CHAPTER XIII.
On the meeting of Parliament in January 1751, Lord Egmont raised on the Address the question of the peace with Spain. Pitt in reply delivered a speech of singular interest, for he disarms criticism by frankly avowing the errors of his 'young and sanguine' days, to employ his own epithets. After pointing out that the Spaniards could not be expected to give up the assertion of their right of search any more than we would renounce our claim to the right of free navigation in the American seas, he proceeded: 'I must therefore conclude, Sir, that "no search" is a stipulation which it is ridiculous to insist on, because it is impossible to be obtained. And after having said this I expect to be told that upon a former occasion I concurred heartily in a motion for an address not to admit of any treaty of peace with Spain unless such a stipulation as this should be first obtained as a preliminary thereto. I confess I did, Sir, because I then thought it right, but I was then very young and sanguine. I am now ten years older, and have had time to consider things more coolly. From that consideration I am convinced that we may as well ask for a free and open trade with all the Spanish settlements in America, as ask that none of our ships shall be visited or stopt, though sailing within a bowshot of their shore; and within that distance our ships must often sail in order to have the benefit of what they call the land breeze.' 'I am also convinced that all addresses from this House during the course of a war, for prescribing terms of peace, are in themselves ridiculous; because the turns or chances of war are generally so sudden and often so little expected that it is impossible to foresee or foretell what terms of peace it may be proper to insist on. And as the Crown has the sole power of making peace or war, every such address must certainly be an encroachment upon the King's prerogative, which has always hitherto proved to be unlucky. For these reasons I believe I should never hereafter concur in any such address, unless made so conditional as to leave the Crown at full liberty to agree to such terms of peace as may at the time be thought most proper, which this of "no search" can never be, unless Spain should be brought so low as to give us a carte blanche; and such a low ebb it is not our interest to bring that nation to, nor would the other Powers of Europe suffer it, should we attempt it.'[195]
This is a new milestone. 'Those who endeavour to quote from my former speeches, the outpourings of my hot and fractious youth, are hereby warned off. I have sown my wild oats; henceforward I am to be regarded as a prudent and sagacious statesman.' This was the real purport of this speech, divested of the necessary circumlocutions. A statesman who has been an active politician in his youth usually has to utter some such warning and repentant note in his maturity.
In 1751 we find Pitt delivering another speech which marks a further distance from his unregenerate days. At this time, for reasons which we can now scarcely discern, but which originated with George II., who considered that the peace and safety of his electorate depended on a secure succession to the Empire being vested in the House of Austria, our foreign policy was concentrated on securing the election of Maria Theresa's son, a boy of ten years old, as King of the Romans, and so heir to the Empire. This strange line of action was absurd enough to be congenial to Newcastle, who soon adopted it, called it his darling child, and grudged its paternity to the King.[196] Pelham had reluctantly to follow, only deprecating expenditure as far as possible. For this we slaved and negotiated and subsidised, in the faith that should the Emperor die without a King of the Romans being ready to succeed him, a war must infallibly ensue. This hypothesis was at least doubtful; but, in any case, we expended our energies in vain. Prussia, and France as guarantor of the Treaty of Westphalia, declared the election of a minor to be contrary to the fundamental laws of the Empire, and prevailed. There is the less reason to deplore our failure, as it is not known what we should have gained by success. Austria, which was alone to profit, threw the coldest water on the project. The obvious flaw of the policy appears to have been that the receipt of subsidies so entirely conflicted with the electoral oath as to form an insuperable bar of honour preventing any elector who received them from voting for our candidate. We were in fact to bribe those who could not vote if they accepted our bribe, for an object flagrantly illegal, on behalf of a Power which scouted our assistance. We offered to bribe the Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Saxony. To the Elector of Bavaria we agreed by treaty to pay 40,000l. a year, the sum to be made up by Holland and ourselves. It was this last treaty which Pitt found himself called upon to defend, and his speech was a broad defence of the whole system andFeb. 22, 1751. principle of subsidies. 