ABSTRACT

The disability which the leadership of Ponsonby brought upon the Whig party might to a certain extent have been mitigated if they had been able to find in the House of Commons allies who would unite with them to turn out the Tories, or collaborate with them in forming a Government. A powerful Whig party could only be built up on the old basis—not indeed on the same principles, for times were changed, but upon the same rocklike foundation of intellectual agreement. It is plain, then, that between the effort to reunite the Pittites and the effort to purge the Foxites the Whig party would sustain a double injury: the delicate equipoise of agreement upon which the Grey-Grenville coalition rested would be threatened, and the search for allies would be made more difficult by internal and external obstacles.