(_Encyclopædia Britannica_, January 1859.)
William Pitt, {221}the second son of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and
of Lady Hester Grenville, daughter of Hester, Countess Temple, was born
on the 28th of May, 1759. The child inherited a name which, at the time
of his birth, was the most illustrious in the civilised world, and was
pronounced by every Englishman with pride, and by every enemy of England
with mingled admiration and terror. During the first year of his life,
every month had its illuminations and bonfires, and every wind brought
some messenger charged with joyful tidings and hostile standards. In
Westphalia the English infantry won a great battle which arrested the
armies of Louis the Fifteenth in the midst of a career of conquest;
Boscawen defeated one French fleet on the coast of Portugal; Hawke put
to flight another in the Bay of Biscay; Johnson took Niagara; Amherst
took Ticonderoga; Wolfe died by the most enviable of deaths under the
walls of Quebec; Clive destroyed a Dutch armament in the Hooghly, and
established the English supremacy in Bengal; Coote routed Lally at
Wandewash, and established the English supremacy in the Carnatic. The
nation, while loudly applauding the successful warriors, considered them
all, on sea and on land, in Europe, in America, {222}and in Asia, merely
as instruments which received their direction from one superior mind.
It was the great William Pitt, the great commoner, who had vanquished
French marshals in Germany, and French admirals on the Atlantic; who
had conquered for his country one great empire on the frozen shores
of Ontario, and another under the tropical sun near the mouths of the
Ganges, it was not in the nature of things that popularity such as he
at this time enjoyed should be permanent. That popularity had lost
its gloss before his children were old enough to understand that their
father was a great man. He was at length placed in situations in which
neither his talents for administration nor his talents for debate
appeared to the best advantage. The energy and decision which had
eminently fitted him for the direction of war were not needed in time
of peace. The lofty and spirit-stirring eloquence which had made him
supreme in the House of Commons often fell dead on the House of Lords. A
cruel malady racked his joints, and left his joints only to fall on his
nerves and on his brain. During the closing years of his life, he was
odious to the court, and yet was not on cordial terms with the great
body of the opposition. Chatham was only the ruin of Pitt, but an
awful and majestic ruin, not to be contemplated by any man of sense
and feeling without emotions resembling those which are excited by the
remains of the Parthenon and of the Coliseum. In one respect the old
statesman was eminently happy. Whatever might be the vicissitudes of his
public life, he never failed to find peace and love by his own hearth.
he loved all his children, and was loved by them; and, of all his
children, the one of whom he was fondest and proudest was his second
son.
The {223}child’s genius and ambition displayed themselves with a rare
and almost unnatural precocity. At seven, the interest which he took in
grave subjects, the ardour with which he pursued his studies, and the
sense and vivacity of his remarks on books and on events, amazed his
parents and instructors. One of his sayings of this date was reported to
his mother by his tutor. In August, 1766, when the world was agitated
by the news that Mr. Pitt had become Earl of Chatham, little William
exclaimed: “I am glad that I am not the eldest son. I want to speak
in the House of Commons like papa.” A letter is extant in which Lady
Chatham, a woman of considerable abilities, remarked to her lord, that
their younger son at twelve had left far behind him his elder brother,
who was fifteen. “The fineness,” she wrote, “of William’s mind makes him
enjoy with the greatest pleasure what would be above the reach of any
other creature of his small age.” At fourteen the lad was in intellect a
man. Hayley, who met him at Lyme in the summer of 1773, was astonished,
delighted, and somewhat overawed, by hearing wit and wisdom from so
young a mouth. The poet, indeed, was afterwards sorry that his shyness
had prevented him from submitting the plan of an extensive literary
work, which he was then meditating, to the judgment of this
extraordinary boy. The boy, indeed, had already written a tragedy, bad
of course, but not worse than the tragedies of his friend. This piece
is still preserved at Chevening, and is in some respects highly curious.
There is no love. The whole plot is political; and it is remarkable that
the interest, such as it is, turns on a contest about a regency. On one
side is a faithful servant of the Crown, on the other an ambitious and
unprincipled conspirator. At length the King, {224}who had been missing,
reappears, resumes his power, and rewards the faithful defender of his
rights. A reader who should judge only by internal evidence would have
no hesitation in pronouncing that the play was written by some Pittite
poetaster at the time of the rejoicings for the recovery of George the
Third in 1780.
