My dear Lord,
Your Lordship will receive from Lord Sydney the official notification of His Majesty’s having given orders for preparing a Patent giving your Lordship the rank of Marquis. In addition to this mark of His Majesty’s favour, I have great satisfaction in being authorized to assure your Lordship that, if His Majesty should depart from His present determination, of not giving the rank of Duke out of His Royal Family, it is His gracious intention to include your Lordship in any such promotion. I need not add how happy I am in obeying H.M.’s commands on this occasion, nor how truly I am at all times,
My dear Lord,
Your most affectionate and faithful servant,
W. Pitt.
Turning from this personal matter, which brought friction for a time between the Pitt and Grenville families, we notice other difficulties confronting the young Premier, which might have daunted an experienced statesman. The frivolous looked on with amusement at his efforts.—“Well, Mr. Pitt may do what he likes during the holidays; but it will only be a mince-pie administration, depend upon it.” So spake that truest of true blues, Mrs. Crewe, to Wilberforce on 22nd December; and she voiced the general opinion. Yet Pitt never faltered. On the next day Wilberforce noted in his journal: “Pitt nobly firm. Evening [at] Pitt’s. Cabinet formed.” On one topic alone did the young chief show any anxiety. “What am I to do,” he asked, “if they stop the supplies?” “They will not stop them,” replied his brother-in-law, Lord Mahon, “it is the very thing they will not venture to do.”[198] The surmise of this vivacious young nobleman (afterwards Earl Stanhope) was for a time correct; but Pitt had rightly foreseen the chief difficulty in his path. For the present, on the receipt of a message from the King that no dissolution or prorogation would take place, Parliament separated quietly for the vacation (26th December).
For Pitt that Christmastide brought little but disappointment and anxiety. His cares were not lessened by the conduct which he found it desirable to pursue towards the Earl of Shelburne, long the official leader of the Chathamites. He did not include him in his Ministry, partly, perhaps, from a feeling of delicacy at asking his former chief to serve under him, but mainly from a conviction that his unpopularity would needlessly burden the labouring ship of State. To Orde he expressed his deep obligations to the Earl, but lamented his inability to leave out of count “the absolute influence of prejudice” against him. He did not even consult Shelburne as to the choice of coadjutors; and the Earl let it be known that he would have no connection with the new men, “lest he should injure them.”[199] Pitt also sustained several direct rebuffs. Though, on 19th December, he sent an obsequious request to the Duke of Grafton to strengthen his hands by accepting the Privy Seal, that nobleman declined.[200] Camden was equally coy; and, strangest of all, his own brother-in-law, Mahon, would not come forward. We can detect a note of anxiety in the following letter of Pitt to Lord Sackville, formerly Germain, which I have discovered in the Pitt Papers (No. 102):
Dec. 29, 1783.
My Lord,
In the arduous situation in which His Majesty has condescended to command my services at this important juncture, I am necessarily anxious to obtain the honor of a support and assistance so important as your Lordship’s. I flatter myself Mr. Herbert will have had the goodness to express my sense of the honor your Lordship did me by your obliging expressions towards me. Permit me to add how much mortification I received in being disappointed of his assistance at the Board of the Admiralty, which I took the liberty of proposing to him, in consequence of the conversation Lord Temple had had with your Lordship. I should sincerely lament if any change of arrangements produced by Lord Temple’s resignation should deprive the King and country in any degree of a support which the present crisis renders so highly material to both. If your Lordship would still allow us to hope that you might be induced to mark by Mr. Herbert’s acceptance your disposition in favour of the King’s Government, the opening may be made with the greatest ease at any moment, and Your Lordship’s commands on the subject would give me particular satisfaction.
From Wraxall’s Memoirs[201] we learn that the writer undertook to pave the way for the receipt of Pitt’s letter; but all was in vain. Lord Sackville refused to take office, though he promised a general support.
The most serious refusal was that of the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland by Earl Cornwallis. George III highly approved of Pitt’s proposal of that nobleman, whose tact and forbearance would have proved of infinite service in so troublous a time.[202] Who knows whether the rebellion and savage reprisals of 1798 might not have been averted by the adoption of wiser methods at Dublin Castle in the eighties? As it was, the most difficult administrative duty in the Empire was soon to devolve upon a young nobleman, the Duke of Rutland, whose chief qualifications seem to have been his showy parts, his splendid hospitality, and his early patronage of Pitt.