AT WESTMINSTER AND GOOSTREE’S
A series of undesigned changes brought the English Constitution to
such a condition that satisfaction and impatience, the two great
sources of political conduct, were both reasonably gratified by
it.--SIR HENRY MAINE.
In the present age, marked by peaceful relations between the different
parts of the Empire and by complete accord between the sovereign and
his people, it is difficult to realize the condition of public affairs
at the time when Pitt entered Parliament. The war with the United
States, France, Spain and Holland, threatened the ruin of the nation,
and it further brought to a climax a constitutional crisis of great
importance. That struggle had resulted in no small measure from the
personal methods of rule of George III; and, despite the disastrous
influence of that policy on the Empire, there was still the chance of
its winning at Westminster.
The reason for this paradox is to be found in the composition of the
House of Commons and in the character of the King. Ten years had
elapsed since the publication of Burke’s indictment, that, whereas in
the previous century the distempers of monarchy had been the chief
cause for fear, now the main apprehension centred in the distempers
of Parliament.[89] The facts given above, and those soon to be set
forth, will show that the danger was still acute. The rallying of
practically the whole of the Tory party to the King’s side, the
division of the Whigs into two chief groups, neither of which had any
definite programme, the enormous power which the monarch wielded over
the members of the Lower House by means of “influence,” and, last but
not least, the revival of his prestige owing to the Lord George Gordon
crisis, all served to strengthen his hand even against reformers who
struggled for peace abroad and economy and purity in the administration.
In fact, the disintegration of the party system and the corruption of
the House of Commons had provided George III with a most favourable
opportunity for realizing the ideals set forth in Bolingbroke’s
“Patriot King.” The old parties had for the time lost their _raison
d’être_. All but a few fossilized Tory squires had given up the cause
of the Stuarts. The Whigs could no longer claim to be defenders of
the House of Brunswick and the liberties of England. For more than a
century they had settled down comfortably on the spoils of office,
until the sight of their magnates affecting to slay the slain and
battening on the nation’s spoils aroused general resentment. Of this
feeling the King had made dexterous use. In the name of the nation he
claimed to set aside the parties and govern in the interests of the
whole. As generally happens in such cases, he called into being another
party, the King’s Friends, which, under the guise of acting for the
nation, gradually ensured the subservience of Parliament to the royal
will. By dint of honours, places, and money, the new policy won its
way, until, as we have seen, it could defy the efforts for Reform. To
the eye of alarmed patriots it seemed that the House of Commons would
soon be little more than a tool of the King, and that George III would
succeed in the enterprise which had cost Charles I his head.
There were some grounds for these fears. George III was on the whole
a more formidable opponent than the first Charles. While lacking the
personal charm of the Stuart sovereign and his power of calling forth
enthusiastic service, he far excelled him in common sense and the power
of adapting means to ends. Both men believed thoroughly in their cause,
struggled with obstinate persistence towards the goal, and yet showed
great finesse in the use to which they put men and events. Outwardly
and mentally, they had nothing in common. Yet the parallel between
them is closer than would at first sight appear. In a political sense
George III is a rather gross replica of Charles I. Even the highest
of Anglicans has never been tempted to canonize him; for, in truth,
he lived in a material age, and had too great a belief in material
interests ever to be in danger of “martyrdom.”
Here, perhaps, lay the real danger to the liberties of England in the
decade, 1770–80. They are more likely to be undermined by an appeal to
material interests than by an open attack. Charles was foolish enough
to assail both the consciences and the pockets of his subjects. George
left consciences alone, and made use of the pockets of the governing
classes to achieve his ends. This sapping process was more likely to
succeed than a hasty attack above ground. The policy of Charles I
braced men to resistance; that of George III drugged and enervated
them.[90] Early in the seventeenth century Parliament was the champion
of the nation’s liberties; now there was some fear that it might
degenerate into a King’s Council. Parliament is but the register of the
nation’s will; and torpor at St. Stephen’s bespoke political deadness
throughout the land. Here, perhaps, was the most threatening symptom of
all. The attempt to manipulate Parliament could come near to success
only in an age of high living and plain thinking. Even the disasters
of the American War did not awaken England at once. Her monitor was
sleeping the sleep of surfeit. What were defeats on the other side
of the Atlantic to the members for the pocket boroughs who virtually
controlled the House for the King’s cause? To what effect was it that
London and Westminster now and again chafed at the losses of the war,
when those cities returned only eight members, as against Cornwall’s
forty-four? Episodes like those connected with the names of Wilkes and
Lord George Gordon roused for a time storms of tropical violence; but
when they died down there ensued long and enervating lulls. All went
on once more as in a land of lotus-eaters, who scarcely heeded the dim
mutterings that came across the western ocean. Even the disaster at
Yorktown, which virtually ended the American War, did not thoroughly
arouse the nation. Two months after the receipt of that news, Romilly
wrote to a friend, “The nation seems fallen into a deep sleep.”[91]
The distributor of the soporific fruit seemed to be equal to every
emergency. Lord North was a coarse and heavy man, with a wide mouth,
thick lips, and puffy cheeks, which seemed typical of his policy. He
resembled Walpole in his knowledge of men’s foibles and contempt of
humanity. True, he excelled him in affability; but he signally fell
behind him in the sterner qualities which master men and beat down
obstacles. For eleven years he had been chief Minister of the Crown,
latterly much against his will; and for fourteen months more the
imperious monarch was to hold him to his post.
