 1782, when the American War was dragging to its disastrous close and a change of Ministers was imminent, one of the youngest members of the House of Commons declared that he would accept no subordinate office in a new administration. At the close of 1783, during a crisis of singular intensity, he became Chief Minister of the Crown, and thenceforth, with one short interval, controlled the destinies of Great Britain through twenty-two years marked by grave complications, both political and financial, social and diplomatic, ending in wars of unexampled magnitude. Early in the year 1806 he died of exhaustion, at the age of forty-seven. In these bald statements we may sum up the outstanding events of the life of William Pitt the Younger, which it is my aim to describe somewhat in detail.
