I am persuaded, and will affirm, that it is a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war. It was conceived in injustice; it was nurtured and brought forth in folly;[103] its footsteps are marked with blood, slaughter, persecution and devastation; in truth everything which goes to constitute moral depravity and human turpitude are to be found in it. It is pregnant with misery of every kind. The mischiefs, however, recoil on the unhappy people of this country, who are made the instruments by which the wicked purposes of its authors are effected.
He continued in the same vehement strain, and seems to have impressed the House less than before, Selwyn giving as his verdict that he was “a promising young man.” The speech does, indeed, sound somewhat forced; and its declamation seems too turgid to be effective. On this occasion “the King’s cause” once more triumphed, by 172 votes to 99.
* * * * *
In the middle of July, after the close of the session, Pitt went on the western circuit, but the notices of his speeches are very meagre. The only reference that I have found to this episode in his life is in a letter of 29th August 1781 to his Cambridge friend, Meeke:
I have this circuit amassed the immense sum of thirty guineas without the least expense either of sense or knowledge.... I shall return to town with the fullest intention of devoting myself to Westminster Hall and getting as much money as I can, notwithstanding such avocations as the House of Commons, and (which is a much more dangerous one) Goostree’s itself. Adieu.
As a proof that Pitt did not merely play with the legal profession, I may quote this sentence from his letter of June 1782 to Meeke:
I have for many reasons chosen to be only a friend, without being a member, of Shelburne’s Administration, and am at least as likely to continue a lawyer as you are to commence one.[104]
The second letter belongs to a time when the prospects of advancement were unpromising, and when, therefore, Pitt devoted much of his time to the select and charming club at Goostree’s. As there is a widespread impression that he was a political automaton, who never unbent save under the spell of Bacchus, it will be well to turn our attention to his social life in London and at Wimbledon. It cannot be said that he ever felt the full charm of London—
The quick forge and working-house of thought.
Brought up in the aristocratic seclusion of Hayes and Burton Pynsent, and in Pretyman’s prim coterie at Cambridge, he had no experience of the varied jostling life which the Londoner loves: and nature had not dowered him with the adaptability that makes up for the defects of training. Therefore he ever remained somewhat of a stranger in London. He was at home in Downing Street, and still more so in his own select club, or at Hayes, Wimbledon, or Holwood; but London never laid her spell on him, and his life was the poorer for it. He reminds us somewhat of that character in Dickens’s “Great Expectations,” who, though naive and jovial, when he entered his suburban retreat in Walworth Road and the mimic castle at the end of the garden, yet always fixed his features in chilling reserve when he went forth citywards. So, too, there were two Pitts, the austere man of affairs, and the lovable, delightful friend. London alone could have mixed up the two men and produced a sociable compound; but this was not to be.