Pitt’s main quarrel with the King was not over the merits of Catholic emancipation, but rather over the manner in which he was now being opposed by the Crown. He found both the King’s public explosion on the matter and his refusal even to consider the advice of Ministers to be unacceptable, apparently telling Canning that ‘He went out, not on the Catholic Question simply as a measure in which he was opposed, but from the manner in which he had been opposed, and to which, if he had assented, he would, as a Minister, have been on a footing totally different from what he had ever before been in the Cabinet.’29 In his letter to his brother on the day his resignation was accepted, Pitt complained of ‘the imprudent degree to which the King’s name was committed on a question not yet even regularly submitted to him. Under these circumstances, with the opinion I had formed and after all that had passed, I had no option, and had nothing left but to consider how I could execute the resolution which became unavoidable’.30
From the very beginning of his political career, Pitt had been interested in holding power rather than being in office for its own sake. He had gone to great lengths in 1783 to show that he was not a creature of the King, and had been careful to come into office only when he could dictate most of the terms. To be publicly contradicted by the monarch offended his pride, damaged his authority, and contradicted his view of how government should be conducted.
The importance of the immediate events should not therefore be understated, but there were additional factors at work. Pitt’s health, which had totally disintegrated only four months before, was again failing. He was suffering from gout at the time of his resignation, and he was to show unusual emotion over the next few weeks, being ‘very unwell … – gouty and nervous’31 at the end of February. Pretyman thought that this was one of ‘several collateral circumstances’, and that ‘release from Office’ had become an important consideration.32
Pretyman also believed that the need once again to consider peace was ‘the principal’ of the other factors involved.33 With the collapse of the Second Coalition, British strategy was now essentially to do well enough in the war over the next few months to be able to make a reasonable peace with Napoleon. The circumstances therefore closely paralleled those of early 1797, when Pitt had felt that an alternative Prime Minister might find it easier to conclude a satisfactory peace. He could not have contemplated resigning if the alternative to him had been Fox, but a government led by Addington would be likely to be true to his achievements and susceptible to his influence while he stepped back from the front line.
In addition, the differences between George III and his Ministers over military strategy in the summer of 1800 had been deeply frustrating to Pitt as well as to the King. As the summer had worn on with the army left unused, Pitt and Dundas had become exasperated when the King for a time withheld agreement to an expedition to attack the Spanish port of Ferrol. Pitt had reminded Dundas of the importance of ‘striking some blow’ or they would see ‘the spirit of the country let down, the government quickly censured, and the impatience and clamour for peace on any terms increasing every hour’. If the King did not agree, their only remaining option would be ‘begging His Majesty to find servants whose judgement he can trust more than ours’.34 Such feelings, however fleeting, must have added to Pitt’s readiness to leave office when confronted with even greater intransigence.
Decisions made for more than one reason are more difficult than those which rest on a single point. Pitt would have had to weigh this accumulation of reasons for giving up against his long-standing confidence that he was the natural Prime Minister, when the King’s behaviour pushed him to the brink. According to Pretyman, the impression Pitt gave to colleagues on 2 February was that ‘he did not propose to resign’. He spent the next day ‘weighing the arguments’, with the result that ‘those for immediate resignation were found to preponderate’, and drafted his final letter that afternoon ‘without however absolutely resolving to send it’.35 Addington believed that Catholic emancipation was the ‘sole cause of Pitt’s resignation’, partly, no doubt, because Pitt would only have discussed it with him or any wider audience in these terms. To resign over a clear issue was true to his concept of integrity and ‘character’. Yet the difficult balance of his decision was reflected in his uncertainty, and was to be further demonstrated by the bizarre events which were to follow.
Pitt’s resignation had been accepted, but a new administration had still to be formed and no immediate announcement was made. As a result, the political world was not only stunned by the steadily expanding rumours that the seventeen-year premiership of Pitt was at an end, but for the time being was left to guess at the reasons why. Assertions that Pitt had gone mad soon resurfaced, while some believed it was a clever manoeuvre which would allow him to return to office with a fresh team of Ministers. Fox considered that it was all ‘a mere juggle’, and could not imagine ‘that Pitt goes out merely because he can not carry an honest & wise measure’.36 There was some alarm in the City, which was calmed when it became clear that Pitt was not leaving office immediately and there would be an orderly transition to an Addington administration.
Addington himself was immediately on the receiving end of much derision, since friends and foes alike considered Pitt’s abilities to far exceed those of his replacement. Dundas wrote to Pitt on 7 February that Addington was ‘totally incapable’ of carrying on a government: ‘It is impossible for me not to whisper into your ear my conviction that no arrangement can be formed under him as its head that will not crumble to pieces almost as soon as formed.’37 Lady Malmesbury thought ‘It is impossible that Pitt’s friend and creature should be his real successor, or more than a stop-gap,’38 and Pretyman regarded Addington as ‘no more equal to what he has undertaken than a Child’.39 While Pitt assured Canning that Addington had not grasped at office, but that ‘it was impossible to have behaved with more confidence, more openness, more sincerity than Addington had done’,40 and told the Commons on 16 February that he ‘had already filled one situation of great importance with the most distinguished ability and this is the surest augur of his services, in another exalted situation’,41 the opposition was scornful.
