The British government would put a great deal of energy in the autumn of 1798 into assembling a new international coalition, but it would not bear fruit that year. Indeed, the protracted negotiations, interminable jealousies and constant demand for subsidies from the possible allies did not augur well, and were from the outset reminiscent of the First Coalition. Both Russia and Austria sought subsidies from Britain in return for troops at war: by late October the seeming impossibility of coming to agreement had left Pitt writing that he was sanguine only of ‘continuing to fight well our own battle; and Europe must probably be left for some time longer to its fate’.42 The Prussians did at least make a definitive proposal, that their army would invade Holland with the support of a British fleet, but as the winter of 1798 set in no progress on this had been made.
Grenville’s cousin, Tom Grenville, was sent as an emissary to Prussia: it is a reminder of the hazards of travel in the eighteenth century that his journey from London to Berlin was initially aborted by contrary winds; on the second attempt his ship became stuck in ice off the German coast, obliging him to wade ashore without his possessions. Having set out in November 1798, he finally arrived in March 1799. The construction of a new coalition was therefore full of the ups and downs, disappointments and false hopes which wore away at Pitt’s health, but he and Grenville continued to work for a structured alliance with ‘one complete & digested system’,43 with objectives agreed in advance.
Diplomacy was one of the three preoccupations of Pitt that autumn as he enjoyed a respite from illness. The second was finance: he wanted to find a way of maintaining the principle he had established in tripling the assessed taxes the previous year – that people with higher incomes should pay proportionately more – but he wanted to find a new way of requiring it. The triple assessment had proved to be too much subject to evasions, alternative interpretations and exemptions. He sought a more reliable and acceptable method of raising about £10 million a year.
His solution was revolutionary, and was set out in his budget speech of 3 December 1798: income tax. In this two-and-a-half-hour speech he explained that in order ‘to repress those evasions so disgraceful to the country’, it was necessary to obtain ‘a more specific statement of income’.44 Going back to first principles, he listed what he thought was the total annual income of each part of the economy (£20 million of land rental, £3 million from mines and canal navigation, £12 million from profits on the capital employed in foreign commerce, etc.), which was largely guesswork at the time. He estimated the total at £102 million, and proposed to levy a tax of 10 per cent on the whole amount. This new, and temporary, form of tax was, he said, justified by ‘justice and expediency … It looks anxiously to the alleviation of the burdens of the country, by a great temporary exertion; it looks to the equality of the tax, and the general efficacy of the measure, conscious that on them depends our success in the great cause in which we are engaged – That is to furnish the means of providing for the debt created in two years, within the same period we formerly provided for the debt created in one.’45 Income tax would thus be fair, collectable, and would provide for the more rapid repayment of the greater debts now being incurred. It would be applied on a sliding scale, zero on incomes below £60 a year, and then one twentieth on those over £60, rising to one tenth on incomes over £200.
In explicitly shifting tax from expenditure to income, doing so through one principal tax, and giving the tax authorities the power to require an itemised schedule of income, Pitt was launching a revolution in the financing of government. It would indeed be temporary, and would be abolished after the end of the war, only to return in a permanent form from the middle of the nineteenth century under Sir Robert Peel. The resentment at the powers given to a government department to intrude into private matters was deeply felt. Nevertheless, the entire complex measure had passed through the Commons by January 1799, always by commanding majorities, due to the obvious realities that the financial need was urgent, the previous scheme had not worked, the principle had been discussed for some time, and no alternative ideas were available.
Pitt’s third preoccupation was with Ireland. If income tax was the solution to the financial situation, and a comprehensive alliance was the solution to war on the Continent, then the solution to rebellion in Ireland was one which had been much longer in his thoughts: the complete Union of the Westminster and Dublin Parliaments. To Pitt, the repeated failures and risks of Irish policy throughout his entire career pointed to one conclusion. The failure of his Irish propositions in 1785, which had been his first serious political rebuff, seemed to demonstrate that it was impossible to carry out policies to the mutual economic benefit of Britain and Ireland when they could be unpicked by two separate Parliaments, each voting in accordance with its own self-interest. In the Regency crisis four years later, the Irish Parliament had been prepared to throw in its lot with the Prince of Wales and prepare for a Regency at a different time and under different conditions from those being set by the House of Commons. Every Irish crisis in the nine years since then had been fed, in Pitt’s view, by demands for Catholic emancipation on the one hand and by Protestant intransigence on the other. In 1792 he had written to the then Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Westmorland:
The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of an Union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly dare flatter myself with the hope of its taking place; but I believe it, though itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties.
