During his first session of Parliament, Pitt never opened his mouth:
indeed, his only public performance was to tell in a division. In 1736
he became better known. He supported an address of congratulation to the
Crown on the marriage of the Prince of Wales. This formal and
complimentary speech has been absurdly scrutinised because of the
speaker's subsequent fame, and much has been read into it which no
impartial reader can now discern. A notorious eulogy describes it as
superior even to the models of ancient eloquence. Others read into it
piercing innuendoes and vitriolic sarcasm. All this was discovered, long
after its delivery, by the light of Pitt's later achievements. It is
said that George II. never forgave it. But George II.'s hatred of Pitt
is more easily accounted for by other offences. It is rumoured that
Walpole shuddered when he heard it, and said, 'We must muzzle that
terrible cornet of horse.' The ordinary reader sees in the reported
speech nothing which would provoke admiration or alarm in anybody were
it attributed to any one who had remained obscure. But the report,
though elaborate, was probably inaccurate; the speech may have been more
vicious than appears; it must, at any rate, have been something very
different from smooth platitudes on a royal marriage that would have
made Walpole tremble, if indeed Walpole was liable to any such emotion.
The truth, no doubt, is that the graces of voice, person, and delivery
marvellously embellished this maiden effort, and produced a striking
effect on the audience.
But, whatever its intrinsic merits, the success of this speech was
immeasurably enhanced, if not altogether secured, by Walpole's action.
It may indeed be said to have been made famous by the penalty which
followed it rather than by its own merits. He deprived the young orator
and cornet of his commission.
'The servile standard from the freeborn hand
He took, and bade thee lead the patriot band,'
sang Lyttelton to Pitt.
It was a vindictive act which seems alien to Walpole's boisterous good
humour, but of a kind to which Walpole's arbitrary notions of political
discipline made him singularly prone. So petty an act of vengeance
wreaked on so young and subordinate an officer by a powerful Prime
Minister seems incredible in our larger or laxer days. But it was
perhaps the very slightness of Pitt's position which was an inducement
to Walpole. He was determined, it may be, that the whole army, from the
highest to the lowest, should feel the weight of his hand. The disgrace
of political generals seemed just and proper, it was cutting off the
heads of the tallest poppies, a proceeding recognised and respectable
since the days of Tarquin. These penalties had left the mass of the army
unmoved, not impossibly because the removal of chiefs means the
promotion of subordinates. So Walpole may have resolved that all in the
service of the Crown should feel that revolt against the minister of the
Crown was a flagrant crime. Generals had been punished, and so all
officers from the highest, to the lowest should be liable to the same
pains and penalties; nay private soldiers, were their lot enviable,
might suffer the same deprivation. 'The King,' wrote Lady Irwin, a lady
of the Prince of Wales' household, to her brother, Lord Carlisle, 'two
days ago turned out Mr. Pitt from a cornetcy for having voted and spoke
in Parliament contrary to his approbation. He is a young man of no
fortune, a very pretty speaker, one the Prince is particular to, and
under the tuition of my Lord Cobham. The Army is all alarmed at this,
and 'tis said it will hurt the King more than his removing my Lord
Stairs and Lord Cobham, since it is making the whole army dependent, by
descending to resent a vote from the lowest commission, which may
occasion a representation in parliament to prevent all officers of the
army from sitting there.'[110]
It may, however, have been that Pitt's dismissal was due not to his
obscurity but to an exactly opposite consideration.
Pitt's nephew, Lord Camelford, asserts as an undoubted fact that the
reputation both of Pitt and of Lyttelton was so considerable before they
entered Parliament, and their political tendencies so notorious, that
Walpole made considerable offers to Thomas Pitt on condition that he did
not brings them in for any of his boroughs. 'William's early abilities,'
writes Lord Camelford, 'induc'd Sir Robert Walpole to offer my father
(Thomas Pitt) any terms not to bring him or his brother-in-law Mr.
Lyttelton into Parliament,' but 'my father preferred their interests to
his own, and laid the foundations, at his own expense, for all his
brother's future fame and greatness.' It is a tradition that Canning,
when in office, kept his eye on promising lads at Eton who might make
eligible followers. One would not, however, have imagined that Walpole
was so much in touch with the rising youth of the country. But if
Camelford may be credited, and there seems no reason to doubt him,
Walpole was prejudiced and on his guard against Pitt before Pitt opened
his mouth; and he may have been hurried into a petulant act by previous
friction unconnected with the speech, which may, moreover, have
contained irritating innuendoes directed against Walpole, which Walpole
alone understood.
The Minister had not been so foolish as to alienate without trying to
secure, and his failure may have exasperated him the more. In later
years Pitt told Shelburne that Sir Robert had offered him the troop
which was afterwards given to Conway, so that had he remained in the
army he would have stood high by seniority alone. This offer, we may
conjecture, was just previous to the overtures to Thomas Pitt. Walpole,
hearing reports of the young officer's conspicuous abilities and of his
hostility to the Government, would try and fix his ambitions in the
army. Failing that, he would try and exclude him from Parliament. And
failing all pacific overtures, he would try different methods. It is
possible, and even probable, that expressions passed during the
negotiations which left a sting. But it now seems clear that no young
private member, without means or influence, ever caused such active
disquietude.
