The case of the Slave Trade serves to illustrate the peculiar difficulties of Pitt's position, which were to appear on even more important questions. The King, Addington, Grenville, and Pitt had all contributed to the tangle. Limiting our survey to the conduct of Addington and Pitt, we must pronounce both of them culpable. Addington should have seen that Pitt's promise of support, given at the time of the King's lunacy in February–March 1801, was not morally binding three years later when the existence of the nation was at stake in the Napoleonic War. At such a time an enlightened patriot does not stand upon punctilio, but gladly takes a second place if he can thereby place in authority an abler man. Addington alone could release Pitt from the debt of honour incurred in February 1801, and faithfully discharged for three weary years, at the cost of the alienation of friends and the derision of opponents. He never spoke or wrote that word of release, but held Pitt to the bargain with an insistence which would be contemptible were it not in large measure the outcome of a narrow complacent nature blind to its own shortcomings.
Pitt, also, behaved weakly. The original promise, to support an untried man, was a piece of astounding trustfulness; and when the weakness of Addington's Administration involved the nation in war and brought it to the brink of disaster, he should openly have claimed release from a pledge too hastily given, leaving the world to judge between them. As it was, for nearly a year he wavered to and fro between the claims of national duty and private honour, thereby exasperating his friends and finally driving the Grenvilles, Windham, and Spencer to a union with Fox which in its turn blighted the hope of forming a national Administration. Finally, he made only one effort to induce the King to accept Fox. True, the situation was a delicate one; for pressure brought to bear on George on that topic would have brought back the mental malady. But the Grenvilles, viewing the situation with pedantic narrowness, considered the attempt so half-hearted as to warrant their opposition to the new Cabinet. On the whole, then, Pitt's punctiliousness must be pronounced a secondary but vital cause of the lamentable dénouement, which left him exposed at forty five years of age, enfeebled by worry and gout, to a contest with Napoleon at the climax of his powers.
CHAPTER XXIII
PITT AND NAPOLEON
I made a mistake about England, in trying to conquer it. The English are a brave nation. I have always said that there are only two nations, the English and the French; and I made the French.—Napoleon to Macnamara (1814), Lord Broughton's Recollections, i, 180.
The two protagonists now stood face to face—Napoleon, Emperor of the French, President of the Italian Republic, Mediator of the Swiss Republic, controller of Holland, absolute ruler of a great military Empire; Pitt, the Prime Minister of an obstinate and at times half-crazy King, dependent on a weak Cabinet, a disordered Exchequer, a Navy weakened by ill-timed economies, and land forces whose martial ardour ill made up for lack of organization, equipment, and training. Before the outbreak of war in May 1803, Napoleon had summed up the situation in the words—"Forty-five millions of people must prevail over sixteen millions." And now after a year of hostilities his position was far stronger. In Hanover the French troops were profitably installed on the Elector's domains. Soult's corps occupied the Neapolitan realm, thus threatening Malta, the Ionian Isles, the Morea, and Egypt. The recent restitution of several colonial conquests by England not only damaged her trade, but enabled her enemy to stir up trouble in India. There, thanks to Wellesley's dramatic victory at Assaye, the Union Jack waved in triumph; but at other points Napoleon might hope to gain the long contested race for Empire.
So convinced was Pitt of the need of fighting out the quarrel thrust upon us by Napoleon's aggressions, that he waved aside an offer of Livingston, American envoy at Paris, to effect a reconciliation. During a brief visit to London, Livingston sent proposals to this effect through Whitworth, who declined to meet a man hitherto remarkable for a strong anti-British bias; and Pitt approved this repulse.[680] Nevertheless, on 5th June Livingston, accompanied by Fox and Grey, called on Pitt at Downing Street; but his proposals proved to be merely the outcome of informal conversations with Joseph Bonaparte, who was known to be far more peacefully inclined than his brother. Joseph's notions were that Malta should perhaps be garrisoned by Russians, and must in any case be relinquished by England; that France should withdraw her troops from the Dutch and Swiss Republics, the status of which was not defined.[681] Pitt set little store by these shadowy proposals, doubtless seeing in them a way of discovering whether England was concerting a league against France.
Already, in spite of many obstacles, he was taking the first steps in that direction. An initial difficulty lay in the mental aberrations of the King, whose conduct still caused intense anxiety or annoyance.[682] Scarcely a day passed without a lapse into incoherence or violence. Moreover, his conversation often showed a lack of discrimination, being the same to the Queen, the physicians, or the servants. He made the most capricious changes, turning off the Queen's favourite coachman, and making grooms footmen, and footmen grooms, to the distraction of the household. On assuming office, Pitt consulted the royal physicians and received a reply, dated Queen's Palace, 16th May 1804, stating that the King was equal to the discharge of important business, but must avoid long conferences or any deviation from his usual habits, quiet being essential. Thereupon Pitt and Lord Eldon wrote to the King urging this prudent course. They frequently visited Buckingham House, where five physicians were in almost constant attendance, a state of things viewed with alarm by patriots and with eager hope by the Foxites and their hangers on.[683]