The pleasure with which William’s parents observed the rapid development
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 {225}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 {226}any examination,
to the degree of Master of Arts. But he continued during some years to
reside at college, and to apply himself vigorously, under Prettyman’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 cheeked 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, {227}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
{228}parliamentary speaker. One argument often urged against those
classical studies which occupy so large a part 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 Aleaics, 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
straight-forward 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 {229}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 onlv 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 a 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 sublimating 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, {230}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 he.
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 {231}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 St. 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 {232}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 {233}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; Barré, 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 {234}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 Puller 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. {235}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, 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 {236}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 {237}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 1881.
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 {238}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.
He saw that the great body of the House of Commons was divided into
three parties, his own, that of North, and that of Shelburne; that none
of those three parties was large enough to stand alone; that,
therefore, unless two of them united, there must be a miserably feeble
administration, or, more probably, a rapid succession of miserably
feeble administrations, and this at a time when a strong government was
essential to the prosperity and respectability of the nation. It was
then necessary and right that there should be a coalition. {239}To
every possible coalition there were objections. But, of all possible
coalitions, that to which there were the fewest objections was
undoubtedly a coalition between Shelburne and Fox. It would have been
generally applauded by the followers of both. It might have been
made without any sacrifice of public principle on the part of either.
Unhappily, recent bickerings had left in the mind of Fox a profound
dislike and distrust of Shelburne. Pitt attempted to mediate, and was
authorised to invite Fox to return to the service of the Crown. “Is Lord
Shelburne,” said Fox, “to remain prime minister?” Pitt answered in the
affirmative. “It is impossible that I can act under him,” said Fox.
“Then negotiation is at an end,” said Pitt; “for I cannot betray him.”
Thus the two statesmen parted. They were never again in a private room
together.
As Fox and his friends would not treat with Shelburne, nothing
remained to them but to treat with North. That fatal coalition which is
emphatically called “The Coalition” was formed. Not three quarters of
a year had elapsed since Fox and Burke had threatened North with
impeachment, and had described him, night after night, as the most
arbitrary, the most corrupt, the most incapable of ministers. They now
allied themselves with him for the purpose of driving from office a
statesman with whom they cannot be said to have differed as to any
important question. Nor had they even the prudence and the patience to
wait for some occasion on which they might, without inconsistency, have
combined with their old enemies in opposition to the government. That
nothing might be wanting to the scandal, the great orators, who had,
during seven years, thundered against the war, determined {240}to join
with the authors of that war in passing a vote of censure on the peace.
The Parliament met before Christmas 1782. But it was not till January
1783 that the preliminary treaties were signed. On the 17th of February
they were taken into consideration by the House of Commons. There
had been, during some days, floating rumours that Fox and North had
coalesced; and the debate indicated but too clearly that those rumours
were not unfounded. Pitt was suffering from indisposition: he did not
rise till his own strength and that of his hearers were exhausted; and
he was consequently less successful than on any former occasion. His
admirers owned that his speech was feeble and petulant. He so far forgot
himself as to advise Sheridan to confine himself to amusing theatrical
audiences. This ignoble sarcasm gave Sheridan an opportunity of
retorting with great felicity. “After what I have seen and heard
tonight,” he said, “I really feel strongly tempted to venture on a
competition with so great an artist as Ben Jonson, and to bring on the
stage a second Angry Boy.” On a division, the address proposed by the
supporters of the government was rejected by a majority of sixteen.
But Pitt was not a man to be disheartened by a single failure, or to
be put down by the most lively repartee. When, a few days later, the
opposition proposed a resolution directly censuring the treaties, he
spoke with an eloquence, energy, and dignity, which raised his fame
and popularity higher than ever. To the coalition of Fox and North
he alluded in language which drew forth tumultuous applause from his
followers. “If,” he said, “this ill-omened and unnatural marriage be not
yet consummated, I know of a just and {241}lawful impediment; and, in
the name of the public weal, I forbid the banns.”
