Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections

by Earl of Archibald Philip Primrose Rosebery

All began smoothly between Pitt and the Duke, all was apparently open, friendly, and civil; but when Newcastle referred to the conversation with Hardwicke, he was taken aback by finding that Pitt declared that nothing had passed that was material. He thus compelled Newcastle to recapitulate the points of policy, no doubt for purposes of comparison.

So the Duke had to state that the eve of the King's departure had been too troubled to lay Pitt's claim before his Majesty; for an address against the journey had been threatened in the House of Commons and actually proposed in the House of Lords. But that when alarming events had happened in America, Hardwicke and he had represented to the King the urgent necessity of forming a system in the House of Commons, which means, it may be presumed, abandoning the plan of conducting the House without a leader, and of enlisting Pitt as an active Minister there. That thereupon the King had graciously expressed his readiness to admit Pitt to his Cabinet. Pitt received this offer coolly, and proceeded at once to larger issues.

As to the King's voyage he spoke with unsparing candour. The King had nearly ruined himself by his unpardonable departure to Hanover at such a crisis. He should only have been allowed to go there over the dead bodies of his people. 'A King abroad at this time, without one man about him that has an English heart, and only returning to bring home a packet of subsidies.'

Of course, he proceeded to say with scarcely disguised sarcasm, the King's countenance was more to him than any other consideration. But if it was expected that he should take an active and efficient part in Parliament he must observe that a mere summons to the Cabinet would not be sufficient. In his present office he could silently acquiesce in ministerial measures. But activity could only be exercised in a responsible situation.

Then he took a line which was clear, bold, and statesmanlike. The whole machinery of the House of Commons was, he said, paralysed by the plan of leaving it without a responsible Minister. That plan must be abandoned. The House could not perform its proper functions without a responsible Minister, even though a subordinate one, who should have access to the Sovereign and to the royal confidence. For that purpose the leader or agent must have a responsible office of advice as well as of execution. 'That was the distinction he made throughout his whole conversation. He would support the measures which he himself had advised, but would not like a lawyer talk from a brief. That it was better plainly to tell me so at first.'

This surely was no inordinate claim from indisputably the first member of the House of Commons, whom the King had kept at bay for so many years, and to keep whom still in subjection every possible manœuvre, childish or cunning, was being adopted. 'Why,' said he bluntly to Newcastle, 'cannot you bring yourself to part with some of your sole power?' This of course produced voluble asseverations from the Duke. Sole power! What an idea! He had no conception of what Pitt could mean. He was in his present place, not by his own choice, far from it! but by the King's command, and, though he was devoted to the King, he would retire to-morrow if he was distasteful to the House of Commons. (This was a safe promise, for, as we have seen, the House of Commons was with but few exceptions at his absolute disposal.) Pitt replied that he himself had no objections to a Peer as First Lord of the Treasury, but there must be men of ability and responsibility in the House of Commons, a Secretary of State and a Chancellor of the Exchequer, that they must be sufficiently supported, and they must have access to the Crown, not a nominal, but an habitual, free, familiar access. In speaking of the Chancellor of the Exchequer he burst out into so enthusiastic a eulogy of Legge, 'the child, and deservedly the favourite child of the Whigs,' that Newcastle suspected that all this was concerted between his rebellious Chancellor of the Exchequer and his insubordinate Paymaster.

Pitt and the Duke next proceeded to analyse their own expressions; a task which the statesmen of that day seem to have avoided, to our detriment, as much as possible. Newcastle had spoken of the proposed seat in the Cabinet as a designation. 'What did this mean?' asked Pitt. 'Did it mean the seals of Secretary of State, though not immediately?' The Duke was obliged to shuffle out, for in truth he had no power to promise any such thing. Designation only meant that the seat in the Cabinet would design him as the King's man of confidence. 'Then the Secretaryship of State is not intended,' was the fierce rejoinder. The Duke replied that he was not authorised to offer more than a seat in the Cabinet. If, rejoined Pitt, 'the Secretaryships of State are to remain as they are, there is an end of any question of my giving active support to the Government in the House of Commons.'

They had arrived at an impassable barrier, Pitt would take nothing but the seals which the King would not give him, and Newcastle was determined not to force on another crisis with the King on account of Pitt; whom, in truth, he dreaded little less as a colleague than as a foe. So they turned to matters of public policy, 'and then,' writes the hapless Minister, 'nothing can equal my astonishment and concern.' He tried Pitt first with the Hessian Treaty, and then with the Russian. For the Hessian Treaty the Duke characteristically urged every reason but the true one, and for the Russian that it was the fruit of four years of negotiation, and that it would seem strange to drop it now. But Pitt was obdurate. He would be no party to a system of subsidies. If the Duke of Devonshire attacked the Hessian subsidy in the House of Lords, as was his intention, Pitt would echo the attack in the House of Commons. If the Russian Treaty were dropped he might acquiesce in the Hessian from regard for the King; as, for the same reason, he would always speak with the utmost respect of Hanover. But no consideration would make him support both, or a system of subsidies. It was his regard for the King, presumably, which impelled him to make a further suggestion, which Newcastle did not venture to transmit even to Hardwicke. Out of the fifteen millions sterling that the King was said to have saved why, asked Pitt, should he not give Hesse 100,000l., and Russia 150,000l., to be out of these bad bargains? Newcastle was driven to his usual resource of the Chancellor, and suggested a conference with him in the ensuing week. Pitt agreed to this with, we may presume, a shrug of the shoulders.

Neither in truth expected anything from such a meeting, for the pleas and the powers had both been exhausted. Newcastle realised this, and ends his remarkable record of the conversation with a despairing glance at his own prospects. What was he to do? There were as usual three courses to pursue. The first, which he should infinitely prefer, would be his own retirement. This is a common cant of ministers, and with Newcastle it was more than usually insincere. Fox, he said, might succeed him at the Treasury, and Pitt for a session at any rate would have to acquiesce. The second would be for Newcastle, remaining First Minister, to throw himself into the arms of the Pitt group, with Pitt as Secretary of State and Legge at the Exchequer. But the King would never hear of this. Newcastle puts it significantly thus: 'Whether this is in any shape practicable, I leave to your Lordship and all who know the King to determine.' The third course was the one adopted, 'to accept Mr. Fox's proposal, made by my Lord Granville,' the first allusion that we have to this particular negotiation. Fox was to be the real, efficient, and trusted leader of the House of Commons. But there must be conditions. Cumberland, the patron of Fox, must give his support, so must Devonshire and Hartington. There must be a new Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Fox must act cordially with the person whom the King might appoint to that office. Murray, and indeed every one, must put their shoulders to the wheel and exert themselves on behalf of the Administration. Lastly, it might be necessary to take in the venal but inevitable Bubb.

Hardwicke answered Newcastle's report without a moment's delay, in a shrewd letter.[284] His first remark was that Pitt had taken much higher ground with the Duke than with him, perhaps because the bad news from the Ohio had made the Paymaster deem himself more valuable and necessary. He doubted whether the praises of Legge were sincere; they were probably intended to indicate a closer connection between them than really existed. But Hardwicke went straight to the two main points. The first was the general principle that the King must have a recognised Minister, what he called oddly enough 'a Minister with the King' in the House of Commons. The other question was whether Pitt should be Secretary of State.