Pitt’s own commitment to abolition is hard to question when one reads his speech, delivered at the end of a long debate as the sun rose on 3 April 1792. It was considered by contemporaries to be one of his greatest ever. Without doubt, it brings together the characteristics of his finest efforts: the building up at great length of arguments of overwhelming logic combined with brilliant spontaneity, the delivery of a peroration which could have been months in the writing but was actually on a theme suggested to him by Wilberforce the previous morning, and the enduring tragedy that some of his greatest feats of oratory could not be matched by accompanying executive action.
‘Do you think nothing’, he asked the Commons, ‘of the ruin and the miseries in which so many other individuals, still remaining in Africa, are involved in consequence of carrying off so many myriads of people? Do you think nothing of their families which are left behind? Of the connections which are broken? Of the friendships, attachments, and relationships that are burst asunder? Do you think nothing of the miseries in consequence, that are felt from generation to generation?’21 He sought to turn the argument about other countries on its head:
How is this enormous evil ever to be eradicated, if every nation is thus prudentially to wait till the concurrence of all the world shall have been obtained? … There is no nation in Europe that has, on the one hand, plunged so deeply into this guilt as Britain; or that is so likely, on the other, to be looked up to as an example, if she should have the manliness to be the first in decidedly renouncing it … How much more justly may other nations point to us, and say, ‘Why should we abolish the slave-trade, when Great Britain has not abolished?’ … This is the argument with which we furnish the other nations of Europe, if we again refuse to put an end to the slave-trade. Instead therefore of imagining, that by choosing to presume on their continuing it, we shall have exempted ourselves from guilt, and have transferred the whole criminality to them; let us rather reflect that on the very principle urged against us, we shall henceforth have to answer for their crimes, as well as our own.22
He attacked the idea of ‘gradual’ abolition (which does not mean that he did not suggest it to Dundas as a fallback): ‘By waiting for some contingency, or by refusing to proceed till a thousand favourable circumstances unite together … year after year escapes, and the most enormous evils go unredressed.’23 But it was on the future of Africa that he brought his speech to its brilliant close:
Why might not some Roman Senator, reasoning on the principles of some honourable gentlemen, and pointing to British barbarians, have predicted with equal boldness, ‘There is a people that will never rise to civilization – there is a people destined never to be free – a people without the understanding necessary for the attainment of useful arts; depressed by the hand of nature below the level of the human species; and created to form a supply of slaves for the rest of the world.’ Might not this have been said … as truly of Britain herself … as it can now be said by us of the inhabitants of Africa?24
He concluded:
We may live to behold the natives of Africa engaged in the calm occupations of industry, in the pursuits of a just and legitimate commerce. We may behold the beams of science and philosophy breaking in upon their land, which, at some happy period in still later times, may blaze with full lustre; and joining their influence to that of pure religion, may illuminate and invigorate the most distant extremities of that immense continent. Then may we hope that even Africa, though last of all the quarters of the globe, shall enjoy at length, in the evening of her days, those blessings which have descended so plentifully upon us in a much earlier period of the world.25
As dawn broke and the first rays of sunlight shone through the windows above him, he chose two lines from Virgil’s Aeneid to illustrate the coming of dawn in Africa:
Nosque ubi primus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis;
Illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.
And when the rising sun has first breathed on us with his panting horses,
Over there the red evening star is lighting his late lamps.
Such spontaneity was nothing to the boy who had practised unrehearsed classical allusions with his father every night, but to other parliamentarians it was breathtaking. A few hours later Wilberforce wrote: ‘Windham, who has no love for Pitt, tells me, that Fox and Grey, with whom he walked home after the debate, agreed with him in thinking Pitt’s speech one of the most extraordinary displays of eloquence they had ever heard. For the last twenty minutes he really seemed to be inspired … He was dilating upon the future prospects of civilizing Africa, a topic which I had suggested to him in the morning.’26
That morning, Pitt had scaled one of the highest peaks of his eloquence. With such persuasiveness in its aid, how could this cause fail? Yet Pitt would not live to see the slave trade abolished by the British Parliament: ‘gradually’ would come to mean very slowly indeed. By the time he got another chance to act against the trade, war and illness had taken his mind and his will elsewhere.
* * *
*The spot is commemorated by a stone bench erected by Earl Stanhope in 1862.
*Forced from home and all its pleasures
Afric’s coast I left forlorn.
To increase a stranger’s treasures
O’er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold …
16
The View from the Precipice
‘Peace and economy are our best resources; and with them I flatter myself we have not … much to fear.’
WILLIAM GRENVILLE, August 17911
‘It is indeed mortifying to be exposed to so many interruptions of a career the most promising that was ever offered to any Country.’
