eighteenth century deserves high praise. He was the first English
minister who formed great designs for the benefit of Ireland. The manner
in which the Roman Catholic population of that unfortunate country had
been kept down during many generations seemed to him unjust and cruel;
and it was scarcely possible for a man of his abilities not to perceive
that, in a contest against the Jacobins, the Roman Catholics were
his natural allies. Had he been able to do all that he wished, it is
probable that a wise and liberal policy would have averted the rebellion
of 1798. But the difficulties which he encountered were great, perhaps
insurmountable; and the Roman Catholics were, rather by his misfortune
than by his fault, thrown into the hands of the Jacobins. There was a
third great rising of the Irishry against the Englishry, a rising
not less formidable than the risings of 1641 and 1689. The Englishry
remained victorious, and it was necessary for Pitt, as it had been
necessary for Oliver Cromwell and William of Orange before him, to
consider how the victory should be used. It is only just to his memory
to say that he formed a scheme of policy, so grand and so simple, so
righteous and so humane, that it would alone entitle him to a high place
among statesmen. He determined to make Ireland one kingdom with England,
and, at the same time, to relieve the Roman Catholic laity from civil
disabilities, and to grant a public maintenance to the Roman Catholic
clergy. Had he been able to carry these noble designs into effect, the
Union would have been an Union indeed. It would have been inseparably
associated in the minds of the great majority of Irishmen with civil and
religious freedom; and the old Parliament in College Green would have
been regretted only by a small knot of discarded jobbers and oppressors,
and would have been remembered by the body of the nation with the
loathing and contempt due to the most tyrannical and the most corrupt
assembly that had ever sate in Europe. But Pitt could execute only one
half of what he had projected. He succeeded in obtaining the consent of
the Parliaments of both kingdoms to the Union; but that reconciliation
of races and sects, without which the Union could exist only in name,
was not accomplished. He was well aware that he was likely to find
difficulties in the closet. But he flattered himself, that by cautious
and dexterous management, those difficulties might be overcome.
Unhappily, there were traitors and sycophants in high place who did
not suffer him to take his own time, and his own way, but prematurely
disclosed his scheme to the King, and disclosed it in the manner most
likely to irritate and alarm a weak and diseased mind. His Majesty
absurdly imagined that his Coronation oath bound him to refuse
his assent to any bill for relieving Roman Catholics from civil
disabilities. To argue with him was impossible. Dundas tried to explain
the matter, but was told to keep his Scotch metaphysics to himself.
Pitt, and Pitt's ablest colleagues, resigned their offices. It was
necessary that the King should make a new arrangement. But by this time
his anger and distress had brought back the malady which had, many
years before, incapacitated him for the discharge of his functions. He
actually assembled his family, read the Coronation oath to them, and
told them that, if he broke it, the Crown would immediately pass to the
House of Savoy. It was not until after an interregnum of several
weeks that he regained the full use of his small faculties, and that a
ministry after his own heart was at length formed.
The materials out of which he had to construct a government were neither
solid nor splendid. To that party, weak in numbers, but strong in every
kind of talent, which was hostile to the domestic and foreign policy of
his late advisers, he could not have recourse. For that party, while it
differed from his late advisers on every point on which they had been
honoured with his approbation, cordially agreed with them as to the
single matter which had brought on them his displeasure. All that was
left to him was to call up the rear ranks of the old ministry to form
the front rank of a new ministry. In an age pre-eminently fruitful of
parliamentary talents, a cabinet was formed containing hardly a single
man who, in parliamentary talents, could be considered as even of the
second rate. The most important offices in the state were bestowed on
decorous and laborious mediocrity. Henry Addington was at the head of
the Treasury. He had been an early, indeed a hereditary, friend of Pitt,
and had by Pitt's influence been placed, while still a young man, in the
chair of the House of Commons. He was universally admitted to have been
the best speaker that had sate in that chair since the retirement of
Onslow. But nature had not bestowed on him very vigorous faculties; and
the highly respectable situation which he had long occupied with honour
had rather unfitted than fitted him for the discharge of his new
duties. His business had been to bear himself evenly between contending
factions. He had taken no part in the war of words; and he had always
been addressed with marked deference by the great orators who thundered
against each other from his right and from his left. It was not strange
that, when, for the first time, he had to encounter keen and vigorous
antagonists, who dealt hard blows without the smallest ceremony, he
should have been awkward and unready, or that the air of dignity and
authority which he had acquired in his former post, and of which he had
not divested himself, should have made his helplessness laughable and
pitiable. Nevertheless, during many months, his power seemed to stand
firm. He was a favourite with the King, whom he resembled in narrowness
of mind, and to whom he was more obsequious than Pitt had ever been.
