William Pitt and national revival

by J. Holland Rose

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Besides the irremediable blunder committed by Fox in framing the Coalition with Lord North, he made several mistakes during the early weeks of 1784. It was in the highest degree unwise to stake everything on the cohesion of his majority in the Commons, and to seek to avert a dissolution. Judging by his motions in the House, it was the worst of crimes for Pitt to advise the King to appeal to the nation. But surely that was the natural and almost inevitable step, seeing that Parliament had sat for four years, and the opponents were very nearly matched. Yet, while hindering the course of public business by the postponement of votes for the public service, Fox claimed to be acting with a single eye to the public welfare. Such conduct evinced no insight into the essentials of the problem before him. For surely, if Ministers were acting as illegally as he averred, it was his duty to impeach them. If their offence was more venial, the verdict of the people would suffice. The question could be decided only in one of two ways—either by an impeachment or a dissolution. He decided in neither way, but allowed the tangle to grow worse, until men came to believe that his sole aims were to shirk any appeal, either to the laws of England or to the hustings, and to force his way once more to power along with Lord North by means of their large but unstable majority. This was the suspicion which thinned their following at St. Stephen’s and ruined them at the polls.

Pitt, on the other hand, showed great tactical skill in working his way out from an apparently hopeless position. Admitting that his tenure of office was irregular, he justified it by the unanswerable retort that the Opposition could not govern. Accepting their decision, that supplies should be postponed so as to prevent a dissolution, he made it clear whose was the responsibility for the resulting disorganization. Finally, when the inability of his opponents to block the Mutiny Bill had set free the administrative machine, he appealed to the country. Men were quick to see which side had best consulted the interests of the State. Over against the impotently factious conduct of Fox stood the patriotic good sense of his rival in disregarding the wavering censures of a discredited House in order on the fitting occasion to consult the will of the nation.

So soon as the essential facts of that unparalleled situation are fully grasped, the diatribes against Pitt for making an illegal use of the royal prerogative for selfish purposes are seen to be mere verbiage. Equally futile is it to inquire, with Lord John Russell, why the constitution was not afterwards altered in favour of the Crown, and why the Court did not gain more advantage by its triumph in the General Election of 1784.[223] The fact is that Pitt had never intended to govern as a Court minion, or to subject the constitution to the royal will. It was not merely that his pride revolted against any such degradation; but his principles, no less than the tough consistency of his nature, forbade it. Because he insisted on maintaining the King’s prerogative at one point, namely, that Ministers were dismissed by him and not by the House of Commons, he was far from supporting it at all points. Even in that particular, he admitted that Government could not be carried on by Ministers who had not the confidence of the House of Commons, but he asserted, and triumphantly proved, that that House had not the confidence of the nation. For the long delay in putting the matter to the test, Fox, not he, was responsible.

In reality, then, there was no violation of the constitution, and no change in Pitt’s relations to the Crown. True, he had sought to reconcile its prerogatives with the functions of Parliament; but his attitude towards George III was still marked by a proud independence, which often caused annoyance.[224] He brought forward measures which the King disapproved; and in all important matters he had his way down to the spring of 1801, when George III demurred on conscientious grounds. The shelving of the cause of Parliamentary Reform by Pitt after the year 1785 resulted from the utter indifference of the nation, not from any bargain that he had corruptly struck with the King.

But if the memorable contest of 1784 has not the significance sometimes ascribed to it in partisan narratives, it is of great moment in regard to the monarchy, the Cabinet, and the course of events at St. Stephen’s. George III came forth victorious from his long struggle with the Whig Houses; but the magnitude of the peril had taught him prudence and self-restraint; and, while keeping a tight hand on patronage, he was thenceforth content, in the more important sphere of legislation, to leave a free hand to the Minister who had saved him from the open conflict with the Commons which Fox had sought to precipitate. The relations between the King and Prime Minister therefore came to resemble those which had subsisted between the first two Georges and Walpole.

Consequently, the growth in the powers of the Cabinet, which had been interrupted since the fall of that Minister, now proceeded normally. During the seventeen years of Pitt’s supremacy the principle became firmly established that the chief Minister of the Crown was the centre of authority, and that, while holding that authority nominally from the King, he exercised it by virtue of a mandate from the people. George, therefore, had escaped from the thraldom of the Coalition only in order to bow before an authority which was at once constitutional and irresistible. He no longer had to do with the nominee of a dozen great families, but with a man who had the clearly expressed confidence of the nation. The same fact tended to make the Cabinet of the future more and more a homogeneous and well disciplined Council, obeying the impulsion of the first Minister, and adding force to his declarations of policy. No longer was it possible, as in Lord North’s decade of office, for the Ministers to act singly and at the behests of the sovereign. George III’s policy of divide et impera might succeed with North; it could not but fail before the iron resolution of Pitt. The King’s acquiescence in the new order of things enabled him to regain much of the ground which he had earlier lost by his masterful efforts to govern as well as reign. Well was it for the British monarchy that those disputes were settled before the storms of the French Revolution beat upon that ancient fabric.

Finally, we may note that Pitt was far more than a second Walpole. The sturdy Norfolk squire wielded power, as a nominee of the Whig Houses; but Pitt was established in office by a wider and grander mandate. The General Election of 1784 ended the existing party system and shattered the rule of the Whig families who had hitherto dominated the Georgian Era. The somnolent acquiescence of the populace in that headship now gave way to a more critical spirit, to a sense that the traditional parties must readjust themselves under a new leader. Chatham’s conception of a union which should absorb the best elements of both Whigs and Tories received a startlingly complete fulfilment; for the greatest of the results of the election of 1784 was the emergence of a party which may be termed national.

CHAPTER VIII
RETRENCHMENT

In the arithmetic of the customs, two and two, instead of making four, make sometimes only one.—Dean Swift.