“These were your Ministers.”
The astute young premier, whose youth at this time was alleged as his chief crime, began to bid for “loyal addresses,” and other servile expressions, to condone the rash experiments recently attempted upon the constitution. With this view he cultivated the citizens, and, being presented with the “Freedom of the City,” he was entertained by the Grocers’ Company as the son of that famous Earl of Chatham, the greatest friend of the rights of the people; it was expected he would be equally steadfast in defending popular freedom:—
“But Chatham, thank heaven! has left us a son;
When he takes the helm, we are sure not undone;
The glory his father revived of the land,
And Britannia has taken Pitt by the hand.”
In “Master Billy’s Procession to Grocers’ Hall” the adulation of the multitude is offered to the “charming youth,” who is declared to be “very like his father;” the gold box is carried before, and the voluntary slaves who are harnessed to his chariot are shouting for “Pitt and Prerogative.”
Before the dissolution (March 25th), Pitt’s ministerial manœuvres were already patent to all. The king had determined, with the obstinacy of purpose which characterized the royal mind, that he would endure any sacrifice rather than sanction the return of the members of the late Coalition Ministry to power; in the face of this eventuality, he even threatened, it is stated, to retire to Hanover, but, in the meanwhile, no effort was spared to obviate this embarrassing emergency. Places and pensions were freely employed as baits to detach followers of Fox and North. A pictorial version of the situation, as given by Rowlandson, represents the extensive “ratting” system and its modus operandi, under the title of “The Apostate Jack Robinson, the Political Rat-catcher. N.B. Rats taken alive!”
T. ROWLANDSON: MASTER BILLY’S PROCESSION TO GROCERS’ HALL—PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS—PITT PRESENTED WITH THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY, 1784.
“The City interests and votes, young Pitt would fain obtain.
For Freedom of the City, too, he does not sue in vain;
So Master Billy goes in state a Grocer to be made,
‘A fig for Fox,’ the Premier cries, ‘I’ve pushed him out of trade.’”
[Page 264.
