On the meeting of Parliament in January 1751, Lord Egmont raised on the
Address the question of the peace with Spain. Pitt in reply delivered a
speech of singular interest, for he disarms criticism by frankly avowing
the errors of his 'young and sanguine' days, to employ his own epithets.
After pointing out that the Spaniards could not be expected to give up
the assertion of their right of search any more than we would renounce
our claim to the right of free navigation in the American seas, he
proceeded: 'I must therefore conclude, Sir, that "no search" is a
stipulation which it is ridiculous to insist on, because it is
impossible to be obtained. And after having said this I expect to be
told that upon a former occasion I concurred heartily in a motion for an
address not to admit of any treaty of peace with Spain unless such a
stipulation as this should be first obtained as a preliminary thereto. I
confess I did, Sir, because I then thought it right, but I was then very
young and sanguine. I am now ten years older, and have had time to
consider things more coolly. From that consideration I am convinced that
we may as well ask for a free and open trade with all the Spanish
settlements in America, as ask that none of our ships shall be visited
or stopt, though sailing within a bowshot of their shore; and within
that distance our ships must often sail in order to have the benefit of
what they call the land breeze.' 'I am also convinced that all
addresses from this House during the course of a war, for prescribing
terms of peace, are in themselves ridiculous; because the turns or
chances of war are generally so sudden and often so little expected that
it is impossible to foresee or foretell what terms of peace it may be
proper to insist on. And as the Crown has the sole power of making peace
or war, every such address must certainly be an encroachment upon the
King's prerogative, which has always hitherto proved to be unlucky. For
these reasons I believe I should never hereafter concur in any such
address, unless made so conditional as to leave the Crown at full
liberty to agree to such terms of peace as may at the time be thought
most proper, which this of "no search" can never be, unless Spain should
be brought so low as to give us a _carte blanche_; and such a low ebb it
is not our interest to bring that nation to, nor would the other Powers
of Europe suffer it, should we attempt it.'[195]
This is a new milestone. 'Those who endeavour to quote from my former
speeches, the outpourings of my hot and fractious youth, are hereby
warned off. I have sown my wild oats; henceforward I am to be regarded
as a prudent and sagacious statesman.' This was the real purport of this
speech, divested of the necessary circumlocutions. A statesman who has
been an active politician in his youth usually has to utter some such
warning and repentant note in his maturity.
[Sidenote: Feb. 22, 1751.]
In 1751 we find Pitt delivering another speech which marks a further
distance from his unregenerate days. At this time, for reasons which we
can now scarcely discern, but which originated with George II., who
considered that the peace and safety of his electorate depended on a
secure succession to the Empire being vested in the House of Austria,
our foreign policy was concentrated on securing the election of Maria
Theresa's son, a boy of ten years old, as King of the Romans, and so
heir to the Empire. This strange line of action was absurd enough to be
congenial to Newcastle, who soon adopted it, called it his darling
child, and grudged its paternity to the King.[196] Pelham had
reluctantly to follow, only deprecating expenditure as far as possible.
For this we slaved and negotiated and subsidised, in the faith that
should the Emperor die without a King of the Romans being ready to
succeed him, a war must infallibly ensue. This hypothesis was at least
doubtful; but, in any case, we expended our energies in vain. Prussia,
and France as guarantor of the Treaty of Westphalia, declared the
election of a minor to be contrary to the fundamental laws of the
Empire, and prevailed. There is the less reason to deplore our failure,
as it is not known what we should have gained by success. Austria, which
was alone to profit, threw the coldest water on the project. The obvious
flaw of the policy appears to have been that the receipt of subsidies so
entirely conflicted with the electoral oath as to form an insuperable
bar of honour preventing any elector who received them from voting for
our candidate. We were in fact to bribe those who could not vote if they
accepted our bribe, for an object flagrantly illegal, on behalf of a
Power which scouted our assistance. We offered to bribe the Electors of
Mainz, Cologne, and Saxony. To the Elector of Bavaria we agreed by
treaty to pay 40,000_l._ a year, the sum to be made up by Holland and
ourselves. It was this last treaty which Pitt found himself called upon
to defend, and his speech was a broad defence of the whole system and
principle of subsidies. 'Surely,' he cried, 'it is more prudent in us to
grant subsidies to foreign princes for keeping up a number of troops for
the service of the common cause of Europe, than by keeping up such
numerous armies of our own here at home, as might be of the most