There is yet another, and, perhaps, a simpler reason. Pitt, as we have
seen, had become identified with the fortunes and party of Cobham, who
was Walpole's bitter enemy. Conciliation having been found futile, the
Minister determined that the young soldier should suffer the same
penalty as the old general. The old gamecock had lost his spurs, so
should the young cockerel. If Pitt were so devoted to Cobham, he should
have the gratification of sharing Cobham's martyrdom. Cobham had lost
his regiment; Pitt should lose his commission. In striking Pitt he would
also wound Cobham. So the removal was carried out in a spirit of
pettiness which was criticised at the time, and seems incredible to
posterity. 'At the end of the session,' says Hervey, 'Cornet Pitt was
broke for this, which was a measure at least ill-timed if not
ill-taken;' which he explained by saying that if done at all it should
have been done immediately on his speech. Hervey, though an ardent
Walpolian, evidently thought the whole proceeding was disproportionate
to the offender and the offence. But the result of the intended disgrace
was, we are told, immediate popularity. Pitt after his dismissal drove
about the country in a one-horse chaise without a servant, and
everywhere the people gathered round him with enthusiasm.[111]
Pitt took the matter philosophically. 'I should not be a little vain,'
he writes, 'to be the object of the hatred of a minister, hated even by
those who call themselves his friends.'[112] But to his slender means
the loss of his pay was not unimportant, and this fact perhaps explains
his accepting an office ill-suited to his temperament. In September
1737, the Prince of Wales, in consequence of his crazy and insolent
conduct at the time of his wife's confinement, was ordered to leave St.
James' Palace. He retired first to Kew, and then to Norfolk House in
St. James' Square, which thus became the birthplace of George III. The
King's displeasure also caused some resignations in the Prince's
household; and, smarting under this disgrace, Frederick found it no
doubt agreeable to take advantage of these vacancies to attach to his
household two active young members of the Opposition, whose appointment
would be profoundly distasteful to his father. Few could be more
repugnant to the King than Pitt, the ex-cornet, and Lyttelton his
seconder. Moreover, Pitt was already intimate and influential with the
Prince.[113] So Lyttelton became private secretary to Frederick, and
Pitt a groom of his bedchamber. These appointments would, in the
ordinary course, be submitted for the sanction of the King, but the
alienation between father and son was so acute that it is probable that
no communication was made. Pitt held this post for seven years,
resigning it in 1744; and the salary was no doubt of sensible assistance
to his meagre income during this period.
Pitt's second speech (in 1737) was also on the Prince of Wales's
affairs. George II., who lost no opportunity of displaying publicly his
hatred to his son, and who as Prince of Wales had received a fixed
income of 100,000_l._ a year, gave the Prince on his marriage an
allowance at pleasure of 50,000_l._ The Prince, who owed his father but
scant duty and affection, was persuaded by his advisers to apply to
Parliament for the same annuity that his father, when in his situation,
had received. This proceeding violently incensed the King; but he was
induced to send an official message to his son, promising to convert
the present voluntary allowance into a fixed income, and to settle some
provision on the Princess. The Prince replied that the matter was now
out of his hands. The offer, in effect, was not particularly alluring,
as the allowance could never have been withdrawn, and a settlement on
the Princess ought to have been made at the time of her marriage. It is
indeed difficult, given the circumstances, to blame Frederick's unfilial
conduct in this matter. He had a colourable claim to an income double
that which was given him by the King; the King had ampler means of
paying it than had been possessed by George I.; and the Prince had
nothing to hope from the unconstrained bounty of his father; he was
indeed under his father's ban. So the motion was brought before the
House, and Pitt made a speech, which Thackeray, his insipid biographer,
declares to have been most masterly, but which is nowhere preserved. We
know nothing of it, but it is safe to presume that it was a good speech.
These efforts and his household appointment made him a prominent figure
in the Prince's party. He was beginning to be talked about. He had been
sneered at by the Government paper, the 'Gazetteer,' and defended by
Bolingbroke's organ, the 'Craftsman.' This seems the first glimmering of
his note, and is therefore worthy of remark. Nothing is so difficult as
to trace in a biography the several degrees by which eminence has been
reached; seldom are the slow degrees of the ladder recorded. Here it is
at least possible to mark the first and second steps. The first event,
that brought Pitt into notice was the deprivation of his commission: the
second indication of his growing power is apparent in the laboured
sneers of the 'Gazetteer' at the young man's long neck and slender body,
for it would not have been worth while to direct these gibes against
one who was not formidable.
Pitt's next speech was less successful. It was in support of a reduction
of the standing army from 17,400 to 12,000. The contention seems almost
incredible when it is considered that Pitt and his party were calling on
the ministry to avenge the ill-treatment of British subjects by Spain.
But, however inconsistent, it was probably deemed a popular move.
Jealousy and dislike of standing armies was still strong among the
people. Lord Hervey had told the Queen in 1735, 'that there was
certainly nothing so odious to men of all ranks and classes in this
country as troops,' and that 'as a standing army was the thing in the
world that was most disliked in this country, so the reduction of any
part of it was a measure that always made any prince more popular than
any other he could take.'[114] Walpole had then maintained that the army
should never be reduced below 18,000 men in view of the constant menace
of the disputed succession, the turbulent character of the nation, and
the necessity of a strong position in foreign affairs.[115] In this
debate of 1738 he took much the same line. This sane view, as it was the
policy of the Minister, was furiously combated by the young bloods of
the Opposition. Lyttelton did not shrink from using the childish
argument that a standing army weakened us abroad, as it made foreign
governments believe that there must be violent dissensions in the
country which it was kept to control. A taunt had in the course of
debate been levelled at placemen; and Pitt, as a member of the Prince's
household, vindicated the independence of officials, directing as he
passed a shaft at the three hundred thick or thin supporters of the
Government who were always so singularly unanimous on all political
questions. The army, he said, was the chief cause of the national
discontents, and yet these discontents were alleged as the chief cause
for maintaining the army. Then he made the criticism so familiar to
English public men even now, that the army cost three times as much
proportionally to its size as the armies of France and Germany. On the
question of disbanding troops, he took a strangely unsympathetic line.
The officers would be put on half-pay, which was as high as full-pay
elsewhere. And as for the private soldiers, 'I must think,' he said,
'they have no claim for any greater reward than the pay they have
already received, nor should I think we were guilty of the least
ingratitude if they were all turned adrift to-morrow morning.'[116]
Pitt, it was obvious, had some distance to compass before he should
become a popular leader. That he should have pressed at all for the
reduction of the small standing army in the midst of an irresistible
clamour for war is another proof of the heedless rhetoric of ambitious
youth.
