If Lyttelton could not state the purpose for which this credit was designed, perhaps he could say for what it was not designed. Still, Pitt added sardonically, he was of so compounding a temper that he should assent to it.
Ministers bragged of their unanimity and spirit. But what had all this army of councils and talents, this universal aye, produced? Were we safe? Had we inflicted any damage on the enemy? If so, when and where?
He had no particular pleasure in thus speaking. He did not wish to load the unhappy men who had undone their country, most unhappy if they did not realise it. And our activity! Philosophers indeed had a phrase vis inertiæ by which they denoted the inactivity of action (sic). Was it by that that we were to be saved?
His charge against the Government was this: that we had provoked before we could defend, and neglected after provocation; that we were left inferior to France in every quarter; that the vote of credit had been misapplied to secure Hanover; and that we had bought a treaty with Prussia by sacrificing our rights. He would not have signed such a treaty to have the five great places of those who had signed it. Yet if this treaty were restrained to the defence of the King's dominions he should not know how to oppose it.
He had no feeling of resentment against the Government, no one had injured him. Yet he could not but think ill of their capacity and their measures. Could he, then, every day, arraign their policy and feel confidence in them? Pelham indeed had intended economy, but he was dragged into this foreign policy by his brother, now at the head of the Treasury. And if he, Pitt, saw Newcastle like a child driving a go-cart with that precious freight of an old King and his family on to a precipice, was he not bound to try and take the reins from his hands? And with a gloomy foreboding which must have chilled the anxious House, he solemnly prayed that the King might not have Minorca written on his heart, as Calais had been, in the dying declaration of Mary, engraved on hers.
The debate ended with a bitter rally between Pitt and Lyttelton, the fiercer for their former friendship. Lyttelton had sneered at his epithets. This came well, said Pitt, from Lyttelton, whose own character was a composition of epithets. He himself had used no epithets that day, so Lyttelton had chosen ill the occasion for his taunt. But in any case the House was not an academy for the exchange of compliments. And when Lyttelton disclaimed any share in framing the motion, it was obvious that he was not at liberty to change it. If Lyttelton would declare that he had no more resources, he would only say that Lyttelton was incapable.
The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose heart was still warm with his old affection, was hurt by this attack, but he maintained his ground. 'He says I am but a thing made up of epithets. Is not this the language of Billingsgate? The world is complaining that the House was turned into a bear garden. I do not envy my friend the glory of being the Figg or Broughton of it.' Pitt retorted that Lyttelton was a very pretty poet, and that there was no one whom he more respected pen in hand. 'But it is hard that my friend, with whom I have taken sweet counsel in epithets, should now reproach me with using them.' Lyttelton replied once more that it was not his fault if he and Pitt were not still friends.[322]
May 14, 1756.
A day or two later Lyttelton unfolded to the House the provisions of the Treaty of Westminster. It had cleared up some small pecuniary claims on both sides, so much to Frederick for losses from British privateers, so much from Frederick for arrears of interest on the Silesian loan, a balance of 40,000l. due on the whole to Great Britain. On this, Pitt, inveterate against the Ministry, fulminated once more. He declared that by payment, even of a small sum, we had conceded the principle of our Empire over the sea, and went off into the usual rhetoric. 'For himself he should affect no superiority but what was common to him with the twelve millions of his countrymen, innocence of his country's ruin, the superiority of the undone over the undoers.'
All that is notable in these crumbs of debate is the strategy of Pitt; to hammer at the enemy without ceasing, not to allow him a moment to breathe or recover, but to display him to the country day and night pummelled, bewildered and helpless, until he should succumb from exhaustion; when the country should insist on the removal of the defeated combatant, and the substitution of his conqueror. Pitt was openly set on the destruction of the Newcastle Government for more reasons than one. He was vindictive and had been slighted; he was profoundly anxious about the position of the country, and convinced of the incapacity of Newcastle to govern; he wished to try his own hand at the game, believing that he could do better, convinced that he could do no worse, than the Ministers whom he had seen at work.