The nation was put into high good humour by a peace with France. The
enthusiasm with which the upper and middle classes had rushed into the
war had spent itself. Jacobinism was no longer formidable. Everywhere
there was a strong reaction against what was called the atheistical and
anarchical philosophy of the eighteenth century. Bonaparte, now First
Consul, was busied in constructing out of the ruins of old institutions
a new ecclesiastical establishment and a new order of knighthood.
That nothing less than the dominion of the whole civilised world would
satisfy his selfish ambition was not yet suspected; nor did even wise
men see any reason to doubt that he might be as safe a neighbour as
any prince of the House of Bourbon had been. The treaty of Amiens
was therefore hailed by the great body of the English people with
extravagant joy. The popularity of the minister was for the moment
immense. His want of parliamentary ability was, as yet, of little
consequence: for he had scarcely any adversary to encounter. The old
opposition, delighted by the peace, regarded him with favour. A new
opposition had indeed been formed by some of the late ministers, and was
led by Grenville in the House of Lords, and by Windham in the House of
Commons. But the new opposition could scarcely muster ten votes, and was
regarded with no favour by the country. On Pitt the ministers relied
as on their firmest support. He had not, like some of his colleagues,
retired in anger. He had expressed the greatest respect for the
conscientious scruple which had taken possession of the royal mind; and
he had promised his successors all the help in his power. In private his
advice was at their service. In Parliament he took his seat on the bench
behind them; and, in more than one debate, defended them with powers far
superior to their own. The King perfectly understood the value of such
assistance. On one occasion, at the palace, he took the old minister and
the new minister aside. "If we three," he said, "keep together, all will
go well."
But it was hardly possible, human nature being what it is, and, more
especially, Pitt and Addington being what they were, that this union
should be durable. Pitt, conscious of superior powers, imagined that the
place which he had quitted was now occupied by a mere puppet which he
had set up, which he was to govern while he suffered it to remain,
and which he was to fling aside as soon as he wished to resume his old
position. Nor was it long before he began to pine for the power which
he had relinquished. He had been so early raised to supreme authority
in the state, and had enjoyed that authority so long, that it had become
necessary to him. In retirement his days passed heavily. He could not,
like Fox, forget the pleasures and cares of ambition in the company of
Euripides or Herodotus. Pride restrained him from intimating, even to
his dearest friends, that he wished to be again minister. But he thought
it strange, almost ungrateful, that his wish had not been divined, that
it had not been anticipated, by one whom he regarded as his deputy.
Addington, on the other hand, was by no means inclined to descend from
his high position. He was, indeed, under a delusion much resembling that
of Abon Hassan in the Arabian tale. His brain was turned by his short
and unreal Caliphate. He took his elevation quite seriously, attributed
it to his own merit, and considered himself as one of the great
triumvirate of English statesmen, as worthy to make a third with Pitt
and Fox.
Such being the feelings of the late minister and of the present
minister, a rupture was inevitable; and there was no want of persons
bent on making that rupture speedy and violent. Some of these persons
wounded Addington's pride by representing him as a lacquey, sent to keep
a place on the Treasury bench till his master should find it convenient
to come. Others took every opportunity of praising him at Pitt's
expense. Pitt had waged a long, a bloody, a costly, an unsuccessful
war. Addington had made peace. Pitt had suspended the constitutional
liberties of Englishmen. Under Addington those liberties were again
enjoyed. Pitt had wasted the public resources. Addington was carefully
nursing them. It was sometimes but too evident that these compliments
were not unpleasing to Addington. Pitt became cold and reserved. During
many months he remained at a distance from London. Meanwhile his
most intimate friends, in spite of his declarations that he made no
complaint, and that he had no wish for office, exerted themselves to
effect a change of ministry. His favourite disciple, George Canning,
young, ardent, ambitious, with great powers and great virtues, but with
a temper too restless and a wit too satirical for his own happiness, was
indefatigable. He spoke; he wrote; he intrigued; he tried to induce a
large number of the supporters of the government to sign a round
robin desiring a change; he made game of Addington and of Addington's
relations in a succession of lively pasquinades. The minister's
partisans retorted with equal acrimony, if not with equal vivacity. Pitt
could keep out of the affray only by keeping out of politics altogether;
and this it soon became impossible for him to do. Had Napoleon, content
with the first place among the Sovereigns of the Continent, and with
a military reputation surpassing that of Marlborough or of Turenne,
devoted himself to the noble task of making France happy by mild
administration and wise legislation, our country might have long
continued to tolerate a government of fair intentions and feeble
abilities. Unhappily, the treaty of Amiens had scarcely been signed,
when the restless ambition and the insupportable insolence of the First
Consul convinced the great body of the English people that the peace, so
eagerly welcomed, was only a precarious armistice. As it became clearer
and clearer that a war for the dignity, the independence, the very
existence of the nation was at hand, men looked with increasing
uneasiness on the weak and languid cabinet which would have to contend
against an enemy who united more than the power of Louis the Great to
more than the genius of Frederick the Great. It is true that Addington
might easily have been a better war minister than Pitt, and could not
possibly have been a worse. But Pitt had cast a spell on the public
mind. The eloquence, the judgment, the calm and disdainful firmness,
which he had, during many years, displayed in Parliament, deluded the
world into the belief that he must be eminently qualified to superintend
every department of politics, and they imagined, even after the
miserable failures of Dunkirk, of Quiberon, and of the Helder, that he
was the only statesman who could cope with Bonaparte. This feeling was
nowhere stronger than among Addington's own colleagues. The pressure put
on him was so strong that he could not help yielding to it; yet, even in
yielding, he showed how far he was from knowing his own place. His first
proposition was, that some insignificant nobleman should be First Lord
of the Treasury and nominal head of the administration, and that the
real power should be divided between Pitt and himself, who were to be
secretaries of state. Pitt, as might have been expected, refused even
to discuss such a scheme, and talked of it with bitter mirth. "Which
secretaryship was offered to you?" his friend Wilberforce asked.
