of his intellectual powers was alloyed by apprehensions about his
health. He shot up alarmingly fast; he was often ill, and always weak;
and it was feared that it would be impossible to rear a stripling so
tall, so slender, and so feeble. Port wine was prescribed by his medical
advisers: and it is said that he was, at fourteen, accustomed to take
this agreeable physic in quantities which would, in our abstemious
age, be thought much more than sufficient for any full-grown man. This
regimen, though it would probably have killed ninety-nine boys out of
a hundred, seems to have been well suited to the peculiarities of
William's constitution; for at fifteen he ceased to be molested by
disease, and, though never a strong man, continued, during many years of
labour and anxiety, of nights passed in debate and of summers passed in
London, to be a tolerably healthy one. It was probably on account of the
delicacy of his frame that he was not educated like other boys of the
same rank. Almost all the eminent English statesmen and orators to whom
he was afterwards opposed or allied, North, Fox, Shelburne, Windham,
Grey, Wellesley, Grenville, Sheridan, Canning, went through the training
of great public schools. Lord Chatham had himself been a distinguished
Etonian: and it is seldom that a distinguished Etonian forgets his
obligations to Eton. But William's infirmities required a vigilance and
tenderness such as could be found only at home. He was therefore bred
under the paternal roof. His studies were superintended by a clergyman
named Wilson; and those studies, though often interrupted by illness,
were prosecuted with extraordinary success. Before the lad had completed
his fifteenth year, his knowledge both of the ancient languages and
of mathematics was such as very few men of eighteen then carried up to
college. He was therefore sent, towards the close of the year 1773,
to Pembroke Hall, in the university of Cambridge. So young a student
required much more than the ordinary care which a college tutor bestows
on undergraduates. The governor, to whom the direction of William's
academical life was confided, was a bachelor of arts named Pretyman, who
had been senior wrangler in the preceding year, and who, though not a
man of prepossessing appearance or brilliant parts, was eminently
acute and laborious, a sound scholar, and an excellent geometrician.
At Cambridge, Pretyman was, during more than two years, the inseparable
companion, and indeed almost the only companion of his pupil. A close
and lasting friendship sprang up between the pair. The disciple was
able, before he completed his twenty-eighth year, to make his preceptor
Bishop of Lincoln and Dean of St Paul's; and the preceptor showed
his gratitude by writing a life of the disciple, which enjoys the
distinction of being the worst biographical work of its size in the
world.
Pitt, till he graduated, had scarcely one acquaintance, attended chapel
regularly morning and evening, dined every day in hall, and never went
to a single evening party. At seventeen, he was admitted, after the bad
fashion of those times, by right of birth, without any examination, to
the degree of the Master of Arts. But he continued during some years
to reside at college, and to apply himself vigorously, under Pretyman's
direction, to the studies of the place, while mixing freely in the best
academic society.
The stock of learning which Pitt laid in during this part of his life
was certainly very extraordinary. In fact, it was all that he ever
possessed; for he very early became too busy to have any spare time
for books. The work in which he took the greatest delight was Newton's
Principia. His liking for mathematics, indeed, amounted to a passion,
which, in the opinion of his instructors, themselves distinguished
mathematicians, required to be checked rather than encouraged. The
acuteness and readiness with which he solved problems was pronounced by
one of the ablest of the moderators, who in those days presided over
the disputations in the schools, and conducted the examinations of the
Senate House, to be unrivalled in the university. Nor was the youth's
proficiency in classical learning less remarkable. In one respect,
indeed, he appeared to disadvantage when compared with even second-rate
and third-rate men from public schools. He had never, while under
Wilson's care, been in the habit of composing in the ancient languages:
and he therefore never acquired that knack of versification which is
sometimes possessed by clever boys whose knowledge of the language and
literature of Greece and Rome is very superficial. It would have been
utterly out of his power to produce such charming elegiac lines as those
in which Wellesley bade farewell to Eton, or such Virgilian hexameters
as those in which Canning described the pilgrimage to Mecca. But it may
be doubted whether any scholar has ever, at twenty, had a more solid and
profound knowledge of the two great tongues of the old civilised world.
