Bath, March 10th, 1754.
Dear Lyttelton,—I am much obliged to you for your dispatch, and am highly satisfied with the necessary reserve you have kept with respect to the dispositions of yourself and friends. Indeed, the conjuncture itself, and more especially our peculiar situation, require much caution and measure in all our answers, in order to act like honest men, who determine to adhere to the public great object; as well as men who would not be treated like children. I am far from meaning to recommend a sullen, dark, much less a double conduct. All I mean is to lay down a plan to ourselves; which is, to support the King's Government in present, and maintain the Princess's authority and power in a future, contingency. As a necessary consequence of this system, I wish to see as little power in Fox's hands as possible, because he is incompatible with the main part, and indeed of the whole, of this plan; but I mean not to open myself to whoever pleases to sound my dispositions, with regard to persons especially, and by premature declarations deprive ourselves of the only chance we have of deriving any consideration to ourselves from the mutual fears and animosities of different factions in court: and expose ourselves to the resentment and malice in the closet of the one without stipulations or security for the good offices and weight of the other there in our favour.
But do I mean, then, an absolute reserve, which has little less than the air of hostility towards our friends (such as they are) at Court, or at least, bear too plainly the indications of intending a third party or flying squadron? By no means. Nothing would, in my poor judgment, be so unfit and dangerous for us. I would be open and explicit (but only on proper occasions) that, I was most willing to support his Majesty's Government upon such a proper plan as I doubted not his Majesty, by the advice of his Ministers, would frame; in order to supply, the best that may be, the irreparable loss the King has sustained in Mr. Pelham's death: in order to secure the King ease for his life and future security to his family and to the kingdom: that my regards to the ministers in being were too well known to need any declarations;' this and the like, which may be vary'd for ever, is answer enough to any sounder. As to any things said by Principals in personal conference, as that of the Chancellor with you, another manner of talking will be proper, though still conformable to the same private plan which you shall resolve to pursue. Professions of personal regard cannot be made too strongly; but as to matter, generals are to be answered with generals; particulars, if you are led into them, need not at all be shunn'd; and if treated with common prudence and presence of mind, can not be greatly used to a man's prejudice; if he says nothing that implies specific engagements, without knowing specifically what he is to trust to reciprocally. Within these limitations, it seems to me, that a man whose intentions are clear and right, may talk without putting himself at another's mercy or offending him by a dark and mysterious reserve.
I think it best to throw my answer to the Chancellor into a separate piece of paper, that you may send it to his lordship. I am sorry to be forced to answer in writing, because, not seeing the party, it is not possible to throw in necessary qualifications and additions or retractions, according to the impression things make.
As far as, my dear Lyttelton, you are so good to relate your several conversations upon the present situation, I highly applaud your prudence. I hope you neither have nor will drop a word of menace, and that you will always bear in mind that my personal connection with the Duke of Newcastle, has a peculiar circumstance,[236] which yours and that of your friends has not. One cannot be too explicit in conversing at this unhappy distance on matters of this delicate and critical nature. I will, therefore, commit tautology, and repeat what I said in my former dispatch, viz., that it enters not the least into my plans to intimate quitting the King's service; giving trouble, if not satisfied, to Government. The essence of it exists in this: attachment to the King's service, and zeal for the ease and quiet of his life, and stability and strength to future government under the Princess; this declared openly and explicitly to the ministers. The reserve I would use should be with regard to listing in particular subdivisions, and thereby not freeing persons from those fears which will alone quicken them to give us some consideration for their own sakes: but this is to be done negatively only, by eluding explicit declarations with regard to persons especially; but by intimations of a possibility of our following our resentments; for, indeed, dear Sir George, I am determined not to go into faction. Upon the whole, the mutual fears in Court open to our connexion some room for importance and weight, in the course of affairs: in order to profit by this situation, we must not be out of office: and the strongest argument of all to enforce that, is, that Fox is too odious to last for ever, and G. Grenville must be next nominated under any Government.
I am too lame to move.
Your ever affectionate,
W. Pitt.[237]
Then follows the apparent and ostensible letter to be shown to the Chancellor. It is from the nature of it artificial and need not be quoted in full. But it contains one remarkable passage in which Pitt claims credit for having renounced opposition and the accompanying popularity when he was convinced that there might be danger to the reigning family from his carrying it further. The assertion is striking and daring, and no doubt Pitt did join the Government while Charles Edward was still in arms.