With Lord North were associated in the year 1781 men who were
fully contented with the task of supervising their own departments
and the patronage belonging to them. The most noteworthy of these
Ministers were Lord Thurlow, a man of low tastes and violent temper,
but considerable gifts for intrigue, who acted officially as Lord
Chancellor and unofficially as chief of “the King’s friends”; Earl
Bathurst, Lord President; Germain (Viscount Sackville), Secretary of
State for the Colonies; Lord Townshend, Master of the Ordnance; Mr.
Jenkinson (afterwards the Earl of Liverpool), Secretary at War; the
Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Earl of Carlisle,
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and Mr. William Eden (afterwards Lord
Auckland), Chief Secretary at Dublin Castle. The personality of some
of these men will appear more fitly in the sequel. Here we may note
that they resembled highly paid confidential clerks, working under
the general direction of the King, rather than responsible Ministers.
Of collective action and responsibility there was little under Lord
North.[92] George III acted on the principle that had guided the
Caesars, _Divide et impera_.
Such, in brief, was the system and such were the men who now had to
confront a world in arms. Apart from the interminable conflict in
America, the area of strife was spreading in Europe; for the Dutch,
incensed by our maritime policy, were on the point of declaring war. In
India Hyder Ali was ravaging the Carnatic; and Britons, looking forth
in fear from Madras, could see the clouds of smoke that told of his
devastations. In the Mediterranean Gibraltar still stoutly held out
against the Franco-Spanish forces, but our possession, Minorca, was
soon to fall. In the Baltic the League of the Armed Neutrality held
the sword dangling over Briton’s commerce, and was kept from striking
only by the skill of Sir James Harris, our envoy at St. Petersburg, in
playing on the foibles of Catharine II.
Yet against most of these difficulties British energy ultimately made
headway; and they did not at present disturb the course of events in
Parliament, with which we are here more especially concerned. The
Opposition was divided into two chief groups, which had not yet begun
to coalesce under the pressure of national calamity. The larger of
these was the official Whig party under the nominal leadership of the
Marquis of Rockingham, an affable and tactful man, with little strength
of character, formidable only from his connections with the great Whig
Houses. Among his followers two men stood forth, of powers so great and
varied as to claim our attention at once. These were Fox and Burke.
Charles James Fox (1749–1806), the second son of Lord Holland, was
now in the prime of his powers. Nature had dowered him with gifts
so rich and varied as not to have been seriously marred even by the
dissipations into which his father had encouraged him to plunge before
he left Eton. While at Hertford College, Oxford, he gave proofs of his
eager, vivacious, lovable temperament, and imbibed that passion for
the classics and for all great literature which was to be his solace
through life. Well would it have been for him had this been his only
passion; unfortunately he never shook off the vices contracted in
youth. His amour with Mrs. Armstead was notorious and avowed. Equally
harmful was his mania for gambling. Many a time he ruined his speeches
in the House by the fatigue or annoyance due to the losses of an
all-night sitting at Brooks’s. But whether he lost or won, whether
caressed by Ministers in Parliament or turned out of his rooms in St.
James’s Street by Jews and bailiffs,[93] he was ever beloved, even by
those whom he belaboured in the House.
His oratorical gifts were the outcome of a powerful mind, and they
were enhanced by a melodious voice and forcible action. Perhaps the
greatest charm of his speeches was their ease and naturalness. He spoke
as if without premeditation, and at times he indulged in repetitions
and digressions to an unpardonable extent. But all such faults and
occasional carelessness in the choice of words scarcely lessened the
effect of his efforts, which seemed to his hearers to be above all
art. The unfailing vigour of thought, the power with which he could
first recapitulate the arguments of his opponents and then tear them
in pieces, and the good humour, which rarely left him even in his most
scornful moods, served alike to convince and captivate the House. He
was the prince of debaters, surpassing even Chatham himself in ease,
wit, skill, and versatility, though lacking that awe-inspiring faculty
that swayed Parliament as with a Jove-like frown. The years 1780–82
saw him at the height of his powers. Grattan afterwards remarked that
no one could realize the force of Fox’s oratory who had not heard him
before his unnatural coalition with Lord North in 1783, after which
event he always seemed on the defensive: “the mouth still spoke great
things, but the swell of soul was no more.”[94] How great must have
been his blunders and indiscretions, both in public and private life,
to have blighted a career of so transcendent a promise.
