No more of Pitt's speeches are recorded during the session, which, with
the enviable ease of those days, having opened on November 16, 1742,
closed on April 21, 1743. In the interval before the ensuing session an
event occurred, not in itself memorable, but notable for the contest
that followed. In July 1743 occurred the long-expected death of
Wilmington, the nominal head of the Government. In itself this departure
would not have caused a ripple on the surface of politics, but it opened
a critical succession. Pulteney, now Earl of Bath, at once laid claim to
it; and his pretensions were warmly supported by Carteret, who was the
minister in attendance on the King in Germany. Henry Pelham, supported
by his brother Newcastle, also applied for the vacant post. As between
these two groups it seemed certain that Bath, through Carteret, who was
on the ground, would have the preference. Pelham, indeed, at the
instance of Walpole, had, before the King left England, applied to his
Majesty for the reversion of the moribund Minister's place, and had, if
Coxe may be trusted, received a definite promise. It seems difficult to
credit this, for George was a man of his word, yet the Pelham brothers
were unfeignedly astonished when the reversion was given them; so that
had Pelham indeed received such a pledge, he must have expected that
the King would break it. Six weeks of dire suspense followed the death
of Wilmington; an interval which was probably caused by the anxiety of
the Sovereign to consult Walpole, while he intimated to Pelham that his
decision would be conveyed to the Ministry by Carteret. This seemed a
deathblow to the chances of Pelham, though the King's aversion to Bath
was notorious. But a letter at length arrived from Carteret, in which he
announced, with unaffected regret but with a generous promise of
support, that the prize had fallen to Pelham. The brothers were elated,
if such an expression can ever be applied to the timid and cautious
Pelham. Newcastle was transported by the 'agreeable but most surprising
news;' so much so, as to acknowledge that Carteret's letter was 'manly.'
Walpole, in writing his congratulations, looked warily to the future.
'Recruits,' he advised, should now be sought 'from the Cobham
squadron.... Pitt is thought able and formidable, try him or show
him.... Whig it with all opponents that will parley, but 'ware Tory.'
Newcastle, on reading this letter to his brother, wrote back: 'I am
afraid, one part of it, viz. the taking in of the Cobham party and the
Whigs in opposition, without a mixture of Tories, is absolutely
impracticable; and, therefore, the only question is whether, in order to
get the Cobham party, etc., you will bring in three or four Tories, at
least, with them, for, without that, they will not come, and this is
what I have the greatest difficulty to bring myself to.' Orford's advice
was not followed, and Pelham's appointments were few and narrow. Two of
Lord Bath's followers, a friend of the Prince of Wales, and a friend of
his own, the only surviving name of the four, Henry Fox, were
gratified, and that was all. And even this limited arrangement was not
completed before Parliament met.
[Sidenote: Dec. 1, 1743.]
The opening of the new session was anticipated with keen interest, as
the Ministry was known to be rent with divisions, and hatred of the
Hanoverians had immeasurably swollen in consequence of rumours of the
favour that the King had shown to his electoral subjects. He had been
surrounded by Hanoverian Guards to the exclusion of the English Guards;
he had worn at Dettingen a yellow sash, which it appears was a
Hanoverian symbol of authority; the Hanoverians had refused to obey the
orders of Lord Stair, and so forth. We can easily imagine the buzz of
angry legend and comment; for national antipathies have no difficulty in
obtaining substantial affidavits in their support. Of this wild but not
unreasonable intemperance Pitt, it is scarcely necessary to say, was the
mouthpiece. In the debate on the Address he spoke with his accustomed
violence. He called Carteret 'an execrable or sole minister, who had
renounced the British nation, and seemed to have drunk of the potion
described in poetic fictions which made men forget their country.'[151]
So far as this tirade concerned Carteret's authority, nothing could be
more absurd or wide of the truth. He could indeed scarcely have chosen a
more unfortunate epithet than 'sole.' So far from being a sole minister,
Carteret, as we have seen, had just received a crushing defeat in the
elevation of Henry Pelham to the first place in the Ministry, and the
rejection of his own candidate; though he had strained all his influence
in the cause.
