PITT ON THE SLAVE TRADE.
The relief granted to English Roman catholics in 1778 was extended in 1791. Though they were still precluded from sitting in parliament and holding public offices, a bill introduced by John Mitford, afterwards Lord Redesdale, gave complete freedom of worship and education, admission to the legal profession, and exemption from vexatious liabilities to all catholics who took an oath of an unobjectionable character. Pitt approved of the bill, and Fox supported it, though he wished that it had gone further, and declared his dislike of all tests. A bill placing Scottish catholics in virtually the same position as their co-religionists in England was passed in 1793. The confiscation of Church property in France strengthened the unwillingness of the commons to weaken the position of the Church at home. A motion to relieve the Scottish presbyterians from the obligation of the test act was lost by a large majority, and a motion for the relief of unitarians, which must be noticed later, also failed. Since 1789 Wilberforce had been working on a committee for collecting evidence with respect to the slave trade. In 1791 he made a motion for its abolition which was supported both by Pitt and Fox, but was defeated by 163 to 88. He repeated his motion in 1792. The king had at first favoured the cause, but a shocking massacre of the white population in the French portion of St. Domingo by the negroes, who were excited by the preaching of the "rights of man," turned him against it, and he thenceforward regarded abolition as jacobinical. Thurlow, Hawkesbury, and Dundas were strongly opposed to it. Pitt could not, therefore, make it a government measure without almost certainly wrecking his administration. He supported the motion with a speech of surpassing eloquence. Public opinion made a direct negative no longer possible; but the West India merchants and planters and the shipping interest were powerful, and the anti-abolitionists were strengthened by the king's known dislike to the cause. The motion was met by arguments for delay, and an amendment proposed by Dundas for gradual abolition was carried. A resolution was finally adopted that the trade should cease in 1796. The lords postponed the question. Year after year Wilberforce, supported by James Stephen, Zachary Macaulay, and others, carried on the struggle for the abolition of the trade with noble persistency. The victory was not attained until 1807.
Another measure on which Pitt and Fox were also in full accord was more successful. Lord Mansfield's pronouncement in the action against Almon, the bookseller, in 1770, which reserved the question of the criminality of a libel for the decision of the court, was, it will be remembered, widely condemned as an invasion of the rights of jurors. Of late years these rights had successfully been maintained by the famous advocate Erskine. When, for example, in 1789, in consequence of a motion by Fox, a publisher, Stockdale, was prosecuted by the crown for a libel on the promoters of the trial of Hastings, Erskine contended that the whole pamphlet in question should be considered by the jury, and procured an acquittal. Fox, who in his early days had jeered at the rights of jurors, introduced a bill in 1791 declaring their right to give a general verdict in a case of libel. His speech was one of his finest; he was ably seconded by Erskine; Pitt gave him his aid, and the bill was passed unanimously by the commons. Thurlow, who disliked the bill, prevailed on the lords to postpone it until the next session. When it was again sent up by the commons in 1792, he obtained a delay until the judges should have been consulted. Their opinion, though hesitating, was unfavourable to the bill. The aged Camden, however, spoke strongly in its favour, and it was carried in spite of the chancellor's opposition. This statute, of which Fox, Erskine, and Pitt share the credit, placed the liberty of the press in the hands of jurors.
EUROPEAN POLITICS.
From 1788 Pitt's foreign policy was directed towards the pacification of Europe and the maintenance of the balance of power by means of the triple alliance between Great Britain, Prussia, and Holland. Catherine of Russia, who was bent on the overthrow of the Turkish empire, and on strengthening her hold on Poland, pressed the Turks until they declared war in 1787. The next year the emperor Joseph declared war against them. Gustavus III. of Sweden allied himself with the Turks and invaded Finland. His expedition failed, and Denmark, the ally of Russia, invaded his kingdom. Sweden was in imminent danger; its overthrow would have given Russia absolute sway in the Baltic; the commerce of England and Holland would have been seriously affected, and the coast of Prussia endangered. The allied powers interfered, and a threat that Prussia would invade Holstein, and a British fleet sail for the Sound, compelled Denmark to cease hostilities, and saved the independence of Sweden. Catherine was deeply offended, and when the allies offered to mediate a peace between her and the Turks, returned a decided refusal. She pressed on the war with success, and the capture of Ochakov extended her dominions to the Dniester.