The figure of Edmund Burke belongs rather to the sphere of literature
and political philosophy than to that of political action. Great in
thought and great in his powers of oratory, he yet failed to impress
the House of Commons, or the public at large; his speeches were too
ornate, too overburdened with learning and reasoning, to please an
audience that is plain, practical, and apt to be impressed more by the
speaker himself than by the fullness of his arguments or the beauty of
his style. In a word, Burke lacked the indefinable gift which Chatham,
Fox, and Mirabeau so abundantly possessed--that of personality. His
figure had not the forceful massiveness of that of Fox, and it wanted
the dignity of the younger Pitt. Moreover his voice was harsh, and his
action clumsy. His philosophic love of wedding facts to principles
often led him to soar to heights where the question at issue appeared
like a speck and votes a vulgar impertinence. Worst fault of all, his
speeches were far too long. The fullness and richness which delights us
to-day then had the effect of emptying the House. The result of it all
was the decline of his influence and the increase of his irritability,
Celtic vivacity leading him more than once shrilly to chide friends
who sought to pull him back to his seat. These failings, together with
the number of his impecunious relatives, probably explain why he never
attained to Cabinet rank. In a subordinate office in the year 1783
he showed signal want of tact and discernment. Thus, in contrasting
the effect produced by the perusal of his great orations with that
which gained him the nickname of the dinner-bell of the House, one is
reminded of the truth of the bitter line levelled at him by Goldsmith:
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
The other group, which rivalled the official Whigs in the zeal of
its opposition to Lord North, was that of the former followers of
Chatham. They had neither organization nor a programme; but in general
they inherited the imperial sentiments and non-partisan traditions of
that great leader. They were less eager than the Rockingham group for
parliamentary reform and the limiting of the royal prerogative; but,
like the Girondins of the French Revolution, the indefiniteness of
their aims left much liberty of action to their following; and Pitt,
who naturally attached himself to this group, rivalled Fox in his zeal
for Reform, both economic and parliamentary.
The leader of the Chathamites was the Earl of Shelburne, who had been
driven into opposition by the arbitrary conduct of the King at the
time of the Wilkes affair. The estimates of his character are very
diverse. Burke wrote of him privately in 1783 as “this wicked man, and
no less weak and stupid than false and hypocritical,” his chief crime
being that of breaking in pieces the Whig party. Few persons would
have gone so far as the vehement Irishman, who, on these lower levels,
allowed party passion to dull his eagle glance. Shelburne was one of
the _grands seigneurs_ and political thinkers of the time. Polite and
courtly, he dazzled men by the splendour of his hospitality. In his
library he shone as a scholar and philosopher, and his conversation was
the index of his keen and supple intellect. In public life he showed
that he never lacked courage. Yet there was always something wanting
about Shelburne. His speech and manner passed so quickly and easily
from the affable to the severe as to beget feelings of distrust. His
enemies accused him of duplicity and dubbed him Malagrida, a well-known
Portuguese Jesuit.[95]
We may note here that Pitt either shared or deferred to the general
feeling about Shelburne when he omitted him from his Cabinet in
December 1783.
Some of the specific charges against Shelburne (and most of them are
vague) have vanished now that the mists of passion, amidst which he
ever moved, have cleared away.[96] It is the lot of some men to arouse
undeserved dislike or distrust, owing to unfortunate mannerisms. Yet it
is certain that England owes much to the earl. He was one of the first
to espouse the Free Trade principles of Adam Smith; he was chiefly
responsible for the terms of peace of 1782–3; and the admiration of
Benjamin Franklin for him largely conduced to the signature of the
preliminaries with the United States. Posterity has therefore accorded
to him a far higher place than was allowed by the jealousy or pettiness
of his contemporaries. Such was the leader to whom Pitt attached
himself.
