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.
Jan. 19, 1744.
On the vote of 393,773l. 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]
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 200,000l. 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 theJan. 1744. 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.'