Editing Charles James Fox (section)

===Constitutional crisis===

Happily for George, the unpopular coalition would not outlast the year. The [[Treaty of Paris (1783)|Treaty of Paris]] was signed on 3 September 1783, formally ending the [[American Revolutionary War]]. Fox proposed an [[East India Bill]] to place the government of the ailing and oppressive [[British East India Company]], at that time in control of a considerable expanse of India, on a sounder footing with a board of governors responsible to Parliament and more resistant to Crown patronage. It passed the Commons by 153 to 80, but, when the King made it clear that any peer who voted in favour of the bill would be considered a personal enemy of the Crown, the Lords divided against Fox by 95 to 76.<ref>{{harvnb|Reid|1969|p=190}}</ref> George III now felt justified in dismissing Fox and North from government and in nominating [[Pitt the Younger]] in their place, the King appointed the youngest [[British prime minister]] to date at twenty-four years of age. Fox used his parliamentary majority to oppose Pitt's nomination, and every subsequent measure that he put before the House, until March 1784, when the King dissolved Parliament and, in the following [[1784 British general election]], Pitt was returned with a substantial majority.

In Fox's own constituency of Westminster, the contest was particularly fierce. An energetic campaign in his favour was run by [[Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire]], allegedly a lover of Fox's who was said to have won at least one vote for him by kissing a shoemaker with a rather romantic idea of what constituted a bribe. In the end, Fox was re-elected by a very slender margin, but legal challenges encouraged, to an extent, by Pitt and the King<ref>{{harvnb|Reid|1969|p=206}}</ref> prevented a final declaration of the result for over a year. In the meantime, Fox sat for the Scottish [[pocket borough]] of [[Tain Burghs (UK Parliament constituency)|Tain or Northern Burghs]], for which he was qualified by being made an unlikely [[burgess of Kirkwall]] in Orkney. The experience of these years was crucial in Fox's political formation. His suspicions had been confirmed. It seemed to him that George III had personally scuppered both the Rockingham-Shelburne and Fox-North governments, interfered in the legislative process and now dissolved Parliament when its composition inconvenienced him. Pitt, a man of little property and no party, seemed to Fox a blatant tool of the Crown.<ref>{{harvnb|Mitchell|1992|p=75}}</ref>

However, the King and Pitt had great popular support, and many in the press and general population saw Fox as the trouble-maker challenging the composition of the constitution and the King's remaining powers. He was often caricatured as [[Oliver Cromwell]] and [[Guy Fawkes]] during this period, as well as [[Satan]].<ref>{{harvnb|Mitchell|1992|p=73}}</ref>