Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections

by Earl of Archibald Philip Primrose Rosebery

It is not worth while to follow this local squabble further, except to notice the singular atmosphere of jobbery with which it was surrounded. By a job, it was alleged, Lord Chief Justice Baldwin, having purchased the manor of Aylesbury in the reign of Henry VIII., had transferred the assizes from Buckingham to Aylesbury. By another job a judge who was a native of Buckingham had managed that the summer assizes should be always held at Buckingham while he lived. 'The arrantest job,' cried Stanhope. 'One of the worst sort of jobs,' echoed Potter, who divided jobs into two species, one laudable and the other infamous, declaring this to be one of the latter kind. Lee also called it a private job of the most infamous kind. Articulate Buckinghamshire was indeed unanimous against the Bill. But the Grenvilles were now powerful with all the insolence of power, and the Government smiled silently on their enterprise; though Nugent said they could only have done so from weariness of political serenity, and the wish to invite catastrophe. So the Bill was carried, and the job, whatever its exact denomination may have been, lasted for nearly a century.[184] But the debate, as will be seen, is significant because it shows the resentment which had long been growing, but which was now openly displayed against Cobham's aggressive and ambitious group.

We do not again hear Pitt's voice till 1749, when he vindicated the proposal of the Government to pay to Glasgow ten thousand pounds to reimburse the city in some degree for what the occupation of the Jacobites had cost it. This of course was an official speech and of no permanent interest.[185] He had to prove that the case of Glasgow stood by itself, and that there was no analogy between this and those of other towns which made the same claim. Two of his points are incidentally worthy of remark. The first is that it was the whole tenor of Glasgow's conduct since the Reformation which had drawn upon it the resentment of the Jacobites; the second, that if this payment were not made, and made promptly, Glasgow must be ruined. He told, too, a story which merits preservation. When there were rumours in 1688 of the coming of William III. with 30,000 men, an adherent of James II. made light of the matter; when it was said that the prince was coming with 20,000 he began to be alarmed; but when he heard that the expeditionary force numbered only 14,000 he cried, 'We are undone: an army of 30,000 men could not conquer England. But no man would come here with only 14,000 unless he were sure of finding a great many traitors among ourselves.'[186]

In 1750 there is a faint echo of Pitt's voice in a discussion on the annual Mutiny Bill, at least the only echo in the recorded debates, for we learn from two letters of Pitt's to George Grenville that there had been other long and troublesome discussions in which he had had officially to bear much of the burden.[187] Colonel Townshend brought forward the case of non-commissioned officers who had been broke or reduced to the ranks without any cause assigned. Some of these, he said, were waiting at the bar as he spoke. He proposed a clause for preventing this abuse, and forbidding these punishments except under sentence of a court-martial. Pitt took the line, truly enough, that if soldiers were on every occasion to bring their complaints against their officers to the House for redress there would be an end to all discipline; and proceeded in the tone of a Paymaster-General to declare that the business of the House was to consider the requisite number of the forces and to grant money for their payment, but that the conduct of the army or complaints against one another were solely within the province of the King or those commissioned by His Majesty.[188] This need not detain us. About the same time, Lord Egmont, who now represented the Prince of Wales in the House of Commons, an able man not without incredible absurdities, brought forward a mischievous motion with regard to Dunkirk. The question which he raised was whether the French had demolished the fortifications erected during the late war, as by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle they were bound to do; but he diverged into a general attack upon the provisions of that Treaty. Pelham answered him in a speech of remarkable candour. Lord Strange followed and brought up Pitt. He defended the peace, which indeed was not difficult, in a speech eminently discreet, ministerial, and conciliatory. No one could discover in it any germ of the policy he was destined afterwards to pursue with such triumphant success. But he cast an interesting light on the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. 'If there be any secret in the late affairs of Europe,' he said, 'it is in the question how it was possible for our ministers to obtain so good a peace as they did. For I must confess that when the French laid siege to Maestricht in the beginning of 1748, I had such a gloomy prospect of affairs that I thought it next to impossible to preserve our friends the Dutch from the imminent ruin they were then threatened with, or to maintain the present Emperor upon the imperial throne.'[189] Though he had thus already spoken, he wound up the debate for the Ministry, and did so with equal discretion.

This was in February 1750. He seems to have spoken no more that session, but in August Pelham wrote to his brother: 'I think him the most able and useful man we have among us, truly honourable and strictly honest. He is as firm a friend to us as we can wish for, and a more useful oneAug. 3-14, 1750. does not exist.'[190] Such an eulogy, offered in confidence by a Prime Minister, a reticent, unemotional man, seems to us a great mark and epoch in Pitt's career. Not 'the most brilliant,' not 'the most eloquent,' not 'the most intrepid,' as we should have expected, but 'the most useful, able, and strictly honest.'

Pitt had earned this praise by exertions which were not visible to the outer world. It often happens that there is a member of Government whose merits do not appeal to the public, who is no orator, who passes no measures, whose conversation does not attract, and whose position in an administration is a puzzle to the outer world. And yet perhaps his colleagues regard him as invaluable. He is probably the peacemaker, the man who walks about dropping oil into the machinery, and preventing injurious friction. This had recently been Pitt's position. He had been diligently and unobtrusively trying to keep the Government together. This was not so easy as it would seem; for though the brothers Pelham had arranged it to their will when they ejected Carteret, the morbid and intolerable jealousies of Newcastle prevented any ease. Did other subjects of intrigue and irritation fail he would quarrel with his brother, for when all else was serene it would secretly chafe him that his junior should be in the first place and he only in the second. Henry himself, it may be noted, seems to have been both blameless and placable on these occasions, but naturally bored. The elder brother would begin whimpering and whining to Hardwicke, his prop and confidant. Hardwicke would soothe him as a sick baby is soothed, eventually his tears would be dried, and he would begin burrowing and intriguing in some other direction.