The facility with which he penetrated the meaning of the most intricate
sentences in the Attic writers astonished veteran critics. He had set
his heart on being intimately acquainted with all the extant poetry
of Greece, and was not satisfied till he had mastered Lycophron's
Cassandra, the most obscure work in the whole range of ancient
literature. This strange rhapsody, the difficulties of which have
perplexed and repelled many excellent scholars, "he read," says his
preceptor, "with an ease at first sight, which, if I had not witnessed
it, I should have thought beyond the compass of human intellect."
To modern literature Pitt paid comparatively little attention. He knew
no living language except French; and French he knew very imperfectly.
With a few of the best English writers he was intimate, particularly
with Shakspeare and Milton. The debate in Pandemonium was, as it well
deserved to be, one of his favourite passages; and his early friends
used to talk, long after his death, of the just emphasis and the
melodious cadence with which they had heard him recite the incomparable
speech of Belial. He had indeed been carefully trained from infancy in
the art of managing his voice, a voice naturally clear and deep-toned.
His father, whose oratory owed no small part of its effect to that art,
had been a most skilful and judicious instructor. At a later period,
the wits of Brookes's, irritated by observing, night after night, how
powerfully Pitt's sonorous elocution fascinated the rows of country
gentlemen, reproached him with having been "taught by his dad on a
stool."
His education, indeed, was well adapted to form a great parliamentary
speaker. One argument often urged against those classical studies which
occupy so large apart of the early life of every gentleman bred in the
south of our island is, that they prevent him from acquiring a command
of his mother tongue, and that it is not unusual to meet with a youth
of excellent parts, who writes Ciceronian Latin prose and Horatian Latin
Alcaics, but who would find it impossible to express his thoughts in
pure, perspicuous, and forcible English. There may perhaps be some truth
in this observation. But the classical studies of Pitt were carried
on in a peculiar manner, and had the effect of enriching his English
vocabulary, and of making him wonderfully expert in the art of
constructing correct English sentences. His practice was to look over
a page or two of a Greek or Latin author, to make himself master of
the meaning, and then to read the passage straightforward into his
own language. This practice, begun under his first teacher Wilson, was
continued under Pretyman. It is not strange that a young man of great
abilities, who had been exercised daily in this way during ten years,
should have acquired an almost unrivalled power of putting his thoughts,
without premeditation, into words well selected and well arranged.
Of all the remains of antiquity, the orations were those on which he
bestowed the most minute examination. His favourite employment was to
compare harangues on opposite sides of the same question, to analyse
them, and to observe which of the arguments of the first speaker were
refuted by the second, which were evaded, and which were left untouched.
Nor was it only in books that he at this time studied the art
of parliamentary fencing. When he was at home, he had frequent
opportunities of hearing important debates at Westminster; and he heard
them, not only with interest and enjoyment, but with a close scientific
attention resembling that with which a diligent pupil at Guy's Hospital
watches every turn of the hand of a great surgeon through a difficult
operation. On one of these occasions, Pitt, a youth whose abilities
were as yet known only to his own family and to a small knot of college
friends, was introduced on the steps of the throne in the House of Lords
to Fox, who was his senior by eleven years, and who was already the
greatest debater, and one of the greatest orators, that had appeared
in England. Fox used afterwards to relate that, as the discussion
proceeded, Pitt repeatedly turned to him, and said, "But surely, Mr
Fox, that might be met thus;" or, "Yes; but he lays himself open to this
retort." What the particular criticisms were Fox had forgotten; but he
said that he was much struck at the time by the precocity of the lad
who, through the whole sitting, seemed to be thinking only how all the
speeches on both sides could be answered.
One of the young man's visits to the House of Lords was a sad and
memorable era in his life. He had not quite completed his nineteenth
year, when, on the 7th of April 1778, he attended his father to
Westminster. A great debate was expected. It was known that France had
recognised the independence of the United States. The Duke of Richmond
was about to declare his opinion that all thought of subjugating those
states ought to be relinquished. Chatham had always maintained that the
resistance of the colonies to the mother country was justifiable. But he
conceived, very erroneously, that on the day on which their independence
should be acknowledged the greatness of England would be at an end.
