Feb. 20, 1756.
At a later stage, Pitt ironically described the plan for the Swiss auxiliaries as a fortuitous blessing, for had not Prevot, the adventurer who was to command the battalions, been taken prisoner by the French and found his way from Brest hither, and had he not then taken it into his head that he would like to command a regiment, nothing would have been heard of it. He hoped this Ulysses-like wanderer might be as wise as his prototype and so forth; one can imagine the sort of pleasantry. But it was Charles Townshend who, 'content with promoting confusion,' chiefly shone at this time. On the other hand, one of Pitt's speeches, urging that the Colonies should be heard on this Swiss scheme, is described as lasting an hour and a half without fire or force. Indeed, Walpole writes of this debate that 'the opposition neither increase in numbers or eloquence; the want of the former seems to have damped the fire of the latter,' and that 'the House of Commons has dwindled into a very dialogue between Pitt and Fox ... in which, though Pitt has attacked, Fox has generally had the better.' Pitt seemed to be becoming dull and diffuse. 'Mr. Pitt talks by Shrewsbury clock, and is grown almost as little heard as that is at Westminster.' Still one wishes that the chronicler had reported the speeches of either as faithfully as he reports his own.
The apprehension of a French invasion, which had been present for months, became acute in March and April (1756). The Government asked for the troops which Holland was, it was held, bound to furnish, and they were refused. Thereupon Lord George Sackville, probably by concert with the Court or to gain its favour, suggested a preference for Hanoverians, whose soldierlike qualities he commended. The hint was acted upon with suspicious promptitude; and on March 29, Fox formally moved to address the King to send for his Electoral troops.[318]
Pitt, swathed as an invalid, opposed the motion in a long speech. He alleged his respect for the King as the ground of his opposition. For this address would be advice to the King in his Electoral capacity which we had no claim to offer, and which, moreover, might involve his Electorate in a peril equal to our own. He seems to have argued against any fear of invasion, on the ground that in the Dutch war, with a suspected King, we had coped with Holland and France; that in 1690, when the French had beaten our fleet at Beachy Head and had an army actually in Ireland, we had surmounted that danger; and that de Witt, the greatest man since the men of Plutarch, had proposed an invasion to d'Estrades, who had treated it as a chimerical suggestion. In any case the natural force of the nation was sufficient to repel any attack of the enemy. That state alone is a sovereign state 'qui suis stat viribus, non alieno pendet arbitrio,' which subsists by its own strength, not by the courtesy of its neighbours:[319] words which may have inspired Lord Lyndhurst, a century afterwards, with his famous phrase with regard to a State existing on sufferance. He would vote, Pitt proceeded, for raising any numbers of British troops. The late war had formed many great officers, and he would not interpose foreigners to hinder their promotion; nor would he force this vote on the King when he might send for his troops without.[320] The motion was agreed to by 259 to 92. Bubb comically commented on the readiness of the King, who had then amassed, it was believed, an immense treasure in Hanover, to make the nation pay for this defence of himself, by declaring that 'His Majesty would not for the world lend himself a farthing.' Not less humorous is the story preserved by Horace Walpole that the night the Hanoverian troops were voted, he summoned his German cook and ordered himself an exceptionally good supper. 'Get me all de varieties,' said the homely monarch, 'I don't mind expense.' A lampoon in the form of an anecdote, it is to be supposed.
March 30, 1756.
Next day Pitt had another opportunity for attack on the charge involved by the employment of Hessian troops, who, he declared, would cost 400,000l. more than the same number of British troops. But, a few days afterwards, there was a still better occasion, when Barrington brought forward the estimate for the Hanoverian troops, and commended it as a better bargain than the Hessian, which had been passed, and was therefore secure. Pitt at once harped on the same strain, and, lauding the Hanoverian estimate, fell still more vehemently on the Hessian. No one could find fault with the Hanoverian, that we owed to His Majesty; but the subsidiary juggle with Hesse was the work of his Ministers. 'Nothing but good flows from the King; nothing but ruin from his servants. I choose that they shall fall by a friendly hand, and that the condemnation of his patrons should come from the noble lord himself (Barrington). But must we engage mercenaries because France does? She engages them,' he said, with one of his phrases of picturesque energy, 'because she has not blood enough in her own veins for the purpose of universal monarchy.' He despaired of preserving Minorca, he continued with gloomy prescience, yet the waste on these Hessians would have saved that island, would have conquered America. He broke out bitterly against the departmental character of the Government. 'I don't call this an administration, it is so unsteady. One is at the head of the Treasury; one, Chancellor; one, head of the Navy; one great person, of the Army. But is that an administration? They shift and shuffle the charge from one to another. One says, "I am not the General;" the Treasury says, "I am not the Admiral;" the Admiralty says, "I am not the Minister." From such an unaccording assemblage of separate and distinct powers with no system, a nullity results. One, two, three, four, five lords meet. If they cannot agree, "Oh, we will meet again on Saturday!" "Oh," but says one of them, "I am to go out of town." Alas! when no parties survive to thwart them, what an aggravation it is that no good comes from such unanimity!'
Fox, in reply, asked if Pitt wished to see a sole Minister, a question that suggests that there was already an impression abroad that Pitt was aiming at the dictatorship which he afterwards received, or else that Pitt, if he obtained office, would be so overbearing as to become the sole Minister.
Pitt, at any rate, did not accept the allusion as to himself. He said that he did not wish to see a single Minister, but system and decision. Indeed, he gracefully added, were Fox sole Minister there would be decision enough.[321]
On May 11 (1756) a royal message apprised Parliament of the treaty concluded with Prussia (the Convention of Westminster, signed January 1756), and asking his faithful Commons for supplies.
The House promptly voted a million on account, but Pitt as usual uttered eloquent lamentations on the incapacity of Ministers and the calamitous situation of affairs. What was this vote of credit for? Was it to raise more men? We had already 40,000 British and 14,000 foreign troops. Was it for the purpose of marine treaties? Then he would joyfully vote it. For a naval war we could and ought to support, but a Continental war on the present system we could not. Regard should no doubt be had to Hanover, but a secondary regard. For if Hanover was to be our first object it would lead us to bankruptcy. It was impossible to defend Hanover by subsidies. How could an open country be defended against an enemy who could march 150,000 men into it, and if necessary reinforce them by as many more? Should Hanover suffer by her connection with Great Britain, we ought not to make peace without exacting full and ample compensation for all the damage and injury she might have sustained. But the idea of defending Hanover by subsidies was preposterous, absurd, and impracticable. Then, excited by this favourite theme beyond the limits he had imposed on himself, he struck home at the King and his darling patrimony. This system, he said, would in a few years, cost us more money than the fee simple of the electorate was worth, a place which after all could not be found in the map. He ardently wished us to break those fetters which chained us like Prometheus to that barren rock. (The metaphor which made a rock of Hanover does not strike one as one of his happiest efforts).