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WILLIAM PITT. 
 
 
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 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 1891. 
 
WILLIAM PITT. 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 DEC 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
 
 1891. 
 
 V 
 
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 Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 
 
WILLIAM PITT. 
 
 Pitt, William, the second son of the great 
 Earl of Chatham and of Lady Hester Grenville, 
 was born at Hayes, near Bromley, in Kent, on 
 28th May 1159. At the time of his 'birth his father 
 was still in the House of Commons and in the very 
 zenith of his fame, and the future statesman grew 
 up amid associations and surroundings that were 
 well fitted to foster that political ambition which 
 was to be the guiding and almost the sole impulse of 
 his life. His constitution in boyhood seemed very 
 weak ; he was never sent to school, but his education 
 advanced so rapidly under a private tutor, that he 
 was able to enter Cambridge when only fourteen. 
 He was then a shy, reserved boy of exceedingly 
 precocious talents, of irreproachable morals, and of 
 regular and studious habits, little drawn to college 
 society and amusements, and already distinguished 
 by a rare self-control and concentration of purpose. 
 From his earliest youth political life was placed 
 before him as his ideal, and all his studies con- 
 verged to that end. He became an excellent 
 classical scholar, but he valued the classical writers 
 mainly as a school of language and of taste ; and it 
 was observed how carefully he analysed their 
 styles, noted down every just or forcible expres- 
 sion, and compared the opposite speeches on the 
 same subject, observing how each speaker met or 
 evaded the arguments of his opponent. Like many 
 others he found in Locke a great master of clear and 
 accurate thinking. His father superintended his 
 studies with much care, and it was remembered 
 that he specially recommended to him the sermons 
 of Barrow as models of style and reasoning, and 
 the histories of Polybius and Thucydides as foun- 
 tains of political wisdom; that he taught him 
 elocution by making him declaim the grandest 
 poetry in Shakespeare and the speeches of the 
 
4 PITT. 
 
 fallen angels in the Paradise Lost; and that he 
 exercised him in fluency by accustoming him to 
 translate into flowing English long passages from 
 the classical writers. To this last practice Pitt 
 largely ascribed that amazing command of choice 
 and accurate English in which he surpassed all his 
 contemporaries. When little more than a boy he 
 was an attentive and discriminating listener to the 
 debates in parliament. He became thoroughly 
 familiar with the matchless eloquence of his father, 
 and together with his brother-in-law, Lord Mahon, 
 he supported his father into the House of Lords on 
 the 7th April 1778 on that memorable occasion 
 Avhen Chatham delivered his last speech against the 
 surrender of America, and fell down, stricken by 
 mortal illness, on the floor of the House. 
 
 Pitt was left with a patrimony of less than £300 
 a year. He was called to the bar in the June of 
 1780, and went on the Western Circuit, but in 
 September parliament was dissolved, and he at once 
 threw himself into politics. He stood for Cam- 
 bridge University, but found himself at the bottom 
 of the poll; his disappointment, however, was 
 speedily allayed, for Sir James Lowther gave him 
 a seat for his pocket-borough of Appleby, and Pitt 
 entered the House of Commons on 23d January 1781. 
 
 He came into the House bearing a name which 
 was beyond all others revered by Englishmen, with 
 the advantage of being in no way mixed up with 
 the calamitous American war, and with talents 
 that had already acquired an extraordinary matu- 
 rity. The Tory ministry of Lord North was then 
 tottering to its fall, crushed by the disasters in 
 America, and confronted by an opposition which 
 consisted of the Old Whigs who followed Rocking- 
 ham, among whom Fox and Burke were conspicu- 
 ous, and of a smaller body who had been especially 
 attached to the fortunes of Chatham, and who 
 were chiefly represented by Shelburne, Camden, 
 and Barre. Pitt lost no time in throwing himself 
 into the fray. He spoke on the 26th February 
 with brilliant success in defence of Burke's Bill for 
 Economical Preform, and on several successive 
 occasions he assailed the falling ministry. He 
 denounced the American war and the corrupt 
 influence of the crown with extreme violence, but 
 he refused to throw in his lot irrevocably with the 
 party of the opposition, and shortly before the fall 
 of North he publicly declared that he could not 
 expect to bear a part in the coming ministry, as he 
 ' would never accept a subordinate position. ' The 
 
PITT. 5 
 
 words are said to have escaped from him in the 
 heat of the debate, and the House was startled and 
 a little amused at the arrogance of a younor man 
 who was not twenty-three, who was absolutely 
 without official experience, and who had been little 
 more than a year in parliament, declaring that he 
 would accept no office except in the Cabinet. 
 
