In sharp contrast to this personal and effusive request was the cold and correct demeanour of Pitt. He sent the following formal reply, not to Necker, but to the French ambassador, the Marquis de Luzerne:
Downing Street, 3rd July, 1789.[889]
Mr. Pitt presents his compliments to the Marquis de Luzerne. He has felt the strongest desire to be able to recommend sending the supply of flour desir’d by Monsr Necker and had hopes from the information at first given him by Mr. Wilson that it would be practicable; but, having afterwards received some contrary information, he thought it necessary that the subject should be examined by the Committee of Council for the Affairs of Trade, whose enquiry was not clos’d till this morning. Mr. Pitt has now the mortification to find that, according to the accounts of the persons most conversant with the corn trade, the present supply in this country compar’d with the demand, and the precarious prospect of the harvest render it impossible to propose to Parliament to authorize any exportation.
Three days later Pulteney brought the matter before the House of Commons and deprecated the export of 20,000 sacks of flour to France which had been talked of. Pitt thereupon stated that skilled advice was being taken as to the advisability of allowing such an export, in view of the shortness at home, and the gloomy prospects for the harvest. Wilberforce, Dempster, and Major Scott urged the more generous course towards our suffering neighbours; but others pointed out that, as the price of home wheat was rising (it rose seven shillings the bushel on that very day), any such proposal would enhance that perilous tendency at home without materially benefiting the French. Even at the present figures export was forbidden under the existing Corn Law; but Pitt mentioned that a curious attempt was on foot at Shoreham to depress the price from forty-eight shillings to forty-four in order to procure the export of 8,000 sacks of flour to Havre. As the transaction was clearly fictitious, he had directed the Customs officers to stop the export. On 13th July Grenville, in the absence of Pitt, asked leave to introduce a Bill for the better ascertaining and regulating the export of corn; and the House at once agreed.[890]
Such, then, was the beginning of Pitt’s relations to French democracy. They are certainly to be regretted. His reply to Necker’s request is icily correct and patriotically insular; and his whole attitude was a warning to the French not to expect from him any deviation from the rules of Political Economy. Of course it is unfair to tax him with blindness in not recognizing the momentous character of the crisis. No one could foresee the banishment of Necker, the surrender of the Bastille, on the very day after Grenville’s motion, still less the stories of the pacte de famine, and their hideous finale, the march of the dames des halles to Versailles, ostensibly to get food. Nevertheless, the highest statesmanship transcends mere reason. The greatest of leaders knows instinctively when economic laws and the needs of his own nation may be set aside for the welfare of humanity. The gift of 20,000 sacks of flour outright would have been the best bargain of Pitt’s career. It would have spoken straight to the heart of France, and brought about a genuine entente cordiale. His conduct was absolutely justified by law. The Commercial Treaty of 1786 with France had not included the trade in corn or flour, which had long been subject to strict regulations, and therefore remained so. Moreover, the Dublin Government did not allow the export of wheat to Great Britain until home wheat sold at more than thirty shillings the barrel; and in that year of scarcity, 1789, when the harvest was extremely late, and the yield uncertain even at the beginning of December, the fiat went forth from Dublin Castle that no wheat must for the present cross the Irish Sea to relieve the scarcity in England.[891] If that was the case between the sister kingdoms, Pitt certainly acted correctly in forbidding the export of flour to France.
Meanwhile, Anglo-French relations were decidedly cool. The Duke of Dorset, our ambassador at Paris, reported that it was not desirable for English visitors to appear in the streets amid the excitements that followed on the fall of the Bastille; and an agent, named Hippisley, employed by him, reported that “the prejudices against the English were very general—the pretext taken being our refusal to aid the French with grain, and our reception of M. Calonne, which, they contended, was in deference to the Polignacs.”[892] The Duke of Dorset also referred to the prevalence of wild rumours as to our efforts to destroy the French ships and dockyard at Brest, and to foment disorders in France.[893]
Certainly we were not fortunate in our ambassador. In the year 1786 the Duke of Dorset had often shown petty touchiness in his relations with William Eden, besides jealously curbing the superior abilities of his own subordinate, Daniel Hailes. Now that they were gone, his despatches were thin and lacking in balance. After the fall of the Bastille, he wrote to the Duke of Leeds that “the greatest Revolution that we know of has been effected with, comparatively speaking, ... the loss of very few lives. From this moment we may consider France as a free country, the King as a very limited monarch, and the nobility as reduced to a level with the rest of the nation.” He described the tactful visit of Louis XVI to Paris on 17th July as the most humiliating step he could possibly take. “He was actually led in triumph like a tame bear by the deputies and the city militia.” He added, with an unusual flash of insight, that the people had not been led by any man or party, “but merely by the general diffusion of reason and philosophy.”
Nevertheless, though the King’s youngest brother, the Comte d’Artois, and his reactionary followers were scattered to the four winds, Dorset had the imprudence to write to congratulate him on his escape. The letter was intercepted, and the populace at once raised a hue and cry against the British embassy, it being well known that the Duke was on the most familiar terms with the highest aristocracy. Dorset thereupon wrote to the Duke of Leeds urging the need of stating officially the good will of England for France; and that Minister at once expressed “the earnest desire of His Majesty and his Ministers to cultivate and promote that friendship and harmony, which so happily subsists between the two countries.” Dorset communicated this to the National Assembly on 3rd August; but that was his last official act. He forthwith returned to England, presumably because of the indiscretion related above.
During the next months the duties of the embassy devolved upon Lord Robert Stephen Fitzgerald (brother of the more famous Lord Edward), who was charged to do all in his power to cultivate friendly relations with the French Government, and, for the present at least, to discourage the visits of English tourists.[894] The new envoy certainly showed more tact than Dorset; but his despatches give the impression that he longed for the political reaction which he more than once predicted as imminent. We may notice here that the Pitt Cabinet showed no sign of uneasiness as to the safety of its archives at the Paris embassy until 5th March, when orders were issued to send back to London all the ciphers and deciphers. The attitude of Pitt towards French affairs was one of cautious observation.
In the meantime affairs at Paris went rapidly from bad to worse. The scarcity of ready money, the dearness of bread, and the wild stories of the so-called pacte de famine, for starving the populace into obedience, whetted class-hatreds, and rendered possible the extraordinary scenes of 5th and 6th October. As is well known, the tactlessness of the Queen and courtiers on the one side, and on the other the intrigues of the Duke of Orleans and his agents, led up to the weird march of the market-women and rabble of Paris upon Versailles, which brought the Royal Family captive into the capital.