William Pitt the Younger however, was comfortable with Shelburne, and thus joined his government; he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. Fox, who became Pitt's lifelong political rival, then joined a coalition with Lord North, with whom he collaborated to bring about the defeat of the Shelburne administration. When Lord Shelburne resigned in 1783, King George III, who despised Fox, offered to appoint Pitt to the office of prime minister. But Pitt wisely declined, for he knew he would be incapable of securing the support of the House of Commons. The Fox–North coalition rose to power in a government nominally headed by William Cavendish-Bentinck,
William Pitt Smith William Pitt Smith William Pitt Smith (1760–1796) was a U.S. physician, educator and theological writer. Smith began his career serving in the General Hospital Department of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. He became Professor of Materia Medica at Columbia College) in 1792. Smith authored two books that espoused the tenets of Universalism: "The Universalist; in Seven Letters to Amyntor" (1787) and "Observations on Conventions" (1793). In his books, Smith argued that the notion of infinite and universal sin contradicted God's basic nature. Smith's writing also spoke positively of deism, noting its practitioners were "of amiable characters, or sense,