dangerous consequence to our constitution.'[197] This must have seemed
strange doctrine to those who remembered his former harangues. But in
this speech he was to exceed himself in superfluous candour. He had said
that there was a good prospect of a firm and lasting peace, and then
strangely wandered off to the consequent prospect of economy at home,
'perhaps by a different method of collecting the revenue. I am not
afraid to mention the word Excise.[198] I was not in the House when the
famous Excise scheme was brought upon the carpet. If I had I should
probably have been induced by the general but groundless clamour to have
joined with those who opposed it. But I have seen so much of the deceit
of popular clamours, and the artful surmises upon which they are
founded, and I am so fully convinced of the benefits we should reap by
preventing all sorts of unfair trade, that if ever any such scheme be
again offered whilst I have a seat in this assembly, I believe I shall
be as heartily for it as I am for the motion now under our
consideration.'[199]
It is scarcely possible to conceive a more deliberate and scornful
repudiation of responsibility for any previous opinions that he may have
maintained than is expressed in this passage. He goes out of his way to
tender an unnecessary support to the detested Excise scheme, which at
the same time he declares that he should certainly have opposed had he
been in the House when it was introduced. The middle-aged Pitt seemed
never to tire of trampling savagely on the young Pitt, even wantonly, as
on this occasion. There is, indeed, more justice than is usual in Horace
Walpole's taunts when he says of Pitt, 'Where he chiefly shone was in
exposing his own conduct; having waded through the most notorious
apostasy in politics, he treated it with an impudent confidence that
made all reflections upon him poor and spiritless when worded by any
other men.' This is one way of putting it. A preferable and, in our
judgment, a truer way is that Pitt deliberately chose this method of
public atonement for past recklessness, and as an avowal that he had
learned and ripened by experience. He recanted at large, so as to
obliterate every vestige of his heedless and censorious youth. It is
better for the country and for themselves that statesmen should thus do
penance than that they should continue to offer sacrifices of what they
see to be right to the somewhat egotistical pagod of their personal
consistency. Honourable consistency is necessary to retain the
confidence of the country; but there is also a dishonourable consistency
in concealing and suppressing conscientious changes of judgment.
Though, as we have seen, his defence of the principle of subsidies
seemed unbounded, it was more limited in practice, and Pitt fixed his
limit at the Bavarian contribution. In 1752 Pelham had to move a subsidy
to the Elector of Saxony, King of Poland. This had been negotiated by
Newcastle, but was so strongly disapproved by Pelham that he even
threatened to second the opposition to it. However, he was persuaded by
the argument most urgent and sometimes most fatal to prime ministers,
that the apparent unity of the Government must at any cost be
maintained, to withdraw his opposition and move the vote. Old Horatio
Walpole, though he voted with Pelham, spoke warmly against him, and Pitt
supported Walpole's argument, though privately and not in speech. He
felt, it may be presumed, that it was not for him to be more of a
Pelhamite than Pelham himself.
With Pelham, however, he had felt constrained to be at open variance in
the previous year, about the time of the Bavarian subsidy. The Minister
had moved a reduction of our seamen from 10,000 to 8000. Pitt declared a
preference for 10,000; and Potter, whom we have seen in the Buckingham
and Aylesbury affair, a clever, worthless fellow, who had now become an
ally of Pitt, opposed the reduction. Pelham seemed to acquiesce, but
Lord Hartington, an enthusiastic Pelhamite, who was hereafter to be for
a while Prime Minister under Pitt, forced a division, in order to show
Pitt that the Whigs would not support him against Pelham. Pitt's
immediate following on this occasion seems to have consisted only of
Lyttelton, the three Grenvilles, Conway, and eight others. There was, it
is to be observed, nothing factious in this; the opinion of Pitt was
natural, and not distasteful to Pelham. Moreover, on the report Pitt
made a conciliatory speech, marking in the strongest manner his regret
at differing with Pelham, declaring that it was his fear of Jacobitism
alone which made him prefer the larger number, and expressing his
concern at seeing our body of trained seamen, whom he called our
standing army, reduced. He and his little following, or rather
cousinhood, vied with each other in loyal eulogies of the Prime
Minister.
This called up Hampden, an intrepid buffoon, but the great-grandson of
the patriot, and 'twenty-fourth hereditary lord of Great Hampden,' who
attacked Pitt and his group with rancour. Here, again, we seem to
discern traces of Buckinghamshire politics and jealousies. Temple and
his belongings had, as we have seen, many enemies in their own county,
and Hampden was one of them. Perhaps the Aylesbury affair still rankled.
