William Pitt the Younger: A Biography

by William Hague

  The only hope now of saving the government was the recruitment of Lord North. But Pitt ‘inflexibly refused’ to sit in the Cabinet with the man who ‘had precipitated Great Britain into disgrace as well as debt’.30 In desperation Dundas approached North anyway at least for support, implying that North might be subject to impeachment if he did not support the government on the peace treaty. Dundas told North’s friend William Adam, ‘If Lord Shelburne resigns, Fox and Pitt may yet come together and dissolve Parliament, and there will be an end of Lord North. I see no means of preventing this but Lord North’s support of the Address.’31 This threat may have finally pushed North into doing the exact opposite, teaming up with Fox in order to get back into power. Whatever the underlying motives. Fox and North now joined forces. With the Lords approving the peace proposals by the alarmingly narrow majority of seventy-two to fifty-nine, North and Fox joined to savage them in the Commons. Fox attacked ‘the sacrifice of our chief possessions in America, Asia and Africa’, saying, ‘If ever the situation of a country required a coalition of parties … it is that of the present.’32 In response to incredulous attacks on his ‘unnatural junction’ with Lord North, he said, ‘It is neither wise nor noble to keep up animosities forever … My friendships are perpetual, my enmities are not so.’33

  Pitt had to reply to the debate. It was four o’clock in the morning, and he was tired. In one of his less effective speeches he argued that ‘the clamours excited against the peace were loud in proportion to their injustice; and it was generally the case, that where men complained without cause, they complained without temper’.34 He attacked the ‘unnatural alliance’ of Fox and North, saying it was ‘undoubtedly to be reckoned among the wonders of the age’,35 but made a mistake by also attacking Sheridan, telling him to reserve his talents for the stage. Sheridan rose immediately afterwards to say that ‘If ever I again engage in the composition he alludes to, I may be tempted … to attempt an improvement on one of Ben Jonson’s best characters, the character of the Angry Boy in the Alchymist.’36

  Wounded by this devastating retort, Pitt and his colleagues were in any case on the way to defeat. The Commons divided 224 to 208 against them. Pitt wrote from Downing Street to his mother at a quarter to seven in the morning: ‘You are, I hope, enough used to such things in the political world as changes, not to be much surprised at the result of our business at the House of Commons … The two standards of Lord North and Fox produced 224 against us, 208 for us. This I think decisive … we should at least leave the field with honour. I am just going to bed, and I am perfectly well in spite of fatigue.’

  The government had received a mortal blow, and before Shelburne could attempt any recovery Fox and North prepared the coup de grâce, tabling a fresh motion for 21 February saying that the concessions to Britain’s enemies were ‘greater than they were entitled to’. This second debate covered much the same ground as the first, but after his lacklustre speech on the Monday, Pitt turned up on the Friday to give a two-and-three-quarter-hour speech that ranks as one of the finest he ever delivered. This was in spite of being taken ill, and ‘actually holding Solomon’s porch door [the door between the Chamber of the Commons and the Members’ Lobby] open with one hand, while vomiting during Fox’s speech to whom he was to reply’.37* Knowing that the government was doomed and his own reputation rather dimmed from his previous performance, he gathered himself up to denounce the Fox – North coalition and to set out his own attitude to politics and office. After a long justification of the peace proposals he defended Shelburne, saying the debate originated ‘rather in an inclination to force the Earl of Shelburne from the treasury, than in any real conviction that ministers deserve censure for the concessions they have made’.38 He tore into Lord North: ‘Whatever appears dishonourable or inadequate in the peace … is strictly chargeable to the noble lord in the blue ribbon [North], whose profusion of the public’s money, whose notorious temerity and obstinacy in prosecuting the war which originated in his pernicious and oppressive policy, and whose utter incapacity to fill the station he occupied, rendered peace of any description indispensable to the preservation of the state.’39

  Pitt raged against the Fox – North alliance: ‘It is the Earl of Shelburne alone whom the movers of this question are desired to wound. This is the object which had raised this storm of faction; this is the aim of the unnatural coalition to which I have alluded. If, however, the baneful alliance is not already formed, if this ill-omened marriage is not already solemnised, I know a just and lawful impediment, and, in the name of the public safety, I here forbid the banns!’