"Really," said Pitt, "I had not the curiosity to inquire." Addington
was frightened into bidding higher. He offered to resign the Treasury
to Pitt, on condition that there should be no extensive change in the
government. But Pitt would listen to no such terms. Then came a dispute
such as often arises after negotiations orally conducted, even when the
negotiators are men of strict honour. Pitt gave one account of what had
passed; Addington gave another: and though the discrepancies were not
such as necessarily implied any intentional violation of truth on either
side, both were greatly exasperated.
Meanwhile the quarrel with the First Consul had come to a crisis. On
the 16th of May, 1803, the King sent a message calling on the House of
Commons to support him in withstanding the ambitious and encroaching
policy of France; and, on the 22d, the House took the message into
consideration.
Pitt had now been living many months in retirement. There had been a
general election since he had spoken in Parliament; and there were
two hundred members who had never heard him. It was known that on this
occasion he would be in his place; and curiosity was wound up to the
highest point. Unfortunately the short-hand writers were, in consequence
of some mistake, shut out on that day from the gallery, so that the
newspapers contained only a very meagre report of the proceedings. But
several accounts of what passed are extant; and of those accounts the
most interesting is contained in an unpublished letter, written by a
very young member, John William Ward, afterwards Earl of Dudley. When
Pitt rose, he was received with loud cheering. At every pause in his
speech there was a burst of applause. The peroration is said to have
been one of the most animated and magnificent ever heard in Parliament.
"Pitt's speech," Fox wrote a few days later, "was admired very much, and
very justly. I think it was the best he ever made in that style." The
debate was adjourned; and on the second night Fox replied in an oration
which, as the most zealous Pittites were forced to acknowledge, left the
palm of eloquence doubtful. Addington made a pitiable appearance between
the two great rivals; and it was observed that Pitt, while exhorting the
Commons to stand resolutely by the executive government against France,
said not a word indicating esteem or friendship for the Prime Minister.
War was speedily declared. The first consul threatened to invade England
at the head of the conquerors of Belgium and Italy, and formed a great
camp near the Straits of Dover. On the other side of those Straits
the whole population of our island was ready to rise up as one man
in defence of the soil. At this conjuncture, as at some other great
conjunctures in our history, the conjuncture of 1660, for example, and
the conjuncture of 1688, there was a general disposition among honest
and patriotic men to forget old quarrels, and to regard as a friend
every person who was ready, in the existing emergency, to do his part
towards the saving of the state. A coalition of all the first men in the
country would, at that moment, have been as popular as the coalition
of 1783 had been unpopular. Alone in the kingdom the King looked with
perfect complacency on a cabinet in which no man superior to himself in
genius was to be found, and was so far from being willing to admit all
his ablest subjects to office that he was bent on excluding them all.
A few months passed before the different parties which agreed
in regarding the government with dislike and contempt came to an
understanding with each other. But in the spring of 1804 it became
evident that the weakest of ministries would have to defend itself
against the strongest of oppositions, an opposition made up of three
oppositions, each of which would, separately, have been formidable from
ability, and which, when united, were also formidable from number. The
party which had opposed the peace, headed by Grenville and Windham,
and the party which had opposed the renewal of the war, headed by Fox,
concurred in thinking that the men now in power were incapable of either
making a good peace or waging a vigorous war. Pitt had, in 1802, spoken
for peace against the party of Grenville, and had, in 1803, spoken for
war against the party of Fox. But of the capacity of the cabinet, and
especially of its chief, for the conduct of great affairs, he thought as
meanly as either Fox or Grenville. Questions were easily found on which
all the enemies of the government could act cordially together. The
unfortunate First Lord of the Treasury, who had, during the earlier
months of his administration, been supported by Pitt on one side, and by
Fox on the other, now had to answer Pitt, and to be answered by Fox. Two
sharp debates, followed by close divisions, made him weary of his post.