While the young patriots were thus endeavouring to reduce the army, war
was brewing with Spain. Our traders were constantly encroaching on her
rights and monopolies in the New World. There was a perpetual smuggling
invasion of the Spanish settlements in America on the part of the
British, and a rigorous defence by right of search on the part of the
Spaniards. There can be little doubt that the British merchants were in
the wrong. But trade has neither conscience nor bowels, and monopolies
of commerce are the fair quarry of the freebooting merchant. The
Spaniards, on their side, were not delicate or merciful in exercising
their undoubted right of search; so our countrymen, to conceal their own
infractions of treaty and to stir up hostility to Spain, spared no
methods or exertions to rouse popular indignation against their enemies.
Little less than the tortures of the Inquisition were alleged. 'Seventy
of our brave sailors are now in chains in Spain! our countrymen in
chains and slaves to the Spaniards!' exclaimed an enthusiastic alderman:
'is not this enough to fire the coldest?'[117] The notorious Jenkins now
appeared on the scene with an ear in cotton-wool, which he alleged to
have been torn from his head by a Spaniard, with an intimation that the
mutilator would gladly serve our King in the same way. Alderman
Beckford, who brought Jenkins forward, afterwards declared that if any
member had lifted up Jenkins's wig, he would have found both ears whole
and complete.[118] Others averred that though he had lost his ear, he
had lost it in the pillory.
The Spaniards, not to be outdone, recorded the sufferings of two of
their nobles, who, captured by our British filibusters, had been
compelled to devour their own noses.[119] It was alleged, too, that
English pirates swarmed, and that Spaniards were publicly sold as slaves
in British colonies.[120] But these allegations, though probably neither
more nor less veracious than the others, had no currency in England,
while the story of the suffering Jenkins ran through England like
wildfire. A bombastic utterance was coined for him by some political
Tadpole, and rang through the land. None cared to inquire into the right
or the wrong of the imprisonments, or to investigate the other side of
the question, and there were none to present it if they did. 'Britons in
Spanish prisons' was a sufficient cry, and swept the nation off its
feet. Walpole, always too contemptuous of popular passion, had presented
to Parliament a convention with Spain, which regulated most of the
points at issue between them, except that which lay nearest the heart of
his people, the right of search; and his brother Horace moved, in a long
and laudatory speech, an address of thanks to the Crown for this
agreement. This roused the Prince's young men. Lyttelton, indeed, spoke
ostentatiously as the Prince's mouthpiece. 'I know who hears me,' he
said, alluding to his master's presence in the gallery, 'and for that
reason I speak,'[121] Pitt and Grenville also spoke, and they are
described in a contemporary account as 'three or four young gentlemen
who took great personal liberties.' Another letter says that Pitt 'spoke
very well, but very abusively.' However imperfectly his speech may be
reported, it has much of that energy of declamatory invective which is
part of the tradition connected with his name. Of this the peroration is
a sufficient example. 'This convention, Sir, I think from my heart is
nothing but a stipulation for national ignominy; an illusory expedient
to baffle the resentment of the nation; a truce without a suspension of
hostilities on the part of Spain; on the part of England, a suspension,
as to Georgia, of the first law of nature, self-preservation and
self-defence; a surrender of the right of England to the mercy of
plenipotentiaries; and in this infinitely highest and sacred point,
future security, not only inadequate, but directly repugnant to the
resolutions of Parliament, and the gracious promise from the throne. The
complaints of your despairing merchants, the voice of England have
condemned it. Be the guilt of it on the adviser. God forbid that the
Committee should share the guilt by approving it.'[122] This was
undoubtedly the first speech in which Pitt made a real mark as an
orator, and of this a proof remains in the fact that it is recorded that
Sir R. Walpole took notes of it as it proceeded.[123]
The debate and its unsuccessful division were followed by that abortive
and disastrous form of protest known as a secession. Wyndham announced
it in a speech of solemn acrimony. It failed, as all such secessions do.
It has been said by a veteran politician that 'a secession of a party
from parliament is so obvious a failure in both duty and prudence that a
benevolent looker-on will always recommend to the seceder to get to his
place as well and as fast as he can.'[124] A secession does not appeal
to the country, which regards it as an exhibition of baffled ill-temper,
while it leaves the House at the mercy of the Ministry. This retirement
of his enemies was therefore hailed by Walpole as an unexpected stroke
of good fortune. Prompt repentance, as usual, overtook the seceders, and
the usual difficulty as to returning with dignity and consistency. In
November they had to slink back without much of either.
It is not easy to discover whether Pitt was among the seceders, though
it seems improbable, as Lyttelton, one of his closest allies, remained
to repeat the strange parallel contention of the Opposition that the
army should be reduced and war declared against Spain.
The national wish for war was at any rate soon gratified. Though Walpole
had carried resolutions approving of his convention, the growing fury of
the nation could not be dammed by his meagre majority of twenty-eight.
When the negotiations between Spain and Great Britain were resumed,
Spain absolutely refused to abandon the right of search. To the English
this was the main point, and Walpole knew that war was now inevitable.
Whether he as minister could or should, in spite of his convictions,
carry it out was another matter. He decided that he could, and war was
declared on October 29, 1739.
The enthusiasm of the nation was frantic. The heralds, on proceeding to
the city to read the formal declaration, were attended by a great
procession. The Prince of Wales did not disdain to take part in it, or
to pause at Temple Bar to drink a public toast to the war. All the
church bells of the capital were set ringing. The Minister, as he heard
the clang, bitterly remarked that they might ring the bells now, but
that they would soon wring their hands. This is a truth that may be
uttered with justice at the beginning of all hostilities, and in this
case there were many opportunities for wringing hands; for, with the
exception of the truce of Aix-la-Chapelle, Britain was not at peace from
now (1739) till 1763. But Walpole's cynical pun did not embody the
spirit which gives confidence to a nation, or in which a great Minister
would begin a just or necessary war. Walpole was, no doubt, convinced
that this one was neither just nor necessary. Moreover, he hated all
war as a needless complication which deranged finance and held out
prospects and opportunities for a Pretender. He knew, too, that he was a
Minister of peace, and that he was not likely to shine in war. He had
indeed been Secretary at War, but then he had the guarantee of a
Marlborough in the field; his function had been to serve and supply a
supreme captain. But there was nothing now to give him the same
confidence. He felt, he knew that he was out of place as a director of
wars. Close to him, unsuspected as yet, was the most successful War
Minister that this country has ever seen. For on the benches over
against him sate Pitt, who was to revel in warfare and find his true
vocation in directing it; but his time was not come. Afterwards, when it
had arrived, he was to repent and recant his opposition on this
occasion, and pay homage to Walpole. None, indeed, of the leaders in
opposition to Walpole attempted afterwards to justify their conduct in
this business.
