Peace abroad.
The first ten years of Pitt's rule (1783-1792) were a time of profound peace both at home and abroad. Though his foreign policy was not weak or vacillating, the young premier avoided all collisions with our neighbours. A slight difficulty with Spain in 1789 about our colony on Vancouver's Island, in the North Pacific, is hardly worth mention.
The Whigs powerless.
Meanwhile Pitt's ascendency at home was complete. The disgrace of the Coalition still hung over the Parliamentary opposition. There seemed to be hardly any reason for the longer existence of the old Whig party, which followed Fox, Burke, and Sheridan. The popular principles on which they had always pretended to rest had now been adopted by the opponent whom they styled a Tory. The opposition in the years 1783-1793 was factious rather than honest. The Whigs had to see measures, which they could not but approve, carried by their political enemy, or else to withstand them on the inadequate ground of pure party spite. The spectacle of a conscientious and enlightened minister opposed by men who could find no real fault with his principles or measures, disgusted the nation, and the Whig party sunk into a disrepute which proceeded from a general belief that it was insincere. Not least among the causes of its ill odour with the country was the close connection of its leaders, Fox and Sheridan—neither of them men of a high moral reputation—with the Prince of Wales. For the young prince's dissolute habits, wanton thriftlessness, and unfilial conduct towards his father rendered him a byword among right-minded men. Yet the only hope of the Whigs returning to office lay in the help of the younger George. He had promised to dismiss Pitt and call Fox to office if ever he were able, and when in 1788 his father was stricken down with a temporary fit of insanity, it seemed that he might be able to carry out his design. But the king recovered before his son had been formally named regent, and the Whigs lost their opportunity.
Pitt and foreign trade.
The early years of Pitt's domination were a period of active legislation. He took in hand many schemes, and brought most of them to a successful end. His enlightened views on Free Trade were shown by a commercial treaty with France which took off many prohibitive duties, and much increased the commerce between the two countries (1786). He also attempted to remove all trade restrictions between England and Ireland, but was foiled by the factious Irish parliament, which refused to ratify the terms which he offered. Smuggling he succeeded in reducing to a low ebb, by lessening the exorbitant duties on tea and spirits; so that the excess of profit on smuggled goods was no longer large enough to tempt men to incur the risk of capture.
Domestic reforms.
We find Pitt abolishing the shocking scandals of public executions at Tyburn, supporting measures for the abolition of the Slave Trade, repealing most of the ancient legislation against Romanists, and opening the bar and the army to them. He turned the ancient punishment of being sold into slavery on a tropical plantation, which had hitherto been the lot of convicts, into the comparatively mild form of transportation to Botany Bay, the penal settlement in Australia established in 1788 as our first possession in that continent.
The Canada Bill.
Of wise and liberal dealing with the colonies Pitt set an example, which has ever since been followed, in his Canada Bill of 1790. This measure gave a liberal grant of responsible government to that great colony, where so many of the exiled loyalists from the United States had settled down after the war. But perhaps the most important of all the measures of the years 1783-1793 were those dealing with India. Pitt had to face, not only the problems which had called forth Fox's India Bill, but some further difficulties of a personal kind.