On this occasion the trouble arose over Bedford. Bedford had become Joint Secretary of State with Newcastle on the resignation of Chesterfield. Sandwich, a clever scapegrace, and Bedford's henchman, had been Newcastle's candidate for the office, while Henry Fox had been strongly supported by Pitt and others. Before offering it to Sandwich, it was thought well to make an honorary tender of the post to Bedford, in the belief that he would refuse it. Bedford, as sometimes happens on such occasions, had promptly accepted it; for six months as he said, but, as also happens, for as long as he could keep it, which was more than three years. The appointment was thus distasteful in its origin to Newcastle and became more irksome with experience. Bedford as a minister was indolent, and as a man was obstinate and unamiable to a singular degree. But it was not these drawbacks which attracted the malevolent attention of Newcastle. Bedford, no doubt, was difficult to work with, and Newcastle soon wished to be rid of him. But it was when Bedford became well with the Court, with the King and with Princess Amelia, for whom Newcastle had once affected to feel something more tender than friendship, with the Duke of Cumberland and Lady Yarmouth, that Newcastle's hatred passed the bounds of moderation and almost of sanity. Pelham, who knew the parliamentary power of Bedford and who was anxious not to alienate it, was reluctant to take up his brother's dispute; so Newcastle promptly quarrelled with him. Pitt intervened. Had he been blindly ambitious, he would have welcomed a schism which might have produced a much greater position for himself. But he saw that a quarrel between the brethren would break up the Ministry; and that such a destruction would involve grave consequences, difficult to calculate, and possibly the resuscitation of Carteret in the first place. Moreover, though on the whole he sided with Newcastle, as Fox sided with Pelham, he could not but be aware of the priceless merits of Pelham as a party manager, as one who allayed animosities, and as one who kept the peace. Pelham, in writing to Newcastle, affects to diminish the value of Pitt's intervention, as he wishes to attribute the renewal of harmony to 'natural affection.' But an impartial judgment comes to a different conclusion. Natural affection had not prevented discord, and was insufficient to produce reconciliation. It is at all times an indifferent political cement. But the exertions of an independent colleague such as Pitt could not be overestimated. There exists a long and earnest letter of July 13, 1750, from Pitt to Newcastle, too long and too tedious to quote, but which is both tactful and energetic, though in his worst style of winding verbosity. 'I don't hazard much,' he wrote, 'in venturing to prophesy that two brothers who love one another, and two ministers essentially necessary to each other, will never suffer themselves to be divided further than the nearest friends by difference of opinion or even little ruffles of temper may occasionally be. Give me leave,' he continues, 'to suggest a doubt. May not frequent reproaches upon one subject gall and irritate a mind not conscious, intentionally at least, of giving cause?' and so forth.[191] He concludes all this with warm eulogies on Newcastle's conduct of foreign affairs, and soothes and flatters the fretful duke with something like sympathetic regard. He or 'natural affection' is successful, for, a week afterwards, he writes a brief note on another subject, which ends thus: 'I am glad to note that the understanding between you and Mr. Pelham, for which I had fears, is re-established.'[192] It is pleasant thus to catch a glimpse of Pitt as a loyal colleague, strenuously patching up differences; not less pleasant to see him pushing the claims of his rival, Fox, to be Secretary of State. This is a new human, and attractive aspect.

The termination of the Bedford transaction is worth noticing for more reasons than one. The King, though he was at least indifferent to Bedford, declined to remove him at the instance of Newcastle, and was probably pleased to have the opportunity of thwarting the tiresome minister who had been the inseparable bane and necessity of his life. Pelham would not intervene directly for other reasons. A characteristic and tortuous method was therefore adopted. The King cared nothing for Sandwich, who was necessary to Bedford. So the brothers suggested the removal of Sandwich, to which the King promptly acceded, and Bedford, as they had foreseen, instantly resigned.

Two points are notable with regard to the vacancy thus caused. The Prime Minister announced that the nomination of Bedford's successor must be left to the sole nomination of the King, with which he would not interfere in any way, but insisted that he must be a peer.[193] The main reason for this strange limitation seems to have been that there were fierce but dormant rivalries in the House of Commons, and that an appointment of one of the aspirants would call uncontrollable passions into activity. Both Secretaries of State must therefore be peers, a principle which seems strange to a later generation. The King, therefore, nominated Lord Holdernesse, of whom the Prime Minister merely observes, 'I cannot possibly see him in the light of Secretary of State.'[194] Holdernesse however is appointed, and reappears more than once in this accidental character.

But Pelham, though he tried to take this affair easily, was near the end of his patience. He was worn out by the perpetual exigencies and caprice of his brother and colleague, for Newcastle was in truth his partner in the Premiership, as well as by the explosive rivalries of Pitt and Fox, which any spark might ignite. Chained to an intolerable nincompoop, with two such subordinates ready to fly at each other's throats or his, and conscious of failing health, he began to long for liberty and repose. At the end of March 1751 died the second Earl of Orford, and thus vacated the rich sinecure office of Auditor of the Exchequer, worth at least eight thousand a year. Pelham, it is said, intimated his wish to retire from active business with this noble provision, but the King would not let him go.