Nor had this 'sole minister' any parliamentary following; his only
strength lay with the King, where it had just been found signally
inadequate. The supreme minister in the last resort, and behind the
scenes, was, in truth, Walpole. It was his decision and his alone that
had turned the scale against Carteret and Pulteney. Carteret was
congenial to the King, for he worked with his Sovereign in matters of
foreign policy; and, as we have seen, he could talk politics to the
Sovereign in the King's own language. But, while the King tried to carry
out his own views in Continental affairs, in domestic politics he looked
to Walpole alone. Still, invective must necessarily have an object, and,
by aiming at the King's confidential Foreign Minister, Pitt was able to
wound the King as well. It is hinted by Yorke, the parliamentary
chronicler, that Pitt's acrimony was dictated by jealousy of Carteret's
influence with the Prince of Wales.[152] As to this there is no proof,
and conjecture is idle. Carteret and Frederick had indeed been long
connected, but this would scarcely impel one of the Prince's court to
attack one of the Prince's friends. Moreover, were this the motive,
Pitt's attacks would have been of a different and milder character,
enough to damage Carteret, but not enough to embroil Pitt with the
Prince, who was not merely his master, but the head of his political
connection. It is clear that Pitt's sole object was to destroy Carteret
as minister, not for the ignominious purpose of subverting him in a
court camarilla, but to show his own power by demolishing the
conspicuous man, the vizier of the King who proscribed himself. The mere
fact that Carteret represented the King's Continental policy, and that
Pitt had apparently determined, in the jargon of that day, to storm the
Closet, seems sufficient reason for Pitt's bitterness. He denounced
Carteret as he denounced Hanover, as darling accessories of a monarch
whom he was determined to harass in every way until his attacks should
produce compliance or surrender. But it was the fate of Pitt to have to
recant his abuse of Carteret, as solemnly and as publicly as he recanted
his abuse of Walpole. 'His abilities,' said Pitt in 1770 of Carteret,
'did honour to this House and to this nation. In the upper departments
of Government he had not his equal. And I feel a pride in declaring that
to his patronage, to his friendship, and instruction, I owe whatever I
am.'[153] It was a generous, almost an extravagant statement. But it
shows how little importance should be attached to the early philippics
of Pitt, as of other aspiring and brilliant young men. Invectives are
one of the least subtle and most piquant forms of advertisement, but
they do not facilitate the task of biographers.
The Sovereign he attacked openly and unsparingly. It was proposed, in
the Address to the Throne, to congratulate the King on his escape from
the dangers of the battle of Dettingen. This Pitt deprecated. 'Suppose,
Sir,' he asked, 'it should appear that His Majesty was exposed to few or
no dangers abroad, but those to which he is daily liable at home, such
as the overturning of his coach or the stumbling of his horse, would not
the address proposed, instead of being a compliment, be an affront and
insult to the Sovereign?' No affront or insult could at any rate be more
stinging or more unfounded than his wanton insinuation. George II. had
the courage of his race, and had displayed it at Dettingen. At first his
runaway horse had almost carried him into the French lines, so he
dismounted and fought on foot for the rest of the day; not leaving the
field until he had created a number of knights banneret; the last
British king to take the field, and the last bannerets to be so
created.[154]
It was vile then to disparage the King's courage, but political life in
those days had no scruple and little shame. The sneers at Hanover with
which this speech was sprinkled were better founded and deserved. But a
serious and reasonable argument, not yet obsolete, pervaded Pitt's
violent rhetoric on this occasion. It was that though the balance of
power concerned all states, it concerned our island state least and last
of all. Moreover, he attacked our recent policy on other grounds. On our
attitude to Austria, then fighting for its integrity under Maria
Theresa, he heaped scorn from another point of view. We had promised her
abundant assistance when she was fighting Prussia alone; when France
intervened we shrank back and left her in the lurch. That, he declared,
was not our only discredit. When Prussia attacked the Queen of Hungary,
and Spain, Poland, and Bavaria laid claim to her father's succession, we
should have known that the preservation of the whole was impossible, and
advised her to yield the part claimed by Frederick. But the words from
the Throne and the speeches of the courtiers had persuaded the Austrian
Government that Great Britain was determined to support her. So great
was the determination, that even Hanover added near one-third to her
army at her own cost, the first extraordinary expense, it was believed,
that Hanover had borne for her purposes since her fortunate conjunction
with England! But then the French intervened. Hanover was in danger, and
so we promptly retired. We gave some money, indeed, but that was because
our ministers contrived to make a job of every parliamentary grant. The
Queen, seeing that she was deserted, came to terms with Frederick, but
much worse terms than he had originally offered. Then was the time for
us to have insisted on her making peace with France and the phantom
Emperor. But we had advised her against this, for no conceivable reason
except apparently that we wished to go on paying the 16,000 Hanoverians
whom we were employing. As regards the battle of Dettingen, he declared
that we had no idea of fighting, but that the French had caught us in a
trap. The ardour of our troops was restrained by the cowardice of the
Hanoverians; we ran away in the night, leaving our dead and wounded
behind us. Never would he consent to call the battle a victory, it was
only a fortunate escape.