 But Pitt had attained a position that placed him 
 far above lasting ridicule. Fox spoke of him as 
 already one of the first men in parliament. Burke 
 said of him that he was not a chip of the old block, 
 but the old block itself; Horace Walpole wrote 
 that he had shown logical powers that made men 
 doubt whether he might not prove superior even 
 to Fox ; and when upon the resignation of North in 
 March 1782 a ministry was formed under the 
 leadership of Rockingham, combining the two 
 sections of the opposition, Pitt remembered his 
 pledge and refused several offers, among others the 
 Vice-treasurership of Ireland with a salary of 
 £5000 a year. He gave, however, a general and 
 cordial support to the new ministers, but he at the 
 same time brought forward the question of parlia- 
 mentary reform, on which they were profoundly 
 divided. It was a question which fell naturally to 
 him, for his father had been one of the first to urge 
 it. On the 7th May he moved, in a speech of great 
 brilliancy, for a select committee to inquire into 
 the state of the representation, and was only 
 defeated by 161 to 141. He soon afterwards sup- 
 ported a measure of Sawbridge for shortening the 
 duration of parliament, and a measure of Lord 
 Mahon for preventing bribery at elections. 
 
 A close personal and political connection about 
 this time grew up between Pitt and Henry Dundas, 
 who had been Lord Advocate under North. It 
 proved of great importance to the career of Pitt. 
 Dundas had none or the intellectual brilliancy or of 
 the moral dignity of the younger statesman, but he 
 had one of the best political judgments of his time, 
 he had great talents both for business and for 
 debate, and he was a most shrewd and sagacious 
 judge of the characters of men — a gift in which 
 Pitt through his whole life was somewhat wanting. 
 
 The Rockingham ministry lasted only for three 
 months. The king detested it ; it was from the 
 first profoundly divided, and a bitter personal and 
 political animosity had broken out between Charles 
 Fox and Lord Shelburne, its two most conspicuous 
 members. On 1st July 1782 Lord Rockingham 
 died, and the question of leadership at once broke 
 
6 PITT. 
 
 up the party. Fox insisted on the leadership of 
 the Duke of Portland, a wealthy and respectable, 
 but perfectly undistinguished nobleman, who was 
 then Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. The king gave 
 the post of First Lord of the Treasury to Shelburne, 
 who had an incomparably higher political position, 
 and who had been a favourite friend and colleague 
 of Chatham, though there were features in his 
 character that already excited great unpopularity 
 and distrust. Fox, with a considerable section of 
 the Rockingham Whigs, at once resigned, and Pitt 
 entered the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 in the reconstructed ministry. Public opinion 
 generally blamed Fox, and one of the consequences 
 of his resignation was that the House of Commons 
 was divided into three distinct parties. There was 
 the party of Fox, the party of North, and the party 
 of the government, and no one of them could 
 command a clear majority. A coalition of some 
 kind was inevitable. Shelburne leaned towards an 
 alliance with North, but Pitt positively refused to 
 have any connection with the statesman whom he 
 deemed responsible for the American war. Peace 
 was not yet attained, but the negotiations which 
 had been pursued by the preceding ministry were 
 steadily pushed on. Provisional articles of peace 
 between England and the United States wp 1 " - 
 signed in November 1782, and preliminary articles 
 with France and Spain in the following January, 
 while a truce was established with Holland, and 
 the first steps were taken towards a very liberal 
 commercial treaty with the United States." 
 