The admission of the Catholics to the … suffrage could not then be dangerous. The Protestant interest – in point of power, property, and Church establishment – would be secure, because the decided majority of the supreme Legislature would necessarily be Protestant; and the great ground of argument on the part of the Catholics would be done away, as, compared with the rest of the Empire, they would become a minority.46
This was Pitt’s vision: an Ireland in which Catholics could be given full rights of citizenship, including the right to sit in Parliament, because Protestants need not fear a local Catholic majority if the Irish representatives were seated at Westminster, and the Catholics need not fear Protestant oppression if the affairs of Ireland were subject to the vote of all MPs. The rebellion of 1798 gave Pitt the opportunity to implement this long-cherished policy, and an added justification for doing so: ‘Will any man tell me, when we come to treat of peace, for instance, or to consider any subject of alliance with any foreign power, or upon any question of trade or commerce, that then the local prejudices, I say prejudices, for they have great influence, may not occasion a difference between the legislatures upon points that may be essential to the welfare of the British Empire?’47 This would be part of Pitt’s case, eloquently developed in the Commons through 1799, for Union.
To Pitt it was entirely logical as well as safe for such a Union to be accompanied by Catholic emancipation. Indeed, it would be in the expectation of such relief that Catholics in general would support it. Pitt’s key lieutenants in Dublin, Cornwallis and Castlereagh, thought such a policy essential. As Cornwallis put it: ‘Until the Catholics are admitted into a general participation of rights (which when incorporated with the British government they cannot abuse) there will be no peace or safety in Ireland.’48
The problem was that Catholic emancipation would not be acceptable to a wide range of other people, including senior members of the Irish administration, many Members of the Irish House of Commons, and George III himself. The result was a fudge, in which Union was to be brought about with Catholic emancipation both implied and expected, but with no actual commitment on it pronounced. The Irish Lord Chancellor, Lord Clare, was instrumental in influencing Pitt towards this compromise, meeting him twice in October at Holwood and writing to Castlereagh on 16 October: ‘I have seen Mr. Pitt, the Chancellor, and the Duke of Portland, who seem to feel very sensibly the critical situation of our damnable country, and that the Union al
one can save it. I should have hoped that what has passed would have opened the eyes of every man in England to the insanity of their past conduct, with respect to the Papists of Ireland; but I can very plainly perceive that they were as full of their popish projects as ever. I trust, and I hope I am not deceived, that they are fairly inclined to give them up, and to bring the measure forward unencumbered with the doctrine of Emancipation. Lord Cornwallis has intimated his acquiescence in this point; Mr. Pitt is decided upon it, and I think he will keep his colleagues steady.’49
His budget behind him, Pitt brought the matter to a decision in the Cabinet on 21 December 1798. The Cabinet announced that ‘His Majesty’s government has decided to press the measure of an Union as essential to the well-being of both countries … and will even in the case (if it should happen) of any present failure, be renewed on every occasion till it succeed, and that the conduct of individuals on this subject will be considered as the test of the disposition to support the King’s government.’50
The determined tone of this announcement was meant to make the Union seem inevitable as well as to make it a matter of confidence in the government. The difficulties the project would face became evident on 22 January 1799, when the Irish House of Commons approved the principle by only one vote, 106 to 105. But in Westminster Pitt showed that he would brook no opposition. In his speech of 23 January he attacked ‘the blind zeal and phrenzy of religious prejudices’ and ‘old and furious family feuds’, which ‘combine to make a country wretched’.51 Three days later he wrote to Cornwallis instructing him to dismiss all officeholders who had opposed the government in the Irish House of Commons. He went ahead and introduced resolutions on the principles of a Union into the Commons on 31 January, in what was widely hailed as one of his greatest speeches. According to Auckland it ‘surpassed even the most sanguine expectations of friends, and perhaps even any former exhibition of Parliamentary eloquence’.52 It was one of only three speeches in his life which Pitt had specially revised and circulated as a text. He called for generosity to be coupled with certainty:
I know that the inhabitants of Great Britain wish well to the prosperity of Ireland; that, if the Kingdoms are really and solidly united, they feel that to increase the commercial wealth of one country is not to diminish that of the other, but to increase the strength and power of both. But to justify that sentiment, we must be satisfied that the wealth we are pouring into the lap of Ireland is not every day liable to be snatched from us, and thrown into the scale of the enemy. If, therefore, Ireland is to continue, as I trust it will for ever, an essential part of the integral strength of the British empire; if her strength is to be permanently ours, and our strength to be hers, neither I nor any English minister can ever be deterred, by the fear of creating jealousy in the hearts of Englishmen, from stating the advantages of a closer connection, or from giving any assistance to the commercial prosperity of that kingdom.53
Ireland needed capital; Britain needed security. Each could provide it to the other. This was how Pitt, much motivated by the failures of the past, set out a vision of what could be achieved in the future.
This was Pitt at the beginning of 1799, confident, determined and eloquent. Wilberforce noted two weeks before Christmas: ‘Supped with Pitt tête-à-tête. Much talk about Europe, Ireland, income-tax, Lord Cornwallis, Union. He is, of course, in high spirits, and, what is better, his health, which had seemed to be again declining a few weeks ago, is now, I am assured, more radically improved than one could almost have hoped.’54 His friends concurred on this, Hester Chatham writing to George Rose to thank him for ‘the perfectly happy account of my dear son’s health, after so long an exertion of his strength’.55 Pitt was in his fortieth year, and had now led the government for fifteen years. From the days of military tension, incapacitating illness and rumours of insanity only months before, he had once again emerged as the incomparable master of the House of Commons and indispensable leader of the government.