On 25th January 1781 Shelburne protested manfully against the
overbearing conduct of our Government in ordering the capture of
Dutch merchantmen before the outbreak of war, and inveighed against
the policy of the Ministry as fatal to liberty and to the welfare of
the Empire. Finally he declared that the tactics of Government had
proved that the conquest of the American colonies, if it could be
accomplished, would entail fatal results at home; that he would be
better pleased to see his country free, though curtailed in power and
wealth, than acquiring greatness, if greatness were to be purchased at
the expense of her constitution and liberty. The speech rang true to
the traditions of Chatham; and it awoke responsive echoes in the breast
of his son.[97]
Within the space of five weeks Pitt proved that his support was of the
highest value. In a maiden speech, which perhaps bears away the palm
from the first efforts of the greatest orators of all time, he gave
proof of those astonishing powers which nature seemed to have implanted
in a state of maturity. Practice and experience were to perfect them;
but they then left on all his hearers an impression of wonder as at
something almost supernatural in a youth of twenty-one years. This
feeling was all the more natural as the speech dealt with economic
subjects, which Wilberforce regarded as “of a low and vulgarizing
quality.”[98]
We must pause here to notice that the topic of economy was at that time
of burning interest. On the whole it excited more general attention
than the subject of parliamentary reform. In fact the latter was
insisted on by practical men mainly with the view of stopping the
frightful waste that resulted from sinecures, jobs, and other forms
of corruption in the public service. Rigid doctrinaires like Major
Cartwright might dilate on the heaven-born right of every man to have
a vote, or depict the beauty of an electoral system which enlisted
the virtuous energies of every citizen and called on him to renew
Parliament every year, that being the natural time of renewal of all
things.[99] A still stiffer theorist, Jebb, might go further and
insist on the election of a new Parliament for each session. Together
they might call for the ballot, equal electoral areas, and payment of
members. Yet their arguments would have fallen on deaf ears but for
the strain of war taxes, the dullness of trade, and the blunderings of
placemen high in office. When London, Bristol, and Yorkshire felt the
pinch of hard times, national expenditure became a matter of the most
urgent concern.
It was in support of Burke’s proposals for the better regulation of the
King’s Civil List and for abolishing several sinecures that Pitt made
his maiden speech in the House (26th February 1781). At once he lifted
the subject to a high level. The measure, he said, would have come with
more grace, and with more benefit to the public service, had it sprung
from the royal breast. Ministers ought themselves to have proposed
it, thereby showing that His Majesty desired to participate in the
suffering of the Empire.
They ought to consult the glory of their royal master, and seat
him in the hearts of his people, by abating from magnificence what
is due to necessity.... The abridgment of useless and unnecessary
expense can be no abatement of royalty. Magnificence and grandeur
are not inconsistent with retrenchment and economy, but, on the
contrary, in a time of necessity and of common exertion, solid
grandeur is dependent on the reduction of expense; and it is the
general sentiment and observation of the House that economy is at
this hour essentially necessary to national salvation.
He next ventured on an argument scarcely consistent with the assumption
of the royal graciousness and generosity touched on in his first period
by asserting that the most important object of the bill was
The reduction of the influence of the Crown--that influence which
the last Parliament, by an express resolution, had declared to be
increasing, and that it ought to be diminished--an influence which
was more to be dreaded, because more secret in its attacks, and
more concealed in its operations than the power of prerogative.
After referring briefly to this delicate subject, he held up to scorn
those who ridiculed the proposal on the ground that it would effect a
saving of only £200,000 a year; as if the calamities of the present
crisis were too great to be benefited by economy: as if, when millions
were being spent, there was no need to think of thousands! Finally he
declared that the Civil List had been granted by Parliament to His
Majesty, not for his personal gratification, but in order
to support the power and the interests of the Empire, to maintain
its grandeur, and pay the judges and the foreign ministers, and to
maintain justice.... The people, who granted that revenue, under
the circumstances of the occasion, were justified in resuming a
part of it under the pressing demand of an altered situation. They
clearly felt their right; but they exercised it with pain and
regret. They approached the throne with hearts afflicted at the
necessity of applying for retrenchment of the royal gratifications;
but the request was at once loyal and submissive. It was justified
by policy, and His Majesty’s compliance with the request was
inculcated by prudence as well as by affection.[100]
Admiration of the perfect manner in which the speech was delivered
seems to have blinded contemporaries to its importance as a political
pronouncement. Certainly in both respects it is remarkable. No speech
ever won more general and more immediate praise. Burke declared the
young orator to be not merely a chip of the old block but the old block
itself. Charles James Fox hurried up to offer his congratulations on
this oratorical triumph, and further showed his regard by proposing
Pitt as a member of Brooks’s club--a connection which he maintained
unbroken through life. Lord North described the oration as the best
first speech that he had ever heard; and another member of the House,
Storer, commenting on the self-possession of the young speaker, which
was far removed from “improper assurance,” remarked that there was
not a word or a look that one would have wished to correct.[101] In
an age when dignity of diction and grace of deportment were deemed
essential to the success of a speech--that was the time when Windham
used to spend hours beforehand in framing elegant _juncturae_ for
his periods--the verdicts quoted above imply in a young speaker the
possession of a profusion of gifts and graces no less remarkable than
the maturity of judgment which harmonized them.