Pitt was visibly angered. Though Pelham warmly defended him, he was not
appeased, and the affair would have ended in a duel had not the
Speaker's authority intervened. In the succeeding year, it may be noted,
the number of 10,000 was restored.
Though these hostilities were averted, the debate produced further
friction between the brethren who controlled the Ministry. Newcastle was
profusely grateful to Pitt for the line he had taken. He wrote to one of
his vassals (January 30, 1750-1): 'As you can be no stranger (if you
have attended the late debate) to the able and affectionate manner in
which Mr. Pitt has taken upon himself to defend me, and the measures
which have been solely carried on by me, when both have been openly
attacked with violence, and when no other person opened his lips, in
defence of either, but Mr. Pitt, I think myself bound in honour and
gratitude to show my sense of it in the best way I am able. I must
therefore desire that neither you nor any of my friends would give into
any clamour or row that may be made against him from any of the party on
account of his differing as to the number of seamen. For after the kind
part he has acted to me, and (as far as I am allowed to be part of it)
the meritorious one to the administration, I cannot think any man my
friend who shall join in any such clamour, and who does not do all in
his power to discourage it. I desire you would read this letter to'
(here follow the names of seven forgotten men whom we may presume to
have been his closest followers).[200] Pitt's attitude had alarmed
Pelham, and this letter from the Duke, so formidable from parliamentary
influence, made him sensible of imminent danger. He saw that he must
either be reconciled to his brother or face that alarming coalition of
Pitt and Newcastle which was afterwards effected with so much success.
Once more there was a crisis, and Pelham's son-in-law Lincoln was called
in as mediator. A treaty of peace of three articles was solemnly drawn
up between the brothers, and apparent harmony restored. The King,
however, broke out anew with emphatic anger against Pitt and the
Grenvilles.
This was probably due to the rumour that Pitt and his connections were
negotiating with the Prince of Wales. This is not improbable. We know
indeed that Lyttelton was arranging through his brother-in-law Dr.
Ayscough for a coalition between the forces of Stowe and those of
Leicester House. The King was old, and ambitious politicians would not
wish to be ill with his heir, if that could be avoided. But all such
foresight was wasted, for Frederick was never to reign, and within two
months of the vote on the seamen he was dead. Up to the last he was
intriguing and securing adherents. On February 28 he was engaging
Oswald, an able debater in the House of Commons, to his cause; on March
20 he died. Next morning his party was convoked by Egmont to consider
the future. Many came, probably from curiosity, but dispersed without
any conclusion. 'My Lord Drax,' writes Henry Fox in pleasant allusion to
the promises of the Prince, 'my Lord Colebrook, Earl Dodington, and
prime minister Egmont are distracted; but nobody more so than Lord
Cobham, who _cum suis_ has been making great court and with some effect
all this winter. Do not name this from me. I fear they will not be dealt
with as I would deal with them.'[201] In truth the purpose and bond of
the party, the sole reason for its existence, had disappeared.
Henceforth the courtiers who found no favour with the King kept their
eyes on the Princess of Wales and her eldest son, a shy, sensitive boy,
who was afterwards to be George III. Soon they began to perceive in this
obscure court a handsome, supercilious Scotsman, who enjoyed the favour
of the Princess and the veneration of her son, who was now a lord of the
Prince's bedchamber, but was hereafter to head one ministry and become
the bugbear of many others, John Earl of Bute.
The Heir Apparent was only thirteen, and a Regency Bill was required.
This is only pertinent to our narrative in that it produced a fierce
parliamentary duel between Pitt and Fox, the point at issue between them
being the Duke of Cumberland, whom the King wished, but the Ministry
did not dare, to nominate Regent. Indeed, one of the principal
expressions of popular grief for the loss of the Prince of Wales had
taken the form of regret that the death had not been that of the Duke.
'Oh! that it was but his brother! Oh! that it was but the Butcher!'
Unfortunately, the speeches of neither Pitt nor Fox in this session have
come down to us. All that we know is that Pelham declared that Pitt's
was the finest speech that ever he heard. Pitt had strongly maintained
that the Regency must be closely restricted, the vital contention of his
son thirty-seven years later, and hinted that Cumberland, if
unrestrained in his capacity as head of the Council of Regency, might be
tempted to usurp the Crown. Hence the wrath of Fox, the close friend of
the royal Duke; hence, too, the antipathy of Cumberland to Pitt, which
was to cause complications thereafter.
