William Pitt and national revival

by J. Holland Rose

Hull, August 1, 1797.[774]

... I am afraid the negotiation is not in such a state as to render the idea I started of negotiating unconditionally for the abolition of the Slave Trade a practical question very necessary to be just now discussed. But if the negotiation should wear a more promising aspect, let me beg you seriously to weigh the matter. Dundas is friendly to the notion, as indeed I must do him, and myself too, the justice to say that I believe he would. Grenville ought to be so, and all the rest except Lord Liverpool are either neutral or friendly. I must honestly say, I never was so much hurt since I knew you as at your not receiving and encouraging this proposal, which even Lord Liverpool himself ought to have approved on the ground on which he used to oppose.[775] Do, my dear Pitt, I entreat you reconsider the matter. I am persuaded of your zeal in this cause, when, amidst the multitude of matters which force themselves on you more pressingly, it can obtain a hearing; but I regret that you have so been drawn off from it. Indeed regret is a very poor term to express what I feel on this subject. Excuse this, from the fulness of my heart, which I have often kept down with difficulty and grief.

My dear Pitt let me intreat you, as I see another bishop is dead, to consider well whom you appoint. I am persuaded that if the clergy could be brought to know and to do their duty, both the religious and civil state of this country would receive a principle of life.

The rupture of the Lille negotiation by the French falsified these hopes and served to justify Pitt for not weighting it with a contentious proposal. But for the present at least, he had lost hope in the cause. It is true that he always spoke strongly on its behalf during the ensuing efforts put forth by Wilberforce.[776] But the buoyancy of his belief was gone, and some even of his friends accused him of apathy.[777] This is probably unjust. A man may believe firmly in a measure, and yet be convinced that it cannot pass under present conditions. In that case he will do his best, but his efforts will be those of an overburdened horse unable to master the load.

More than once he annoyed Wilberforce by preventing a useless discussion of the question.[778] Insinuations of insincerity were therefore hurled at Pitt. Indeed they seem to have gained wide credence. We find his young admirer, Canning, writing at Brooksby, near Leicester, on 15th December 1799, that very many friends doubted whether he now desired to carry abolition, while some even commended his prudence in doing less than he professed in the matter. Canning found it far from easy to eradicate this notion from the minds of his hosts, the Ellises, by informing them of the object of a secret mission to the West Indies then undertaken by Smith.[779]

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It may be well to postpone to a later chapter the question of Pitt’s attitude towards abolition in his second Ministry, that of 1804–6. But we may notice here certain criticisms which apply mainly, of course, to the years 1788–1800. He has been censured for not making abolition a Cabinet question.[780] But how could he do so when the majority of Ministers opposed it? For a short time only the Duke of Richmond and he favoured abolition. The substitution of Grenville for Sydney strengthened his hands; but even then he was in a minority in the Cabinet on this question. Further, the House of Lords consistently, and by increasing majorities, scouted the measure; and the House of Commons, even under the spell of Pitt’s eloquence, refused to decree immediate abolition, and that, too, before the shadow of the great war shrouded the whole subject in disastrous eclipse. After the last year of peace of Pitt’s ministerial career, other considerations came uppermost. The need of keeping up the mercantile marine, both as a source of wealth and as a nursery for the royal navy, cooled the zeal of many friends of the movement. Windham opposed it in a manner that earned him the title of Machiavelli. Others also fell away; and even the eloquence of young Canning on its behalf did not make up for defections. The better class of West India planters and merchants tacitly agreed to the limitation of the Slave Trade; and with this prospect in view many friends of the cause relaxed their efforts.

Further, when the King, a decided majority both in the Cabinet and in the House of Lords, and a wavering majority in the Commons, were unchangeably opposed to immediate abolition, what could a Minister do? The ordinary course of conduct, resignation, would have availed nothing. As nearly all the Ministerial bench disliked the proposal, no coherent Cabinet could have been formed. True, a Ministry composed of Pitt, Grenville, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, and Wilberforce might perhaps have forced the measure through the Commons (to see it fail in the Lords); but so monstrous a coalition could scarcely have seen the light; certainly it could not have lived amid the storms of the war. Besides, the first duty of a Minister after 1792 was to secure for his country the boon of a solid peace. As we shall see, that was ever Pitt’s aim; and grief at seeing it constantly elude his grasp finally cost him his life. Further, the assumption that he could have coerced the members of his Cabinet because they differed from him on this question is untenable. He was able to secure the retirement of Sydney because he was not highly efficient, and of Thurlow on the ground of contumacy. But to compel useful and almost necessary Ministers like Dundas or Camden to retire, when the majority in both Houses agreed with them, would have set at defiance all the traditions of parliamentary life.

The criticisms noticed above are based on the assumption that Pitt was all-powerful and could bend the Cabinet and Parliament to his will. This is an exaggeration. Where, as in the case of pocket boroughs and the Slave Trade, members felt their interests at stake, they somnolently resisted the charms of his oratory and trooped into the opposite lobby. The British people is slow to realize its responsibilities, but in the end it responds to them; and in these years of defeat at Westminster the efforts of Clarkson, Granville Sharp, and others spread abroad convictions which were to assure an ultimate triumph.

The failure of Pitt to carry the abolition of the Slave Trade or materially to improve the condition of the negroes was to have a sinister influence on our position in the West Indies. While the slave owners and shippers and their friends at Westminster refused to budge an inch, the French Jacobins eagerly rushed forward and proclaimed the equality of all mankind. Therefore early in the course of the Great War the slaves rallied to the tricolour; and Toussaint l’Ouverture, the ablest of negro leaders, enthusiastically marshalled their levies in Hayti for the overthrow of British rule. In a later chapter we shall trace the disastrous sequel. Colonel (afterwards Sir John) Moore noted in his Diary that the negroes were for the most part fanatical for liberty; and, after committing deeds of desperation in its name, died defiantly with the cry Vive la République on their lips.[781] Here we touch on one of the chief causes for the frightful waste of British troops in the West Indies. With discontent rife in our own colonies, the struggle against the blacks, especially in Hayti, placed on our men a strain unendurable in that pestilential climate. The Hon. J. W. Fortescue, the historian of the British Army, estimates its total losses in the West Indies during the war of 1793–1802 as not far short of 100,000 men. Whatever the total may be, it is certain that at least half of that woeful sacrifice resulted from the crass stupidity and brutal selfishness displayed by mercantile and colonial circles on this question.