One great difficulty, the King's repugnance to Legge, had been surmounted one does not know how; but there were still minor obstacles. The whole arrangement was odious to the Sovereign: he could not bear even to turn the first page of Devonshire's appointments. Pitt, who was to succeed Newcastle in the Southern department, wished to exchange this for the Northern. The King objected, for the Northern department included Hanover, and Pitt eventually yielded. The new Secretary, as we have seen, wished for Sir Thomas Robinson, his old butt, as a colleague, on the singular ground that he knew nothing of the office he was undertaking, and required Sir Thomas's guidance.[382] Pitt had compared Robinson to a jack-boot; but personal opinions vary according to points of view; Sir Thomas might be contemptible as a leader, but useful as a dry-nurse. Holdernesse however remained. Then over every petty office, coffererships, masterships of the Wardrobe, keeperships of the jewels, treasurerships of the Household, there was snarling and struggling as of dogs over bones. Bedford was secured as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, mainly, it would appear, through the agency of Fox, who wished to secure as many ministerial posts as possible for his friends, and who was in hopes that the Duke would traverse Pitt. Bedford cared little for office; perhaps not much for Fox. His political passions were inspired by his personal hatreds, of Newcastle now, as later of Pitt.[383] But Fox, aided by the Duchess's ambition, prevailed. Amid these changes one provokes a smile; Bubb was as usual dismissed.
But the greatest and most grotesque disability lay with Pitt himself. After all his struggles to be in the position of forming a Ministry, he had no Ministry to produce. He could not fill a fraction of the offices. His personal followers, all told, hardly exceeded a dozen. When he had provided for the Grenvilles, Potter, and Legge, he had scarcely any one to name. So this Ministry was doomed from the beginning. Pamphleteers could not fail to observe Pitt's predicament. One lampoon, in the form of a royal degree, 'Given at our imperial seat at Hayes,' and countersigned 'John Thistle,' (a premature allusion to Bute), sets forth: 'We will that you give lucrative employments to all Our Brethren, uncles, cousins, relations and namesakes.'[384] Outside this category Pitt's subordinates were mostly the friends of Newcastle or Fox, and so his secret enemies, or waiters upon Providence who were not sufficiently sure of his stability to call themselves his friends. Holdernesse, Pitt's colleague in the Secretaryship of State, and Barrington, Secretary for War, kept Newcastle fully informed of all that went on in the administration and of all that they knew. Holdernesse also sent abstracts of the despatches that came from abroad.[385] So that Pitt was betrayed from the first. Ministries formed by one man seldom last long under another. But Ministries which pass between two declared enemies have not from the beginning any chance of life. This one was stillborn.
Pitt himself lay ill with the gout at Hayes; so he had to leave his affairs to be managed by a little clique in London, of which Temple of course was the chief, and which was in close communion with Leicester House. For every day Leicester House waxed and Kensington Palace waned in importance, as the King advanced in years. Nothing in the history of those days is more difficult to trace and yet nothing is more significant than this invisible Court of the Heir-Apparent, which was felt rather than seen, but towards which courtiers kept one anxious eye during their dutiful attendance on the King. All felt that the centre of power was shifting thither, and the uneasiness of those who wished to be well with both Courts was manifest and irrepressible. The constant anxiety of Fox to be Paymaster was largely due to his desire to be sheltered from the hatred of the young Court in the reign that seemed imminent. All this could not but increase the jealousy and irritability of the old Sovereign, at a time when he was undergoing a new Ministry most repulsive to him. Distasteful as it was in almost every respect, what was perhaps most abhorrent was the consciousness that it was imposed upon him by his daughter-in-law and her favourite, that it rested on their support, and was indeed the Ministry of George III. rather than of George II.
Bute was the object of the King's chief detestation, a righteous aversion if his suspicions were well founded; and Bute was now undisguisedly prominent in the negotiations for the new Government. The King treated Temple and his friends so ill at the levee, that the injured nobleman went to Devonshire to say that he feared he could not proceed a step further in the negotiations. On this mission he was accompanied by Bute, for the purpose, apparently, of making the world realise that Leicester House and all its influence were behind Pitt. And Bute availed himself of this opportunity to make use of 'expressions so transcendently obliging to us,' writes Temple, 'and so decisive of the determined purposes of Leicester House towards us in the present or any future day, that your lively imagination cannot suggest to you a wish beyond them.' By Temple, too, he sent word to Pitt that he could not advise, that he left all to Pitt, determined to support and approve whatever Pitt decided.[386] This was the one element of strength to the new Government, besides Pitt himself. And yet, so elusive was this mysterious Court, that in September the town had been ringing with the coolness of Pitt's reception at Leicester House, more especially by Bute.[387] The fact is that there had evidently been a coldness, but that the fall of Newcastle had brought the two together again.[388]
After Devonshire had kissed hands on November 4 there were however few difficulties. Temple's cold reception at Court, on the very day of Newcastle's resignation, which had made him declare with his usual arrogance to Devonshire that all was over, was only a passing incident, due to the fact that the King could not abide the very sight of Temple. Pitt no doubt counselled moderation from Hayes, not desiring to lose the fruit of so many years for a slight to his relative. And so, a week after Temple's fiery declaration to Devonshire, the new Board of Admiralty was gazetted with Temple at its head. Three days before, the Board of Treasury had been declared with Devonshire and Legge as its chiefs. One Grenville was included in this. For George Grenville and Potter treasurerships and paymasterships were found. There were indeed but few traces of Pitt's small connection in the Government. He, still an invalid, received his seals a little later. He had also to change hisDec. 4, 1756. seat. He could not condescend to be re-elected for Newcastle's borough of Aldborough; indeed, he had held it too long. Nor indeed would Newcastle nominate him.[389] So now he accepted an olive branch from Lyttelton, who shared the control of Okehampton with the Duke of Bedford, and generously named his old friend and recent foe.[390] It may have been that Pitt was desirous of cutting the last link with Newcastle before entering upon office, and had deferred receiving the seals till he was independent. Be that as it may, he was only to hold them four months. During most of that time he was ill, during all of it he was surrounded by conspiracies, and he was soon intrigued out of office, though he never actually vacated it. But his short term had taught him one priceless lesson; that genius and public spirit were not enough, that a practical and even sordid leaven was required, and that if he would not do the necessary work of political adjustment himself, he must find somebody to do it for him, or give up all idea of being a powerful Minister.
It has been thought well to narrate at length the circumstances of the final breakdown of the King's veto on Pitt's accession to office and the struggle which preceded it; partly because some of the documents are new, partly because it is a curious picture of character and intrigue, partly because it is the fifth and culminating act of this long drama.
CHAPTER XXII.
But with this Government we have nothing to do. We have reached our limits. The youth of Pitt has passed, his apprenticeship is over, he has now his foot in high office, he is soon to be supreme. The weary period of proscription and conflict has come to an end, he is henceforth to command where he has obeyed, and he is to raise his country to a singular height of glory and power. That splendid period is beyond the scope of this book, which only records the ascent and the toil; the lustre of achievement and reward require a separate chronicle. The next scenes require a broader canvas and brighter colours.