Pitt and his family connections, whose allegiance to the Ministry had
been under suspicion, and who had been in negotiation with the Prince's
party, were rallied into apparent fidelity to the Ministry by the
Prince's death, without, however, severing their renewed connection with
Leicester House. But it was acquiescence rather than loyalty. Between
the two ministerial orators in the House of Commons, Fox and Pitt, there
had been cordial friendship. But it is evident that this had ceased.
Fox, as we have seen, would have dealt with Pitt and the Grenvilles as
traitors, and one would infer that it was the negotiation with the
Prince of Wales which had angered him. The fact that Fox had sided with
Pelham, and Pitt with Newcastle, had probably tended to division. Pitt,
indeed, afterwards accused Pelham, poor soul, with having fostered their
variance. Then there had been the affair of the Regency. There had,
too, just previously to the Prince's death, been a sharp altercation
between them in a small debate raised by the petition for compensation
of an ill-used gentleman in Minorca. This Pelham had refused; while Pitt
upheld the claim with his wonted energy, but with unusual absurdity. He
would support the petition of a man so oppressed and of so ancient a
family to the last drop of his blood. Fox ridiculed this extravagance,
and Pitt was nettled. This is only notable as a symptom of prevailing
temper.
But the facts of their personalities speak for themselves. They were
rivals in Parliament, neither of them very scrupulous, both fierce in
debate. What need of further explanation? Fox, moreover, viewed Pitt's
overtures to Leicester House with distrust, not merely from the point of
view of a minister, but from that of the Duke of Cumberland, to whom he
was devoted, and who detested the Prince of Wales and his crew. So that
on the Regency Bill it was the wrath between the two factions which
broke into open war. It was in the main the devotion of Fox to
Cumberland which originally divided and then estranged him from Pitt.
They were afterwards to reunite for a time by the mutual attraction of
brains opposed to imbecility.
This is perhaps the best opportunity to consider the character of this
Henry Fox, who was now Pitt's rival. Strangely enough there is no real
biography of this remarkable man, a vigorous and interesting figure, who
has been to some extent obscured by his more popular and famous son.
It would almost be enough to say that Fox was everything that Pitt was
not. He had not that wayward but divine fire which we call genius, and
which inspired Pitt; but he had the saving quality of common sense which
was wanting to his rival. He laid no claim to the oratory of Pitt; he
was, we are told hesitating and inelegant, not indeed a good speaker;
but he was plain and forcible, with a good business-like wear and tear
style, which is in Parliament not less valuable than oratory; on
occasions indeed he spoke with a vehemence and closeness of reasoning
which almost anticipated the supreme faculty of his son. More than all,
he thoroughly understood the House of Commons. He had the cordial
manner, the veneer at least of good fellowship, the frankness savouring
of cynicism, which make for an eminently serviceable sort of
parliamentary popularity. In one respect, as a letter writer, he was
greatly Pitt's superior. While Pitt was prancing fantastic minuets
before his correspondents, Fox, without wasting a word, went straight to
the point; and his letters are pregnant, graphic, and forcible. There
are perhaps none better in the English language than those in which he
describes the debates of December 1755. He was, what Pitt was not, a
genial companion, fond of the bottle and the chase; he had, indeed, been
a gambler and a debauchee. He was, what Pitt was not, a man of the
world, and was closely allied with the choicest blood of the aristocracy
by a marriage with a daughter of the Duke of Richmond. Pitt was a county
gentleman, who had indeed married Temple's sister, but had thus entered
a more limited and less exalted connection. They both had courage, but
Fox minded the rebuffs of debate much less than Pitt. He was
passionate, but with a passion less sublime than Pitt's. Pitt could
sometimes feign passion; Fox could sometimes repress it. In later life,
when it had been long smouldering, it was ungovernable. But at this time
it only displayed itself in a not ungenerous resentment. In the race for
success it would perhaps have been safer to back Fox than Pitt.