The ministers were again left in a minority; and Shelburne consequently
tendered his resignation. It was accepted; but the King struggled long
and hard before he submitted to the terms dictated by Fox, whose faults
he detested, and whose high spirit and powerful intellect he detested
still more. The first place at the board of Treasury was repeatedly
offered to Pitt; but the offer, though tempting, was steadfastly
declined. The young man, whose judgment was as precocious as his
eloquence, saw that his time was coming, but was not come, and was deaf
to royal importunities and reproaches. His Majesty, bitterly complaining
of Pitt’s faintheartedness, tried to break the coalition. Every art of
seduction was practised on North, but in vain. During several weeks the
country remained without a government. It was not till all devices had
failed, and till the aspect of the House of Commons became threatening,
that the King gave way. The Duke of Portland was declared First Lord of
the Treasury. Thurlow was dismissed. Fox and North became Secretaries of
State, with power ostensibly equal. But Fox was the real prime minister.
The year was far advanced before the new arrangements were completed;
and nothing very important was done during the remainder of the session.
Pitt, now seated on the opposition bench, brought the question of
parliamentary reform a second time under the consideration of the
Commons. He proposed to add to the House at once a hundred county
members and several members for metropolitan districts, and to enact
that every borough of which an election committee {242}should report
that the majority of voters appeared to be corrupt should lose the
franchise. The motion was rejected by 203 votes to 140.
After the prorogation, Pitt visited the Continent for the first and last
time. His travelling companion was one of his most intimate friends,
a young man of his own age, who had already distinguished himself in
Parliament by an engaging natural eloquence, set off by the sweetest
and most exquisitely modulated of human voices, and whose affectionate
heart, caressing manners, and brilliant wit, made him the most
delightful of companions, William Wilberforce. That was the time of
Anglomania in France; and at Paris the son of the great Chatham was
absolutely hunted by men of letters and women of fashion, and forced,
much against his will, into political disputation. One remarkable saying
which dropped from him during this tour has been preserved. A French
gentleman expressed some surprise at the immense influence which Fox, a
man of pleasure, ruined by the dice-box and the turf, exercised over the
English nation. “You have not,” said Pitt, “been under the wand of the
magician.”
In November 1783 the Parliament met again. The government had
irresistible strength in the House of Commons, and seemed to be scarcely
less strong in the House of Lords, but was, in truth, surrounded on
every side by dangers. The King was impatiently waiting for the moment
fit which he could emancipate himself from a yoke which galled him so
severely that he had more than once seriously thought of retiring to
Hanover; and the King was scarcely more eager for a change than the
nation. Fox and North had committed a fatal error. They ought to have
known that coalitions {243}between parties which have long been hostile
can succeed only when the wish for coalition pervades the lower ranks
of both. If the leaders unite before there is any disposition to union
among the followers, the probability is that there will be a mutiny in
both camps, and that the two revolted armies will make a truce with each
other, in order to be revenged on those by whom they think that they
have been betrayed. Thus it was in 1783. At the beginning of that
eventful year, North had been the recognised head of the old Tory party,
which, though for a moment prostrated by the disastrous issue of the
American war, was still a great power in the state. To him the clergy,
the universities, and that large body of country gentlemen whose
rallying cry was “Church and King,” had long looked up with respect and
confidence. Fox had, on the other hand, been the idol of the Whigs,
and of the whole body of Protestant dissenters. The coalition at once
alienated the most zealous Tories from North, and the most zealous Whigs
from Fox. The University of Oxford, which had marked its approbation of
North’s orthodoxy by electing him chancellor, the city of London, which
had been during two and twenty years at war with the Court, were equally
disgusted. Squires and rectors, who had inherited the principles of the
cavaliers of the preceding century, could not forgive their old leader
for combining with disloyal subjects in order to put a force on the
sovereign. The members of the Bill of Rights Society and of the Reform
Associations were enraged by learning that their favourite orator now
called the great champion of tyranny and corruption his noble friend.