  With an eye on the future, Pitt set out his own approach to office, saying that if the government was voted out he would

  confidently repair, as to an adequate asylum from all the clamour which interested faction can raise. I was not very eager to come in, and shall have no great reluctance to go out, whenever the public are disposed to dismiss me from their service. It has been the great object of my short official existence to do the duties of my station with all the ability and address in my power, and with a fidelity and honour which should bear me up, and give me confidence, under every possible contingency or disappointment … High situation, and great influence, are desirable objects to most men, and objects which I am not ashamed to pursue, which I am even solicitous to possess, whenever they can be acquired with honour, and retained with dignity. On these respectable conditions, I am not less ambitious to be great and powerful than it is natural for a young man, with such brilliant examples before him [his father], to be. But even these objects I am not beneath relinquishing, the moment my duty to my country, my character, and my friends, renders such a sacrifice indispensable. Then I hope to retire, not disappointed, but triumphant; triumphant in the conviction that my talents, humble as they are, have been earnestly, zealously, and strenuously employed …40

  When in opposition in the future, he said, he would behave entirely differently from the opposition of that day: ‘I will not mimic the parade of the honourable gentleman [Fox] in avowing an indiscriminate opposition to whoever may be appointed to succeed. I will march out with no warlike, no hostile, no menacing protestations; but hoping the new administration will have no other object in view than the real and substantial welfare of the community at large.’41 And calling on the memory of his father, he said: ‘My earliest impressions were in favour of the noblest and most disinterested modes of serving the public: these impressions are still dear, and will, I hope, remain for ever dear to my heart: I will cherish them as a legacy infinitely more valuable than the greatest inheritance.’42

  Wraxall commented: ‘those who heard Mr. Pitt address the House … cannot easily forget the impression made upon his audience by a speech that might be said to unite all the powers of argument, eloquence, and impassioned declamation’. The speech did much for Pitt’s reputation, and according to one opposition MP, Thomas Pelham, it was ‘unanimously acknowledged … to be the finest speech that ever was made in Parliament’.43 Against the united opposition, however, it could not win the vote. The government again went down to defeat, this time by 207 to 190, and the Shelburne ministry was finished. On 23 February Shelburne announced his resignation, and on the twenty-fourth he delivered it to George III. He asked the King to raise Thomas Townshend to the peerage, to which the King agreed, and Townshend subsequently became Lord Sydney.* This left William Pitt as the most senior member of the administration in the House of Commons. As the King and the supporters of the government looked in desperation for some final means of preventing the Fox – North coalition from coming to power, Pitt was suddenly the obvious and only person with a chance of leading any alternative government. Shelburne would now suggest to the King that a twenty-three-year-old Member of Parliament be invited to become Prime Minister, and Dundas would work furiously to bring it about. It is testimony to the extraordinary nature of both the situation and the individual that the King would agree to do so, and that the twenty-three-year-old would have the presen
ce of mind to say no.

  * * *

  *It is possible that this incident occurred on the Monday, in which case it would help to explain Pitt’s inferior speech on that occasion.

  *Townshend earlier toyed with the title of Lord Sydenham, and his decision not to adopt that name was to be of lasting importance to the people of Australia, since a few years later Sydney was to be named after him.

  7

  Brief Exuberance

  ‘I am clear Mr. Pitt means to play false.’

  KING GEORGE III, MARCH 1783

  ‘I had thought, from the first formation of the coalition, that Mr. Pitt was extinguished nearly for life as a politician, and wished to see him at the Bar again, under a conviction that his transcendent abilities would soon raise him to great eminence in his profession.’

