William Pitt and national revival

by J. Holland Rose

In February 1780 Burke introduced his proposals for Economic Reform in a speech of great ability. He sought, firstly, to abolish the special jurisdictions in Wales and Cheshire and in the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which formed petty and extravagant and corrupt governments. The great orator, like a forensic retiarius, sought to enfold his great enemy, Corruption, within the cloak of humour which he thus deftly threw in front. Affecting the desire to free the royal prerogative from irritating and absurd local restrictions, he proceeded thus: “Cross a brook, and you lose the King of England, but you have some comfort in coming again under His Majesty, though shorn of his beams, and no more than Prince of Wales. Go to the north and you find him dwindled to a Duke of Lancaster. Turn to the west of that north, and he hops upon you in the humble character of the Earl of Chester.” Equally difficult and important was Burke’s attempt to reduce the Civil List and lessen the number of sinecures attached to the King’s household. He sought to abolish the offices of Master of the Household, Treasurer, Comptroller, Cofferer, Treasurer of the Chamber, the whole Board of Green-Cloth, the Wardrobe and Jewel Offices, the Board of Works, and the Keepers of stag-hounds, buck-hounds, fox-hounds, and harriers, and other well-paid sinecures. With playful irony he described the clatter of white-sticks and yellow-sticks about the head of a reformer who would touch those offices, or sought to exclude the King’s turnspit from Parliament. As regarded the Civil List, he proposed to fix its amount immutably, to transfer to the general fund accounts which had ceased properly to belong to the King’s private purse, and to regulate the whole on business-like principles. He also urged the suppression of useless offices in the general administration, especially the newly created Secretaryship for the Colonies and the Board of Trade, the latter of which then formed a desirable sinecure for eight members of Parliament.[80] Most important of all, perhaps, was the proposal, brought in by Sir Philip Clerk, to exclude from Parliament contractors—a class which had been proved to have battened on the funds, and to have urged the continuance of the war.

Had Burke’s proposals stood in need of further vindication, it would have been supplied by the mysterious fate which befell them. Members of Parliament with scarcely an exception loudly commended the measure, and the eloquence and power with which Burke introduced it to the House. About the same time Lord Shelburne brought forward in the Upper House damning proofs of the greed of contractors and of the gross carelessness with which accounts were kept at the Admiralty and War Office.[81] The defence of ministers was strong only in personalities. Argument there was none; and it seemed that the whole festering sudd of corruption must be swept away by the flood of popular indignation.

From three of Pitt’s letters, those of 9th and 26th February and 14th March 1780, we can imagine the high hopes of the young reformer as he listened to the scathing attack on Ministers by Lord Shelburne, and the comprehensive indictment framed by Burke. In the second letter he notes with joy the drop of the ministerial majority to two; and in the small hours of 14th March he was privileged to witness the stormy scene which occurred when Burke by a majority of eight carried his motion for abolishing the Board of Trade. And yet the sudd did not move. Despite the success of reformers in the House, and the growing excitement among their associations in the country, the clogging influences of the past prevailed. Members who praised Burke for his lofty and statesmanlike aims, voted in committee against the details of his scheme. Little by little it disappeared; and, in face of the greed, cowardice, or apathy of Parliament, Burke soon declared his indifference as to the fate of the few remaining clauses of his measure. The bill for the exclusion of contractors from Parliament passed the Commons, but was thrown out by the Lords.

Another surprise was in store for the House and the country. On 6th April Mr. Dunning brought forward a motion that “the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be lessened.” The motion was made suddenly and on the day when numerous petitions were laid on the table, signed by thousands of persons, on behalf of shorter parliaments and a larger addition to the representatives of counties who, as a rule, showed some independence. The proposal produced a great sensation. Ministers seemed to be “stunned.” Pitt’s relative, Thomas Pitt of Boccanoc, ably supported this daring motion. The Speaker himself left the chair and spoke in support of it, and the resolution, after a trifling change of form, was passed by a majority of eighteen. But again the forces of obscurantism triumphed. Apparently Dunning owed his success solely to the fear of the imminence of a general election, and as that fear lessened, so also did the numbers of the popular party in the House. North slowly but surely regained his hold on the waverers, and succeeded in defeating a motion begging the King not to dissolve or prorogue Parliament until steps had been taken to diminish the influence of the Crown at elections (24th April).

