Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections

by Earl of Archibald Philip Primrose Rosebery

This consideration leads us to what is the best, and probably the true, explanation of this voluntary eclipse: that in taking office he was taking leave of his youth and of his past, and embarking on a new phase of his career. Up to this time he had, like a predatory animal, lived wholly on attack, and had given no thought to consistency, and little to his future. He had only been a rattling politician, determined to make his way, thinking only of the game, and of how to develop and display his powers of oratory. He had been content to adopt Cobham's enemies as his own, and had tried on them the temper of his virgin sword, without much caring who they were or why he attacked them, so long as they were sufficiently prominent to give notoriety to their assailant. His course had been one of brilliant recklessness and of striking eloquence; but at bottom it had been nothing but faction. There have been many such swashbucklers in our history, and there will be many more. But it is rare that, as in Pitt's case, they develop into something supreme. With Pitt these extravagancies had only been the frolics of genius. By burying himself in the sedateness and reticence of office, Pitt sought to break with his dazzling indiscretions, and mature himself for statesmanship. He retired behind a screen in order to change his dress. That, one may infer, was his design; that, certainly, was the effect.

To make an end of this topic, one may ask why Pitt, so fertile of invective himself, was not the subject of execration when he joined the Court. Great men no doubt may commit faults, even crimes, with impunity, for the lustre of their achievements throws a shadow over their errors. In such men it is recognised that all is usually on a colossal scale, deeds and misdeeds alike. As they are capable of gigantic successes, they are also capable of stupendous blunders. This is true of Pitt's whole career, but it does not explain the facility with which he was now able, before he had his famous administration to his credit, to subside into an easy placeman and vindicate the measures which he had previously denounced. A few lampoons were of course launched at so tempting an object, but he was not made a conspicuous butt. Nor does he seem to have lost, or if he did he soon regained, the ear and confidence of the people. He had at all periods rare powers of recovery. But in this case the fact is not difficult to explain. In the first place it must be borne in mind that what he did was the ordinary thing to do. Again, his personal friends, and even those who had intercourse with him, were impressed by his character and believed in his integrity. Then the refusal of the indirect profits counted for much, it gave an air of austere virtue to a proceeding otherwise questionable. Again, there was no particular object to be gained by attacking him. Who indeed was there to attack him? No one thought it worth their while to subsidise Grub Street for the purpose of throwing dirt on a silent Paymaster, and few dared attack him to his face. He had already inspired the House of Commons with that awe of him which subsisted and increased so long as he remained there. To deliver a philippic against Pitt was no joking matter; it required a man with iron nerves who was reckless of retribution. Lee, as we have seen, had attempted one, but, in spite of Horace Walpole's eulogy, he does not seem to have repeated the experiment. Hampden also attacked him, as we shall see, in terms which would have led to a duel had not the Speaker interposed his authority. Fox and Grenville withstood him doggedly in after years. Barré, when an obscure Irish adventurer, tried an attack not altogether without success, but did not care to renew the attempt, and became, in fact, Pitt's devoted follower. But these instances must be considered as singularly rare when it is remembered how tempting a mark was presented by Pitt's career, how frank and direct was the language of Parliament, and how generous the potations which flushed its debates. Murray, Pitt's contemporary and his equal in sheer ability, cowered before him; cowered with loathing, but cowered.[181] Pitt was already surrounded, and as years went on completely encompassed, with an armour and atmosphere of terror which rendered him almost impregnable to personal collisions throughout his career in the House of Commons. Some who had nothing to lose and everything to gain baited him from time to time, but they were always tossed back with damage. Such persistent assailants as he had, and they only appeared in force long afterwards, were mainly anonymous.

Whatever the cause may have been, Pitt, from his accession to office in 1746, remains in obscurity and almost in silence (so far as the records testify, though it is evident that these are extremely imperfect) for eight long years, at the potent period of life which ranges from thirty-eight to forty-six, the age at which Napoleon closed his career, but which was yet two years earlier than the commencement of Pitt's. During this long eclipse of ambition and stormy vigour he gives but few signs of life for the most diligent chronicler to note. But he had no sooner been appointed Paymaster than an incident took place which seemed to point to a sudden dawn of royal favour. The Duke of Cumberland's achievements in Scotland were to be rewarded by a pension of 40,000l. a year, and the King expressed a wish that the motion to this effect should be made by Pitt. It is, however, evident that this was not a mark of royal affection, but rather of a royal desire to utilise the new acquisition to the Government, and in a way so little congenial as to make Pitt feel the collar on his neck. The King may have wished to display his captive in chains. But Cumberland, who did not love Pitt, declined this mark of regard, and Pelham fulfilled the honorary duty.