That Minister meanwhile moodily prepared to carry out the wishes of the
country, and no doubt excused himself for his humiliating compliance by
the thought that if he did not some one else would, with less economy
and more danger to the State. He is said to have tendered his
resignation, but even were this true it could only be, in view of the
King's relations to himself and the Opposition, a matter of form. He
uttered his own self-condemnation: 'I dare not do what is right.'
But his submission, whether accompanied or not by a feigned resignation,
availed him nothing; his unpopularity seemed rather to increase than
diminish. The nation suspected his good faith. The legion of able and
brilliant men whom he had alienated were in no ways appeased, but more
ruthless in their determination to hunt him to the death; the multitude
effervesced in mobs. Soon they were all in full cry. There was another
general election in 1741, when the Prince of Wales with lavish subsidies
entered actively into the strife. Parliament, dissolved in April, met in
December, thirsty for Walpole's political blood.
The inglorious course of the war in the meantime, its delays and
disasters, forms no part of Pitt's life. One may wonder in passing at
the callous wickedness that sent out raw boys and decrepit pensioners to
die of fever and exhaustion, or at the strange fortune by which those
who prepare such expeditions, ministers, commissaries, contractors, and
the like, escape the gallows. Walpole at any rate did not escape the
particular fate that he deserved. A year of glowing and successful war
might yet have saved him; a year of failure and calamity fixed his doom.
He had held on to the last possible moment, and so fell with little of
grace or dignity. An inevitable political catastrophe only becomes more
overwhelming by delay; each day that a minister remains in power against
the will of the nation adds force to the torrent against him. Moreover,
he affronted public opinion by receiving unusual favours from the King
when he had become the object of popular execration. Here the coarse
fibre which had stood him in such good stead during a hundred fights did
him disservice, for it hindered his perception of the fact that it is
unwise to be conspicuously decorated at a moment when the nation is
calling for your head. He held on, with failing health but unfailing
courage, though the war had furnished him with a reasonable door of
departure at the critical moment when honour permitted and indeed
required him to go, and though his friends had implored him to resign.
The motives for his obstinacy were obvious enough. His was a doughty
soul, and did not yield without agony. But there was a more practical
reason. He believed that, as had long been threatened, his fall would be
followed by his impeachment. As soon as he resigned, his brother Horace
hurried off to burn his papers. Walpole himself took a similar
precaution. This shows their sense of the imminence of the danger which
had always impended over him, and which was first in their thoughts when
the protection of office was about to be withdrawn.
The final scene in the House of Commons was dramatic enough, and must
have been in the mind of Disraeli when he penned his description of the
fall of Peel. As the fatal division on the Chippenham election was
proceeding, the Minister sate and watched the hostile procession with
unfailing and imperturbable humour. He beckoned to his side Bayntun
Rolt, the Chippenham candidate supported by the Opposition, and so their
nominal champion, and gave him a reasoned catalogue of many of the
members voting against him, detailing their ingratitude and treachery,
as well as the exact favours that he had heaped on them. 'Young man, I
will tell you the history of all your friends as they come in; that
fellow I saved from the gallows, and that from starvation; this other
one's sons I promoted,' and so forth;[125] then passing on through this
bitter recital to his scornful conclusion, he declared that never again
would he set foot in that House.[126]
He fell with the skill and presence of mind which never deserted him,
for in everything except office he remained victorious. All parties had
combined to destroy Walpole, and in their triumph all not unnaturally
expected to see every vestige of the detested administration swept away
in his defeat. Vast was their disappointment. Newcastle, the oldest of
the old gang, to use the vivid expression of modern politics, had long
scented the approaching catastrophe of his chief, and had been preparing
to lessen the shock to himself and his friends, so far as was possible,
by judicious conference with the Opposition.
Newcastle has long been a byeword; he was so all through his protracted
public life; and he has remained in history a synonym for a certain
jobbing and fussing incapacity. Justice has, perhaps, been scarcely done
to his laborious life; his disinterestedness about money, rare in any
age, especially in that; above all to his unequalled capacity for
remaining in office, a virtue not unappreciated by the great mass of
politicians. Nor was he a fool, though he was something of a coward. A
man who could hold the seals of Secretary of State for thirty continuous
years of stress and intrigue, who filled high office for forty-five
years in succession, could not be without invaluable qualities for
steering with persistence and astuteness through intricacies of
parliamentary navigation. His ambition, such as it was, had indeed an
elastic but stubborn tenacity; the ties of blood, friendship, or
principle availed nothing against it. His industry, such as it was, is
attested by his long tenure of office and the vast mass of his
correspondence. His disinterestedness, such as it was, is proved by his
leaving public life 300,000_l._ poorer than he entered it, and by his
nevertheless refusing a pension offered him by George III. on his
retirement, a circumstance almost unique in the annals of the century.
In nothing else was he disinterested. His only taste in private life
seems to have been for the pleasures of the table and the consequent art
of the physician. On his resignation in 1756 he attempted indeed to
assume the air of a retired country squire. Guns and gaiters were
procured, but getting his feet wet he hurriedly abandoned the sports of
the field and with them the appearance of rural absorption. This
illustrates his crowning defect. In all that he did he was supremely
ridiculous.
