The arrangements for a peerage, as a matter of course, came to an end.

But Pitt was well aware of the serious embarrassments by which Burke was so pressed that he saw actual beggary very close at hand.

The king, too,--who had once, by the way, granted a pension to Burke's detested Rousseau, though Rousseau was too proud to draw it--seems to have been honourably interested in making a provision for Burke.

What Pitt offered was an immediate grant of L1200 a year from the Civil List for Mrs.Burke's life, to be followed by a proposition to Parliament in a message from the king, to confer an annuity of greater value upon a statesman who had served the country to his own loss for thirty years.
As a matter of fact, the grant, L2500 a year in amount, much to Burke's chagrin, was never brought before Parliament, but was conferred directly by the Crown, as a charge on the four and a half per cent fund for two or more lives.

It seems as if Pitt were afraid of challenging the opinion of Parliament; and the storm which the pension raised out of doors, was a measure of the trouble which the defence of it would have inflicted on the Government inside the House of Commons.