 Pitt bore a leading part in the debates in parlia- 
 ment, and his reputation steadily rose, but the 
 Shelburne ministry was weak, divided, and short- 
 lived. The peace following a disastrous war 
 necessarily involved sacrifices that were profoundly 
 unpopular, and the character of Shelburne aggra- 
 vated the divisions that had already appeared. 
 Several resignations took place, but Pitt stood 
 loyally by his chief, and endeavoured without 
 success to induce Fox to rejoin the ministry. Fox, 
 however, declared that he would never again serve 
 any ministry with Shelburne for its head, and to 
 the astonishment and indignation both of the king 
 and of the country, he united with the very states- 
 man whose expulsion from public power had been 
 for years the main object of his policy, and whom 
 he had repeatedly threatened with impeachment. 
 North, irritated at the ostracism with which he had 
 been threatened, readily entered into the alliance. 
 
PITT. 7 
 
 Two factious votes of censure directed against the 
 peace were carried through the Commons by 
 majorities of 16 and 17, and on 24th February 1783 
 Shelburne resigned. 
 
 Pitt had displayed the most splendid parlia- 
 mentary talents in the discussions that preceded 
 the fall of the ministry, and although he could 
 not overthrow the compact weight of parlia- 
 mentary influence opposed to him, he profoundly 
 moved the country and placed his own position 
 beyond dispute. On the fall of the Shelburne 
 ministry, the king, hoping to escape the yoke of 
 the coalition, implored the young statesman to 
 accept the leadership, and gave him an absolute 
 authority to name his colleagues. It was a daz- 
 zling offer, and Pitt was not yet twenty-four, but 
 he already possessed a judgment and a self-restraint 
 which is rarely found at any age in combination 
 with such brilliancy and such courage, and he saw 
 clearly that the moment of triumph had not yet 
 come. After a long struggle and many abortive 
 efforts the king was obliged to yield, and on the 2d 
 April the coalition ministry was formed with the 
 Duke of Portland as First Lord of the Treasury, 
 and Fox and North as joint Secretaries of State. 
 
 It commanded a large majority of the votes, and 
 included a great preponderance of the ability in 
 the House of Commons, but the king viewed it 
 with a detestation amounting to loathing, and the 
 nation was profoundly scandalised by the alliance 
 on which it rested. Pitt was offeree! his old post 
 of Chancellor of the Exchequer, which he peremp- 
 torily refused. As leader of the opposition, he 
 brought forward, in the form of resolutions, an 
 elaborate scheme of parliamentary reform, includ- 
 ing an increase of the county members. He was 
 defeated by 293 to 149, but he at least succeeded in 
 bringing Fox and North into direct collision. He 
 brought forward another important measure for the 
 reform of abuses in the public offices, which passed 
 the Commons but was rejected in the Lords. The 
 peace which was carried by the new ministry 
 differed very little from that which they had 
 censured when in opposition ; and very soon the bill 
 of the government for subverting in some important 
 respects the charter of the East India Company 
 and reorganising the government of India, pro- 
 duced another great change in the disposition of 
 power. 
 
 The feature of the scheme which chiefly excited 
 indignation and alarm was the' creation by the 
 
I 
 
 8 PITT. 
 
 existing legislature of a new supreme body in 
 England, consisting of seven commissioners who 
 were to be immovable except by an address from 
 either house for four years, and who were during 
 that period to have an absolute control of the 
 patronage of India. It was contended that this 
 measure would give the party who were now in 
 power an amount of patronage which would enable 
 them to overbalance the influence of the crown, 
 dominate the parliament, and control succeeding 
 administrations. These objections were brought 
 forward by Pitt with great power, but with 
 extreme exaggeration, and the king and the nation 
 were speedily alarmed. The India Bill passed by 
 large majorities through the Commons, but when it 
 came into the House of Lords the king authorised 
 Lord Temple to say that he would consider any 
 man his enemy who voted for the bill. The com- 
 munication produced an immediate effect. The 
 bill was rejected in the Lords by 95 to 76; the 
 ministry refused to resign, and the House of 
 Commons supported them by large majorities ; but 
 the king peremptorily dismissed them on 18th 
 December 1783, and next day it was announced 
 that Pitt had been called to the head of affairs as 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the 
 Treasury. | 
 