'Behind him close behold Newcastle's Grace,
Haste in his step and absence in his face;
* * * * *
Tho' void of honesty, of sense, of art,
A foolish head and a perfidious heart,
Yet riches, honours, power he shall enjoy.'[127]
Foote and Smollett have left vivid caricatures of his ludicrous
personality. The story of his conference with Pitt when Pitt was in bed
with the gout, and of his getting into a vacant bed and discoursing from
thence to his colleague, is one of the choicest pictures of his
absurdity that survive. The two leading Ministers were found storming at
each other from adjacent couches, disputing as to whether Hawke's fleet
should put to sea or not.[128] Pitt fortunately prevailed. Newcastle's
grotesqueness was part of his temperament, for all through his life his
jealousy and suspicion kept him in a perpetual froth of nervous
excitement. His jealousy was of power, his suspicion of those who aimed
at it. And by power he meant patronage. Throughout his long life his god
or goddess was patronage. Indeed his voluminous correspondence rather
resembles the letter-bag of an agency for necessitous persons of social
position than the papers of a Prime Minister or Secretary of State. To
hold a crowded levee of placehunters, ecclesiastical and temporal, to
thread his way about it coaxing, fawning, and slobbering, embracing and
even kissing, promising and paying all with the base coin of cozenage,
this was Newcastle's paradise. But it answered. It made him necessary to
his party, and therefore necessary to those who would govern the
country; for government was restricted to his party. So all statesmen in
turn scorned and employed him. 'His name,' said Walpole, 'is perfidy.'
But perfidy paid, and Walpole kept him to the end, fully aware that he
was always ready for betrayal if expediency dictated it, and that in the
closing months he was in fact busy at the work. At last, indeed, Walpole
himself, under the name of the King, commissioned him to intrigue
officially. Hardwicke, perhaps the greatest of our Chancellors, who
furnished the brains for Newcastle, and condescended to act as his
mentor and instrument, was joined with him to make terms with the enemy,
and offer the reversion of the Treasury on condition of immunity for
Walpole.
Pulteney was the enemy, or its chief; for he led the Opposition, and
guided the Court of the Heir Apparent, as he had that of the father when
Prince of Wales, though then without fruit and result. He was also the
idol of the nation. For long years he had made the people believe that
Walpole was a Goliath of corruption, and that he was the incorruptible
David. Moreover, his vast wealth, his ability, his eloquence, and his
social qualities gave him a personal ascendancy apart from his political
position. 'He was, by all accounts,' writes Shelburne, 'the greatest
House of Commons orator that had ever appeared,'[129] surpassing even
the legendary reputation of Bolingbroke; he was also a scholar, a wit,
and a potent pamphleteer. In conversation he excelled; when the wits
were gathered at Stowe, the pre-eminence of Pulteney was
acknowledged.[130] At this moment he was supreme, 'in the greatest point
of view,' writes Chesterfield, 'that I ever saw any subject in ... the
arbiter between the Crown and the people; the former imploring his
protection, the latter his support;' 'possessing,' says Glover, 'a
degree of popularity and power which no subject before him was ever
possessed of.' All eyes were raised to him with expectant adoration as
he stood on this pinnacle, and as they gazed they saw him slowly totter,
and then fall headlong. For the two Ministers had succeeded in
compromising him. He refused, indeed, amnesty for Walpole or office for
himself; but adulterated these refusals by watering his expressions of
hostility to the Minister, and by asking on his own behalf for an
earldom and a seat in the Cabinet. When his followers found that he and
Carteret were engaged in secret negotiation with Ministers, their
indignation was unbounded. They held a public meeting to disown him. His
popularity disappeared in an instant and for ever. He afterwards averred
that he had lost his head, that there was no comprehending or describing
the confusion that prevailed, and that he was obliged to go out of town
for three or four days to keep his senses. This is not impossible or
even improbable. A political crisis bursts like a tornado, and
bewilders the strongest characters. Both rare and happy are the men who
can on such occasions take counsel with themselves, and meet the storm
with presence of mind. Pulteney had, perhaps, become enervated with a
long period of merely negative opposition. Glover also asserts that his
hand was forced by Lyttelton who was secretly offering terms to Walpole,
and that these, though tendered by the Prince of Wales's Secretary,
Walpole treated with disdain. Glover was an ill-conditioned wasp, and
his story refutes itself. For the one person whom Walpole was anxious to
gain was Frederick, even offering to add 50,000_l._ to his income. That
he should then have spurned an overture from the Prince's right-hand man
is out of the question; he would have met it more than half-way.
Whatever the cause, Pulteney, having committed himself, could not
retrace his steps; an iron grip constrained him. In vain did he seek to
recall his patent and escape his peerage. Walpole held him fast.
Pulteney had finally conquered in the long struggle of twenty years, and
overthrown Sir Robert; but the prostrate Minister had from the dust
worked Pulteney like a marionette.
For behind all these strange scenes Walpole pulled the strings. His main
object was to avoid his own impeachment, and this, in spite of the
determination of the hostile majority which called for his head, he
achieved; a feat little less than miraculous. The Tory candidates for
office were rejected by the King, and as for the not less bitter Whigs,
as
'... bees, on flowers alighting, cease to hum,
So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb.'
They were dumb in spite of themselves. The nation, which had been
excited by the hope of seeing corruption extinguished, and the advent of
a new era of virtue and public spirit, was again disappointed. People
saw this sublime struggle result in a jobbing distribution of such
places as were vacated to the same sort of people as had vacated them,
with precisely the same system. It was much the same ministry without
the one great minister. Fooled once more, as so often before and since,
people shrugged their shoulders, and turned their attention to other
things, more honest and more practical than party politics.
