As to the second condition, it was inevitable sooner or later, and took place in the form least offensive to the Sovereign. But the ministerial crisis and the desperate venture with Bath and Carteret testify to the formidable position of Pitt and to the equal aversion of the Sovereign. In no less an instance than Pitt's could this repulsion have been overcome.
Pitt himself had begged that his pretensions to the Secretaryship at War should not act as an obstacle to an accommodation with the King, for there was evidently nothing so repugnant to the Sovereign. The King had said first that he would not have him in that office at any price, then that he would use him ill if he had it, then that he would not admit him to his presence to do the business of the office if he had it.[176]
There is, if the matter be candidly considered, no just cause of reproach in this obstinacy. George II. was a gentleman, and a brave gentleman. The Hanoverians were his own people, of his own blood and language. Hanover was the home in which he had been brought up, the paradise to which he always looked longingly from his splendid exile in England. The King's personal courage Pitt had publicly and wantonly aspersed; Hanover and the Hanoverians he had held up to every form of public hatred and contempt. One cannot be surprised that George II. would have nothing to say to him except under compulsion, and refused, as between one gentleman and another, to have personal relations with him. As a constitutional ruler his duty was another matter, but he would not perform a duty so odious except in the last resort. He ignored Pitt even after Pitt had entered office. It was four years after Pitt became Paymaster that Newcastle, as the result of long pressure or intrigue, induced the King even to speak to him. This was considered a triumph for the ministry.[177]
Mar. 6, 1746.
Perhaps the Pelhams understood the King's feelings. Pitt did without doubt. The King was not now pressed beyond endurance, and Pitt was content for the moment with the joint Vice Treasurership of Ireland, in which his partner was Walpole's son-in-law, Cholmondeley. The office was understood to be lucrative, but he was not destined to hold this sinecure for more than a few weeks. He had scarce time to ask for exemption from the land tax of four shillings in the pound which was charged on his salary for not residing in Ireland, or for admission to the Irish Privy Council, both customary requests.[178] Two months after he was gazetted Winnington died, and Pitt succeeded him in the rich office of Paymaster-General. This is a Privy Councillor's place, so Pitt had to be admitted to the King's presence to take the oath. The King shed tears as Pitt knelt before him. A constitutional Sovereign has these bitter moments.
During the interval between the two appointments Pitt had to pay a heavy fee for the first. A vote was demanded for 18,000 Hanoverians to be taken into British pay. Cobham's young men, one of whom, afterwards Lord Temple, 'had declared in the House that he would seal it with his blood that he never would give his vote for a Hanoverian,' voted the money in silence. Pitt however was not content to play so abject a part. He stood boldly forth, speaking, said Pelham, his new chief, with the dignity of Wyndham, the wit of Pulteney, and the knowledge blended with judgment of Walpole. Walpole's son thought differently: Pitt, he declared, added 'impudence to profligacy; but no criminal at the Place de Grève was ever so racked as he was by Dr. Lee, a friend of Lord Granville, who gave him the question both ordinary and extraordinary.' Probably both accounts are true. Lee was one of the Prince of Wales's men, and Pitt's relations with his late master were strained to the point of rupture by his acceptance of office.
CHAPTER XII.
Pitt was now to inhabit the Pay Office, and he gave notice to Ann, without any previous quarrel so far as we know, that they would henceforth live apart. In any case, Pitt's accession to office thus enabled him to put a convenient period to what had probably become a fretting and irksome arrangement; but Walpole notes at this time that there is gossip about 'the new Paymaster's ménage,' possibly Grattan's tradition of 'This House to Let.' This sort of chit-chat is, however, the inevitable accompaniment of a man in Pitt's position and need not again be dwelt upon. Two of his early patrons also quarrelled with him: the Prince of Wales and Cobham. But Pitt, for the moment at any rate, could afford to do without either. A more delicate question required his attention. There were habitual practices in the Pay Office which brought in immense profits to the Paymaster. It was the custom of that official to take poundage on all subsidies paid to foreign princes, and to use the great balances at his credit for his own purposes of speculation. As to this second method Pitt had no doubts, and rejected the idea. As to the first he seems, on entering upon office, to have consulted Pelham.[179] Pelham replied that Winnington had taken these perquisites, but that he himself when Paymaster had not; Pitt could do as he chose. 'Such a manner of stating it left scarce an option in any but the basest of mankind,' remarks Camelford with characteristic bitterness. Pitt at any rate did not hesitate, and refused to take a farthing beyond his salary, which, in truth, was splendid enough. But the indirect profits of the Paymastership, which earlier in the century had founded the dukedom of Chandos and the palace of Canons, and which later endowed the peerage of Henry Fox and the glories of his exquisite residence at Kensington, besides furnishing great fortunes for his graceless sons to squander at the gaming-table, were, as Dr. Johnson would have said, beyond the dreams of avarice. It was held in that day of loose political morality to be noble, if not unique, for a man with a patrimony of a hundred a year and a legacy of ten thousand pounds to refuse to receive such profits.[180]