Bath, March 11th, 1754.
My dear Sir George.—I beg you will be so good to assure my Lord Chancellor, in my name, of my most humble services and many very grateful acknowledgments for his Lordship's obliging wishes for my health.... I can never sufficiently express the high sense I have of the great honours of my Lord Chancellor's much too favourable opinion of his humble servant; but I am so truly and deeply conscious of so many of my wants in Parliament and out of it, to supply in the smallest degree this irreparable loss, that I can say with much truth were my health restored and his Majesty brought from the dearth of subjects to hear of my name for so great a charge, I should wish to decline the honour, even though accompany'd with the attribution of all the weight and strength which the good opinion and confidence of the master cannot fail to add to a servant; but under impressions in the Royal mind towards me, the reverse of these, what must be the vanity which would attempt it? These prejudices, however so successfully suggested and hitherto so unsuccessfully attempted to be removed, shall not abate my zeal for his Majesty's service, though they have so effectually disarmed me of all means of being useful to it. I need not suggest to his Lordship that consideration and weight in the House of Commons arises generally but from one of two causes—the protection and countenance of the Crown, visibly manifested by marks of Royal favour at Court, or from weight in the country, sometimes arising from opposition to the public measures. This latter sort of consideration it is a great satisfaction to me to reflect I parted with, as soon as I became convinced there might be danger to the family from pursuing opposition any further; and I need not say I have not had the honour to receive any of the former since I became the King's servant.... Perhaps some of my friends may not labour under all the prejudices that I do. I have reason to believe they do not: in that case should Mr. Fox be Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary at War is to be filled up....[238]
He does not follow up this innuendo, nor was it necessary. The next day he writes frankly to Temple, who seems to have been much in Pitt's confidence at this time. Taken in conjunction with the secret letter to Lyttelton of March 10, the plan of operations is easily understood. We will leave ministers 'under the impression of their own fears and resentments, the only friends we shall ever have at Court, but to say not a syllable which can scatter terrors or imply menaces.' Pitt's plan, in a sentence, was to hang over the Government like a thundercloud, dark, silent, menacing, possibly to be dispelled, but ready and in an instant to pour destruction down.
Mr. Pitt to Earl Temple.
Bath, March 11, 1754.
My dearest Lord,—I hope you will not disapprove my answer to Lord Chancellor. I include in you your brothers, for your Lordship's name is Legion. You will see the answer contains my whole poor plan; the essence of which is to talk modestly, to declare attachment to the King's government, and the future plan under the Princess, neither to intend nor intimate the quitting the service, to give no terrors by talking big, to make no declarations of thinking ourselves free by Mr. Pelham's death, to look out and fish in troubled waters, and perhaps help trouble them in order to fish the better: but to profess and to resolve bona fide to act like public men in a dangerous conjuncture for our country, and support Government when they will please to settle it; to let them see we shall do this from principles of public good, not as the bubbles of a few fair words, without effects (all this civilly), and to be collected by them, not expressed by us; to leave them under the impressions of their own fears and resentments, the only friends we shall ever have at Court, but to say not a syllable which can scatter terrors or imply menaces. Their fears will increase by what we avoid saying concerning persons (though what I think of Fox, etc., is much fixed), and by saying very explicitly, as I have (but civilly), that we have our eyes open to our situation at Court, and the foul play we have had offered us in the Closet: to wait the working of all these things in offices, the best we can have, but in offices.
My judgment tells me, my dear Lord, that this simple plan steadily pursued will once again, before it be long, give some weight to a connection, long depressed, and yet still not annihilated. Mr. Fox's having called at my door early the morning Mr. Pelham died is, I suppose, no secret, and a lucky incident, in my opinion. I have a post letter from the Duke of Newcastle, a very obliging one. I heartily pity him, he suffers a great deal for his loss.
Give me leave to recommend to your Lordship a little gathering of friends about you at dinners, without ostentation. Stanley, who will be in Parliament: some attention to Sir Richard Lyttelton I should think proper; a dinner to the Yorkes very seasonable; and, before things are settled, any of the Princess of Wales's Court. John Pitt not to be forgot: I know the Duke of B—— nibbles at him: in short liez commerce with as many members of Parliament, who may be open to our purposes, as your Lordship can. Pardon, my dear Lord, all this freedom, but the conjuncture is made to awaken men, and there is room for action. I have no doubt George Grenville's turn must come. Fox is odious, and will have difficulty to stand in a future time. I mend a little. I cannot express my impatience to be with you.