With the fall of Walpole this narrative is not otherwise concerned, for
his successors found no post for Pitt. Two members of the Prince of
Wales's household, Lords Baltimore and Archibald Hamilton, had found
acceptance as members of the new administration; the King probably could
not stomach more, certainly not Pitt. For long years afterwards he could
not endure contact with the orator who sneered at him and at Hanover,
and who even insinuated with factious injustice doubts of his personal
courage. It must also be remembered that Pitt was not merely attached to
the party of the Prince but to the group of Cobham. That veteran
accepted for a short time a seat in the Cabinet and the command of a
regiment. But his animosity against Carteret was second only to his
animosity against Walpole. Carteret was a powerful, and aimed at being
the controlling member of the new Government. He therefore succeeded to
the position of target for the barbed arrows of Pitt and his friends
which had been vacated by Walpole's retirement. Carteret, the new object
of philippic, had striven hard for the succession to Walpole when
Pulteney stood aside, but had been foiled by Walpole acting through the
King. Lord Wilmington, whom Horace Walpole describes as a solemn
debauchee and Hervey as fond only of money and eating, but who was the
favourite nonentity of George II., had been fobbed off upon the party as
First Minister; and the choice had its advantages. For, always
incapable, he was now moribund; and so as a feeble and transient barrier
to ambition was the least unacceptable to Walpole's expectant heirs. A
figurehead, moreover, was the favourite expedient of the century for
skirting the fierce conflict of personalities.
So Wilmington reigned, and Carteret governed for a while in Walpole's
stead. The shadowy form of the First Minister could not veil for a
moment the bold outline of the Secretary of State, for Carteret, though
scarcely attaining real greatness, remains one of the most brilliant and
striking figures in the eighteenth century. It is almost enough to say
that in all but disregard of money he was the exact antipodes of
Newcastle. No man of his time was so splendidly equipped for the highest
public service as Carteret. He was sprung from an ancient Norman family
settled in Jersey, eight of whom, the father and seven sons, were
knighted in one day by Edward III.[131] To a person of commanding beauty
and an open and engaging demeanour, he united superb qualities of
intellect developed by ardent study. He was a scholar of signal
excellence at a time when scholarship was in the atmosphere of English
statesmanship, the best Grecian of his day, with the great classics
always in his mind and at command. Did any one of the like taste come to
him on business, Carteret would at once turn from business to some
Homeric discussion. Moreover he knew the whole Greek Testament by heart;
an unusual and unsuspected accomplishment.[132] But he was also versed
in modern languages, then a rare and never a common faculty in this
island, and alone among his compeers spoke German fluently, a priceless
advantage under a sovereign whose heart and mind were in Hanover. He was
the only person who was in favour both with the King and with the Prince
of Wales.[133] He abounded in a wit at once genial and penetrating. He
was a puissant orator. His comprehensive grasp of European statecraft,
his capacity for taking broad and high views, his soaring politics, his
intrepid spirit and his high ambition, marked him out among the meaner
men by whom he was surrounded. His contempt of money amounted to
recklessness. His scorn of all pettiness made him disdain jobbery, and
even the subtler arts of parliamentary manipulation. There was much that
was sublime in him, and more that was impracticable. In a greater degree
than any other minister of his time, if we except Chatham, with whom he
had many qualities in common, does he seem to partake of the mystery of
genius. Unfortunately, his energy came in gusts, he could scarcely bring
himself to bend, and he was incapable of that self-contained patience,
amounting to long-suffering, which is a necessary condition of the
highest success in official life. All, indeed, was marred by an
extravagance of conduct which was in reality the result of his nature
running riot and of his good qualities carried to excess. He played his
political chess with the big pieces alone, and neglected the pawns. He
disregarded not merely the soldiers and most of the officers, but all
the arts and equipment of the parliamentary army, heedless of the fact
that parliamentary support is the vital necessity of a British minister.
Disdainful of public opinion or party connections, he attempted to play
the great game in Europe with no resource but his own abilities and the
confidence of his sovereign, whose antipathy to France he shared, and
whose policy and prejudices he could discuss in the King's native
language. And yet over the bottle, which he loved at least as much as
literature or politics, he would laugh at the whole business and the men
with whom he was engaged. 'What is it to me,' he would say, 'who is a
judge or who is a bishop? It is my business to make Kings and Emperors';
and he would have to be reminded that those who wanted offices or
honours would follow and support those who did deal in those
commodities. One can hear his jolly laugh. His policy he embodied in one
striking sentence: 'I want to instil a nobler ambition into you, to make
you knock the heads of the Kings of Europe together, and jumble
something out of it which may be of service to this country.' As a
matter of fact though he did undoubtedly knock together the heads of
some kings, no material advantage resulted to the country. He was,
however, a patriot, a single-minded, able, jovial, reckless patriot, but
out of touch with the politicians, unsuited to parliamentary government,
and so almost ineffectual. And thus we see him at his best on his
deathbed, where he quotes to the under-secretary who brought him the
Treaty of Paris for approval the speech of Sarpedon with melancholy
emphasis. 'Friend of my soul, were we to escape from this war, and then
live for ever without old age or death, I should not fight myself among
the foremost, nor would I send thee into the glorifying battle; but a
thousand fates of death stand over us, which mortal man may not flee
from and avoid; then let us on.' These last words he repeated with calm
and determined resignation, and after a pause of some minutes desired
the preliminary articles of the Peace of Paris to be read to him. After
hearing these at length he desired that, to use own words, the
approbation of a dying statesman might be declared to the most glorious
war and the most honourable peace that this nation ever saw.[134] The
news of his extremity had reached Chesterfield. 'When he dies,' wrote
this shrewdest judge and observer of mankind in England, who had in his
factious days called Carteret 'a wild and drunken minister,'[135] 'the
ablest head in England dies too, take it for all in all.'[136]
Pitt soon had an opportunity of showing that the selection of ministers
from the Prince's household had left out the one priceless force. For
now there came raining into Parliament imperative demands for the
impeachment of the fallen Minister. These representations from the
various constituencies to their several members are well worth
consideration, for they emphasise identical demands with a unanimity
suggestive of much later forms of political organization. They denounce
Standing Armies, and Septennial Parliaments, asking that Triennial
Parliaments, 'at least,' may be restored; they require that placemen
largely, and pensioners entirely, shall be excluded from the House of
Commons; and that laws shall be passed for the security and
encouragement of the linen trade. In an even more sanguine spirit they
stipulate for the extirpation of those party distractions 'which, though
their foundations have long ceased to exist, were yet so industriously
fomented among us, in order to serve the mischievous purposes of a
ministerial tyranny.' But first and last, and above all, they insist on
the punishment of Walpole, bringing him and his colleagues, which of
course meant him, to 'condign punishment.' 'Nothing but the most
rigorous justice ought to avenge an injured people ... justice is a duty
we owe to posterity.' 'We have a right to speak plainly to you, and we
must tell you, Sir, that if the man that ruined our trade, disgraced our
arms, plundered our treasure, negotiated away our interests,
impoverished the land--in a word, the author of all the disgraces and
calamities of twenty years should (while the whole nation is calling out
for justice against him) triumph in impunity, we shall be apt to think
our constitution is lost.' 'Lenity to him would be cruelty to the
nation.'[137] Our ancestors, it will be seen, did not wage their
political warfare with the sweetmeats or roses of a carnival contest.