Were we to continue fighting? he asked. We ourselves had nothing to gain
by it, though Hanover, no doubt, would continue to receive four or five
hundred thousand pounds a year from us if we did. But we should
consider, even the Hanoverians should consider, that we could not carry
on a long war as in the reign of Queen Anne. We were not far from a
national bankruptcy, and should soon have to disband our army. What,
then, if the Pretender should land at the head of a French force?
This outline is given to show the singular but forcible mixture of
shrewd argument, wayward extravagance, and bitter scoffs, which at this
time constituted Pitt's parliamentary armament.
He followed this speech up by another on December 6, of which little
remains; but his vehemence brought him into collision with the Speaker.
He urged contemptuously that if we must have German troops we should
rather hire those of Cologne and Saxony than those of Hanover. The King
was surrounded by German officers, and by one English Minister without
an English heart. The little finger of one man, he declared, had lain
heavier upon the nation than an administration which had continued
twenty years. Murray, however, the Solicitor-General, afterwards Lord
Mansfield, delivered a consummate speech against the motion, which
carried so much conviction that Pitt with some of the other Cobhamites
struck out the words relating to the exhausted and impoverished state of
the kingdom. But the amended motion was rejected by a majority of
seventy-seven.
And now there occurred a significant fissure in the Opposition. Pitt and
Lyttelton were inclined to support the maintenance of the British force
in Flanders. But Cobham, the chief of the little party, was
uncompromising: he resigned his commission 'as captain of the troop of
horse grenadiers' and his seat in the Cabinet. A formula had to be
framed to unite the two sections, and so George Grenville brought
forward a motion praying his Majesty 'in consideration of the exhausted
and impoverished state of the Kingdom not to proceed in this war without
the concurrence of the Dutch.' Pitt concurred in this motion, and
promised that if it were rejected he would join in opposing the
continued employment of the British as well as the Hanoverian troops in
Flanders.
This revision by a little group is not without significance; as the
Opposition, we are told, at the beginning of the session, entrusted the
direction of the party to a committee of six, consisting of Dodington,
Pitt, Sir John Cotton, Sir Watkin Wynn, Waller, and Lyttelton. The
putting of political leadership into commission has never been
successful in Parliament, and the device seems finally to have broken
down when it was last attempted, by the Protectionist party, after the
fall of Peel. Nor does it appear to have been more happy on this
occasion. Pitt and Lyttelton, who, in spite of their engagement, still
desired to support the continued employment of the British troops in the
Low Countries, at a general meeting of the Opposition found themselves
alone, and so agreed to give a silent vote with their associates.
It is probable that this incident produced alienation as it certainly
wrought friction between Pitt and Cobham. In the ensuing year we find
Cobham describing Pitt as a young man of fine parts, but narrow,
ignorant of the world, and dogmatical.[155] Two years afterwards Cobham
went further, and described him as a wrong-headed fellow, whom he had
had no regard for.[156] So we may well conjecture that from this time
there was but little confidence between Pitt and the patron of the
cousinhood; a great emancipation, though not wholly a gain for Pitt.
[Sidenote: Jan. 19, 1744.]
On the vote of 393,773_l._ to maintain the 16,000 Hanoverians during the
coming year, there was no need for the restraint of silence, so Pitt
railed with his customary bitterness against Carteret, who was the
Hanover-troop minister, a flagitious taskmaster, with a party only
composed of the 16,000 Hanoverians; and he ended his denunciation by
wishing that Carteret were in the House, for then he would say ten times
more. His speech was passionate and rhetorical, incomparably good of its
kind. But the Government prevailed in the division by 271 to 226. This
majority of forty-five was larger than had been anticipated, and was due
to the incessant exertions of Walpole. He sustained the flagging spirits
of the Ministry, who were on the point of abandoning the proposal.
Newcastle, indeed, had blenched before the storm, and openly took part
against the Hanoverians. But Walpole restored the fortune of the field.
He stemmed the gathering retreat, put heart into the waverers, and used
his personal credit with his old friends. Never in his own
administration had he laboured any point with more zeal. 'The whole
world,' writes his son Horace, 'nay, the Prince himself, allows that if
Lord Orford had not come to town, the Hanover troops had been lost. They
were, in effect, given up by all but Carteret.'[157]
[Sidenote: Jan. 1744.]