Though sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, he determined,
in spite of the entreaties of his family, to be in his place. His son
supported him to a seat. The excitement and exertion were too much for
the old man. In the very act of addressing the peers, he fell back in
convulsions. A few weeks later his corpse was borne, with gloomy pomp,
from the Painted Chamber to the Abbey. The favourite child and namesake
of the deceased statesman followed the coffin as chief mourner, and saw
it deposited in the transept where his own was destined to lie.
His elder brother, now Earl of Chatham, had means sufficient, and barely
sufficient, to support the dignity of the peerage. The other members of
the family were poorly provided for. William had little more than three
hundred a year. It was necessary for him to follow a profession. He had
already begun to eat his terms. In the spring of 1780 he came of age.
He then quitted Cambridge, was called to the bar, took chambers in
Lincoln's Inn, and joined the western circuit. In the autumn of
that year a general election took place; and he offered himself as a
candidate for the university; but he was at the bottom of the poll. It
is said that the grave doctors, who then sate robed in scarlet, on the
benches of Golgotha, thought it great presumption in so young a man
to solicit so high a distinction. He was, however, at the request of a
hereditary friend, the Duke of Rutland, brought into Parliament by Sir
James Lowther for the borough of Appleby.
The dangers of the country were at that time such as might well have
disturbed even a constant mind. Army after army had been sent in vain
against the rebellious colonists of North America. On pitched fields of
battle the advantage had been with the disciplined troops of the mother
country. But it was not on pitched fields of battle that the event of
such a contest could be decided. An armed nation, with hunger and the
Atlantic for auxiliaries, was not to be subjugated. Meanwhile the House
of Bourbon, humbled to the dust a few years before by the genius and
vigour of Chatham, had seized the opportunity of revenge. France and
Spain were united against us, and had recently been joined by Holland.
The command of the Mediterranean had been for a time lost. The British
flag had been scarcely able to maintain itself in the British Channel.
The northern powers professed neutrality; but their neutrality had a
menacing aspect. In the East, Hyder had descended on the Carnatic, had
destroyed the little army of Baillie, and had spread terror even to the
ramparts of Fort Saint George. The discontents of Ireland threatened
nothing less than civil war. In England the authority of the government
had sunk to the lowest point. The King and the House of Commons were
alike unpopular. The cry for parliamentary reform was scarcely less
loud and vehement than in the autumn of 1830. Formidable associations,
headed, not by ordinary demagogues, but by men of high rank, stainless
character, and distinguished ability, demanded a revision of the
representative system. The populace, emboldened by the impotence and
irresolution of the government, had recently broken loose from all
restraint, besieged the chambers of the legislature, hustled peers,
hunted bishops, attacked the residences of ambassadors, opened prisons,
burned and pulled down houses. London had presented during some days
the aspect of a city taken by storm; and it had been necessary to form a
camp among the trees of Saint James's Park.
In spite of dangers and difficulties abroad and at home, George the
Third, with a firmness which had little affinity with virtue or with
wisdom, persisted in his determination to put down the American rebels
by force of arms; and his ministers submitted their judgment to his.
Some of them were probably actuated merely by selfish cupidity; but
their chief, Lord North, a man of high honour, amiable temper, winning
manners, lively wit, and excellent talents both for business and for
debate, must be acquitted of all sordid motives. He remained at a post
from which he had long wished and had repeatedly tried to escape, only
because he had not sufficient fortitude to resist the entreaties and
reproaches of the King, who silenced all arguments by passionately
asking whether any gentleman, any man of spirit, could have the heart to
desert a kind master in the hour of extremity.
The opposition consisted of two parties which had once been hostile to
each other, and which had been very slowly, and, as it soon appeared,
very imperfectly reconciled, but which at this conjuncture seemed to act
together with cordiality. The larger of these parties consisted of the
great body of the Whig aristocracy. Its head was Charles, Marquess of
Rockingham, a man of sense and virtue, and in wealth and parliamentary
interest equalled by very few of the English nobles, but afflicted with
a nervous timidity which prevented him from taking a prominent part in
debate. In the House of Commons, the adherents of Rockingham were led
by Fox, whose dissipated habits and ruined fortunes were the talk of the
whole town, but whose commanding genius, and whose sweet, generous, and
affectionate disposition, extorted the admiration and love of those who
most lamented the errors of his private life. Burke, superior to Fox in
largeness of comprehension, in extent of knowledge, and in splendour of
imagination, but less skilled in that kind of logic and in that kind of
rhetoric which convince and persuade great assemblies, was willing to be
the lieutenant of a young chief who might have been his son.