W. Pitt.[239]
On March 18, Lyttelton writes to Grenville to ask if he shall send an express down to Pitt as 'he will be impatient to hear particulars,' with the news that Grenville and the writer had accepted office, and 'things are not as much settled as they are likely to be till the dissolution of parliament. I have had no answer from him to my last letter; have you?' But this unanswered letter may not have reached its destination, or was destitute of certain intelligence, for we find Pitt writing to Lyttelton on March 20: 'I conclude that things still remain unsettled, because I hear nothing from you or my other friends relating to them.' So he is solacing himself by reading Bolingbroke's works. Their arrogance, he says, is so excessive, that, great as is the performance, it often becomes ridiculous. There was, he remembers, not many years ago, a man in Bedlam, a scholar of fine parts, who used to entertain all the spectators of that asylum with very rational discourses, and talked with wit and eloquence; but always concluded by assuring his hearers that he alone of all his hearers was in his right senses, and they and all mankind were mad, and had conspired to put him in that place; Bolingbroke reminds Pitt of this lunatic. There was indeed no love lost between the two men. Pitt had not treated the elder statesman with the deference paid to him by the adoring circle in which he lived, and Bolingbroke had then charged Pitt with the same fault which Pitt now found in Bolingbroke. On March 24, in a letter to Grenville, he pursues the same theme, and dubs Bolingbroke the 'intellectual Sampson of Battersea.' But six weeks afterwards, we find him warmly recommending Bolingbroke's 'Remarks on the History of England' to his nephew 'to be studied and almost got by heart for the inimitable beauty of the style as well as the matter.'
And now comes a letter of which not a word must be omitted, the memorable letter to Newcastle of March 24, long supposed to be lost, but now discovered among the Newcastle Papers. It was penned under the just resentment caused by the knowledge of the arrangements for office from which he had been insultingly ignored. It is, so far as we know, the greatest that Pitt ever wrote, full of scornful humility, suppressed passion, and pointed insinuation. Unlike most of his letters it needs no interpretation, it speaks for itself. That bitterness of indignation, which is said to produce poetry, has in this instance evolved clearness and force. Towards the end, after speaking of resignation, and of his wish for retirement, he utters this prophecy, baleful to Newcastle, who should have remembered that the prophet had it in his power to fulfil his own prediction. 'Indeed, my lord, the inside of the House must be consider'd in other respects besides merely numbers, or the reins of government will soon slip or be wrested out of any minister's hands.' A few months were to bring home to the duke the truth of this prediction.
Pitt to Newcastle.
Bath, 24 March, 1754.
My Lord Duke,—I have heard with the highest satisfaction by a message from Sr George Lyttelton the effectual proofs of his Majesty's great kindness and firm confidence in your Grace for the conduct of his Government. You have certainly taken most wisely the Province of the Treasury to yourself, where the powers of Government reside, and which at this particular crisis of a General Election may lay the foundations of the future political system so fast as not to be shaken hereafter. But this will depend upon many concomitant circumstances. For the present the nation may say with consolation, uno avulso non deficit alter aureus. The power of the Purse in the hands of the same family may, I trust, be so used as to fix all other power there along with it. Amidst all the real satisfaction I feel on this great measure so happily taken, it is with infinite reluctance that I am forced to return to the mortifying situation of your Grace's humblest servant and to add some few considerations to those, which, I have the satisfaction to learn from Sr George Lyttelton, had the honour to be receiv'd by your Grace and my Lord Chancellor without disapprobation. The difficulties grow so fast upon me by the repetition and multiplication of most painfull and too visible humiliations that my small store of prudence suggests no longer to me any means of colouring them to the world; nor of repairing them to my own mind consistently with my unshaken purpose to do nothing on any provocation to disturb the quiet of the King and the ease and stability of present and future Government.