Yet the grand design of Union with Ireland contained a serious flaw. Pitt would find a way to ram through its enactment, aided by differing understandings of the likelihood of Catholic emancipation. But those who held differing views on this subject would one day come into collision, and Pitt’s liberal views on the matter were the very opposite of those of King George III. His categoric opinion had been stated in a letter to Pitt of 13 June 1798: ‘No further indulgences must be granted to the Roman Catholics, as no country can be governed where there is more than one established religion; the others may be tolerated, but that cannot extend further [than] to leave to perform their religious duties according to the tenets of their Church, for which indulgence they cannot have any share in the government of the State.’56
Pitt would have known that this difference would be a major difficulty, but for years he had succeeded in manoeuvring George III into agreement with projects he found unpalatable, numerous peace initiatives among them. He was probably confident that he could get his way without precipitating a crisis, and in any case the risks he had run since the darkest days of September 1797 had paid off. Militarily, personally and politically he had sailed closer to the wind than ever in his life, and was now the stronger for it. Surely he could do the same again.
22
The Dashing of Hope
‘I do, indeed, consider the French revolution as the severest trial which the visitation of Providence has ever yet inflicted upon the nations of the earth; but I cannot help reflecting, with satisfaction, that this country, even under such trial, has not only been exempted from those calamities which have covered almost every other part of Europe, but appears to have been reserved as a refuge and asylum to those who fled from its persecution, as a barrier to oppose its progress, and, perhaps, ultimately as an instrument to deliver the world from the crimes and miseries which have attended it.’
WILLIAM PITT, 3 FEBRUARY 18001
‘In what sort of state did I leave France, and in what sort of state do I find it again? I left you peace and I find war! I left you conquests, and the enemy is crossing our frontiers. I left our arsenals full, and I find not a single weapon! I left you the millions of Italy, and I find spoliatory laws and poverty everywhere!’
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, NOVEMBER 17992
HAVING PULLED HIMSELF and the nation together at the end of 1798, Pitt was once again confident and decisive as he entered upon the seventh consecutive year of war and his sixteenth year of leading the government. There is no doubt that he was tired, each bout of illness leaving him less able to sustain the schedule he had once maintained from breakfast time until late in the evening. Now his colleagues increasingly noticed, and grumbled, that he remained asleep in the mornings; Grenville commented that it was possible to do a morning’s work ‘before the day breaks in Downing Street’.3 Pitt had less time for side issues, and became more dependent still on Dundas and Grenville as his senior colleagues. In the 1780s a zealous, hardworking and inquisitive Pitt had wrested control of foreign policy from Leeds, a Foreign Secretary in whom he never had much confidence. In 1799, by contrast, British foreign policy at the crucial moment of the formation of the Second Coalition against France was increasingly dictated by Grenville as Pitt relaxed his hold on detail. When the Continental powers resumed hostilities with France, Grenville could even say to Pitt that it brought ‘credit and reputation to myself’4 rather than to the government as a whole.
Pitt’s physical resilience may have been waning, but it is testimony to his sanguine nature that his optimism about the war and his determination to succeed still shone. Against the endless setbacks on the Continent could be set a string of British naval victories and colonial conquests. At the same time, Britain was enjoying remarkable economic success despite the burdens of war. Control of the seas and the ever-quickening Industrial Revolution meant British trade was expanding rapidly: Pitt would proudly tell the Commons in June 1799 that exports the previous year neared £34 million, representing an increase of more than 20 per cent in a single
year, and a huge surplus over imports. Such prosperity helped the government to maintain domestic order, and now it was hoped that the Union with Ireland would make that good order more durable. In Europe, the French military position was vulnerable and exposed, with their brilliant General trapped in the Middle East while the great imperial powers of Austria, Prussia and Russia gathered themselves for a further war against France.
It was a promising outlook, and Pitt must have felt that one more heave would do it. His work for the last six years had been like the labour of Sisyphus, using ever greater reserves of strength and ingenuity to roll the boulder up the hill. On each occasion, his hopes had been destroyed – he was cheated of victory in 1793 and 1794 largely by the ineffectiveness of allies, and of peace in 1796 and 1797 by the hardening demands of radical French leaders. Now there was a new, and perhaps greater than ever, opportunity to defeat France and secure a lasting peace. One more time he could bend body and mind to gain victory, vindication, and an end to the financial and human waste he had never sought or relished.
In early 1799, Pitt did not want for decisiveness: the government took whatever measures necessary to secure financial revenues, public order and Irish Union. Notwithstanding the almost even division in the Irish House of Commons, Pitt was determined that the measure would ultimately be passed in Dublin as well as London. He was prepared to give it time, but more significantly he was prepared to give the money, titles and rewards necessary to turn a truculent Irish Parliament into a cooperative one.
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 51