It seems unnecessary to remark that of these various injunctions the
only one to which the members of Parliament paid any heed was that for
the prosecution or persecution of Walpole. Even here there was no
result. The new officials were sated and at ease, the hungry remnant was
insufficient or inept. But the constituencies were in deadly earnest, if
their members were not. They had been goaded by their leaders to a state
bordering on frenzy, and their demands, vindictive as they may appear
to us, only embodied the declamation of the Opposition throughout half
at least of Walpole's ministry. More than ten years before, Pulteney had
publicly declared that 'the Opposition had come to a determined
resolution not to listen to any treaty whatsoever, or from whomsoever it
may come, in which the first and principal condition should not be to
deliver him (Walpole) up to the justice of the country.' But now the
Opposition was in power, and Pulteney was in a chastened and moderate
mood. His star, indeed, was already on the wane; he was on the high road
to the earldom of Bath and extinction. At the first meeting indeed with
the King's envoys he had declared in a famous phrase that he could not
screen Walpole if he would, for 'the heads of parties are like the heads
of snakes, which are carried on by their tails.' But at a later
conference he said, with reference to the same topic, that he was not a
man of blood, and that in all his expressions importing a resolution to
pursue the Minister to destruction he meant only the destruction of his
power, not his person. He would consult with his friends, yet must
confess that so many years of maladministration deserved some
parliamentary censure.
Accordingly Lord Limerick moved on March 9 (1742) for a select committee
of inquiry into the administration of the late Sir Robert Walpole during
the last twenty years; but Pulteney did not at first countenance this
moderate measure. He was absent, on a reasonable excuse no doubt, and in
his absence his friends intimated that it would not be disagreeable to
him were the motion rejected.
This was, it seems, untrue, but it gave Pitt the first great opportunity
of his life. When others were silenced by office or honours, he stood
forth as the mouthpiece of the people and as the consistent,
incorruptible maintainer of the policy and declarations of his party. It
was an opportunity of which he availed himself with terrible effect. It
is now, we think, that he first appealed to the imagination and
confidence of the nation, as distinguished from the appreciation of
Parliament, though that also was sufficiently marked. 'Pitt grows the
most popular speaker in the House of Commons, and is at the head of his
party,' writes Philip to Joseph Yorke.[138]
Owing to the absence, and so the presumed indifference or disapproval of
Pulteney, Lord Limerick's motion was rejected by two votes. At the
request of Pulteney, however, who, whether lukewarm or not, was nettled
at the natural criticisms provoked by his attitude, Lord Limerick
brought forward another motion of the same kind limited to the last ten
years of Walpole's administration. Pulteney who, discredited outside,
retained within the House 'a miraculous influence,' exerted himself to
the utmost, we may be sure, but it can scarcely be doubted that the
honours of the double debate rested with the vehement and untainted
Pitt. It is not perhaps of much use to quote from the vague and
imperfect reports of his speeches, but we can gather, at least, their
general trend. One passage, at any rate, in his speech on the second
motion, has been authentically preserved by Horace Walpole, for it was a
compliment to himself. Horace had defended his father with a grace and
filial duty that commended him to the House. Pitt, in reply, said that
it was becoming in the young man to remember that he was the child of
the accused, the House should remember that they were the children of
their country, a flight which seems to outstep the perilous limits of
the sublime.
From the summary of Pitt's two speeches we may at least gather that he
had much the best of the argument on this issue, so long dead and
buried. One noteworthy point, however, in his declamation against the
Minister, is that he paid vindictive attention to Walpole's practice of
dismissing and cashiering his opponents, by which he had himself
suffered. He argued that the King might as well dispose of all the
property of his subjects as of that particular form of property
represented by commissions in the army; which, whether obtained by
service or by purchase, were as freehold as an estate, and should be as
amply secured.[139]
But, in truth, his denunciation of Walpole is much less remarkable than
the poisoned shafts which, as is manifest even in the faulty report, he
aimed at the King, or at Hanover, which was much the same thing. He
declared that the changes were unreal, that Walpole remained Minister
behind the scenes. 'Though he be removed from the Treasury,' said Pitt,
'he is not from the King's closet, nor probably will be, unless by our
advice or by our sending him to a lodging at the other end of the town,
where he cannot do so much harm to his country.'[140] This pointed hint
at the Tower must have been greatly to the taste of his audience.
Allusions to the debts of the Civil List, caused certainly not by
hospitality or by expenditure on any public object, but inferentially by
corruption, were artfully framed so as to cause the King the greatest
possible annoyance;[141] so, too, were the innuendoes as to our foreign
policy having been framed in the sole interests of Hanover. Lord
Limerick's second motion was carried by seven votes, and Pitt was named
on the secret committee, which, however, owing to the loyal silence of
Walpole's associates, to the placing one of them in the privileged
security of the House of Lords, and to the refusal of the King to allow
disclosures as to the manner in which secret service money had been
employed, came to a futile and inglorious end. We catch one glimpse of
Pitt in its proceedings. Scrope, the doughty old Secretary of the
Treasury, who had fought under Monmouth at Sedgemoor, refused to reply
to the questions of the inquisitors. Pitt seems to have pushed him hard,
and he was so stung that he wished to call his tormentor out. From this
we may at least infer that Pitt took a leading part in the deliberations
of the Committee. On the other hand, it may be noticed that he only
received 259, or one more than the lowest number of votes, while the
member who headed the poll scored 518, a circumstance which would seem
to indicate that he had as yet no strong position in the House.