Two great multitudes were at once left without any head, and both at
once turned their eyes on Pitt. One party saw {244}in him the only man
who could rescue the King; the other saw in him the only man who could
purify the Parliament. He was supported on one side by Archbishop
Markham, the preacher of divine right, and by Jenkinson, the captain of
the Praetorian band of the King’s friends; on the other side by Jebb and
Priestley, Sawbridge and Cartwright, Jack Wilkes and Horne Tooke. On the
benches of the House of Commons, however, the ranks of the ministerial
majority were unbroken; and that any statesman would venture to brave
such a majority was thought impossible. No prince of the Hanoverian
line had ever, under any provocation, ventured to appeal from the
representative body to the constituent body. The ministers, therefore,
notwithstanding the sullen looks and muttered words of displeasure with
which their suggestions were received in the closet, notwithstanding the
roar of obloquy which was rising louder and louder every day from every
corner of the island, thought themselves secure.
Such was their confidence in their strength that, as soon as the
Parliament had met, they brought forward a singularly bold and original
plan for the government of the British territories in India. What was
proposed was that the whole authority, which till that time had been
exercised over those territories by the East India Company, should be
transferred to seven Commissioners who were to be named by Parliament,
and were not to be removable at the pleasure of the Crown. Earl
Fitzwilliam, the most intimate personal friend of Fox, was to be
chairman of this board; and the eldest son of North was to be one of the
members.
As soon as the outlines of the scheme were known, all the hatred which
the coalition had excited burst forth {245}with an astounding explosion.
The question which ought undoubtedly to have been considered as
paramount to every other was, whether the proposed change was likely to
be beneficial or injurious to the thirty millions of people who were
subject to the Company. But that question cannot be said to have been
even seriously discussed. Burke, who, whether right or wrong in the
conclusions to which he came, had at least the merit of looking at the
subject in the right point of view, vainly reminded his hearers of that
mighty population whose daily rice might depend on a vote of the British
Parliament. He spoke, with even more than his wonted power of thought
and language, about the desolation of Rohilcund, about the spoliation
of Benares, about the evil policy which had suffered the tanks of the
Carnatic to go to ruin; but he could scarcely obtain a hearing. The
contending parties, to their shame it must be said, would listen to none
but English topics. Out of doors the cry against the ministry was almost
universal. Town and country were united. Corporations exclaimed against
the violation of the charter of the greatest corporation in the realm.
Tories and democrats joined in pronouncing the proposed board an
unconstitutional body. It was to consist of Fox’s nominees. The effect
of his bill was to give, not to the Crown, but to him personally,
whether in office or in opposition, an enormous power, a patronage
sufficient to counterbalance the patronage of the Treasury and of the
Admiralty, and to decide the elections for fifty boroughs. He knew,
it was said, that he was hateful alike to King and people; and he had
devised a plan which would make him independent of both. Some nicknamed
him Cromwell, and some Carlo Khan. Wilberforce, with his usual felicity
of expression, {246}and with very unusual bitterness of feeling,
described the scheme as the genuine offspring of the coalition, as
marked with the features of both its parents, the corruption of one and
the violence of the other. In spite of all opposition, however, the bill
was supported in every stage by great majorities, was rapidly passed,
and was sent up to the Lords. To the general astonishment, when the
second reading was moved in the Upper House, the opposition proposed an
adjournment, and carried it by eighty-seven votes to seventy-nine. The
cause of this strange turn of fortune was soon known. Pitt’s cousin,
Earl Temple, had been in the royal closet, and had there been authorised
to let it be known that His Majesty would consider all who voted for
the bill as his enemies. The ignominious commission was performed; and
instantly a troop of Lords of the Bedchamber, of Bishops who wished to
be translated, and of Scotch peers who wished to be re-elected, made
haste to change sides. On a later day, the Lords rejected the bill. Fox
and North were immediately directed to send their seals to the palace
by their Under Secretaries; and Pitt was appointed First Lord of the
Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The general opinion was, that there would be an immediate dissolution.
But Pitt wisely determined to give the public feeling time to gather
strength. On this point he differed from his kinsman Temple. The
consequence was, that Temple, who had been appointed one of the
Secretaries of State, resigned his office forty-eight hours after he had
accepted it, and thus relieved the new government from a great load of
unpopularity; for all men of sense and honour, however strong might be
their dislike of the India Bill, disapproved of the manner {247}in which
that bill had been thrown out. Temple carried away with him the scandal
which the best friends of the new government could not but lament.