So far as the House of Commons was concerned, this ended the hostilities
against the Hanoverian troops, though the House of Lords continued the
controversy with a debate in which Chesterfield, who outdid Pitt in
violence, delivered a speech which was greatly admired. But a subsidy of
200,000_l._ had to be voted to the King of Sardinia under the treaty of
Worms. This treaty, negotiated by the King and Carteret in Germany
independently of the Home Government, was little relished by that
Government, and offered a tempting target to the warriors of the
Opposition. On a first motion for papers, Pitt was again prominent,
though little of his speech survives. Alluding, however, to a secret
convention attached to the treaty, which Carteret had signed but which
Ministers had refused to ratify, he declared, 'I only wanted the sight
of a convention, tacked to the treaty which that audacious hand had
signed, to furnish matter for immediate impeachment.' On the actual vote
the Government had only a majority of 62. Subsequent unreported debates
furnished Pitt with opportunities of denouncing the Pelham brethren as
subservient tools of Carteret. But the Government waxed stronger in
proportion to the heat of opposition. On a vote of censure they had a
majority of 114. Through these discussions Pitt passes like a phantom,
foremost by all consent in debate, but without leaving any footprint of
speech behind.
From these broils Parliament was now distracted by startling
intelligence. By message to the House on February 15 (1744) the King
apprised his faithful lieges that a French fleet was prowling in the
Channel, and that the young Stuart Prince, Charles Edward, had arrived
in France to join it. One of our vessels had met this squadron of
seventeen men-of-war and four frigates so long ago as January 27, 'half
seas over' between Brest and the Land's End, prowling apparently
northwards. There was something of a panic: men remembered how the Dutch
in 1667 had sailed up the Thames, and apprehended a repetition of that
disgrace. The Jacobites began to raise their head, but stocks did not
fall. The King's message announced that the 'eldest son of the Pretender
to his Crown is arrived in France; and that preparations are making
there to invade this kingdom in concert with disaffected persons here.'
A loyal address was at once prepared, to which the Opposition moved an
addition, promising an inquiry into the state of the Navy. The
amendment was, of course, supported by Pitt, and, of course, defeated.
But Pitt, as stout an anti-Jacobite as his grandfather, promised his
adhesion to the address whether the amendment voted or not; and a few
days later, on the presentation of papers, he supported the Government
so warmly as to receive the public thanks of Pelham. But for once the
interest was not in the Commons but the Lords. Newcastle had laid the
papers before the House, and with his usual blundering ineptitude had
allowed the House to pass to private business. Then Orford rose, and
broke his long silence. With dignity and emotion he confessed that he
had vowed to refrain from speech in that House, but that abstinence now
would be a crime. He had heard the King's message, and had observed with
amazement that that House was to be so wanting in respect as to leave it
unanswered. Was our language so barren as to be unable to find words to
the King at such a crisis; 'a time of distraction and confusion, a time
when the greatest power in Europe is setting up a Pretender to his
throne?'
'I have indeed particular reason to express my astonishment and my
uneasiness on this occasion; I feel my breast fired with the warmest
gratitude to a gracious and royal master whom I have so long served; my
heart overflows with zeal for his honour, and ardour for the lasting
security of his illustrious house. But, my lords, the danger is common,
and an invasion equally involves all our happiness, all our hopes, and
all our fortunes.'
In these passionate words the wary and unemotional Orford allowed his
apprehension to overflow. He saw the work of his life, the keeping out
of the Stuarts, compromised and endangered by the unpopularity of the
throne, and the blunders of jobbing mediocrity. He perceived the danger
which he had so long warded off now instant and imminent. The House was
deeply moved. Newcastle with obvious mortification acknowledged his
lapse, and the Chancellor hurriedly drafted an address. Even the Prince
of Wales, whose hatred of Walpole was perhaps the deepest feeling of
which his shallow nature was capable, was so stirred, that he rose and
shook hands with the veteran Minister. Nay, as we are told by a
chronicler blissfully unconscious of bathos, 'he revoked the prohibition
which prevented the family of Lord Orford from attending his levee.' It
was a dramatic occasion, worthy of being the last public appearance of
Orford. The hard-bitten old statesman who had been baited for near a
quarter of a century, and had always given his opponents as good as he
had got, disappeared from the stage with a burst of passionate
patriotism.
[Sidenote: 1744.]
