The Cabinet as finally formed comprised the following seven members: Pitt, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Marquis of Carmarthen (son of the Duke of Leeds), an amiable but unenterprising Secretary for Foreign Affairs; Lord Sydney (T. Townshend), Home Secretary; Earl Gower, President of the Council (up to December 1784, when Earl Camden succeeded him); the Duke of Rutland, Lord Privy Seal (up to November 1784, when Earl Gower succeeded him, the Duke taking the Viceroyalty of Ireland); Lord Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty; Lord Thurlow, Lord Chancellor. In debating power this Cabinet was deficient. Apart from Pitt and Thurlow, not one of the Ministers could make a tolerable speech, or possessed the strength of character which makes up for oratorical deficiencies.
Thurlow might have been a tower of strength in the Lords, but for his duplicity, bad temper, and domineering ways. For the present, Pitt had to put up with him as a disagreeable necessity. There was something so threatening in his aspect as to elicit Thelwall’s picturesque description of him as a man with the Norman Conquest in his eyebrow and the Feudal System in every feature of his face. Add to these formidable gifts a sonorous voice, his powers of crushing retort, above all, his secret connection with George III, and his influence in the Upper House can be imagined. Yet his reputation rested on a slight basis; his knowledge of law was narrow, his culture slight, and his private character contemptible. He was known to bully his mistress and his illegitimate daughters, just as he browbeat juries and Whigs.[203] On the whole his reputation is hard to explain save on the ground that the majority of mankind is apt to be imposed on by externals, and is too uncritical or too lazy to sound the depths of character.
For the present Pitt tolerated Thurlow just as the commander of an untried warship might tolerate the presence of an imposing gun of uncertain power, in the midst of light weapons. The boom of his voice was worth something to a Ministry in which the posts not of Cabinet rank were filled as follows: The Duke of Richmond, Master-General of the Ordnance;[204] Kenyon, Attorney-General; Pepper Arden, Solicitor-General; William Grenville (afterwards Lord Grenville) and Lord Mulgrave, joint Paymasters of the Forces; Henry Dundas (afterwards Lord Melville), Treasurer of the Navy; Sir George Yonge, Secretary at War; George Rose and Thomas Steele, Secretaries of the Treasury; Thomas Orde, Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Of these the Duke of Richmond had great private influence, but was personally unpopular. Grenville and Rose were useful, hard-working men, but uninteresting in personality and speech. Their characters and that of Dundas will concern us in Chapter XII. Here we may note that the bold and jovial nature of Dundas made him popular as a man; but his defection from Lord North, and his capacity for intrigue impaired his influence in the House. Nevertheless his fighting powers, his legal training, his knowledge of men and affairs, and his skill in parrying the blows of the Opposition made him an effective lieutenant in the House. By degrees, as we shall see, he acquired great influence over Pitt; and after his entry to the Cabinet as Home Secretary in 1791, he, together with Grenville, came to form around Pitt what may almost be termed an inner Cabinet. For the present, however, the distrust with which the “Caledonian thane” was regarded permitted him to be no more than the chief among Pitt’s subordinates; and the ingenious poetaster of the “Rolliad” maliciously aimed these lines at his weakest point, his inconsistency:
His ready tongue with sophistries at will
Can say, unsay, and be consistent still;
This day can censure, and the next retract,
In speech extol, and stigmatize in act.
The other subordinates claim only the briefest notice. Sir George Yonge was a nonentity, under whom the British army sank to the nadir of efficiency. Kenyon and Pepper Arden were very young men; the latter was one of Pitt’s Cambridge friends, lively and amiable, but having little influence in debate. The House could not take Pepper seriously. On the whole the Ministry aroused little confidence among friends and much derision among opponents. The general opinion was expressed by Sir Gilbert Elliot (first Earl of Minto) that Pitt’s colleagues were “a set of children playing at Ministers, and must be sent back to school, and in a few days all will have returned to its former course.”[205] On the other hand Daniel Pulteney, writing to the Duke of Rutland, said that people approved the appointments and were glad that Pitt, in showing attention to existing interests, proved himself to be not “too virtuous and speculative for a Minister.”[206]
Such were the predictions concerning a premiership which was to last nearly eighteen years. In one respect the mediocrity of his colleagues made Pitt’s task easier. His commanding temper would never have brooked the superior airs of the earls, Temple and Shelburne. From the outset he could carry out his plan of moulding the Cabinet to his will and enforcing its discipline, without hindrance except from Thurlow; and the final ejection of that cross-grained egoist marked not only the triumph of Pitt, but also the consolidation of the Cabinet in what seems to be its permanent form, a body moulded by, and largely responsible to, the Prime Minister.
All this was hidden from the gaze of the most discerning amidst the gloom and uncertainties of the first days of the year 1784. Shortly before Parliament re-assembled events occurred which helped to strengthen a confessedly weak administration. At the request of Pitt, George III created four new peerages. Thomas Pitt received the title of Lord Camelford; Edward Eliot (father of Pitt’s brother-in-law) became Lord Eliot; Henry Thynne was created Lord Carteret; and a barony was conferred on the second son of the Duke of Northumberland. Thus the sources of nobility, which had remained hermetically sealed during the previous administration, were now opened with a highly suggestive readiness.