Alas, the reader of to-day cannot fully realize the witchery of his
diction, instinct with the fervour of youth, but balanced by the
sagacity of manhood. The printed word can never reveal the nature
of the spell cast on listeners by a noble countenance, harmonious
gestures, musical cadences, and the free outpouring of inspiring
thoughts. No great speeches, except those of a pre-eminently literary
quality, such as shines in the stately rhetoric of Burke, can be
appreciated apart from the speakers. It is the man who gives life to
the words. A fervent admirer of Chatham’s oratory summed up his chief
impression in the suggestive remark that there was something in the
speaker finer than his words; “that the man was infinitely greater than
the orator.” This must be so, if the speaker is to keep attention on
tip-toe, ever on the look-out for new effects and charms. Hope is a
necessary element in all admiration. The hearer, to be enthralled, must
have been wafted up to that state of ecstasy wherein delight at present
beauties is intensified by the expectation of other charms yet to come.
Shakespeare has once for all time portrayed this mental bliss in the
young and eager love of Florizel for Perdita:
What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I’ld have you do it ever.
Some such wealth of gifts the Commons of Britain discerned in Pitt in
that springtide of hope. Theirs was to be a rich harvest of joy. Ours
is but a lean aftermath.
The reader, who naturally thinks more about the matter of this speech
than the manner of its delivery, will be most impressed by the boldness
of some of the arguments. That a new member should venture to remind
Parliament and the nation of the King’s control over the Civil List
being that of a steward, not of a proprietor, was daring enough; but it
is startling to find the future champion of the Crown asserting that
the nation could _resume_ at least a part of what it had granted. There
is no essential difference between this plea and the dictum of Rousseau
(used so effectively by the French Revolutionists against the King and
the Church) that the hypothetical contract once framed between prince
and people empowered the latter at any time to enter into possession of
property which was held merely in trust on their behalf. The sentiments
expressed in Pitt’s first speech enable us to gauge the astonishment
of the world when the young orator at the close of 1783 became first
Minister of the Crown.
His second speech, delivered on 31st May, was perhaps less effective
than the first, though it marks an advance in argumentative power
and the handling of details. Colonel Barré had proposed that the
commissioners who supervised the public accounts should be chosen from
the House of Commons. After a hostile speech from Lord North, Pitt rose
to support the motion. He pointed out how essential this proposal was
for the maintenance of the power of the Commons. He continued thus:
Every branch of the legislature has something peculiar to
distinguish and to characterize it; and that which at once gives
the character and elevation of the Commons House of Parliament is
that they hold the strings of the national purse, and are entrusted
with the great important power, first of granting the money, and
then of correcting the expenditure. To delegate this right, then,
is a violation of what gives them their chief consequence in the
legislature, and what, above all other privileges, they cannot
surrender or delegate without a violent breach of the constitution.
Tracking the Prime Minister into detail after detail, he finally begged
the House to pass the motion as necessary for the prosperity of the
land and as a pledge of further reforms.
But (said he) if the motion is rejected, and the old and vicious
system of government is in every point tenaciously adhered to, the
freedom of the people and the independence of this House must be
buried in the same grave with the power, the opulence and the glory
of the Empire.
Men so diverse in character as George Selwyn and the young reformer,
Wilberforce, were loud in praise of the speech. The latter, though
he regretfully voted against Pitt, declared him to be “a ready-made
orator”; while the old place-hunter and _roué_ found in it, “_du sel
et du piquant à pleines mains. Charles_ [Fox] _en fut enchanté_.”[102]
Horace Walpole praised the speech in these terms:
The young William Pitt has again displayed paternal oratory. The
other day, on the commission of accounts, he answered Lord North,
and tore him limb from limb. If Charles Fox could feel, one should
think such a rival, with an unspotted character, would rouse him.
What if a Pitt and Fox should again be rivals.... As young Pitt is
modest too, one would hope some genuine English may revive.
So far as we know, not a single vote was gained by this oration, for
the division list showed ninety-eight against Barré’s motion and only
forty-two for it. A Scottish member, Ferguson of Pitfour, a faithful
supporter of Henry Dundas, on one occasion confessed that he had only
once ventured to vote on his own conviction, and that was the worst
vote he ever gave. Many members, while lacking the courage and wit to
make the admission, acted with equal fidelity to their own interests;
and hence even the best speeches rarely won over votes. In the present
case no one answered, and no one could answer, Pitt’s arguments; yet
they had no effect on the docile flock which trooped into the lobby
at the heels of Lord North. By a majority of forty-three the Commons
decided that the King should not be requested to show his benevolence
and disinterestedness.
The third effort of the young orator had no more effect. It came
about, apparently without premeditation, in the course of a debate
on the motion of Fox for the conclusion of an immediate peace with
our American colonies (12th June). In the first part of his speech
Pitt warmly controverted two members who claimed that Chatham had
sympathized with the war; and, in his eagerness to clear his father’s
memory, he averred that his (Chatham’s) conduct on this subject had
been uniform and consistent. After this doubtful assertion he stated
his own views in a most trenchant style. Falling upon Lord Westcote,
who had declared the war to be a holy war, he uttered these remarkable
words:
I am persuaded, and will affirm, that it is a most accursed,
wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war.
