Fox opposed the Bill, which he said would be considered as a veiled declaration of war. France was patient because she wished to persuade her allies that we were the aggressors, and so induce them to join her. The passing of the Bill would furnish the very proof she required. The whole gist of the matter lay in the word 'now,' 'the hinge,' he said with a painful confusion of metaphor, 'upon which the very marrow of this debate must turn.' Were peace hopeless such a Bill might be necessary; now it could only do harm. Pitt followed Fox and made play with the word 'now,' for as Murray said in reply: 'He has the happy faculty of being able to turn the most important word, the most serious argument, into ridicule.' He pointed out from examples in the reign of Elizabeth and Charles II. that we might be at war for many years without declaring war, and supported the Bill; as did Richard Lyttelton (though the House, says Rigby, can no longer be brought to hear a word from him), and George Grenville. The most piquant part of the speeches of both Pitt and Fox related to Walpole, who had now from a bugbear become a fetish. Fox pronounced a high eulogy upon him, but denied that his parliaments had been venal. Pitt said that he himself had always opposed Walpole when in power, but after resignation had always 'spoken well of him as a man.' Here there was a laugh, which Pitt angrily rebuked. Was it not more honourable to respect a man when his power had come to an end than before? Walpole had no doubt 'for many years an amazing influence in this House, and the enquiry, stifled as it was, made it pretty evident from whence that influence proceeded!' Legge swelled the chorus of devotion to a Minister who had scarce a friend at his fall, by declaring that 'he was an honour to human nature and the peculiar friend to Great Britain!' Death, in British politics, magnanimously closes most accounts with a credit balance.[310]
Dec. 5, 1755.
Three days afterwards, Barrington, the new Secretary at War, moved the Army Estimates. Here we are again thrown upon Walpole, whose records, precious as they are, are the notes of an amateur, jotted down at the time with the idea of subsequent expansion, but not subsequently expanded. Indeed, when he came to use them, his memory, it is probable, no longer availed for the purpose. But from the account of the last debate on December 2, 1755, the Parliamentary history, incredible as it may seem, records no speech of Pitt's till the last month of 1761, and then only a formal reply.
Pitt, 'in one of his finest florid declamations,' seconded the motion for an army of 34,263 men, which was an augmentation of 15,000 men. He would have moved for a larger number, had not Barrington promised to move for more men when he brought in a Bill for the better recruiting of the army, a pledge which seemed to meet the general anxiety of the House. Rigby, who gives us this information, says that Pitt's speech was most violent and abusive, but admits that it was a very fine piece of declamation.[311] Both Walpole and Rigby, it will be observed, use this vigorous substantive to characterise the speech.
Pitt again used the language of tenderness and devotion to the King, deplored to see him in his old age, and his kingdom exposed to attack; and even his amiable posterity, born among us, sacrificed by unskilful Ministers.
The innuendo at the King's foreign birth betrays the sarcasm underlying Pitt's effusive loyalty. One cannot also but suspect that his constant allusions to the venerable age of George II. were not intended to be wholly agreeable to a King who piqued himself on being gay and libertine. 'He then drew a striking and masterly picture of a French invasion reaching London, and of the horror ensuing while there was a formidable enemy within the capital itself, as full of weakness as full of multitude; a flagitious rabble, ready for every nefarious action; of the consternation in the City, where the noble, artificial, yet vulnerable fabric of public credit should crumble in their hands. How would Ministers be able to meet the aspect of so many citizens dismayed? How could men so guilty meet their countrymen?'
The King's Speech of last year, he continued, had been calculated to lull the country into repose. Had His Majesty's Ministers not sufficient understanding, or foresight, or virtue, he repeated the words that they might not again be misquoted, to lay before him the real danger? Elsewhere, where the King himself had the slightest suspicion even of a fancied danger, we knew what vast preparations had been made. Did the subjects of his kingdom lack that prudent foresight which his subjects of the electorate possessed in so eminent a degree? Alas! that he should live to see a British Parliament so unequal to its duties. There were but ten thousand men left in England. Not half that number would be available to defend the royal family and the metropolis. 'Half security is full danger.'
'Accursed be the man,' he continued, 'who will not do all he can to strengthen the King's hands, and he will indeed receive the malediction. Strengthen the Sovereign by laying bare the weakness of his Councils: urge him to substitute reality to incapacity, futility, and the petty love of power. It is the little spirit of domination, the ambition of being the only figure among cyphers, which has caused the decay of this country. The ignominious indulgence of patronage, the poor desire to dispose of places, should be left for times of relaxation: rough times such as these require wisdom. The cost of the augmentation proposed to-day, two hundred and eighty thousand pounds, would last year have given us security. Yet the danger was last year as visible as now to the eye of foresight. The first attribute of a wise Minister is to leave as little as possible exposed to contingencies. Now, for want of that foresight, stocks will fall, and hurry along with them the ruin of the City, vulnerable in proportion to its opulence. In other countries the treasure remains in a city which is not sacked. But paper credit like ours may be wounded even in Kent. It is like the sensitive plant, it need not be cropped; extend but your hand, it withers and dies.'