By this stage it was clear that all of the most senior Ministers responsible for directing the war – Dundas, Grenville and Spencer – would leave office with Pitt and were not prepared to serve under Addington. This brought forth Sheridan’s withering attack:
When the crew of a vessel was preparing for action, it was usual to clear the decks by throwing overboard the lumber, but he never heard of such a manoeuvre as that of throwing their great guns overboard. When an Election Committee was formed, the watchword was to shorten the business by knocking out the brains of the Committee. This was done by striking from the list the names of the lawyers and other gentlemen who might happen to know a little too much of the subject. In this sense the right hon. gentlemen had literally knocked out the brains of the administration and then, clapping a mask on the skeleton, cried, ‘Here is as fine vigour and talent for you as any body may wish to see’. This empty skull, this skeleton administration, was the phantom that was to overawe our enemies, and to command the confidence of the House and the people.42
In the same debate, Pitt finally explained to the Commons what had happened:
I have no wish to disguise from the House, that we did feel it an incumbent duty upon us to propose a measure on the part of government, which, under the circumstances of the union so happily effected between the two countries, we thought of great public importance and necessary to complete the benefits likely to result from that measure: we felt this opinion so strongly, that when we met with circumstances which rendered it impossible for us to propose it as a measure of government, we equally felt it inconsistent with our duty and our honour any longer to remain a part of that government.43
As Addington scrambled to form an administration from whatever talent was available, the presumption was that Pitt would leave office after the budget on 18 Februar
y. He had resigned in businesslike fashion, but the process of temporarily carrying on the business of government, with obviously undiminished ability and support, became increasingly distressing to him and his supporters.* Pretyman found initially that ‘I never saw Mr. Pitt in more uniformly cheerful spirits, although everyone about him was dejected and melancholy. He talked of his quitting office with the utmost composure.’44
But at the royal levée on 11 February Pitt seems to have been taken aback by the King’s kindness towards him. George III knew, of course, that he needed Pitt’s support for the new administration, and as others have observed, he was probably grateful for being allowed to win.45 He told Pitt in front of onlookers: ‘You have behaved like yourself throughout this business. Nothing could possibly be more honourable … I do not care who hears me.’46 He then took Pitt for half an hour into his closet for a further conversation, in which Pitt apparently became tearful more than once.
Seven days later Pitt presented his budget to the Commons, which, even though it involved a loan of £25.5 million and swingeing tax increases encompassing tea, paper, sugar, timber, pepper, horses, insurance and postage, was greeted without dissent. Such unanimity had never been known in the previous seventeen years. George III wrote to him: ‘My Dear Pitt [a term of address he had never used before], as you are closing, much to my sorrow your political career, I cannot help expressing the joy I feel that the Ways and Means for the present year have been this day agreed …’47
That evening, Rose recalled: ‘I went to him at his desire, and we were alone more than three hours … in the course of which he was, beyond all comparison, more affected than I had seen him since the change first burst upon me.’48 When Rose suggested that Addington had taken advantage of the situation, ‘there was … no actual admission on the part of Mr. Pitt that he thought with me on the subject, but there were evident demonstrations of it, and there were painful workings in his mind, plainly discernible; most of the time tears in his eyes, and much agitated’.49
Rose was joining Charles Long and Canning as trusted acolytes of Pitt who would not serve Addington. Cornwallis, Castlereagh, Camden and Windham were further adding to the list of those leaving the government. All the senior figures who had supported Pitt on the Catholic issue were resigning with him. Addington found a new Foreign Secretary in Hawkesbury, and was able to keep the Duke of Portland. With poetic justice, Loughborough was to be replaced as Lord Chancellor by Lord Eldon, a deeply conservative member of Pitt’s governments who would hold his new office for twenty-five of the next twenty-six years. Loughborough was utterly astonished at his dismissal amidst the wreckage of the government he had helped to destroy, and even turned up at the first meetings of Addington’s Cabinet – where he had to be told that he was no longer wanted.
The stage was set for Pitt’s imminent departure from office when on 19 February, with the dramatic timing that always distinguished George III’s bouts of madness, Pitt told Rose that ‘His Majesty’s mind was not in a proper state’.50 Within days the King had taken leave of his senses as completely as in 1788, making it impossible for Pitt and the other resigning Ministers to surrender the seals of office. The change of government was caught in suspended animation, and the renewed prospects of Regency brought the complicating presence of the Prince of Wales onto the scene.