The fame of the young prime minister preserved its whiteness. He could
declare with perfect truth that, if unconstitutional machinations had
been employed, he had been no party to them.
He was, however, surrounded by difficulties and dangers. In the House of
Lords, indeed, he had a majority; nor could any orator of the opposition
in that assembly be considered as a match for Thurlow, who was now again
Chancellor, or for Camden, who cordially supported the son of his old
friend Chatham. But in the other House there was not a single eminent
speaker among the official men who sate round Pitt. His most useful
assistant was Dundas, who, though he had not eloquence, had sense,
knowledge, readiness, and boldness. On the opposite benches was a
powerful majority, led by Fox, who was supported by Burke, North, and
Sheridan. The heart of the young minister, stout as it was, almost died
within him. He could not once close his eyes on the night which followed
Temple’s resignation. But, whatever his internal emotions might be, his
language and deportment indicated nothing but unconquerable firmness and
haughty confidence in his own powers. His contest against the House of
Commons lasted from the 17th of December, 1783, to the 8th of March,
1784. In sixteen divisions the opposition triumphed. Again and again the
King was requested to dismiss his ministers. But he was determined to go
to Germany rather than yield. Pitt’s resolution never wavered. The
cry of the nation in his favour became vehement and almost furious.
Addresses assuring him of public support came up daily from {248}every
part of the kingdom. The freedom of the city of London was presented to
him in a gold box. He went in state to receive this mark of distinction.
he was sumptuously feasted in Grocers’ Hall; and the shopkeepers of the
Strand and Fleet Street illuminated their houses in his honour. These
things could not but produce an effect within the walls of Parliament.
The ranks of the majority began to waver; a few passed over to the
enemy; some skulked away; many were for capitulating while it was still
possible to capitulate with the honours of war. Negotiations were opened
with the view of forming an administration on a wide basis; but they had
scarcely been opened when they were closed. The opposition demanded,
as a preliminary article of the treaty, that Pitt should resign the
Treasury; and with this demand Pitt steadfastly refused to comply. While
the contest was raging, the Clerkship of the Pells, a sinecure place for
life, worth three thousand a year, and tenable with a seat in the House
of Commons, became vacant. The appointment was with the Chancellor of
the Exchequer: nobody doubted that he would appoint himself; and nobody
could have blamed him if he had done so: for such sinecure offices
had always been defended on the ground that they enabled a few men of
eminent abilities and small incomes to live without any profession, and
to devote themselves to the service of the state. Pitt, in spite of
the remonstrances of his friends, gave the Pells to his father’s old
adherent, Colonel Barré, a man distinguished by talent and eloquence,
but poor and afflicted with blindness. By this arrangement a pension
which the Rockingham administration had granted to Barré was saved to
the public. Never was there a happier stroke of policy. About treaties,
{249}wars, expeditions, tariffs, budgets, there will always be room
for dispute. The policy which is applauded by half the nation may be
condemned by the other half. But pecuniary disinterestedness everybody
comprehends. It is a great thing for a man who has only three hundred a
year to be able to show that he considers three thousand a year as mere
dirt beneath his feet, when compared with the public interest and
the public esteem. Pitt had his reward. No minister was ever more
rancorously libelled; but, even when he was known to be overwhelmed with
debt, when millions were passing through his hands, when the wealthiest
magnates of the realm were soliciting him for marquisates and garters,
his bitterest enemies did not dare to accuse him of touching unlawful
gain.
At length the hard fought fight ended. A final remonstrance, drawn up by
Burke with admirable skill, was carried on the 8th of March by a single
vote in a full House. Had the experiment been repeated, the supporters
of the coalition would probably have been in a minority. But the
supplies had been voted; the Mutiny Bill had been passed; and the
Parliament was dissolved.
The popular constituent bodies all over the country were in general
enthusiastic on the side of the new government. A hundred and sixty of
the supporters of the coalition lost their seats. The First Lord of the
Treasury himself came in at the head of the poll for the University
of Cambridge. His young friend, Wilberforce, was elected knight of
the great shire of York, in opposition to the whole influence of the
Fitzwilliams, Cavendishes, Dundases, and Saviles. In the midst of such
triumphs Pitt completed his twenty-fifth year. He was now the greatest
subject that England had seen {250}during many generations. He
domineered absolutely over the cabinet, and was the favourite at once of
the Sovereign, of the Parliament, and of the nation. His father had never
been so powerful, nor Walpole, nor Marlborough.