  GEORGE ROSE, SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY, IN 1783

  THE DEFEAT OF SHELBURNE, and the happy translation of Townshend to the Upper House as Lord Sydney, meant that there was only one person left who could both hold his own in Parliament and did not belong to the Fox—North alliance. Twenty-three he might be, but after his speech on that Friday night, 21 February 1783, his reputation for ability and integrity stood high. It did not take long for those who had burnt their boats with Fox and North to alight on Pitt as the only available life-raft. Shelburne raised the idea on the Sunday, and on the Monday morning, 24 February, Dundas wrote to Shelburne:

  My Dear Lord,

  I cannot refrain from troubling your Lordship with a few lines upon a subject of the most serious importance; and the particular ground of my addressing you arises from the words which dropped from you yesterday morning relative to Mr. Pitt. I did not pay much attention to them when you uttered them, but I have revolved them seriously and candidly in the course of the day yesterday, and I completely satisfied my own mind that, young as he is, the appointment of him to the Government of the country is the only step that can be taken in the present moment attended with the most distant chance of rearing up the Government of this country … He is perfectly new ground, against whom no opposition can arise except what may be expected from the desperation of that lately allied faction, which I am satisfied will likewise gradually decline till at last it will consist only of that insolent aristocratical band who assume to themselves the prerogative of appointing the rulers of the kingdom. I repeat it again that I am certain the experiment will succeed if His Majesty will try it.1

  From Pitt’s first arrival in Parliament Henry Dundas had admired his abilities. In declaring himself an enthusiast for Pitt to lead the government, Dundas was opening a quarter of a century of close friendship and steadfast allegiance. Forty-one years old, Dundas had been trained to drink and to argue at the Scottish Bar. Many of Westminster’s aristocrats would have found him coarse or dogmatic, but he always showed courage, a readiness for rough debate, fierce loyalty, and a gift for building a political machine based on patronage and rewards. His objective was the exercise of power rather than to take the leading role for himself. It would turn out that he and Pitt could find in each other precisely the qualities each of them needed in their ally: Pitt could supply oratory, intellect and integrity, while Dundas could bring cunning, solid votes and the arts of the political fixer.

  The leading members of the defeated government looked around at each other and came to the same conclusion as Dundas. The only chance of frustrating the opposition was to present as head of the government someone relatively new, completely untainted, and possessed of an ability to win over the House of Commons. Extraordinary though it might be on grounds of age, they could muster no alternative. Both Shelburne and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, concurred with the advice of Dundas and put it to the King. George III, who had determined with regard to Fox that he ‘would never employ him again’, was ready for anything provided it meant that Fox would not be returning to power. On the afternoon of Monday, 24 February 1783 William Pitt was summoned to the King and, three months before his twenty-fourth birthday, became by far the youngest person before or since to be invited to accept the office of First Lord of the Treasury and, in effect, Prime Minister.

  The temptation must have been great. He was young, but he had known no other life, and had prepared from infancy to lead the political life of the nation. Even if he tried and failed, he would have held the highest office in the land, acquired its status, and could for the rest of his life be an alternative to whoever held it. As Horace Walpole put it: ‘The offer was no doubt dazzling, and so far worth accepting, as to obtain the chariot for a day, was glorious at his age, and to one so ambitious. It was placing him at the head of a party, – a rank which he must always preserve, in or out of place.’2

  Pitt also knew that the government had been defeated by only seventeen votes three nights before, and that opposition MPs had been fired up with the objective of removing Lord Shelburne rather than himself. He was no doubt still savouring the adrenalin of his triumphant speech of defiance. All the indications are that his first thought was that he could do it.

  At 6.30 p.m. George III wrote to Thurlow that he had made the offer to Pitt, who had ‘received it with a spirit and inclination that makes me think he will not decline though he has very properly desired time to weigh so momentous a step’.3 The King was optimistic that he would be rescued from disaster; Pitt had clearly given him cause to think that was likely. But tempted though he was, Pitt was not dazzled. Several times he had seen his father reject the invitation of the King to lead a government, and once he had watched him accept it and then regret it. It appears that over the following hours he weighed the options coolly. On the one hand, his Sovereign and ministerial colleagues wished him to accept the challenge. Many Members of Parliament concurred, despairing of the whole previous generation of political leaders – ‘Of all the public characters of this devoted country (Mr. Pitt alone excepted) there is not a man who has, or who deserves, the nation’s confidence,’ wrote Sir Samuel Romilly the following month.4 The object on offer was also unmistakably his principal ambition. Yet on the other hand, he had watched the King forsake his father, and owed him little; and many of the colleagues urging him on were entering the evening of their political careers, while his was at its dawn. It would do nothing for his future to please his fellow Ministers but look ridiculous by being First Lord of the Treasury for a week. In the uneasy constitutional balance of the eighteenth century, the King could nominate whom he wished to lead a government, but the House of Commons could reject his choice.