 Pitt had already abundantly displayed his parlia- 
 mentary ability, his judgment, and his discretion. 
 He was now to display in the highest degree his 
 courage. In the eyes of nearly all the best judges 
 in England his position was a hopeless one, and his 
 administration was likely to be even more brief 
 than the three which had preceded it. There was 
 a majority of more than a hundred against him in 
 the Commons, and the parliamentary influence 
 behind it was so great that an immediate dissolu- 
 tion must have been disastrous. He was called to 
 office by a grossly unconstitutional interference 
 on the part of the king, and every day which he 
 remained in office under the censure of the House 
 of Commons added to the falseness of his position. 
 Temple, on whom he had greatly relied, threw up 
 the seals of Secretary of State which he had 
 accepted, and in the House of Commons Pitt was 
 himself at this time the only cabinet minister, 
 while Dundas was the only considerable debater 
 who supported him against the united attacks of 
 North, Fox, Burke, and Sheridan. But Pitt 
 fought his battle with a skill and a resolution that 
 have never been surpassed in parliamentary history. 
 
PITT. 9 
 
 A long succession of hostile votes was carried, but 
 they failed to drive him from office, and soon un- 
 equivocal signs appeared that the country was with 
 him. The magnanimity with which at this critical 
 period he refused to take for himself a great sine- 
 cure office which fell vacant added greatly to his 
 popularity. Addresses in his favour poured in from 
 all the leading corporations in the country. The 
 majorities against him grew steadily smaller. At 
 last, on 25th March 1784, the long-deferred blow 
 was struck. Parliament was dissolved, and an 
 election ensued which swept away nearly 160 
 members of the opposition, made Pitt one of the 
 most powerful ministers in all English history, 
 and prepared the way for a ministry which lasted' 
 with a few months' intermission, for no less than 
 twenty years. 
 
 In this great and powerful ministry English 
 political life assumed much of its modern aspect. 
 The House of Commons acquired a new importance 
 in the constitution, the people a new control over 
 its proceedings, and the First Lord of the Treasury 
 complete ascendency in the government. The 
 system of ' king's friends ' controlling the ministry 
 was finally destroyed, and when the chancellor, 
 Lord 1 hurlow, attempted to perpetuate it, he was 
 peremptorily dismissed. The skilful management 
 of the regency question established the right of 
 parliament to provide for the exercise of supreme 
 power during the incapacity of the king. Direct 
 parliamentary corruption was finally put down 
 Great numbers of sinecure places were abolished 
 and great reforms were introduced into the system 
 of collecting the revenue and issuing public loans, 
 lne government of India was reorganised on the 
 system of a double government, which continued 
 with little change till the abolition of the East 
 India Company in 1858. The whole system of 
 taxation and of trade duties was thoroughly revised 
 and no minister since Walpole had approached Pitt 
 in his complete competence in dealing with trade 
 questions. The finances of the country, which had 
 been extremely disorganised by the American war, 
 became once -more flourishing. A commercial 
 treaty, based upon more enlightened commercial 
 doctrines than any English statesman, except 
 bhelDurne, had yet adopted, was negotiated with 
 t ranee. In foreign politics Pitt was for some years 
 equally successful. Some troubles that had arisen 
 with Spam were put down by a display of prompt 
 and judicious firmness. In conjunction with 
 
10 PITT. 
 
 Prussia a revolutionary movement in Holland 
 which was fomented by French influence was 
 suppressed, and the triple alliance of England, 
 Prussia, and Holland contributed largely to ter- 
 minate the wars between Sweden and Denmark 
 and between the emperor and the Turks, though it 
 met with a mortifying failure in its dealings with 
 Russia. Pitt's love of peace was very sincere, but 
 the influence of England in European councils rose 
 greatly under his ministry, and he showed much 
 decision and tact in extricating England from a 
 dangerous complicity with the ambitious designs 
 of her Prussian ally. Up to the time of the French 
 Revolution there was no decline in his ascendency, 
 his popularity, or his success. 
 