A smaller section of the opposition was composed of the old followers
of Chatham. At their head was William, Earl of Shelburne, distinguished
both as a statesman and as a lover of science and letters. With him were
leagued Lord Camden, who had formerly held the Great Seal, and whose
integrity, ability, and constitutional knowledge commanded the public
respect; Barre, an eloquent and acrimonious declaimer; and Dunning, who
had long held the first place at the English bar. It was to this party
that Pitt was naturally attracted.
On the 26th of February 1781, he made his first speech, in favour of
Burke's plan of economical reform. Fox stood up at the same moment,
but instantly gave way. The lofty yet animated deportment of the young
member, his perfect self-possession, the readiness with which he replied
to the orators who had preceded him, the silver tones of his voice,
the perfect structure of his unpremeditated sentences, astonished and
delighted his hearers. Burke, moved even to tears, exclaimed, "It is not
a chip of the old block; it is the old block itself." "Pitt will be one
of the first men in Parliament," said a member of the opposition to Fox.
"He is so already," answered Fox, in whose nature envy had no place.
It is a curious fact, well remembered by some who were very recently
living, that soon after this debate Pitt's name was put up by Fox at
Brookes's.
On two subsequent occasions during that session Pitt addressed the
House, and on both fully sustained the reputation which he had acquired
on his first appearance. In the summer, after the prorogation, he again
went the western circuit, held several briefs, and acquitted himself in
such a manner that he was highly complimented by Buller from the bench,
and by Dunning at the bar.
On the 27th of November the Parliament reassembled. Only forty-eight
hours before had arrived tidings of the surrender of Cornwallis and
his army; and it had consequently been necessary to rewrite the royal
speech. Every man in the kingdom, except the King, was now convinced
that it was mere madness to think of conquering the United States.
In the debate on the report of the address, Pitt spoke with even
more energy and brilliancy than on any former occasion. He was warmly
applauded by his allies; but it was remarked that no person on his
own side of the house was so loud in eulogy as Henry Dundas, the Lord
Advocate of Scotland, who spoke from the ministerial ranks. That able
and versatile politician distinctly foresaw the approaching downfall of
the government with which he was connected, and was preparing to make
his own escape from the ruin. From that night dates his connection with
Pitt, a connection which soon became a close intimacy, and which lasted
till it was dissolved by death.
About a fortnight later, Pitt spoke in the committee of supply on
the army estimates. Symptoms of dissension had begun to appear on the
Treasury bench. Lord George Germaine, the Secretary of State, who was
especially charged with the direction of the war in America, had held
language not easily to be reconciled with declarations made by the First
Lord of the Treasury. Pitt noticed the discrepancy with much force and
keenness. Lord George and Lord North began to whisper together; and
Welbore Ellis, an ancient placeman who had been drawing salary almost
every quarter since the days of Henry Pelham, bent down between them to
put in a word. Such interruptions sometimes discompose veteran speakers.
Pitt stopped, and, looking at the group, said, with admirable readiness,
"I shall wait till Nestor has composed the dispute between Agamemnon and
Achilles."
After several defeats, or victories hardly to be distinguished from
defeats, the ministry resigned. The King, reluctantly and ungraciously,
consented to accept Rockingham as first minister. Fox and Shelburne
became Secretaries of State. Lord John Cavendish, one of the most
upright and honourable of men, was made Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Thurlow, whose abilities and force of character had made him the
dictator of the House of Lords, continued to hold the great seal.