This narrative has now reached a point, beyond which a full history of
the life of Pitt would be a history of England, or rather of the whole
civilised world; and for such a history this is not the proper place.
Here a very slight sketch must suffice; and in that sketch prominence
will be given to such points as may enable a reader who is already
acquainted with the general course of events to form a just notion of
the character of the man on whom so much depended.
If we wish to arrive at a correct judgment of Pitt’s merits and defects,
we must never forget that he belonged to a peculiar class of statesmen,
and that he must be tried by a peculiar standard. It is not easy to
compare him fairly with such men as Ximenes and Sully, Richelieu and
Oxenstiern, John de Witt and Warren Hastings. The means by which those
politicians governed great communities were of quite a different
kind from those which Pitt was under the necessity of employing. Some
talents, which they never had any opportunity of showing that they
possessed, were developed in him to an extraordinary degree. In some
qualities, on the other hand, to which they owe a large part of their
fame, he was decidedly their inferior. They transacted business in their
closets, or at boards where a few confidential councillors sate. It was
his lot to be born in an age and in a country in which parliamentary
government was completely established; his whole training from infancy
was such as fitted him to bear a part in parliamentary {251}government;
and, from the prime of his manhood to his death, all the powers of
his vigorous mind were almost constantly exerted in the work of
parliamentary government. He accordingly became the greatest master
of the whole art of parliamentary government that has ever existed, a
greater than Montagne or Walpole, a greater than his father Chatham
or his rival Fox, a greater than either of his illustrious successors
Canning and Peel.
Parliamentary government, like every other contrivance of man, has its
advantages and its disadvantages. On the advantages there is no need
to dilate. The history of England during the hundred and seventy years
which have elapsed since the House of Commons became the most powerful
body in the state, her immense and still growing prosperity, her
freedom, her tranquillity, her greatness in arts, in sciences, and in
arms, her maritime ascendency, the marvels of her public credit, her
American, her African, her Australian, her Asiatic empires, sufficiently
prove the excellence of her institutions. But those institutions,
though excellent, are assuredly not perfect. Parliamentary government is
government by speaking. In such a government, the power of speaking
is the most highly prized of all the qualities which a politician
can possess; and that power may exist, in the highest degree, without
judgment, without fortitude, without skill in reading the characters of
men or the signs of the times, without any knowledge of the principles
of legislation or of political economy, and without any skill in
diplomacy or in the administration of war. Nay, it may well happen that
those very intellectual qualities which give a peculiar charm to the
speeches of a public man may be incompatible with the qualities which
would {252}fit him to meet a pressing emergency with promptitude and
firmness. It was thus with Charles Townshend. It was thus with Windham.
It was a privilege to listen to those accomplished and ingenious
orators. But in a perilous crisis they would have been found far
inferior in all the qualities of rulers to such a man as Oliver
Cromwell, who talked nonsense, or as William the Silent, who did not
talk at all. When parliamentary government is established, a Charles
Townshend or a Windham will almost always exercise much greater
influence than such men as the great Protector of England, or as
the founder of the Batavian commonwealth. In such a government,
parliamentary talent, though quite distinct from the talents of a
good executive or judicial official, will be a chief qualification for
executive and judicial office. From the Book of Dignities a curious list
might be made out of Chancellors ignorant of the principles of
equity, and First Lords of the Admiralty ignorant of the principles of
navigation, of Colonial ministers who could not repeat the names of
the Colonies, of Lords of the Treasury who did not know the difference
between funded and unfunded debt, and of Secretaries of the India Board
who did not know whether the Mahrattas were Mahometans or Hindoos. On
these grounds, some persons, incapable of seeing more than one side of a
question, have pronounced parliamentary government a positive evil, and
have maintained that the administration would be greatly improved if the
power, now exercised by a large assembly, were transferred to a single
person. Men of sense will probably think the remedy very much worse than
the disease, and will be of opinion that there would be small gain in
exchanging Charles Townshend {253}and Windham for the Prince of the
Peace, or the poor slave and dog Steenie.