 A few adverse criticisms, however, may be justly 
 made. He cast aside too lightly on the first serious 
 opposition parliamentary reform and the abolition 
 of the slave-trade, and it became evident to good 
 observers that he cared more for power than for 
 measures, and was ready to sacrifice great causes 
 with which he had sincerely sympathised and which 
 he might have carried, rather than raise an opposi- 
 tion that might imperil his ascendency. His once 
 famous Sinking Fund is now universally recog- 
 nised to have been thoroughly vicious in its prin- 
 ciple ; and in the latter part of his career it led him 
 to the absurdity of borrowing largely at high 
 interest in order to pay off a debt that had been 
 contracted at low interest. His attempt to estab- 
 lish free trade between England and Ireland failed 
 through an explosion of manufacturing jealousy 
 in England, which obliged him to modify his 
 original propositions in a way which was unpala- 
 table to the Irish. More real blame attaches to 
 him for his opposition to all serious measures to 
 remedy the enormous abuses in the Irish parlia- 
 ment and for the great uncertainty of his policy 
 towards the Irish Catholics. The great evils which 
 grew up in England in his time in connection with 
 the sudden development of the factory system 
 appear never to have attracted his attention, and 
 he made no effort to mitigate them. He created 
 peerages with extreme lavishness . and with very 
 little regard to merit, and although his patronage 
 was not positively corrupt, few ministers have 
 shown themselves more indifferent to the higher 
 interests of literature, science, and art. 
 
 When the French Revolution broke out his 
 policy was one of absolute neutrality towards the 
 contending parties, and this neutrality he most 
 
PITT. 11 
 
 faithfully observed. He wholly failed, however, to 
 understand the character and the supreme impor- 
 tance of the Revolution. He believed that it was 
 merely a passing disturbance, and that its prin- 
 cipal effect would be to deprive France for some 
 years of all serious influence in European affairs, 
 ami almost to the eve of the great war he was 
 reducing the armaments of England. There is no 
 real doubt that he was forced most reluctantly into 
 war by the aggressive policy of France in Flanders 
 and towards Holland ; but he drew the sword 
 believing that France was so disorganised and 
 bankrupt that a struggle with her would be both 
 short and easy ; he was almost wholly destitute 
 of the kind of talents that are needed for a war- 
 minister, and he had to contend with an almost 
 unexampled outburst of military enthusiasm, and 
 soon after with the transcendent genius of Napo- 
 leon. His belief in the probable shortness of the 
 war and in the efficacy of his sinking fund, led him 
 into the great error of raising his war expenses in 
 the first stages of the war almost wholly by loans, 
 and thus laying the foundation of an enormous 
 increase of debt. His military enterprises were 
 badly planned and badly executed, and he had 
 none of his father's skill in discovering and bring- 
 ing forward military talent. For some years it 
 is true his ascendency in parliament continued to 
 increase. The great Whig schism of 1794 and 
 the secession of Fox reduced the opposition to 
 utter insignificance. But even in his domestic 
 measures Pitt was no longer fortunate. Through 
 fear of the revolutionary spirit which had infected 
 some portions of the population, he was led into 
 repressive measures very little in harmony with 
 his earlier career. Corn had risen to famine price, 
 and great distress prevailed, and the government 
 attempted to meet it by very ill-conceived relaxa- 
 tions of the poor-laws — by levying rates for the 
 purpose of increasing wages, and by granting 
 parochial relief in proportion to the number of 
 children in a family, and thus offering a direct 
 premium to improvident marriages. In Ireland 
 disaffection was steadily growing, and Pitt tried 
 to win the Catholics by measures of conciliation, 
 and especially by the concession of the suffrage ; 
 but the opposition of the king, divided councils, 
 and the vacillation of his own mind impaired 
 his policy, and the injudicious recall at a very 
 critical moment of a popular viceroy contributed 
 largely to the savage rebellion of 1798. He then 
 