'Surely,' he cried, 'it is more prudent in us to grant subsidies to foreign princes for keeping up a number of troops for the service of the common cause of Europe, than by keeping up such numerous armies of our own here at home, as might be of the most dangerous consequence to our constitution.'[197] This must have seemed strange doctrine to those who remembered his former harangues. But in this speech he was to exceed himself in superfluous candour. He had said that there was a good prospect of a firm and lasting peace, and then strangely wandered off to the consequent prospect of economy at home, 'perhaps by a different method of collecting the revenue. I am not afraid to mention the word Excise.[198] I was not in the House when the famous Excise scheme was brought upon the carpet. If I had I should probably have been induced by the general but groundless clamour to have joined with those who opposed it. But I have seen so much of the deceit of popular clamours, and the artful surmises upon which they are founded, and I am so fully convinced of the benefits we should reap by preventing all sorts of unfair trade, that if ever any such scheme be again offered whilst I have a seat in this assembly, I believe I shall be as heartily for it as I am for the motion now under our consideration.'[199]
It is scarcely possible to conceive a more deliberate and scornful repudiation of responsibility for any previous opinions that he may have maintained than is expressed in this passage. He goes out of his way to tender an unnecessary support to the detested Excise scheme, which at the same time he declares that he should certainly have opposed had he been in the House when it was introduced. The middle-aged Pitt seemed never to tire of trampling savagely on the young Pitt, even wantonly, as on this occasion. There is, indeed, more justice than is usual in Horace Walpole's taunts when he says of Pitt, 'Where he chiefly shone was in exposing his own conduct; having waded through the most notorious apostasy in politics, he treated it with an impudent confidence that made all reflections upon him poor and spiritless when worded by any other men.' This is one way of putting it. A preferable and, in our judgment, a truer way is that Pitt deliberately chose this method of public atonement for past recklessness, and as an avowal that he had learned and ripened by experience. He recanted at large, so as to obliterate every vestige of his heedless and censorious youth. It is better for the country and for themselves that statesmen should thus do penance than that they should continue to offer sacrifices of what they see to be right to the somewhat egotistical pagod of their personal consistency. Honourable consistency is necessary to retain the confidence of the country; but there is also a dishonourable consistency in concealing and suppressing conscientious changes of judgment.
Though, as we have seen, his defence of the principle of subsidies seemed unbounded, it was more limited in practice, and Pitt fixed his limit at the Bavarian contribution. In 1752 Pelham had to move a subsidy to the Elector of Saxony, King of Poland. This had been negotiated by Newcastle, but was so strongly disapproved by Pelham that he even threatened to second the opposition to it. However, he was persuaded by the argument most urgent and sometimes most fatal to prime ministers, that the apparent unity of the Government must at any cost be maintained, to withdraw his opposition and move the vote. Old Horatio Walpole, though he voted with Pelham, spoke warmly against him, and Pitt supported Walpole's argument, though privately and not in speech. He felt, it may be presumed, that it was not for him to be more of a Pelhamite than Pelham himself.
With Pelham, however, he had felt constrained to be at open variance in the previous year, about the time of the Bavarian subsidy. The Minister had moved a reduction of our seamen from 10,000 to 8000. Pitt declared a preference for 10,000; and Potter, whom we have seen in the Buckingham and Aylesbury affair, a clever, worthless fellow, who had now become an ally of Pitt, opposed the reduction. Pelham seemed to acquiesce, but Lord Hartington, an enthusiastic Pelhamite, who was hereafter to be for a while Prime Minister under Pitt, forced a division, in order to show Pitt that the Whigs would not support him against Pelham. Pitt's immediate following on this occasion seems to have consisted only of Lyttelton, the three Grenvilles, Conway, and eight others. There was, it is to be observed, nothing factious in this; the opinion of Pitt was natural, and not distasteful to Pelham. Moreover, on the report Pitt made a conciliatory speech, marking in the strongest manner his regret at differing with Pelham, declaring that it was his fear of Jacobitism alone which made him prefer the larger number, and expressing his concern at seeing our body of trained seamen, whom he called our standing army, reduced. He and his little following, or rather cousinhood, vied with each other in loyal eulogies of the Prime Minister.