WILLIAM PITT, NOVEMBER 17922
WHEN WILLIAM PITT ROSE in the House of Commons on 17 February 1792 to deliver his ninth annual budget, he gave his most expansive, optimistic and confident assessment of the nation’s finances. It must have been a proud moment, for this speech represented the culmination of eight years’ careful stewardship of the Treasury and a celebration of increasing prosperity: in it were contained his greatest achievements and his dearest hopes. His earlier tax rises had boosted revenues, as had the war on smuggling, but above all a general increase in trade and business was bringing the money flowing in. As the cotton mills boomed, exports of British manufactures had increased by 65 per cent in ten years, a growth that was still accelerating. Duties levied on a wide range of goods – spirits, wine, soap, tobacco, bricks, tiles, starch, paper and printed goods for example – were pouring into Pitt’s coffers. This buoyancy he attributed to ‘the invention and application of machinery’, ‘the extension of our navigation and our fisheries’, the commercial treaty with France and, above all, the ‘constant accumulation of capital’, a power identified by Adam Smith which would now act ‘with a velocity continually accelerated, with a force continually increased’.3
With a budget substantially in surplus, Pitt could make a speech which many of his successors might envy, repaying more of the national debt and reducing taxes at the same time. The taxes to be repealed were astutely chosen: first the tax on female servants, about which Pitt had always been taunted, was abolished; with it went the tax on carts and wagons and the tax on candles. Houses with fewer than seven windows were exempted from the window tax. With the international crisis involving Spain and Russia now over, Pitt lopped £200,000 off the budget of the army and navy, and devoted that sum and more to his cherished project of debt reduction. To entrench it for the future, government loans would henceforward require a corresponding increase in the payments made into the Sinking Fund. It would be only fifteen years, Pitt claimed, before the fund would reach its target and the saved interest payments would be available for expenditure rather than debt redemption. It was this fifteen-year horizon which led Pitt into the s
tatement widely regarded as the most ill-judged he ever made:
I am not, indeed, presumptuous enough to suppose, that when I name fifteen years, I am not naming a period in which events may arise, which human foresight cannot reach, and which may baffle all our conjectures. We must not count with certainty on a continuance of our present prosperity during such an interval; but unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country, when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than we may at the present moment.4
We now know, of course, that in fact Europe was on the brink of the greatest war it had ever known, and that the first hostilities between Austria and France were only weeks away. Yet at the time it was delivered that February afternoon, Pitt’s confident assertion of a peaceful outlook would have raised few eyebrows in Britain. The arch-rival France was paralysed by revolution and seemed incapable of mounting an aggressive war. The rulers of Austria and Prussia appeared to be afraid to act on their hostility to the Revolution without British and Dutch support, neither of which was forthcoming. The Russians might well be preparing the dismemberment of Poland, but Pitt and his colleagues had burnt their fingers trying to settle eastern affairs, and were no longer involved in them. Pitt and Grenville had adopted a new isolationism: in the words of one envoy, ‘peace and plenty is the sum of our politics’.5 At home there had been the first signs of disorder fomented by events in France, and the added worry of a bad harvest in 1791, but the government was clear that an emphasis on peace and prosperity was the best defence against popular discontent. Britain would only enter a war if its vital national interests were threatened directly, and at that moment no country seemed likely to threaten them.
Such was the assessment of Pitt and his Ministers, and by any conventional assessment their analysis was correct. They could not yet appreciate the extent to which conventional notions of power and diplomacy were breaking down. Industrial progress meant that ideas as well as news could now be communicated, and the ‘Age of Reason’ was generating ideas whose associated fears, emotions and conflicts were not constrained by any balance of power.
Although Pitt had now led the government for more than eight years, he was still only thirty-two years old. He was lively and witty company when he chose to relax, ‘a most affectionate, indulgent and benevolent friend, and so easy of access’, according to Lord Mornington.6 Even so, the pressure of events and the rupturing of his original social circle six years before had led him steadily to assume a heavier workload. In the late summer and early autumn of 1791 he was able to escape from London for some time and pay two visits to Somerset while also visiting the King in Weymouth, but for several years the need to deal with foreign crises had kept him in Downing Street or Holwood with few breaks. He was still in good health, although outbreaks of gout had become a little more common: these and occasional colds often led him to write embarrassed letters to his mother insisting any ailment was minor. For instance, he wrote to her from Downing Street on 4 October 1791: ‘I am very sorry the newspapers have done so much honour to my Gout. I had in fact just enough for a few days to furnish materials for a paragraph but it was very little inconvenience while it lasted, and has left none behind it.’7 He continued his enjoyment of alcohol, particularly in the company of Dundas. According to one account, the two of them came into the Commons noticeably under the influence shortly after the eventual outbreak of war in February 1793, leading to the memorable lines in an opposition newspaper:
I cannot see the Speaker, Hal, can you?