Pitt was emphatically the man of parliamentary government, the type of
his class, the minion, the child, the spoiled child, of the House of
Commons. For the House of Commons he had a hereditary, an infantine
love. Through his whole boyhood, the House of Commons was never out of
his thoughts, or out of the thoughts of his instructors. Reciting at his
father’s knee, reading Thucydides and Cicero into English, analysing the
great Attic speeches on the Embassy and on the Crown, he was constantly
in training for the conflicts of the House of Commons. He was a
distinguished member of the House of Commons at twenty-one. The ability
which he had displayed in the House of Commons made him the most
powerful subject in Europe before he was twenty-five. It would have
been happy for himself and for his country if his elevation had been
deferred. Eight or ten years, during which he would have had leisure and
opportunity for reading and reflection, for foreign travel, for social
intercourse and free exchange of thought on equal terms with a great
variety of companions, would have supplied what, without any fault
on his part, was wanting to his powerful intellect. He had all the
knowledge that he could be expected to have; that is to say, all the
knowledge that a man can acquire while he is a student at Cambridge, and
all the knowledge that a man can acquire when he is First Lord of the
Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. But the stock of general
information which he brought from college, extraordinary for a boy, was
far inferior to what Fox possessed, and beggarly when compared with
the massy, the splendid, the various treasures laid up in the large
{254}mind of Burke. After Pitt became minister, he had no leisure to
learn more than was necessary for the purposes of the day which was
passing over him. What was necessary for those purposes such a man could
learn with little difficulty, he was surrounded by experienced and able
public servants, he could at any moment command their best assistance.
From the stores which they produced his vigorous mind rapidly collected
the materials for a good parliamentary case: and that was enough.
Legislation and administration were with him secondary matters. To the
work of framing statutes, of negotiating treaties, of organising fleets
and armies, of sending forth expeditions, he gave only the leavings of
his time and the dregs of his fine intellect. The strength and sap of
his mind were all drawn in a different direction. It was when the House
of Commons was to be convinced and persuaded that he put forth all his
powers.
Of those powers we must form our estimate chiefly from tradition; for of
all the eminent speakers of the last age Pitt has suffered most from
the reporters. Even while he was still living, critics remarked that
his eloquence could not be preserved, that he must be heard to be
appreciated. They more than once applied to him the sentence in which
Tacitus describes the fate of a senator whose rhetoric was admired in
the Augustan age: “Haterii canorum illud et profluens cum ipso simul
exstinctum est.” There is, however, abundant evidence that nature had
bestowed on Pitt the talents of a great orator; and those talents had
been developed in a very peculiar manner, first by his education, and
secondly by the high official position to which he rose early, and in
which he passed the greater part of his public life.
At {255}his first appearance in Parliament he showed himself superior
to all his contemporaries in command of language. He could pour forth
a long succession of round and stately periods, without premeditation,
without ever pausing for a word, without ever repeating a word, in a
voice of silver clearness, and with a pronunciation so articulate that
not a letter was slurred over. He had less amplitude of mind and less
richness of imagination than Burke, less ingenuity than Windham, less
wit than Sheridan, less perfect mastery of dialectical fence, and less
of that highest sort of eloquence which consists of reason and passion
fused together, than Fox. Yet the almost unanimous judgment of those
who were in the habit of listening to that remarkable race of men placed
Pitt, as a speaker, above Burke, above Windham, above Sheridan, and not
below Fox. His declamation was copious, polished, and splendid. In power
of sarcasm he was probably not surpassed by any speaker, ancient or
modern; and of this formidable weapon he made merciless use. In two
parts of the oratorical art which are of the highest value to a minister
of state he was singularly expert. No man knew better how to be luminous
or how to be obscure. When he wished to be understood, he never failed
to make himself understood. He could with ease present to his audience,
not perhaps an exact or profound, but a clear, popular, and plausible
view of the most extensive and complicated subject. Nothing was out of
place; nothing was forgotten; minute details, dates, sums of money,
were all faithfully preserved in his memory. Even intricate questions of
finance, when explained by him, seemed clear to the plainest man
among his hearers. On the other hand, when he did not wish to be
explicit,--and {256}no man who is at the head of affairs always wishes
to be explicit,--he had a marvellous power of saying nothing in language
which left on his audience the impression that he had said a great deal.
