ABSTRACT
Ambition is a virtue or a vice, a blessing or a curse, according to the motives from which it proceeds, the objects to which it is directed and the means which are employed to gratify it. The restoration and maintenance of the credit system, through confidence in the capacity of the Sinking Fund to contain and eventually eliminate the National Debt, became the basis of his financial and economic policy. Once India Act was passed, William Pitt saw the Irish situation as 'the most important and delicate we now have to attend to', and during the parliamentary recess he had the time to seek a systematic solution. The war indeed precipitated the two most fundamental reforms of the era: the introduction of major direct taxation, and the Union with Ireland.