It was conceived in injustice; it was nurtured and brought forth
in folly;[103] its footsteps are marked with blood, slaughter,
persecution and devastation; in truth everything which goes to
constitute moral depravity and human turpitude are to be found
in it. It is pregnant with misery of every kind. The mischiefs,
however, recoil on the unhappy people of this country, who are made
the instruments by which the wicked purposes of its authors are
effected.
He continued in the same vehement strain, and seems to have impressed
the House less than before, Selwyn giving as his verdict that he was “a
promising young man.” The speech does, indeed, sound somewhat forced;
and its declamation seems too turgid to be effective. On this occasion
“the King’s cause” once more triumphed, by 172 votes to 99.
* * * * *
In the middle of July, after the close of the session, Pitt went on the
western circuit, but the notices of his speeches are very meagre. The
only reference that I have found to this episode in his life is in a
letter of 29th August 1781 to his Cambridge friend, Meeke:
I have this circuit amassed the immense sum of thirty guineas
without the least expense either of sense or knowledge.... I
shall return to town with the fullest intention of devoting
myself to Westminster Hall and getting as much money as I can,
notwithstanding such avocations as the House of Commons, and (which
is a much more dangerous one) Goostree’s itself. Adieu.
As a proof that Pitt did not merely play with the legal profession, I
may quote this sentence from his letter of June 1782 to Meeke:
I have for many reasons chosen to be only a friend, without being a
member, of Shelburne’s Administration, and am at least as likely to
continue a lawyer as you are to commence one.[104]
The second letter belongs to a time when the prospects of advancement
were unpromising, and when, therefore, Pitt devoted much of his time to
the select and charming club at Goostree’s. As there is a widespread
impression that he was a political automaton, who never unbent save
under the spell of Bacchus, it will be well to turn our attention to
his social life in London and at Wimbledon. It cannot be said that he
ever felt the full charm of London--
The quick forge and working-house of thought.
Brought up in the aristocratic seclusion of Hayes and Burton Pynsent,
and in Pretyman’s prim coterie at Cambridge, he had no experience of
the varied jostling life which the Londoner loves: and nature had
not dowered him with the adaptability that makes up for the defects
of training. Therefore he ever remained somewhat of a stranger in
London. He was at home in Downing Street, and still more so in his
own select club, or at Hayes, Wimbledon, or Holwood; but London never
laid her spell on him, and his life was the poorer for it. He reminds
us somewhat of that character in Dickens’s “Great Expectations,” who,
though naive and jovial, when he entered his suburban retreat in
Walworth Road and the mimic castle at the end of the garden, yet always
fixed his features in chilling reserve when he went forth citywards.
So, too, there were two Pitts, the austere man of affairs, and the
lovable, delightful friend. London alone could have mixed up the two
men and produced a sociable compound; but this was not to be.
Lincoln’s Inn and the law did little towards unbending him; though the
story, recounted in the previous chapter, of his intellectual duel with
Gibbon at a dinner in Lincoln’s Inn during the Gordon Riots shows that
even then he had the power of keen and witty repartee which gained him
the victory over an admitted autocrat of the table. Why these gifts did
not draw him into general society is hard to say. Probably his shyness
and awkwardness, on which Wilberforce lays so much stress, held him
aloof.
Certainly the temptations of the West End had for him only a passing
allurement. He felt no desire, besides having no means, to associate
with the gambling _cohue_ that played at Brooks’s or Almack’s. His
preference for bright and entertaining talkers naturally linked him
with those who had sufficient mental resources within themselves to
scorn the usually dull cliques whose interest in life begins and ends
with card tables. So far as opportunities had offered at Cambridge, he
had cultivated conversation as a fine art; and now in the West End he
found several of his University friends who welcomed him to a somewhat
wider circle. It included about twenty-five young men, of whom the
most noteworthy were Lords Althorpe, Apsley, G. Cavendish, Duncannon,
Euston, Graham, and Lennox; as well as the following who were to
become peers: Mr. Pratt (Marquis Camden), St. John (Lord St. John),
Bridgeman (Lord Bradford), Morris Robinson (Lord Rokeby), W. Grenville
(Lord Grenville), Pepper Arden (Lord Alvanley), and R. Smith (Lord
Carrington).
That was the age when the bestowal of titles was one of the means
of influence used by the Crown for the defence of its prerogatives.
Wilberforce late in life remarked that more than half of the Peers
had received their titles during his lifetime, and certainly, if we
look at the circle of Pitt’s friends in 1781, we find that only he and
seven others remained commoners. They were Bankes, Edwards (afterwards
Sir Gerard Noel), Marsham, T. Steele, General Smith, Wilberforce and
Windham, a friend of somewhat later date.