He was at once the only man who could open a budget without notes, and
the only man who, as Windham said, could speak that most elaborately
evasive and unmeaning of human compositions, a King’s speech, without
premeditation.
The effect of oratory will always to a great extent depend on the
character of the orator. There perhaps never were two speakers whose
eloquence had more of what may be called the race, more of the flavour
imparted by moral qualities, than Fox and Pitt. The speeches of Fox owe
a great part of their charm to that warmth and softness of heart, that
sympathy with human suffering, that admiration for everything great and
beautiful, and that hatred of cruelty and injustice, which interest and
delight us even in the most defective reports. No person, on the other
hand, could hear Pitt without perceiving him to be a man of high,
intrepid, and commanding spirit, proudly conscious of his own rectitude
and of his own intellectual superiority, incapable of the low vices of
fear and envy, but too prone to feel and to show disdain. Pride, indeed,
pervaded the whole man, was written in the harsh, rigid lines of his
face, was marked by the way in which he walked, in which he sate,
in which he stood, and, above all, in which he bowed. Such pride, of
course, inflicted many wounds. It may confidently be affirmed that there
cannot be found, in all the ten thousand invectives written against Fox,
a word indicating that his demeanour had ever made a single personal
enemy. On the other hand, several men of note who had been partial
{257}to Pitt, and who to the last continued to approve his public
conduct and to support his administration, Cumberland, for example,
Boswell, and Matthias, were so much irritated by the contempt with which
he treated them, that they complained in print of their wrongs. But his
pride, though it made him bitterly disliked by individuals, inspired
the great body of his followers in Parliament and throughout the country
with respect and confidence. They took him at his own valuation. They
saw that his self-esteem was not that of an upstart, who was drunk with
good luck and with applause, and who, if fortune turned, would sink from
arrogance into abject humility. It was that of the magnanimous man
so finely described by Aristotle in the Ethics, of the man who thinks
himself worthy of great things, being in truth worthy. It sprang from
a consciousness of great powers and great virtues, and was never so
conspicuously displayed as in the midst of difficulties and dangers
which would have unnerved and bowed down any ordinary mind. It was
closely connected, too, with an ambition which had no mixture of low
cupidity. There was something noble in the cynical disdain with which
the mighty minister scattered riches and titles to right and left among
those who valued them, while he spurned them out of his own way. Poor
himself, he was surrounded by friends on whom he had bestowed three
thousand, six thousand, ten thousand a year. Plain Mister himself, he
had made more lords than any three ministers that had preceded him. The
garter, for which the first dukes in the kingdom were contending, was
repeatedly offered to him, and offered in vain.
The correctness of his private life added much to the dignity of his
public character. In the relations of son, brother, {258}uncle, master,
friend, his conduct was exemplary. In the small circle of his intimate
associates, he was amiable, affectionate, even playful. They loved him
sincerely; they regretted him long; and they would hardly admit that
he who was so kind and gentle with them could be stern and haughty with
others. He indulged, indeed, somewhat too freely in wine, which he had
early been directed to take as a medicine, and which use had made a
necessary of life to him. But it was very seldom that any indication of
undue excess could be detected in his tones or gestures; and, in truth,
two bottles of port were little more to him than two dishes of tea.
He had, when he was first introduced into the clubs of Saint James’s
Street, shown a strong taste for play; but he had the prudence and the
resolution to stop before this taste had acquired the strength of habit.
From the passion which generally exercises the most tyrannical dominion
over the young he possessed an immunity, which is probably to be
ascribed partly to his temperament and partly to his situation. His
constitution was feeble; he was very shy; and he was very busy. The
strictness of his morals furnished such buffoons as Peter Pindar and
Captain Morris with an inexhaustible theme for merriment of no very
delicate kind. But the great body of the middle class of Englishmen
could not see the joke. They warmly praised the young statesman for
commanding his passions, and for covering his frailties, if he had
frailties, with decorous obscurity, and would have been very far indeed
from thinking better of him if he had vindicated himself from the taunts
of his enemies by taking under his protection a Nancy Parsons or a
Marianne Clark.