But Fox had one incurable flaw which was wholly wanting in Pitt: his
aims were base and material. He was content for long years to be
Paymaster, amassing a huge fortune from all the emoluments, legitimate
and semi-legitimate, of that lucrative office, when a noble ambition
would not have stooped to so gross an obscurity. And besides money he
had another weakness. He longed to be a lord. In the moment of his
rival's triumph and his own fall we find him writing to Lady Yarmouth
soliciting a peerage in almost abject terms.[202] That was refused, and
it was only after long years of unabashed solicitation that he obtained
his object. At last a peerage was accorded to his wife, as if to mark
the reluctance felt to giving it to himself. Then his chance came. Bute
had to find a bold and unscrupulous agent to carry the Peace through the
House, and Fox was his man. Not merely had Fox to earn his peerage but
to wreak some vengeances.[203] He accepted the task readily, and had as
his first reward the joy of removing Newcastle from the lieutenancy of
three counties. And then, as if animated by a hatred of the whole human
race, he expelled from their posts all, from the highest to the
humblest, whom he suspected of opposition. It was a reign of terror, and
by terror he accomplished the work he had been hired to do. Then he
claimed his reward. He had earned and he received his peerage. But he
had also earned and received a detestation, rarely accorded in England
to a statesman, which lasted for the rest of his life, and which finds
vent in the bitter lampoon which Gray, the gentlest of scholars, was
moved to write.
Later again, in his opulent seclusion, Fox was fired with a new ambition
to become an earl.[204] He feared no extremity, no humiliation, to
obtain his cherished object. But he failed. He was no longer worth
buying; he could not, indeed, be employed. So in bitterness of spirit he
passed away, cheered only by his delightful devotion to his wife and
children, and by the goodwill of a few staunch friends.
There is something profoundly melancholy in Fox's degeneracy. Its
commencement is clearly marked. In 1756 he was an easy companion, a good
friend, kindly and beloved; he was honoured and admired; he was the
second man in the House of Commons, willing and able to dare all. But
when he was discarded, and had subsided into the Paymastership, he seems
to have suffered a gradual deterioration. His objects became sordid; he
lost the finer elements of his character; his ambition sank into
something composed of vindictiveness and greed; his generous wine became
corked and bitter. But at the time we are writing of, he was still
amiable, still courageous, still warm with some instinct of honour,
patriotism, and high emulation, still an able and masculine figure. It
is perhaps unfair to anticipate a decline which is outside our limits.
But the change is so remarkable, throwing, as it were, a back light on
some of the puzzling aspects of Fox's earlier career, that it cannot
well be unnoticed.
More ominous of Pitt's attitude to the Ministry than any small incidents
of debate was Pitt's silence. For three successive sessions of
Parliament, in 1752, 1753, and in that which closed in April 1754, he
practically held his peace. Nothing could be more sinister, nothing
could mark more emphatically his discontent. Sickness, it appears,
accounted in part for this abstinence from the arena. 'After a year of
sullen illness,' as Horace Walpole describes it, he intervened in 1753;
and this was followed by another twelve months of silence and of illness
not less sullen. The intervention of 1753 was not very happy. By an Act
passed in June 1753, foreign Jews had been rendered capable of
naturalisation. The Bill had passed into law without serious opposition,
but soon aroused great popular clamour. Grub Street, as usual, was
called into requisition.
'But Lord! how surprised when they heard of the news
That we were to be servants to circumcised Jews,
To be negroes and slaves instead of True Blues,
Which nobody can deny.'
Newcastle was charged with having been bribed.
'That money you know is a principal thing,
It will pay a Duke's mortgage or interest bring.'[205]
[Sidenote: Nov. 27, 1753.]
On the meeting of Parliament in November of the same year Newcastle at
once moved to repeal it. It had only been, he said in his silly jargon,
a 'point of political policy,' and as it had aroused agitation in the
public it had better be repealed. Foote recalled this slipshod phrase in
his comical portrait of the Duke. 'The honour,' says Matthew Mug, 'I
this day solicit will be to me the most honourable honour that can be
conferred.' Pitt supported the repeal in a speech on which his admirers
would not desire to dwell. He was still in favour of the Act, but should
vote for its repeal, because the people wished it, having been misled by
the 'old High Church persecuting spirit' into believing that religion
was concerned in the matter, which was not the fact, therefore an
explanatory preamble was necessary. 'In the present case we ought to
treat the people as a prudent father would treat his child; if a
peevish, perverse boy should insist on something that was not quite
right but of such a nature as, when granted, could not be attended with
any very bad consequence, an indulgent father would comply with the
humour of his child, but at the same time he would let him know that he
did so merely out of complaisance, and not because he approved of what
the child insisted on.'[206] Whether this would or would not be the
wisest course of parental discipline it is not necessary to discuss, but
it was in the spirit of the practice that prevailed in the Fox family
rather than in that of the Pitts. The repeal was passed with the
preamble of admonition.
