“He was pressed,” says Earl Stanhope, “to stand for several other cities and towns, more especially for the city of Bath, which his father had represented, and the king was vexed at his refusal of this offer. But the choice of Pitt was already made. He had determined, as we have seen, to offer himself for the University of Cambridge.”
He held at this time all the state patronage, and, moreover, with the king at his back, he meant mischief to the members of the ministry recently displaced from power by his royal master; and was about to trust to his faculties and the reserve forces he could command for a great electioneering campaign. He found time to write to his friend in Yorkshire:—
“Dear Wilberforce,
“Parliament will be prorogued to-day and dissolved to-morrow. The latter operation has been in some danger of delay by a curious manœuvre, that of stealing the Great Seal last night from the Chancellor’s, but we shall have a new one ready in time. I send you a copy of the Speech which will be made in two hours from the Throne. You may speak of it in the past tense, instead of in the future.... I am told Sir Robert Hildyard is the right candidate for the county. You must take care to keep all our friends together, and to tear the enemy to pieces. I set out this evening for Cambridge, where I expect, notwithstanding your boding, to find everything favourable. I am sure, however, to find a retreat at Bath.
“Ever faithfully yours,
“W. Pitt.”
Though Pitt had the “good things” to give away he did not escape sarcasm: thus it was suggested—it is said by Paley, who was then at Cambridge—as a fitting text for a university sermon, “There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?”
“The author of this pleasantry,” declares Stanhope, “did not allow for the public temper of the time; in most cases the electors voted without views of personal interest; in some cases they voted even against views of personal interest.”
Pitt was supported by Lord Euston, the heir of the Duke of Grafton, and between them they defeated the late members, the Hon. John Townshend, and James Mansfield, both members of the coalition ministry, the former as lord of the admiralty, the latter as solicitor-general. After a keen contest, Pitt and Lord Euston were returned, Pitt at the head of the poll. It was a marked triumph, and exercised an influence elsewhere; nor was it a fleeting victory or a temporary connection, for Pitt continued to represent the university during the remainder of his life. Pitt, now, as he called himself, “a hardened electioneerer,” entered into the spirit of the warfare, and carried his forces into the strongholds of the Whig estates:—
“But,” writes Earl Stanhope, “of all the contests of this period the most important in that point of view was for the county of York. That great county, not yet at election times severed into Ridings, had been under the sway of the Whig Houses. Bolton Abbey, Castle Howard, and Wentworth Park had claimed the right to dictate at the hustings.”
The spirit of the country in 1784 rose still higher; the independent freeholders of Yorkshire boldly confronted the great Houses, and insisted on returning, in conjunction with the heir of Duncombe Park, a banker’s son, of few years and of scarcely tried abilities, though destined to a high place in his country’s annals—Mr. Wilberforce. With the help of the country gentlemen, they raised the vast sum of £18,662 for the expense of the election (twenty-one years later this “vast sum” would not have produced much effect on the same field, when Wilberforce fought, in 1807, what has been described as the “Austerlitz of electioneering,”—the candidates between them expending above three hundred thousand pounds,—the details of which follow in their chronological sequence); and so great was their show of numbers and of resolution, that the candidates upon the other side did not venture to stand a contest. Wilberforce was also returned at the head of the poll by his former constituents at Hull. “I can never congratulate you enough on such glorious success,” wrote the youthful prime minister to his equally youthful friend. Rank and file, leaders and spokesmen, of the coalition party fell before the masterly tactics of the young chief, who stirred the minds of the people by extreme views as to England’s sinister future (if the Whigs prevailed) menaced with the onslaught of sweeping revolutions, and the destruction of every moderate institution and every safeguard of the state. In this manner, writes Pitt’s biographer, the party of the opposition was scattered beyond rallying. “To use a gambling metaphor,” declares Stanhope, “which Fox would not have disdained, many threw down their cards. Many others played, but lost the rubber.” A witty nickname was commonly applied to them. In allusion to the History, written by John Fox, of the sufferers under the Romish persecution, they were called “Fox’s Martyrs;” and of such martyrs there proved to be no less than one hundred and sixty. Amidst all these reverses, however, Fox’s high courage never quailed. On the 3rd of April, we find him write as follows to a friend: “Plenty of bad news from all quarters, but I think I feel misfortunes when they come thick have the effect rather of rousing my spirits than sinking them;”—as set down by Earl Russell in his “Memorials.”
One of the most remarkable features of the great electioneering contest of 1784 was the fact of the ex-demagogue Wilkes being returned as the ministerial candidate, to Pitt’s pronounced gratification too, for the county of Middlesex. But the ways of statesmen are indeed wonderful and manifold, and Wilkes, the man without prejudices, and equally unburdened by principles, was an expedient ally (though a redoubtable foe). Wilkes, very cleverly and plausibly, upon the score of Pitt’s constant advocacy of Parliamentary Reform, was enabled to press upon the freeholders of the county of Middlesex the advisability of extending their entire support to the “virtuous young Minister,” whose “liberal and enlightened principles promised to advance the best interests of the country.”[61]
“Johnny Wilkes, Johnny Wilkes,
Thou boldest of bilks,
What a different song you now sing!
For your dear Forty-five,
’Tis Prerogative!
And your blasphemy—‘God save the King.’”
(The Backstairs Scoured.)