Permit, my Lord, a man, whose affectionate attachment to your Grace, I believe, you don't doubt, to expose simply to your view his situation, and then let me entreat your Grace (if you can divest your mind of the great disparity between us) to transport yourself for a moment into my place. From the time I had the honour to come into the King's service, I have never been wanting in my most zealous endeavours in Parliament on the points that laboured the most, those of military discipline and foreign affairs; nor have I differ'd on any whatever, but the too small number of seamen one year, which was admitted to be so the next; and on a crying complaint against General Anstruther: for these crimes how am I punish'd? Be the want of subjects ever so great and the force of the conjuncture ever so cogent, be my best friends and protectors ever so much at the head of Government, an indelible negative is fixed against my name. Since I had the honour to return that answer to the Chancellor which Your Grace and his Lordship were pleas'd not to disapprove, how have mortifications been multiply'd upon me. One Chancellor of the Exchequer over me was at that time destin'd, Mr. Fox: since that time a second, Mr. Legge, is fixt: a Secretary of State is next to be look'd for in the House of Commons; Mr. Fox is again put over me and destin'd to that office: he refuses the seals: Sir Thomas Robinson is immediately put over me and is now in possession of that great office. I sincerely think both these high employments much better fill'd than I cou'd supply either of them in many respects. Mr. Legge I truely and cordially esteem and love. Sir Thos. Robinson, with whom I have not the honour to live in the same intimacy, I sincerely believe to be a gentleman of much worth and ability. Nevertheless I will venture to appeal to your Grace's candour and justice whether upon such feeble pretensions as twenty years' use of Parliament may have given me, I have not some cause to feel (as I do most deeply) so many repeated and visible humiliations. I have troubled your Grace so long on this painfull subject that I may have nothing disagreeable to say, when I have the honour to wait on you; as well as that I think it fit your Grace shou'd know the whole heart of a faithfull servant, who is conscious of nothing towards your Grace which he wishes to conceal from you. In my degraded situation in parliament, an active part there I am sure your Grace is too equitable to desire me to take; for otherwise than as an associate and in equal rank with those charg'd with Government there, I never can take such a part.
I will confess I had flatter'd myself that the interests of your Grace's own power were so concern'd to bring forward an instrument of your own raising in the House of Commons that you cou'd not let pass this decisive occasion without surmounting in the royal mind the unfavourable impressions I have the unhappiness to be under; and that the seals (at least when refus'd by Mr. Fox) might have been destin'd as soon as an opening cou'd be made in the King's mind in my favour instead of being immediately put into other hands. Things standing as they do, whether I can continue in office without losing myself in the opinion of the world is become a matter of very painfull doubt to me. If any thing can colour with any air of decency such an acquiescence, it can only be the consideration given to my friends and some degree of softening obtain'd in his Majesty's mind towards me. Mr Pelham destin'd Sir George Lyttelton to be cofferer, whenever that office shou'd open, and there can be no shadow of difficulty in Mr Grenville being made Treasurer of the Navy. Weighed in the fair scale of usefulness to the King's business in Parliament, they can have no competitors that deserve to stand in their way. I have submitted these things to your Grace with a frankness you had hitherto been so good to tolerate in me, however inferior. I wou'd not have done it so fully for my own regard alone, were I not certain that your Grace's interests are more concern'd in it than mine: because I am most sure that my mind carries me more strongly towards retreat than towards courts and business. Indeed, My Lord, the inside of the House must be consider'd in other respects besides merely numbers, or the reins of Government will soon slip or be wrested out of any minister's hands. If I have spoken too freely, I humbly beg your Grace's pardon: and entreat you to impute my freedom to the most sincere and unalterable attachment of a man who never will conceal his heart, and who can complain without alienation of mind and remonstrate without resentment.
I have the honour to be, etc. etc.
W. Pitt.
I cannot hope to leave Bath in less than a week. My health seems much mended by my gout.[240]
This letter was enclosed to Lyttelton under flying seal to be communicated to the Grenvilles. Pitt, writing the same day to Temple, says: 'I hope my letter to the Duke of Newcastle will meet with the fraternal approbation. It is strong, but not hostile, and will, I believe, operate some effect. I am still more strongly fixed in my judgement that the place of importance is employment, in the present unsettled conjuncture. It may not to us be the place of dignity, but sure I am it is that of the former. I see, as your Lordship does, the treatment we have had: I feel it as deeply, but I believe, not so warmly. I don't suffer my feelings to warp the only plan I can form that has any tendency or meaning. For making ourselves felt, by disturbing Government, I think would prove hurtful to the public, not reputable to ourselves, and beneficial in the end, only to others. All Achilles as you are, Impiger, Iracundus, etc., what would avail us to sail back a few myrmidons to Thessaly! Go over to the Trojans, to be revenged, we none of us can bear the thought of. What then remains? The conduct of the much-enduring man, who by temper, patience, and persevering prudence, became adversis rerum immersabilis undis.'