It was known, too, that the Upper House was even more hostile to him
than the Lower, that the Scotch representative peers wavered, that there
were signs of mutiny among the bishops. In the cabinet itself there was
discord, and, worse than discord, treachery. It was necessary to give
way: the ministry was dissolved; and the task of forming a government
was entrusted to Pitt.
Pitt was of opinion that there was now an opportunity, such as had never
before offered itself, and such as might never offer itself again, of
uniting in the public service, on honourable terms, all the eminent
talents of the kingdom. The passions to which the French revolution had
given birth were extinct. The madness of the innovator and the madness
of the alarmist had alike had their day. Jacobinism and anti-Jacobinism
had gone out of fashion together. The most liberal statesman did not
think that season propitious for schemes of parliamentary reform; and
the most conservative statesman could not pretend that there was any
occasion for gagging bills and suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act. The
great struggle for independence and national honour occupied all minds;
and those who were agreed as to the duty of maintaining that struggle
with vigour might well postpone to a more convenient time all disputes
about matters comparatively unimportant. Strongly impressed by these
considerations, Pitt wished to form a ministry including all the first
men in the country. The Treasury he reserved for himself; and to Fox he
proposed to assign a share of power little inferior to his own.
The plan was excellent; but the King would not hear of it. Dull,
obstinate, unforgiving, and, at that time half mad, he positively
refused to admit Fox into his service. Anybody else, even men who had
gone as far as Fox, or further than Fox, in what his Majesty considered
as Jacobinism, Sheridan, Grey, Erskine, should be graciously received;
but Fox never. During several hours Pitt laboured in vain to reason down
this senseless antipathy. That he was perfectly sincere there can be
no doubt: but it was not enough to be sincere; he should have been
resolute. Had he declared himself determined not to take office without
Fox, the royal obstinacy would have given way, as it gave way, a
few months later, when opposed to the immutable resolution of Lord
Grenville. In an evil hour Pitt yielded. He flattered himself with the
hope that, though he consented to forego the aid of his illustrious
rival, there would still remain ample materials for the formation of an
efficient ministry. That hope was cruelly disappointed. Fox entreated
his friends to leave personal considerations out of the question, and
declared that he would support, with the utmost cordiality, an efficient
and patriotic ministry from which he should be himself excluded. Not
only his friends, however, but Grenville, and Grenville's adherents,
answered, with one voice, that the question was not personal, that a
great constitutional principle was at stake, and that they would not
take office while a man eminently qualified to render service to the
commonwealth was placed under a ban merely because he was disliked at
Court. All that was left to Pitt was to construct a government out of
the wreck of Addington's feeble administration. The small circle of
his personal retainers furnished him with a very few useful assistants,
particularly Dundas, who had been created Viscount Melville, Lord
Harrowby, and Canning.
Such was the inauspicious manner in which Pitt entered on his second
administration. The whole history of that administration was of a piece
with the commencement. Almost every month brought some new disaster or
disgrace. To the war with France was soon added a war with Spain. The
opponents of the minister were numerous, able, and active. His most
useful coadjutors he soon lost. Sickness deprived him of the help of
Lord Harrowby. It was discovered that Lord Melville had been guilty of
highly culpable laxity in transactions relating to public money. He was
censured by the House of Commons, driven from office, ejected from the
Privy Council, and impeached of high crimes and misdemeanours. The blow
fell heavy on Pitt. It gave him, he said in Parliament, a deep pang;
and, as he uttered the word pang, his lip quivered, his voice shook, he
paused, and his hearers thought that he was about to burst into tears.
Such tears shed by Eldon would have moved nothing but laughter. Shed by
the warm-hearted and open-hearted Fox, they would have moved sympathy,
but would have caused no surprise. But a tear from Pitt would have been
something portentous. He suppressed his emotion, however, and proceeded
with his usual majestic self-possession.
His difficulties compelled him to resort to various expedients. At one
time Addington was persuaded to accept office with a peerage; but he
brought no additional strength to the government. Though he went through
the form of reconciliation, it was impossible for him to forget the
past. While he remained in place he was jealous and punctilious; and he
soon retired again. At another time Pitt renewed his efforts to overcome
his master's aversion to Fox; and it was rumoured that the King's
obstinacy was gradually giving way. But, meanwhile, it was impossible
for the minister to conceal from the public eye the decay of his health,
and the constant anxiety which gnawed at his heart. His sleep was
broken. His food ceased to nourish him. All who passed him in the Park,
all who had interviews with him in Downing Street, saw misery written in
his face. The peculiar look which he wore during the last months of his
life was often pathetically described by Wilberforce, who used to call
it the Austerlitz look.