These and a few others, about thirty in all, formed what might be
termed Pitt’s Club. They met first at a house in Pall Mall, but
afterwards occupied rooms in the premises of a man named Goostree,
which later on were used as the Shakespeare Gallery.[105] Opposition to
Lord North’s Ministry was one of the shibboleths of this coterie; but
in pre-revolutionary days, when the merely political club was almost
unknown, conviviality held the first place at Goostree’s. One who was
in George Selwyn’s set evidently thought the ideals aimed at in Pitt’s
little society too good for London; for he wrote, at the close of 1781:
“Goostree’s is a small society of young men in Opposition, and they
are very nice in their admissions; as they discourage gaming as much
as possible, their club will not do any harm to Brooks’s, and probably
not subsist a great while.” In February 1782 Selwyn himself refers to
Pitt as having formed a “society of young ministers who are to fight
under his banner ... and they assemble at Goostree’s.” Clearly, then,
this club was political, at least in part. Pitt spent much of his time
there, supping at the club every night during the winter of 1780–81;
and there it was that he became intimate with William Wilberforce, the
most fascinating of his friends.
The young and brilliant member for Hull was a living proof of the
triumph which mind can win over physical disadvantages. In person he
was slight and bent, and he early suffered from that weakness of the
eyes which hampered him through life. Yet, “bodkin” though he was,
his quickness of mind, the silvery tones of his voice, the wit that
sparkled in his speech, and his uniform geniality and kindliness gained
for him a continuous round of social triumphs. His singing possessed
a natural charm which drew from the Prince of Wales the statement
that he would come at any time to hear Wilberforce sing. Equally
attractive was his power of mimicking any public character; but what
most of all endeared him to his friends was the genial raillery of his
conversation, his power of lively repartee, and the chivalry which
shone in all his words and deeds. Mme de Staël afterwards declared
him to be the best talker among all the Englishmen she had known; and
in that art of the _salons_ the exuberant Genevese was an exacting
connoisseur. She, however, could not know the warmth of feeling which
animated that slight frame, or the sensitiveness of conscience which
was to make him one of the chief uplifting forces of the age. Towards
the close of his life he expressed regret that in his youth he had made
intellectual conversation his all in all.[106] But regret was surely
needless, when that gift attracted to him the young statesman whose
life at some points he helped to inspire and elevate. Both of them,
indeed, were artists in words; and the free play of mind on mind must
have helped to strengthen those oratorical powers which were to be
devoted to the service of their country and of mankind.
From the pages of Wilberforce’s diary we catch a glimpse, tantalizingly
brief, alas, of Pitt as a boon companion, losing among his intimates
that shyness which outsiders mistook for pride.
He was the wittiest man I ever knew, and what was quite peculiar
to himself, had at all times his wit under entire control. Others
appeared struck by the unwonted association of brilliant images;
but every possible combination of ideas seemed always present to
his mind, and he could at once produce whatever he desired. I was
one of those who met to spend an evening in memory of Shakespeare
at the Boar’s Head, East Cheap. Many professed wits were present,
but Pitt was the most amusing of the party, and the readiest and
most apt in the required allusions. He entered with the same
energy into all our different amusements; we played a good deal at
Goostree’s, and I well remember the intense earnestness that he
displayed when joining in these games of chance. He perceived their
increasing fascination, and soon after suddenly abandoned them for
ever.
This passage, together with its context, is interesting in more
ways than one. Firstly it shows that the fashionable vice of the age
had crept into Goostree’s more than was known by outsiders; or else
Selwyn’s reference to the club belonged to a later period, when Pitt’s
resolve to have done with gambling, and the remorse of Wilberforce at
having suddenly won a large sum from impecunious friends, had availed
to curb the passion for it in their society. The difference of the
two friends in temperament is equally noteworthy. In Wilberforce the
resolve to break away from gambling was the first sign of awakening
of a sensitive conscience, which, though dulled by gaieties, was
thenceforth to assert itself more and more and finally to win over the
whole of his energies.
Pitt also felt the fascination of play in a manner which shows the
eagerness of his animal instincts; but the awakening in his case seems
to have been due to self-respect and also to a keen sense of what
he owed to the State. How could he, who had early vowed himself to
the service of his country, dull his powers and tarnish his name by
indulgence in an insidious and enslaving vice? The career of Charles
James Fox, we may believe, had already been a warning to the young
aspirant. In any case, by an exercise of that imperious will, which
controlled even his vehement impulses, he crushed at once and for ever
those entangling desires, and came forth fancy-free from that Circean
domain, saved by his ennobling resolve to serve England.
