But all this is beyond our narrative. At this time all these ambitions are concealed, there is nothing visible but cordiality, the genial flow of soul, and brotherly love. Pitt's early letters to George Grenville are among the easiest and most human that he ever wrote: he wrote nothing more unaffectedly tender than two letters he sent in September and October 1742, to George, then abroad for his health. Richard and George Grenville, Lyttelton and William Pitt, with their set, form one of those engaging companionships of youth, when high spirits, warm affections, and the dayspring of life combine to animate a friendship without guile or suspicion.
Then come separation, marriage, new interests, new ambitions, and the paths diverge, perhaps till sunset. So it was with these young men. They all at times quarrelled, even the kindly Lyttelton was driven to separation. Later, again, they all came together again in some fashion or another, with the exception, perhaps, of George, whose obstinate self-love when wounded could never be healed.
But now all was dawn and blossom and smiles. The friends are full of banter. Their politics are half a frolic. Life is all before them. Its conditions will harden them presently, and they will wrangle and snarl, and have their quarrels and huffs. But that is not yet; not even a coming shadow is visible. Still, even now, it is necessary to indicate the nature and consequences of Pitt's absorption into the cousinhood.
CHAPTER VI.
It is here that his public career begins. His lot was cast in stirring times. For the year of his entry into Parliament was the fourteenth of Walpole's long administration, and it was not difficult to see menacing cracks in the structure. The Minister himself seems to have been aware that his position was critical; and at the general election in the previous year he had spared no exertions to secure a majority. In his own county of Norfolk, 10,000l. had been spent in support of his candidates without averting their defeat: from his own private means he is said, no doubt with gross exaggeration, to have expended no less than 60,000l. Figures like these, however swollen by rumour, denote the intensity of the struggle. But in spite of all, his losses were considerable. Even Scotland, in those days the hungry dependant of all Governments, was shaken in her allegiance. And, though he gained the victory, the toughness of the contest betokened clearly that his stability was seriously impaired, and that the country was weary of his domination.
For this there were many obvious causes. One, of course, was the universal unpopularity of the Excise scheme. It was also one of the moments in our history when the country is uneasily conscious of weakness and possible humiliation abroad, and when the silent and passive interests of peace weigh lightly in the balance against the smarting burden of wounded self-respect. But the most operative cause lay in Walpole himself.
There is no enigma about Walpole. He sprang from near a score of generations of Norfolk squires who had spent six hundred years in healthy obscurity and the simple pleasures of the country. None of them apparently had brains, or the need of them. From these he inherited a frame hardy and robust, and that taste for the sports of the field that never left him. He had also the advantage of being brought up as a younger son to work, and thus he gained that self-reliant and pertinacious industry which served him so well through long years of high office. From the beginning to the end he was primarily a man of business. Had he not been a politician it cannot be doubted that he would have been a great merchant or a great financier. And, though his lot was cast in politics, a man of business he essentially remained. This is not to say that he was not a consummate parliamentary debater, for that he must have been. But it is to suggest that the key to Walpole's character as Prime Minister lies in his instincts and qualifications as a man of business. His main tendency was not, as with Chesterfield and Carteret and Bolingbroke, towards high statesmanship. His first object was to carry on the business of the country in a business spirit, as economically and as peacefully as possible. His chief preoccupation apart from this was the keeping out of the rival house of Stuart, which would not have employed the firm of Walpole and the Whigs to keep their accounts. It is quite possible that as a patriot he may have also dreaded the probable evils of the Stuart dynasty. But the first reason is amply sufficient. The corruption of which he was undoubtedly guilty, but of which he was by no means the inventor, he perhaps considered as the commission due to customers; or else he may have argued, 'these men have to be bought by somebody, let us do it in a business-like way.' His merciless crushing of any rivals was simply the big firm crushing competition, a familiar feature of commerce. His carrying on a war against Spain in spite of his own conscientious disapproval can only be satisfactorily explained on the same hypothesis. The nation would have war: well, if it must, he could carry it on more cheaply, and limit its mischief more effectually than any other contractor. Moreover, Walpole had all along been the merchants' man. He had given them peace and wealth. Now for commercial purposes they wanted war and he had to gratify them. They had been the main backers of his administration, the deprivation of their support would have left him bare; so when they turned round he had to follow, with scarcely the appearance of leadership.
In these days we should undoubtedly condemn any statesman who declared a war of which he disapproved. Lord Aberdeen morbidly and unjustly accused himself of this offence, and refused to be comforted. That is the other extreme to Walpole's position. But we must remember the political morality of those times. Was there then living a statesman who would have acted differently? From this sweeping question we cannot except Pitt, who was bitterly denouncing Walpole for his pacific attitude, and had afterwards to confess that Walpole had been right.