Cumberland had earned this grant, as well as his name of 'the Butcher,' by his victory at Culloden, and the barbarity with which he had followed up his success. Fortunately for him, it never occurred to a grateful country to draw up a debtor and creditor account as between the nation and the Duke. Had it done so, there would have been no grant; for his defeats, both in number and in importance, represented something much more considerable than this easy and solitary triumph, which would have been amply compensated by Swift's 'frankincense and earthern pots to burn it in' at 4l. 10s., with 'a bull for sacrifice' at 8l. However, mingling vengeance with gratitude, Parliament now plunged itself with zest into the horrors of the trials of some adventurous or bankrupt gentlemen who had followed Charles Edward, so that Pitt, even had he so desired, had no opportunity of breaking silence. No speech of his is recorded, indeed, till 1748.

In the meantime he had been compelled to exchange Old Sarum for the ministerial borough of Seaford, one of the Cinque Ports; for Old Sarum was no longer tenable. The lord of Old Sarum, his brother Thomas, was a liege servant of the Prince of Wales, who was now once more in violent opposition, and who indeed ran two candidates, Lord Middlesex, a member of his household, and Mr. Gage, the sitting member, at Seaford in opposition to the ministerial men, William Pitt and William Hay. This proceeding sufficiently indicates the violence and completeness of the rupture between Pitt and his former master, brought about by acceptance of office. So tense indeed was the contest that Newcastle posted down to Seaford in person, held a levee of the voters whom he wooed with copious solicitation and refreshment, and during the poll sat by the returning officer to overawe the corrupt and limited constituency. He was victorious; Lord Middlesex exchanging seats with Pitt, for after this his defeat he was brought in by Thomas Pitt for Old Sarum. Newcastle's proceedings furnished matter for a petition to the House of Commons. This Pitt treated with contempt and 'turned into a mere jest,'[182] but Potter, son of the Primate, a clever scapegrace, of whom we shall hearNov. 20, 1747. again, spoke vigorously in support of the petition. This, however, had little chance against the argument of a compact parliamentary majority, which rejected it by 247 to 96. But it is strange to find Pitt treating purity of election with ridicule: all the more strange when we remember that seven years afterwards he delivered one of his most famous speeches in awful rebuke of the same levity on the same subject. 'Was the dignity of the House of Commons on so sure foundations that they might venture themselves to shake it by jokes on electoral bribery?' It was thus that the House might dwindle into a little assembly serving only 'to register the arbitrary edicts of one too powerful a subject.' It was the arbitrary interference of the same too powerful subject in a parliamentary election that Pitt was now screening with jesting scorn. But Pitt thought little of consistency, and he might well have forgotten for the moment his earlier performance, when seeing and seizing the opportunity for a speech which placed him on a moral elevation above the House of Commons.

In 1748 we find him intervening comically enough in an affair, suspiciously like a local job, which affected his friends, the Grenvilles, and which proved the bitter and jealous animosity with which they were regarded.