  Pitt’s decision therefore came down to a matter of arithmetic, meticulously analysed and coldly assessed. Long into the night he sat with Dundas, going down the list of Members of Parliament and assessing their attitudes. It is not known how much port might have assisted the initial calculations, but it seems they were not wholly unfavourable. The following morning Dundas wrote to his brother in Edinburgh, telling him of the secret while urging him to keep it:

  I was with him [Pitt] all last night, and Mr. Rigby and I have been with him all this morning, going through the state of the House of Commons. I have little doubt that he will announce himself Minister to-morrow, and I have as little doubt that the effects of it upon the House of Commons will be instantly felt. Not a human being has a suspicion of the plan, except those in the immediate confidence of it. It will create an universal consternation in the allied camp the moment it is known. Still, secrecy!5

  At 9.30 that morning Pitt wrote to his mother, evidently wishing she was there to assist him.

  My Dear Mother,

  I wished more than I can express to see you yesterday. I will, if possible, find a moment today to tell you the state of things and learn your opinion. In the meantime the substance is, that our friends, almost universally, are eager for our going on, only without Lord Shelburne, and are sanguine in the expectation of success – Lord Shelburne himself most warmly so. The King, when I went in yesterday, pressed me in the strongest manner to take Lord Shelburne’s place, and insisted on my not d
eclining it till I had taken time to consider. You see the importance of the decision I must speedily make. I feel all the difficulties of the undertaking and am by no means in love with the object. On the other hand, I think myself bound not to desert a system in which I am engaged, if probable means can be shown of carrying it on with credit. On this general state of it I should wish anxiously to know what is the inclination of your mind. I must endeavour to estimate more particularly the probable issue by talking with those who know most of the opinions of men in detail. The great article to decide by seems that of numbers.

  Your ever dutiful and affectionate W Pitt

  The secret did not last long, and by the evening of the twenty-fifth rumours of Pitt accepting office were sweeping Westminster. For two more days he weighed the matter, perhaps waiting for parliamentary support to be manifested once the news was well known. In the absence of that ‘he seemed averse, thinking he will not be supported in the House of Commons’.6 By the evening of the twenty-sixth, Pitt was telling the King that only the ‘moral certainty’ of a majority in the Commons would satisfy him that he could become First Lord. Dundas made a last effort to persuade him, assuring him that Lord North could be persuaded to desist from active opposition, thus tipping the balance. He believed Pitt was now persuaded. But just as the entreaties of the unfortunate Dundas had inadvertently helped push North into his pact with Fox, so his pleading with Pitt helped to highlight the crux of the decision, with the opposite effect to that intended. On the afternoon of Thursday, 27 February Pitt wrote to Dundas that what he had told him that morning ‘seemed to remove all doubt of my finding a majority in Parliament, and on the first view of it, joined to my sincere desire not to decline the call of my friends, removed at the same time my objections to accepting the Treasury’. But he said he had now reconsidered matters and his final decision was ‘directly contrary’, for this reason: ‘I see that the main and almost only ground of reliance would be this, that Lord North and his friends would not continue in a combination to oppose … Such a reliance is too precarious to act on. But above all, in point of honour to my own feelings, I cannot form an administration trusting to the hope that it will be supported, or even will not be opposed, by Lord North, whatever the influence may be that determines his conduct.’ For all Pitt’s earlier insistence that personal factors would never sway him, at no time could he bring himself to make any concession to cooperation with Lord North. This, he said, had ‘unalterably determined’ him to decline the King’s invitation. ‘I have to beg’, he finished by writing to a distraught Dundas, ‘a thousand pardons for being the occasion of your having so much trouble in vain.’7