In another sense--a less important one, it is true--Pitt was the
most unfortunate man of his age. All his friends agreed that he was
a delightful talker and the most charming of companions. But there
their information ends. Not one of them had the Boswellian love of
detail which enables us to peer right into the heart of Johnson, and
discern the loves and hates, the prejudices and envyings, the whims
and fancies which swayed it. A man can never be known unless we have,
not merely his great speeches, but also his small talk. That of Pitt
must have been of singular charm, not only from the richness of his
mental gifts, but also from the width of the culture which informed
them. In learning he equalled the best of his compeers at Cambridge;
and we may imagine that his vivid knowledge of the life of Greece and
Rome lent to his comparisons and references a grace which could be
appreciated by few _raconteurs_ of to-day. I have already referred to
the stories circulated by those who set themselves to talk and write
him down to their own level, that he studied the classics merely in
order to provide elegant tags to his speeches. The theme has been
embroidered by certain admirers of Fox, who picture the Whig statesman
as the disinterested lover of Greece and Rome, and Pitt as a kind of
money-grubbing paramour. If these persons, instead of copying from the
many malicious stories of that time, would investigate for themselves,
they would see through the partisan spitefulness of all such tales.
Fortunately, Pitt’s copies of the classics preserved at Orwell Park
reveal signs, not only of his frequent perusal of them, but of the
pleasure which it brought, as evinced by marginal comments. Away, then,
with the Foxite myth of the classical tags!
The passage from Wilberforce’s Diary cited above also shows Pitt
to have been well primed with Shakespearean lore, and to have had
the mental agility and tact which could cull the right flower from
that rich garner. Ill though we could spare any of Pitt’s oratorical
efforts, I doubt whether we would not give up any one of his speeches
if we could have in return a full record of some of the evenings spent
by him and his friends at Goostree’s or the Boar’s Head.
Concerning his ordinary talk we only know that he delighted his family
by his gaiety, even amidst the heaviest cares of state. In that
terrible year 1793, when England and France had closed in the death
grapple, Lady Chatham refers to his “ease and gay spirits”; and she
speaks of him as not looking like a man on whom rested the destinies
of kingdoms. A further sentence explains the source of this buoyancy
of spirits: “The uprightness of his intentions and the strength of
his mind saved him from feeling any oppression from the weight upon
him.”[107]
Here we see the secret of that cheerfulness which charmed his friends.
His high spirits were in part, no doubt, bequeathed to him by the
ever confident Chatham; but their even flow was also the outcome of
his own conscious rectitude. Hence also there came the brightness and
sincerity which shone in Pitt’s conversation as also in his life.
Another characteristic on which Wilberforce insisted was his strict
truthfulness, which his friend attributed to his self-respect and to
the moral purity of his nature. Yet there was no taint of priggishness
about it. Wilberforce describes him as “remarkably cheerful and
pleasant, full of wit and playfulness, neither, like Mr. Fox, fond of
arguing a question, nor yet holding forth like some others [Windham is
here hinted at]. He was always ready to hear others as well as to talk
himself.”[108]
Obviously, then, Pitt’s conversation was free from some of the defects
which mar the efforts of professional talkers. He never used the
sledge-hammer methods by which Dr. Johnson too often won an unfair
advantage; he scorned to make use of feigned incidents or grossly
exaggerated accounts whereby many small wits gain a passing repute.
His speech, in private as in public, seems to have resembled a limpid
stream, the natural overflow of a mind richly stocked and a nature at
once lively and affectionate.
Sometimes the stream raced and danced along, as appears from an entry
in the diary of George Selwyn, in March 1782:
When I left the House, I left in one room a party of young men,
who made me, from their life and spirits, wish for one night to
be twenty. There was a tablefull of them drinking--young Pitt,
Lord Euston, Berkley, North, etc., singing and laughing _à gorge
déployée_: some of them sang very good catches; one Wilberforce, a
M. of P., sang the best.
This is only one of many signs that nature had bestowed on Pitt social
gifts and graces which under more favourable conditions would have made
him the centre of a devoted circle of friends. True, he was too shy and
modest to figure as a political Dr. Johnson; too natural to pose as
did the literary lion of Strawberry Hill; too prudent to vie with Fox
as the chief wit and gamester of a great club. But in his own way and
in his own sphere he might have carried on those honourable traditions
which have invested the life of St. Stephen’s with literary and social
charm, had not Chatham’s premature forcing of his powers devitalized
him before the start of a singularly early and exacting career. Here
was the ill fortune of Pitt. Like all precocious natures he needed
times of rest and recuperation before he reached his prime. He sought
them in vain either at Hayes, Cambridge, or Westminster. As we shall
see, the very unusual state of English politics down to 1789 would have
made the accession of Fox, the unofficial representative of the Prince
of Wales, a public misfortune; and soon afterwards there occurred in
quick succession the disputes with Spain, Russia, and France, which,
after two false alarms, ended in a tremendous war. In such a period
how could a delicate man rise to the height of his faculties, either
political or social? On both sides of his nature Pitt showed signs of
the most brilliant promise; but the premature and incessant strain of
public duty robbed him and his country of the full fruition.