Hitherto the summer assizes for Buckinghamshire had been held at Buckingham, and the winter at Aylesbury; but suddenly the summer assizes had also been transferred to Aylesbury. The reason seems to have been simple enough; for the gaol being at Aylesbury, prisoners had to be transferred thence and back again when the assizes were at Buckingham. Richard Grenville (afterwards Lord Temple), however, for obvious reasons, took up the cudgels for Buckingham, which was the close neighbour and borough of Stowe, and brought in a Bill to enact that the summer assizes should be held at that town. All Bucks rushed into the conflict, and as is generally the case in a local affair, the debate was extraordinarily diverting. Richard Grenville, Sir William Stanhope of Eythrope, the brother of Chesterfield, and afterwards a brother of the famous or infamous Medmenham fraternity, Potter again, who had now become secretary to the Prince of Wales, who was soon to be member for Aylesbury, probably for his services on this occasion, and also a future monk of Medmenham, George Grenville, the solemn figure of Pitt, Robert Nugent (whose daughter married George Grenville's son), Lee of Hartwell, were all visible and ardent in the thick of the battle. Henry Fox, then a friend of Pitt, was the only outside member who intervened, and then with a sort of puzzled surprise at the fury of the combatants. Sir William Stanhope, who led the attack on Buckingham, made a speech which was specially piquant. He began: 'Sir, if I did not think I could prove that this Bill is the arrantest job that ever was brought to Parliament, I should not give the House the trouble of hearing me.' He attributed the Bill to the fact that the County of Bucks had not elected two Grenvilles as their members. 'Here let me condole with that unhappy, rather that blinded, county who neglected to choose two gentlemen of such power and interest that I am persuaded they will have more votes in this House to-day than they would have had at the General Election in the whole county in question if they had done it the honour to offer themselves for representatives.' After this bitter exordium he proceeded: 'It is the power and interest of these gentlemen that I am afraid of, not of their arguments;' with good reason, for though to posterity the claim of Aylesbury with its gaol will seem conclusive, the Bill was triumphantly carried. But Stanhope proceeded with an invective against Cobham's young patriots, so violent as to be checked by the Speaker. It is noteworthy as showing the jealousy and hostility with which their rise and power were regarded in the House, and so merits quotation:—

And to shew you, Sir, how sensible they are of the frivolousness of the latter, I could recapitulate such instances of intriguing for votes, as no man would believe who does not know those gentlemen. Conscious of the badness of their cause, they have employed every bad art to support it, and have retained so much of their former patriotism, as consisted in blackening their adversaries and acquiring auxiliaries. They have propagated such tales, that men have overlooked the improbabilities, while they wondered at the foolishness of them; and they have solicited the attendance of their friends, and of their friends' friends, with as much importunity as if their power itself was tottering, not the wanton exercise of it opposed: the only aid they have failed to call in was reason, the natural but baffled enemy of their family: a family, Sir, possessed of every honour they formerly decried, fallen from every honour they formerly acquired: a family, Sir, who coloured over ambition with patriotism, disguised emptiness by noise, and disgraced every virtue by wearing them only for mercenary purposes: a family, Sir, who from being the most clamorous incendiaries against power and places, are possessed of more employments than the most comprehensive place-bill that ever was brought into parliament would include; and who, to every indignity offered to their royal master, have added that greatest of all, intrusion of themselves into his presence and councils; and who shew him what he has still farther to expect, by their scandalous ingratitude to his son; a family, Sir, raised from obscurity by the petulance of the times, drawn up higher by the insolence of their bribing kinsman, and supported by the timidity of two ministers, who, to secure their own persons from abuse have sacrificed their own party to this all-grasping family, the elder ones of which riot in the spoils of their treachery and places, and the younger....

At this point he was, not prematurely, called to order. Stanhope brought up Pitt, portentous but unconvincing, with perhaps a unique expression, for he addressed the Speaker as 'dear Sir.' 'They (the Grenvilles) desire the assizes may be sometimes held at Buckingham; the point he (Stanhope) espouses is that they should be always held at Aylesbury. Which, dear Sir, looks most like a monopoly?' Then he proceeds to defend the Grenvilles.

After so happy a beginning, he falls into a torrent of violent abuse on a whole family, founded on no reason in the world, but because that family is distinguished by the just rewards of their services to their king and country; and, in the heat of his resentment, he throws out things that are as unpardonably seditious as they are palpably absurd. He takes it for granted that men force themselves into a presence and into councils to which they have the honour to be called, and into which our Constitution renders it impossible for any to intrude. In the same breath he makes entering into a father's service an act of ingratitude to a son; and, without so much as pretending to assign either facts or reasons, he bestows the most low and infamous epithets upon characters that all other men mention with esteem. In a word, he forgot himself to such a degree that he pointed out men of birth and fortune, and in high stations, as if they were the most abandoned and profligate creatures in the universe, without parts, without morals, without shame, and who, if his description had in it the least tittle of truth, instead of being Members of Parliament, or admitted to the Privy Council, were fit only to be members of a society once famous by the name of the Hell-fire Club.[183]