12 PITT. 
 
 tried to place Irish affairs on a sound basis by 
 a legislative union which was to be followed by 
 Catholic emancipation, the payment of the priests, 
 and a commutation of tithes. The first measure 
 was carried by very corrupt means, but the king, 
 who had not been informed of the ultimate in- 
 tentions of his minister, declared himself inexo- 
 rably opposed to Catholic emancipation, which he 
 deemed inconsistent with his coronation oath. 
 Pitt resigned his office into the hands of his fol- 
 lower Addington in February 1801 ; but a month 
 later, on hearing that the agitation of the Catholic 
 question had for a time overthrown the totter- 
 ing intellect of the king, he declared that he 
 would abandon the Catholic question during the 
 remainder of the reign, and he resumed office in 
 May 1804 on the understanding that he would 
 not suffer it to be carried. His last ministry was 
 a melancholy and a humiliating one. The war, 
 which had been suspended by the peace of Amiens, 
 had broken out with renewed vehemence. There 
 was great danger of invasion, and Pitt earnestly 
 desired to combine the most eminent men of all 
 parties in the ministry ; but the king forbade 
 the admission of Fox. The principal followers of 
 Fox refused to join without their chief, and Lord 
 Grenville and his followers took the same course. . 
 Grenville, who had long been one of Pitt's ablest 
 colleagues, was now completely alienated. A junc- 
 tion with Addington was effected, but it lasted 
 only for a short time, and it added little to the 
 strength of the ministry. Dundas, Pitt's oldest 
 friend and colleague, had been lately made Viscount 
 Melville. He was placed at the head of the Admi- 
 ralty ; but a charge of misappropriating public 
 funds was raised against him, and in 1805 he was 
 driven ignominiously from office. Pitt's own health 
 was now broken. His spirits had sunk ; the spell 
 which had once surrounded him had in a great 
 degree passed away, and although the victory of 
 Trafalgar saved England from all immediate 
 danger of invasion, the disasters of Ulm and 
 Austerlitz threw a dark cloud over his closing- 
 scene. He died in his forty-seventh year on 23d 
 January 1806. The House of Commons by a great 
 majority voted him a public funeral and a monu- 
 ment in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 He was never married, and he never mixed much 
 in general society ; but in all his private relations 
 he was pure, amiable, simple, and attractive. He 
 was a warm friend. His temper was very equable, 
 
PITT. 13 
 
 and till near the close of his life very cheerful. He 
 had much ready wit, and he could easily throw off 
 the cares of office, and even join heartily in the 
 games of boys. He maintained to the last his 
 familiarity with the classics, but his serious 
 interests were exclusively political. He only once 
 crossed the Channel, and lie appears to have been 
 wholly untouched by the great contemporary 
 currents of literature and non-political thought. 
 He was not free from the prevailing vice of hard 
 drinking, and he has been justly blamed for having 
 allowed his great indifference to money to degener- 
 ate into a culpable carelessness. In 1801 some of 
 his friends subscribed £12,000 towards the payment 
 of his debts, and in the following year he sold 
 Holwood, his country place. But these measures 
 proved wholly insufficient. With no extravagant 
 tastes, with no family to support, with no expen- 
 sive elections, and with an official income of at 
 least £10,000 a year, he left £40,000 of debt, which 
 was paid by the nation. In public he was cold 
 and repellent, and there was something theatrical 
 in the unvaried dignity of his demeanour ; but few 
 men possessed to a higher degree the power of 
 commanding, directing, and controlling, and he 
 inspired the nation with an unbounded confidence 
 both in his character and in his abilities. England 
 has seen no greater parliamentary leader" few 
 greater masters of financial and commercial legisla- 
 tion, and he was one of the first statesmen to adopt 
 the teaching of Adam Smith. If his eloquence was 
 very diffuse, if it showed little imagination, or 
 depth or originality of thought, it was at least 
 supremely adapted to all the purposes of debate, 
 and it rarely failed in its effect. He was, in a 
 word, a great peace-minister; but in the latter part 
 of his life an evil fate brought him face to face with 
 problems which he never wholly understood and 
 with difficulties which he was very little fitted to 
 encounter. 
 
 His political life has been written in much detail by 
 Tomhne and by Gifford; but by far the fullest and best 
 biography of him which has yet appeared is that of Lord 
 Stanhope. Lord Macaulay has made him the subject of 
 a well-known biographical essay, and Mr Goldwin Smith 
 of two brilliant lectures, and the reader may consult with 
 profit the recent monograph of Mr Walford. The career 
 of Pitt, however, is indissolubly intertwined with the 
 whole English history of his time, and it is in connection 
 with that history that it may be best studied.