William Pitt the Younger King refused to support him. Fox stated the bill was necessary to save the company from bankruptcy. Pitt responded that: "Necessity was the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It was the argument of tyrants; it was the creed of slaves." The King was opposed to the bill; when it passed in the House of Commons, he secured its defeat in the House of Lords by threatening to regard anyone who voted for it as his enemy. Following the bill's failure in the Upper House, George III dismissed the coalition government and finally entrusted the premiership to William Pitt,
William Pitt the Younger with the rest of the British Army all divided between Britain, Europe, India and North America. As the British death toll caused by yellow fever continued to climb, Pitt was criticised in the House of Commons with several MPs suggesting it might be better to abandon the expedition, but Pitt insisted that Britain had given its word of honor that it would protect the French planters from their former slaves, and the expedition to St. Domingue could not be abandoned. The British attempt to conquer St. Domingue in 1793–1798 ended in disaster with the British pulling out on 31 August