Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Châtelet" to "Chicago" / Volume 6, Slice 1

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CHÂTELET (from Med. Lat. castella ), the word, sometimes also written castillet , used in France for a building designed for the defence of an outwork or gate, sometimes of great strength or size, but distinguished from the château , or castle proper, in being purely defensive and not residential. In Paris, before the Revolution, this word was applied both to a particular building and to the jurisdiction of which it was the seat. This building, the original Châtelet, had been first a castle defending the approach to the Cité. Tradition traced its existence back to Roman times, and in the 18th century one of the rooms in the great tower was still called the chambre de César . The jurisdiction was that of the provostship ( prévôté ) and viscountship of Paris, which was certainly of feudal origin, probably going back to the counts of Paris.
(J. P. E.)
CHATHAM, WILLIAM PITT , 1st Earl of (1708-1778), English statesman, was born at Westminster on the 15th of November 1708. He was the younger son of Robert Pitt of Boconnoc, Cornwall, and grandson of Thomas Pitt (1653-1726), governor of Madras, who was known as “Diamond” Pitt, from the fact of his having sold a diamond of extraordinary size to the regent Orleans for something like £135,000. It was mainly by this fortunate transaction that the governor was enabled to raise his family, which was one of old standing, to a position of wealth and political influence. The latter he acquired by purchasing the burgage tenures of Old Sarum.
William Pitt was educated at Eton, and in January 1727 was entered as a gentleman commoner at Trinity College, Oxford. There is evidence that he was an extensively read, if not a minutely accurate classical scholar; and it is interesting to know that Demosthenes was his favourite author, and that he diligently cultivated the faculty of expression by the practice of translation and re-translation. An hereditary gout, from which he had suffered even during his school-days, compelled him to leave the university without taking his degree, in order to travel abroad. He spent some time in France and Italy; but the disease proved intractable, and he continued subject to attacks of growing intensity at frequent intervals till the close of his life. In 1727 his father had died, and on his return home it was necessary for him, as the younger son, to choose a profession. Having chosen the army, he obtained through the interest of his friends a cornet’s commission in the dragoons. But his military career was destined to be short. His elder brother Thomas having been returned at the general election of 1734 both for Oakhampton and for Old Sarum, and having preferred to sit for the former, the family borough fell to the younger brother by the sort of natural right usually recognized in such cases. Accordingly, in February 1735, William Pitt entered parliament as member for Old Sarum. Attaching himself at once to the formidable band of discontented Whigs known as the Patriots, whom Walpole’s love of exclusive power had forced into opposition under Pulteney, he became in a very short time one of its most prominent members. His maiden speech was delivered in April 1736, in the debate on the congratulatory address to the king on the marriage of the prince of Wales. The occasion was one of compliment, and there is nothing striking in the speech as reported; but it served to gain for him the attention of the house when he presented himself, as he soon afterwards did, in debates of a party character. So obnoxious did he become as a critic of the government, that Walpole thought fit to punish him by procuring his dismissal from the army. Some years later he had occasion vigorously to denounce the system of cashiering officers for political differences, but with characteristic loftiness of spirit he disdained to make any reference to his own case. The loss of his commission was soon made up to him. The heir to the throne, as was usually the case in the house of Hanover, if not in reigning families generally, was the patron of the opposition, and the ex-cornet became groom of the bed-chamber to the prince of Wales. In this new position his hostility to the government did not, as may be supposed, in any degree relax. He had all the natural gifts an orator could desire—a commanding presence, a graceful though somewhat theatrical bearing, an eye of piercing brightness, and a voice of the utmost flexibility. His style, if occasionally somewhat turgid, was elevated and passionate, and it always bore the impress of that intensity of conviction which is the most powerful instrument a speaker can have to sway the convictions of an audience. It was natural, therefore, that in the series of stormy debates, protracted through several years, that ended in the downfall of Walpole, his eloquence should have been one of the strongest of the forces that combined to bring about the final result. Specially effective, according to contemporary testimony, were his speeches against the Hanoverian subsidies, against the Spanish convention in 1739, and in favour of the motion in 1742 for an investigation into the last ten years of Walpole’s administration. It must be borne in mind that the reports of these speeches which have come down to us were made from hearsay, or at best from recollection, and are necessarily therefore most imperfect. The best-known specimen of Pitt’s eloquence, his reply to the sneers of Horatio Walpole at his youth and declamatory manner, which has found a place in so many handbooks of elocution, is evidently, in form at least, the work, not of Pitt, but of Dr Johnson, who furnished the report to the Gentleman’s Magazine . Probably Pitt did say something of the kind attributed to him, though even this is by no means certain in view of Johnson’s repentant admission that he had often invented not merely the form, but the substance of entire debates.