The end is so near that we may follow him thither. This speech was on
the last day of February, and he was soon afterwards seized with a
painful and mortal complaint; but in July he could not resist returning
to Houghton for a final visit. There he remained till November, beset by
anxious solicitations both from the King and from the Ministry, for he
was the guide and stay of both. At last, though tortured with the stone,
he consented to return to London at the urgent solicitation of his
sovereign, then engaged in a desperate struggle to retain Carteret as
Secretary of State. Even Carteret, his old enemy, in the stress of
self-preservation sought his aid. Orford set out on November 19, and in
four slow days of an agony which wrung even the practised nerves of
Ranby, the surgeon (and it is difficult even now to read Ranby's
narrative without emotion), he reached London. The crisis then was over,
for he had put an end to it on his journey. A message despatched by the
Pelhams had met him on the road and placed him in possession of the
facts of the situation. He had at once written to advise the King to
part with Carteret, and the King had instantly submitted.
This was Walpole's last act of power, but he remained in London to die.
For four months he lingered under the hands of the surgeons, sometimes
under opium, sometimes suffering tortures with equanimity and good
humour. But even so his shrewd and cynical common sense did not desert
him. Consulted by the Duke of Cumberland as to a marriage projected for
him by the King, but repugnant to the Duke, the dying statesman advised
him to consent to the marriage on condition of an ample and immediate
establishment. 'Believe me,' he added, 'the marriage will not be
pressed.' Walpole's knowledge of mankind left him only with his death.
His constancy, his courage, his temper, his unfailing resource, his love
of peace, his gifts of management and debate, his long reign of
prosperity will always maintain Walpole in the highest rank of English
statesmen. Distinguished even in death, he rests under the bare and
rustic pavement of Houghton Church, in face of the palace that he had
reared and cherished, without so much as an initial to mark his grave.
This is the blank end of so much honour, adulation, power, and renown.
For a century and a half unconscious hobnails and pattens have ground
the nameless stones above him, while mediocrities in marble have
thronged our public haunts. His monument, unvoted, unsubscribed, but
supreme, was the void left by his death, the helpless bewilderment of
King and Government, the unwilling homage and retractation offered by
his foes, the twenty years of peace and plenty represented by his name.
And here another illustrious name cannot but suggest itself, though it
may seem difficult to bring into anything like a parallel the two great
Sir Roberts, Walpole and Peel. Both were distinguished by the same
cautious and pacific sagacity. But they differed by the whole width of
human nature in temperament. Walpole belonged to the school of the cold
blood, and Peel to that of the warm. This, perhaps, constitutes the most
important touchstone in the characters of statesmen, and success usually
lies with the colder temperament. Of this principle, Fox, who was warm
blooded, presents the most remarkable illustration, and Gladstone, who
was not less so, the most signal exception. Peel's conscience, moreover,
was as notably sensitive as Walpole's was notoriously the reverse. But
though thus essentially apart, there is one capital point which the
careers of Walpole and Pitt bear an almost exact resemblance to each
other. Neither of them, strangely enough, reached his full height until
his fall; neither acquired the full confidence of the country until he
had lost that of Parliament; after having exercised almost paramount
power as Ministers, neither ever reached his truest supremacy until he
had left office for ever. Then, after a great catastrophe which had
seemed to demolish them, it was perceived that they had soared above the
mist into a higher air, clear of passion and interest; whence, though
with scarce a following and without the remotest idea of a return to
office, they spoke with an authority which they had never possessed when
their word was law to an obedient majority in the Commons; an authority
derived from experience and wisdom, without any lingering suspicion of
self-interest. They lived in reserve, and only broke their self-imposed
silence when the highest interests of the country seemed to forbid them
to maintain it. Walpole, it is true, had to do his work mainly behind
the scenes, while Peel did it conspicuously in Parliament; but the
position was the same. If their eulogist had to choose the supreme
period in the lives of both Walpole and Peel, he would select, not the
epoch of their party triumphs, but the few exalted judicial years which
elapsed between their final resignation and their death. It may seem a
strain of language to use the word 'judicial,' for Walpole remained the
oracle and stay of Whiggery, while Peel extended his consistent
protection to the weak ministry of Lord John Russell. But Peel's
protection of Russell was given in defiance of party to secure the Free
Trade which he deemed vital, and Walpole's guidance of Whiggery was in
disinterested support of men he disliked and despised because he deemed
Whiggery, or at least opposition to Jacobitism, not less vital. Free
Trade and Whiggery were, in the opinion of the two statesmen, essential
to avert the revolutions which the opposite systems would have involved.
This seems a digression, but at this time Pitt and Walpole were not far
apart; they secretly acknowledged each other's power and merit. Pitt had
already begun to appreciate the solid sagacity of Walpole, and to repent
of some random invective. Walpole saw the rhetorical boy developing
into the man of the future, and was more and more anxious to enlist him.
'Sir Robert Walpole,' said Pitt in Parliament at a later period,
'thought well of me, and died at peace with me. He was a truly English
minister.'[158]