To Pitt was offered, through Shelburne, the Vice-Treasurership of
Ireland, one of the easiest and most highly paid places in the gift of
the crown; but the offer was, without hesitation, declined. The young
statesman had resolved to accept no post which did not entitle him to
a seat in the cabinet: and, in a few days later, he announced that
resolution in the House of Commons. It must be remembered that the
cabinet was then a much smaller and more select body than at present. We
have seen cabinets of sixteen. In the time of our grandfathers a cabinet
of ten or eleven was thought inconveniently large. Seven was an usual
number. Even Burke, who had taken the lucrative office of paymaster, was
not in the cabinet. Many therefore thought Pitt's declaration indecent.
He himself was sorry that he had made it. The words, he said in private,
had escaped him in the heat of speaking; and he had no sooner uttered
them than he would have given the world to recall them. They, however,
did him no harm with the public. The second William Pitt, it was said,
had shown that he had inherited the spirit, as well as the genius, of
the first. In the son, as in the father, there might perhaps be too much
pride; but there was nothing low or sordid. It might be called arrogance
in a young barrister, living in chambers on three hundred a year, to
refuse a salary of five thousand a year, merely because he did not
choose to bind himself to speak or vote for plans which he had no share
in framing; but surely such arrogance was not very far removed from
virtue.
Pitt gave a general support to the administration of Rockingham, but
omitted, in the meantime, no opportunity of courting that Ultra-Whig
party which the persecution of Wilkes and the Middlesex election had
called into existence, and which the disastrous events of the war, and
the triumph of republican principles in America, had made formidable
both in numbers and in temper. He supported a motion for shortening the
duration of Parliaments. He made a motion for a committee to examine
into the state of the representation, and, in the speech, by which that
motion was introduced, avowed himself the enemy of the close boroughs,
the strongholds of that corruption to which he attributed all the
calamities of the nation, and which, as he phrased it in one of those
exact and sonorous sentences of which he had a boundless command, had
grown with the growth of England and strengthened with her strength,
but had not diminished with her diminution or decayed with her decay.
On this occasion he was supported by Fox. The motion was lost by
only twenty votes in a house of more than three hundred members. The
reformers never again had so good a division till the year 1831.
The new administration was strong in abilities, and was more popular
than any administration which had held office since the first year of
George the Third, but was hated by the King, hesitatingly supported by
the Parliament, and torn by internal dissensions. The Chancellor
was disliked and distrusted by almost all his colleagues. The two
Secretaries of State regarded each other with no friendly feeling. The
line between their departments had not been traced with precision; and
there were consequently jealousies, encroachments, and complaints. It
was all that Rockingham could do to keep the peace in his cabinet; and,
before the cabinet had existed three months, Rockingham died.
In an instant all was confusion. The adherents of the deceased statesman
looked on the Duke of Portland as their chief. The King placed Shelburne
at the head of the Treasury. Fox, Lord John Cavendish, and Burke,
immediately resigned their offices; and the new prime minister was left
to constitute a government out of very defective materials. His own
parliamentary talents were great; but he could not be in the place where
parliamentary talents were most needed. It was necessary to find some
member of the House of Commons who could confront the great orators of
the opposition; and Pitt alone had the eloquence and the courage which
were required. He was offered the great place of Chancellor of
the Exchequer; and he accepted it. He had scarcely completed his
twenty-third year.
The Parliament was speedily prorogued. During the recess, a negotiation
for peace which had been commenced under Rockingham was brought to a
successful termination. England acknowledged the independence of her
revolted colonies; and she ceded to her European enemies some places
in the Mediterranean and in the Gulf of Mexico. But the terms which she
obtained were quite as advantageous and honourable as the events of
the war entitled her to expect, or as she was likely to obtain by
persevering in a contest against immense odds. All her vital parts, all
the real sources of her power, remained uninjured. She preserved even
her dignity: for she ceded to the House of Bourbon only part of what she
had won from that House in previous wars. She retained her Indian
empire undiminished; and, in spite of the mightiest efforts of two great
monarchies, her flag still waved on the rock of Gibraltar. There is not
the slightest reason to believe that Fox, if he had remained in office,
would have hesitated one moment about concluding a treaty on such
conditions. Unhappily that great and most amiable man was, at this
crisis, hurried by his passions into an error which made his genius
and his virtues, during a long course of years, almost useless to his
country.