What! Cannot see the Speaker, I see two!8
There is no suggestion, however, that such consumption affected his capacity for work. Whether or not Pitt was an alcoholic at this stage, he was certainly a workaholic whose entire life was devoted one way or another to the business of government. This was largely the result of taking upon himself the overall direction of foreign affairs in addition to holding both the senior positions at the Treasury, but it was made complete by the absence from his life at this period of any intimate companion outside the government. Harriot was dead, Wilberforce changed, and Eliot often away. The Duchess of Gordon had receded in her role as a hostess, and Lady Hester Stanhope was still some years from assuming that position. Even Pretyman was now a more distant friend, having become Bishop of Lincoln. Pitt spent his time with the ever-present Dundas, and worked hard alongside Grenville, who in addition to being Pitt’s cousin married Ann Pitt, daughter of Lord Camelford, in 1792. In early 1791 Pitt had promoted within the government other close friends who had always been part of his circle: Thomas Steele became Joint Paymaster General alongside Dudley Ryder, and was replaced as a Secretary to the Treasury by Charles Long, another Cambridge friend. The indispensable George Rose remained the other Secretary to the Treasury, but Pitt resolved to make him Clerk of the Parliaments as well, occasioning another angry confrontation with Thurlow.
Among the members of this group Pitt could relax as well as allow his mind to wander over the political scene. Politics and play had been enmeshed ever since he was a child, and were all the more so now. There is every indication that he was happy for this to be so, but it is also clear that he understood the group’s political importance and saw the need to add fresh talent to it. While he was not socially approachable in Parliament, he spent a great deal of time listening to the speeches made in the House or in its Committees, showing a capacity for talent-spotting which few leaders of governments have ever matched. One historian has pointed out that the young Members chosen each year by Pitt for the privilege of seconding the Loyal Address to the King included two future Prime Ministers and five future Cabinet Ministers.9 It is even more striking that later in the 1790s Pitt’s ministry would include four of the five Prime Ministers who would govern Britain for the twenty-two years after his death – and the fifth would also serve with him at a later stage.
A study of 1792 yields two outstanding examples of Pitt’s approach. In March, he complimented the young MP Robert Jenkinson, son of Lord Hawkesbury, on a speech which was ‘a specimen of clear eloquence, strong sense, justness of reasoning, and extensive knowledge’.10 As second Earl of Liverpool, Jenkinson was to be Prime Minister for fourteen and a half years in the next century. Later that year Pitt met the young George Canning, who was thought of as a future Whig politician. He invited him to Downing Street, and Canning explained that it was ‘personally with Yourself that I am ambitious of being connected’.11 Within ten months he was an MP, and his attachment to Pitt eventually bordered on the fanatical. Decades later he would be Foreign Secretary and, briefly, Prime Minister.
Pitt’s attitude to patronage was selective and certainly selfless. Offered the great honour of becoming a Knight of the Garter by the King in 1791, he suggested that it be given to his elder brother instead. It was only on the King’s insistence in August 1792 – ‘I am so bent on this that I shall seriously be offended at any attempt to decline’12 – that Pitt accepted the sinecure of Warden of the Cinque Ports vacated by the death of the Earl of Guilford (formerly Lord North). This carried £3,000 a year and the residence of Walmer Castle on the Kent coast, a place of which Pitt would eventually become very fond. Pitt was full of good intentions about the use to be made of his additional income. He wrote to Eliot, who had suggested that some of the money could help with the further redevelopment of Holwood: ‘Your proposed distribution allows me much more latitude than I mean to allow myself, as in this instance I am inclined to apply the whole as a Sinking Fund for some time, and postpone any participation for Holwood until a good deal of debt is paid off.’13 In spite of this attempt to apply his national budgetary rules to his own finances, the money would in fact soon be swallowed up by his customary uncontrolled personal expenditure.
Holding the wardenship of the Cinque Ports was an obvious pleasure to Pitt, but what was important to him was that he had never asked for such a favour. He was bored by the requests of the aspiring nobility and ambitious clergy whose pleading lette
rs resided for many months on his desk. On the other hand, he never hesitated to use the power of patronage over ministerial appointments and peerages for clear political ends. Officeholders who had gone against him in the Regency crisis were ruthlessly removed at its conclusion, and his generous creation of peerages granted for political loyalty was criticised for inflating the size of the House of Lords. He had already created forty-three new English peerages and would eventually create eighty-nine of them, increasing the size of the Lords by around 40 per cent.14
Taken together, the tightened grip on appointments, the rewards for loyalty, and the scouting for new ability are the actions of a man who intended to remain in power for a long time to come. After eight years in office, most Ministers throughout history are nearing the end of their political or physical capabilities. The extraordinary precocity of Pitt’s arrival at the Treasury at the age of twenty-four meant that his outlook was entirely abnormal; he was thirty-two years old, and only now seeing the fruits of long-nurtured policies. While he had faced the prospect of dismissal in 1789 and possibly entertained the idea of resignation in 1791 after the Ochakov fiasco, his ambition even at this stage should not be underestimated. His constant awareness of his ‘character’ would not permit him to hold office in dishonourable or humiliating circumstances, but it was very much his purpose to ensure that such circumstances did not come about.
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 36