This reluctant, ironical support was all that Pitt gave his colleagues.
It cannot indeed be doubted that throughout these three lean years of
silence he was hostile to the Ministry. Promises had probably been made
on his first accession to office which he thought had been ill-kept. He
had been told, no doubt, that every effort would be made to make him
more acceptable to the King, and he might well doubt if there had been
much strenuous effort in that direction. And indeed a topic so sure to
excite the royal spleen was not likely to be raised except under the
pressure of absolute necessity. At any rate there had been no result.
'The Pitts and Lytteltons are grown very mutinous on the Newcastle's not
choosing Pitt for his colleague,' writes Horace Walpole six weeks after
the Prince's death. For Bedford was known to be doomed by Newcastle, and
his Secretaryship of State would soon be vacant. There were many
aspirants for the succession, but no whisper of Pitt. Cobham, who had
been his main supporter, was dead;[207] no one could speak with so much
authority on his behalf; and even had Cobham survived he would probably
have been silent.
Soon after the letter from Walpole which we have quoted (June 1751)
Bedford had resigned. He had been succeeded by Holdernesse. At the same
time Granville, the object of Pitt's inveterate philippics, was admitted
to the Cabinet as President of the Council. These events may well have
inflamed Pitt's resentment, which had, we cannot doubt, been long
smouldering. The great obstacle to his advancement was the King, who, as
he knew, had always detested him. It was with the greatest difficulty
that the Pelhams could persuade the Sovereign not altogether to ignore
him at the Levees. Could he indeed trust the brothers? He appreciated no
doubt Pelham's qualities at the Treasury, in council, and in the House
of Commons. It seems impossible to believe that Pitt ever can have
trusted Newcastle; though he addresses the Duke in his letters with an
affected flummery of devotion. Almon, who is not a trustworthy
authority, but who is supported in this instance by a probability which
we may well deem irresistible, says that in at least one interview in
the year 1752 he treated Newcastle with such scorn that Newcastle had he
dared would have dismissed him from office.[208] Pitt had openly scoffed
at the King of the Romans policy, Newcastle's cherished plan, and told
the Duke that he was engaging in subsidies without knowing the amount,
and in alliances without knowing the terms. Why, indeed, should Pitt
trust Newcastle, whom no one had ever trusted, and whom Pitt must have
measured and known to the very marrow of his bones?
We may take it as certain then that Pitt viewed the Duke with
contemptuous penetration, and tolerated his grimaces and professions
only till such time as he could put them to the test. Meanwhile there
was a free trade in blandishments between them. Newcastle would send
venison from Holland, and carp and fruit, and Pitt would abound in
gratitude.[209] He still thought well to profess friendship, but, we may
be sure, a wary friendship, for the veteran in the florid and artificial
style of the day; on the very day of Pelham's death he wrote from Bath
to assure him of 'unalterable attachment;'[210] and he condescended to
solicit a parliamentary seat from him.
But words cost little, and Pitt did not disdain profusion in them any
more than in what cost more. In a letter to Lyttelton written
immediately after Pelham's death, when he recommended an attitude of
armed and hostile vigilance towards the new powers, he says:
'Professions of personal regard cannot be made too strongly,' and this
line of conduct explains his professions to Newcastle. For how could he
fail under existing circumstances to be suspicious? Had Newcastle lifted
a finger to procure him the succession to Bedford? Yet no one could
compete in Parliamentary authority with Pitt; and, though Murray's
claims to oratorical pre-eminence might vie with his, Murray's
aspirations were confined to the law. At this time, Chesterfield, the
best living judge of such matters, was writing to his son, and
expressing therefore his real convictions: 'Mr. Pitt and Mr. Murray are
beyond comparison ... the best orators. They alone can inflame or quiet
the House; they alone are so attended to, in that numerous and noisy
assembly, that you might hear a pin fall while either was
speaking.'[211] It is true that Chesterfield depreciates Pitt's matter.
But the fact remains that he mentions Pitt as one of the two supreme
masters of the House of Commons, the other, indeed, not having much
heart in politics. The ignoring, the slighting of this great power,
could not be forgiven by so aspiring a nature as Pitt's. He brooded and
watched.