He soon had the opportunity of further exasperating the King, an
opportunity of which he availed himself rather with the intemperance of
resentment than with the astuteness of ambition; for he was now in
declared opposition to the new Government, and as bitter against
Carteret as he had been against Walpole. When Parliament met (November
16, 1742) after the recess, Pitt 'spoke like ten thousand angels,' but
no trace of his speech remains. Of its spirit, however, we can judge
from that which he delivered on December 10, on the vote for continuing
the British troops in Flanders. Here the onslaught was against the King,
and it is scarcely possible to conceive sarcasms more calculated to
afflict the sovereign in his tenderest susceptibilities than those which
Pitt now launched, even as we read them in an imperfect report; they
are, indeed, so masterly in this way as almost to prove their
authenticity. This is the first speech of real point and power delivered
by Pitt of which we have any record. It may be noted in passing, that in
the 'London Magazine' (one of the two newspapers that reported debates)
Pitt's speech was unnoticed, while it did not appear in the 'Gentleman's
Magazine' till fourteen months after it was delivered.[142]
A few specimens may give a fair idea of the power which made Pitt so
dreaded.
'The troops of Hanover, whom we are now expected to pay, marched into
the Low Countries, where they still remain. They marched to the place
most distant from the enemy, least in danger of an attack, and most
strongly fortified had an attack been designed. They have, therefore, no
other claim to be paid than that they left their own country for a place
of greater security. I shall not, therefore, be surprised, after such
another glorious campaign ... to be told that the money of this nation
cannot be more properly employed than in hiring Hanoverians to eat and
sleep.'[143]
'As to Hanover,' he continues, 'we know by experience that none of the
merits of that Electorate are passed over in silence.' 'It is not to be
imagined that His Majesty would not have sent his proportion of troops
to the Austrian army had not the temptation of greater profit been laid
industriously before him.' 'It is now too apparent that this powerful,
this great, this mighty nation is considered only as a province to a
despicable electorate, and that, in consequence of a plan formed long
ago and invariably pursued, these [Hanoverian] troops are hired only to
drain us of our money.... How much reason the transactions of almost
every year have given for suspecting this absurd, ungrateful, and
perfidious partiality it is not necessary to declare.... To dwell upon
all the instances of partiality which have been shown, and the yearly
visits which have been paid to that delightful country [Hanover], to
reckon up all the sums that have been spent to aggrandise and enrich it,
would be an irksome and invidious task, invidious to those who are
afraid to be told the truth, and irksome to those who are unwilling to
hear of the dishonour and injuries of their country. I shall, however,
dwell no longer on this unpleasing subject than to express my hope that
we shall no longer suffer ourselves to be deceived and oppressed.'
Conceive the position. On the one side a King, born and bred in Hanover,
to whom the honour and welfare of Hanover and the Hanoverians were
everything, whose paradise was Hanover, who counted the days to his
annual visit to Hanover as a schoolboy counts the days to his holidays,
who held Hanover as his own absolute monarchy and property as compared
with the limited interest and power of the British throne; a King,
moreover, courted by all, whose favour was necessary for the obtaining
of office; accustomed to unstinted adulation and homage. On the other,
this young jackanapes, an official in the court of his detested son,
declaiming against him with every art of the actor and the rhetorician,
with every power of voice and eye, holding him and his Hanover up to
every kind of ridicule and contempt, before an audience mainly of
place-hunters and place-holders, half trembling, half chuckling, as the
philippic proceeded.
Why did Pitt take this line? If he wished for office (as he undoubtedly
did), it seemed madness: he was committing something like suicide. But
pique, as Sir George Savile well said, 'is the spur the devil rides the
noblest tempers with.' He was unquestionably angry at his exclusion from
office, which he had, no doubt, been told was due to the King. He was
justly indignant that the long-continued efforts which had resulted in
the overthrow of Walpole's overweening power had simply resulted in the
shuffle of a few offices, and that to the victors the spoil had been
denied; the sole and execrable minister Walpole had been replaced by a
much less sole but not less execrable minister in Carteret. All this was
gall to a man who had been among the most formidable in the heat of
battle. That heat was now over, and the vanquished were picnicking with
a few selected victors, while Pitt and his friends were left to cool
themselves on the deserted battlefield. 'They tell me,' said Lord George
Bentinck, in 1846, 'that I shall save fifteen hundred a year by Free
Trade. I don't care for that. What I cannot bear is being sold.' Pitt,
too, could not bear being sold.
That pique and a not ignoble rage had much to do with this philippic we
may well assume. But we may also surmise that his attitude was not
devoid of calculation. The veto of George II. was not to be removed by
deference, so he would, like another Hannibal, destroy the obstacle
with vinegar. The King had been exasperated by the lambent play of
Pitt's earlier insinuations; he should be made to know how Pitt had then
held his hand, what thunderbolts he had kept in reserve, what
unspeakable things awaited the Prince who should frown on him. 'All the
things I have told you,' said Sancho Panza, 'are tarts and cheese-cakes
to what remains behind.' George II. should learn that the innuendoes
that Pitt had levelled at him before were tarts and cheesecakes compared
to what he had the power of producing. Pitt, in a word, had made up his
mind that his only means of achieving his objects was by terror. He had
thrown away the scabbard. Moreover, he was appealing from the Court to
the people. The Court was foreign, immoral, and unpopular: the very name
of Hanover was detested. And although Pitt's actual words reached the
people late or not at all, there was an echo which was audible, and made
known all through the three kingdoms that there was within the walls of
Parliament an intrepid, unbribed, perhaps incorruptible orator who
feared the face of no man, and who was embodying in fiery words the
antipathies and distrusts of the nation.