For the present Pitt stifled his disappointment at this fiasco by attendance at the opera and masquerades, so we may judge from his letters; but he probably hardened his resolve to effect the Reform of Parliament itself, which, as was now clear to all but Burke, must precede any attempt to cleanse the Augean stables of the Court and the Administration. That gifted thinker but somewhat erratic politician, whose character will concern us later, had gone so far as to defend the state of the representation and to urge reformers to concentrate their efforts on the task of freeing Parliament from the corrupt influences that were warping its character. To this belief he still clung, in spite of the recent damning proof that a Parliament of place-hunters and borough-mongers had refused to root out the canker of corruption, even at a time of great national danger. Pitt, for his part, looked for safety to that course of action which Chatham had so often taken; he turned away from Parliament and fixed his hopes in the nation. Even the oratory of Burke failed to satisfy him. He found in his great speech of 11th February not only “real beauties,” but “ridiculous affectations.” He added, however, in his letter of 14th March: “I have heard two less studied harangues from him since in reply that please me much more than this does now that it is upon paper.” This criticism, coming from the son of Chatham, is a little surprising; but it may be considered symptomatic. As will appear later, there was something in Burke’s temperament which jarred on the young statesman.

While disagreeing with Burke and the more academic wing of the reformers, Pitt did not consort with the men on the extreme left who now raised a great clamour through the country. He seems to have had no dealings at this time with the Reform or “Œconomic” Associations; and events now occurred which helped for a time to distract his attention from politics. While he was expecting to be called to the Bar, London fell a prey to the Lord George Gordon rioters (2nd to 9th June).

What must have been the disgust of the young patrician as he gazed at the scenes of rapine and drunkenness which went on under the name of Protestantism! The pretence of bigotry was soon flung aside, and then, when the thin crust of civilization was removed, men saw appalled the depths of villany that usually are hidden. For days the passions of the mob raged unchecked by timorous magistrates and ministers. The King alone was undismayed, and finally insisted on the use of vigorous measures. Thanks to his staunchness, the wheels of government began to move once more. Then the orgy quickly died down; but it left men with a dread of the newly-revealed Caliban, and a heightened respect for the one man whose firmness had ensured the vindication of law and order. How much the popular cause then suffered can never be known. When, in the course of the French Revolution, the Parisian mob carried the King and Queen from Versailles to Paris and completed its triumph at the harvest time of 1792, Englishmen viewed those events in the lurid light thrown by the flames of the Lord George Gordon riots; and it is probable that Pitt himself was no stranger to this feeling.

The cause of Parliamentary Reform in England also suffered untold harm. Why talk about manhood suffrage, vote by ballot and annual Parliaments, as the Westminster Committee had talked, when all around were proofs of the savagery of the many-headed monster? The Duke of Richmond, who then, along with Fox, advocated a programme of reform which was to furnish the Chartists with their “six points,” confessed in a letter to Shelburne that the riots “will tend to discredit any attempts of the people to do themselves justice on any future occasion when the cause may warrant it”;[82] and though Charles James Fox retained his faith in the cause, yet he and all other democrats thenceforth found it a hopeless task to roll the stone up to the point to which the enthusiasm of the people carried it in the spring of 1780. After midsummer of that year the various committees and associations preached to deaf ears. The King had won.

To return to Pitt’s fortunes, we may note that Lincoln’s Inn had been in no immediate danger from the rioters, though surrounded with flames on all sides. In order to be ready for the worst, the benchers took arms and formed a corps, in which Pitt had his first experience of volunteering. The records of the Inn, however, show that it was also defended by 800 men of the Northumberland Militia, the sum of £364 12s. 0d. being paid for provisions to them for the ten days during which they were in garrison.[83]

The desire of the resident members of the Inn worthily to entertain the officers of that corps led to the appointment of a committee for that purpose, which included Pitt, Pepper Arden (afterwards Lord Alvanley), Mitford (afterwards Lord Redesdale), Bland Burges, and three others. The last named, in his reminiscences, tells how, when his turn came, he invited Gibbon and Lord Carmarthen to meet four officers and other company at dinner. The historian, as is well known, was a most entertaining talker, flitting easily from one topic to another, and lighting up all with sallies of wit which the listeners were expected to receive with deferential applause and unquestioning mirth. Judge then of his astonishment, when, after one of his best foreign anecdotes, which touched on “the fashionable levities of political doctrine then prevalent,” a deep but clear voice was heard from the far end of the table calmly but civilly impugning the correctness of the story and the propriety of its political connexion. The applause ceased at once, and Gibbon turned his gaze petulantly on the slim youth who had dared to challenge his unquestioned supremacy, and sat there quietly eating grapes. As the interruption had been hailed with too much approval to be ignored or dismissed with a frown, he endeavoured to crush the youth by heavy artillery. A spirited fire came in return, and a sharp duel of wits began, which the company followed with the keenest interest. Finally the skill and vigour of the attack drove the historian from one position after another and left him defenceless; whereupon he left the room in high dudgeon. In vain did Bland Burges seek in the anteroom to calm his feelings and persuade him to return. “By no means,” replied Gibbon; “that young gentleman is, I have no doubt, extremely ingenious and agreeable, but I must acknowledge that his style of conversation is not exactly what I am accustomed to, so you must positively excuse me.” Meanwhile Pitt continued to hold forth on the topic in dispute, “which he discussed with such ability, strength of argument, and eloquence, that his hearers were filled with profound admiration.”[84]