The emperor's war was unsuccessful. He was in great difficulties; for Hungary was restless and his Netherland provinces in revolt. The allies might have mediated a peace between him and the Turks on the basis of the status quo before the war, had it not been for the desire of Frederick William to use the difficulties of Austria for his own advantage. He designed to compel Austria to a peace by which she should restore Galicia to Poland, in order that in return Poland should cede to him Dantzig and Thorn; and he would have compensated Austria by allowing the emperor to conquer and retain Moldavia and Walachia. He hoped to accomplish this through his alliance with England and Holland, and in order further to weaken Austria proposed that the revolted Netherlands should be united to Holland as one republic, urging that they might otherwise fall into the hands of France. Pitt desired to arrange a peace on the status quo basis, and to extend the triple alliance by the inclusion of other powers; and, highly as he valued the Prussian alliance, he would not consent that, merely to aggrandise Prussia, England should lend herself to a policy which would almost certainly have led to a new war. Accordingly, the Duke of Leeds warned Frederick William that his plans went beyond the treaty of alliance, which was purely defensive. The death of the emperor Joseph, on February 20, 1790, changed the situation, for his successor, Leopold II., was a practical and wary statesman. Frederick William was bent on war against Russia and Austria, his minister signed a treaty with the Turks, and he pressed England to acknowledge the independence of the Austrian Netherlands. The English government took a decided line, made him clearly understand that in the event of a war he would be isolated, and proposed an immediate armistice.
Frederick William at last yielded to the representations of England and Holland. Through the mediation of the allies an armistice between Austria and the Turks was arranged on the basis of the status quo at a congress at Reichenbach in July, 1790, and a formal peace was concluded the next year at Sistova. The English government, anxious to prevent an alliance between the revolted Netherlands and France, desired the restoration of the Austrian power in the provinces, under conditions which would shut out French influence by satisfying the people; and accordingly the allies guaranteed the liberties of the provinces, and they were regained by the emperor. The ministry agreed with Prussia that support must be given to Sweden, which was exhausted by its war with Russia; a subsidy was promised and a squadron lay in the Downs ready to sail for the Baltic. As soon as Catherine heard of the issue of the conference at Reichenbach, she made a peace with Gustavus without the mediation of the allies, which was concluded at Werela in August. So far, then, in spite of serious difficulties arising from the ambition of the Prussian king, the triple alliance had enabled the government to carry out its policy with success. Its formation secured the Dutch from the ascendency of France; it strengthened the position of England in its quarrel with Spain, saved the independence of Sweden, mediated peace on the basis of the status quo between Austria and the Porte, hindered the spread of French influence in the Netherlands, and indirectly restored peace in the Baltic.
THE RUSSIAN ARMAMENT.
Pitt's policy, however, received one decided check. Catherine rejected the proposal of England that she should make peace with the Turks on the basis of the status quo before the war, and declared that she would keep Ochakov and the line of the Dniester. Pitt differed from the views held by his father, the whigs generally, and the coalition, with reference to Russia. They looked on Russia as the natural ally of England, both for commercial reasons and as a counterpoise to the Bourbon alliance, and Catherine owed much to England's good-will in her war with the Turks in 1770 and during her conquest of Crimea in 1783. Times had changed; and Pitt regarded with displeasure the establishment of Russia on the Black Sea and the prospect of the conquest of Constantinople, and held that the Turks were useful as a check on Russian aggrandisement. The possession of Ochakov was believed to be of the first importance in the struggle between the two powers. Frederick William urged that Catherine should be forced to resign it. In 1790 Pitt was opposing his wishes elsewhere; he was unwilling to alienate him altogether, and agreed to put pressure on Russia. The Turks were repeatedly defeated, and in December Suvorov (Suwarrow) took Ismail; 12,000 Russians and 28,000 Turks perishing in the storming and sack of the city, which are described in Byron's splendid verse. In the following March, in spite of some opposition, Pitt persuaded the cabinet to agree to send a fleet to the Baltic, and a squadron to the Black Sea to assist the Turks, while Frederick William invaded Livonia, and on the 27th an ultimatum was despatched to St. Petersburg.[229]
The next day a royal message to parliament announced the augmentation of the navy. Pitt sought to obtain a pledge that parliament would support the government in its proposed action. He met with strong opposition. Fox and others in both houses maintained that our true policy was to be on good terms with Russia, and that Russia had an undoubted right to retain Ochakov. "The balance of Europe," it was urged, could not be overset by its retention; it was a matter which did not concern England; a war with Russia would be disastrous to English trade and manufactures; if Russia became a power in the Mediterranean so much the better, as its fleet would be a check on the fleets of France and Spain. Burke vehemently protested against England embarking on an "anti-crusade" by assisting "destructive savages," as he called the Turks, against a Christian power. Four times, in one form or another, the question was debated in the commons. The government majorities were large, though less than normal. In the cabinet Grenville opposed the armament, and Pitt found that the feeling of the country generally, and specially of the city of London and the mercantile class, was strong on the same side. He yielded on April 16; a messenger was sent in hot haste to St. Petersburg to prevent the presentation of the ultimatum, and the Prussian king was informed that the fleet would not sail to the Baltic. Catherine was triumphant; she kept Ochakov and the line of the Dniester, made terms with the Turks without the intervention of other powers on August 11, 1791, and concluded a definite peace at Jassy in the following January. Freed from her wars with Sweden and the Porte, and from the danger of foreign intervention in both cases, she was again able to pursue her designs on Poland. She complimented Fox on the part he had played, and placed his bust in her palace between those of Demosthenes and Cicero. Pitt, who had lately refused the king's offer of the garter, sarcastically referred in parliament to the compliments his opponent received from a foreign sovereign.