An awkward meeting took place between Pitt and the Prince at Carlton House to discuss the old and vexatious subject of the terms of a Regency. While Pitt was apparently happy to hand over the government to Addington, he was as determined as he had been twelve years before to ensure that any attempt by the Prince to bring in Fox and his followers would be hamstrung. Pitt was therefore at his most reserved and correct, which means extremely so, and according to Pelham was ‘more stiff and less accommodating than he should have been’.51 He said he would give advice to the Prince on condition that competing advice was not sought from the ranks of the opposition, and explained that the highly restrictive terms of the possible Regency laid down by Parliament under his direction in 1789 should once again apply, pointing out for good measure that this approach was now backed by many of the Whigs who had previously opposed it, leaving the Prince with no hope of any amendment. Inevitably, rumours flew that the accession of the Prince as Regent might result in a different administration to the one then being formed by Addington, either by the inclusion of the opposition – Fox reluctantly agreed to resume his seat in Parliament – or by reverting to Pitt with a fresh understanding on Catholic emancipation. Given, however, the long history of poor relations between the Prince and Pitt, there was probably little substance to this idea.
As the crisis over the King’s health continued through the end of February, Pitt’s public presence remained as commanding as it had been since his resignation became known. When he spoke in the Commons on 27 February, Wilberforce referred to his ‘extreme eloquence’.52 He decided to introduce a Regency Bill on 14 March, if the King had not by then recovered. As it turned out, George III yet again managed to stage a rapid return to health in the nick of time before his son could obtain even a temporary grip on any levers of power. After seeming in danger of his life on 2 March, he went to sleep and then ‘awoke much refreshed, and from that time steadily mended’.53
As the King recovered his senses, he left no doubt as to who and what he attributed this latest bout of insanity. Even during the course of it he had muttered, ‘I am better now, but I will remain true to the Church,’54 suggesting that it was the prospect of Catholic emancipation that had sent his mind into a spin. Once restored to health, he asked Dr Willis to tell Pitt that ‘I am now quite well, quite recovered from my illness; but what has he not to answer for, who is the cause of my having been ill at all?’55
According to Malmesbury, Pitt had already been feeling ‘a great deal’ uneasy about the possible cause of the King’s illness, though he had been ‘too haughty to confess it’.56 Now, said Pretyman, he was ‘struck extremely’ by the news from Willis.57 He very quickly sent an assurance to the King, later put in writing by Rose in the following terms: ‘It affords me great satisfaction to be able to say to Your Majesty that I am authorized by Mr. Pitt to assure your Majesty that (in whatsoever situation, public or private, he may happen to be) he will not bring forward the question respecting the Catholics of Ireland: and that if it should be agitated by others he will supply a proposition for deferring the consideration of it.’58
What was Pitt doing? If he had been prepared to give in February the undertaking he now gave in March, the entire crisis and his resignation would have been unnecessary. Having resigned ostensibly over Catholic emancipation, he was now prepared to forgo the policy for the foreseeable future. To his supporters at the time, this seemed to be a strong argument for not giving up office after all, and to later commentators the inconsistency has appeared baffling.
The truth seems to be that Pitt had no remaining expectation that he or anyone else could pursue Catholic emancipation during the lifetime of George III, and the concession he was making therefore cost nothing. He had not resigned in order to pursue the policy at a later date, but over the manner of the King’s opposition to him, and possibly for other unrelated reasons already discussed. Honour and character mattered more to Pitt than the pursuit of a particular policy: by his being prepared to resign, honour was now satisfied on the Catholic question, just as honour had been satisfied in his duel with Tierney even though no one had been hit. The question could now be put aside – although Pitt left the door open to returning to it in another reign.
The pledge to the King must also have done something to assuage Pitt’s guilt about the return of George III’s malady, but it may also have been part of an immediate political calculation. For on the same day that the King was blaming Pitt for his illness, George Rose was recording that ‘Mr. Pitt seems to admit more than he has at all heretofore done, during the last four weeks, the possibility of its being right that he should remain in, or rather return to, his situation; in wh
ich possible case it would become necessary to dispose honourably and advantageously of Mr. Addington.’59 The arch-loyalists of Pitt – Rose, Canning, Pretyman – now seized the moment to urge him to rescind his resignation. Senior Cabinet members led by Dundas joined in, even including Portland, who had already agreed to serve under Addington. Canning wrote to Pitt on 8 March that the ‘public interest’ required him to stay in office; against that was ‘nothing but miserable, petty, personal considerations’.60
Pitt hesitated. Against all the factors which had caused him to resign, he now had to weigh the fact that honour on the immediate issue had been satisfied, and that the respect paid to him over the preceding month had reminded him how much he enjoyed being First Lord of the Treasury. Yet while his sentiments reversed themselves, the same self-sacrificing nature which had led him to be so heedless of his own health and finances while in office now prevented him from making any overt attempt to stay in it once he had said he would leave. It was not in his nature to give any public indication of discomfort or desire. His combination of shyness, pride and sense of honour meant that he could be kept in power by the actions of others, but not now by his own hand. In March 1783 he had hesitated to accept the premiership while waiting for the House of Commons to call on him to do so, which, without a lead, they failed to do. Exactly eighteen years later, he hesitated and waited again, and left his situation to the goodwill of others. ‘Pitt will not stir unless Addington begins,’61 Canning reported to Malmesbury.
The result was not surprising. Overtures were made to Addington, possibly through Portland, to see whether even at this stage he would stand aside. They met with a frosty response: he had already given up the post of Speaker, a job he had loved doing, and had only done so on the understanding he was to be Prime Minister. He would not retreat without a fight. When Pitt heard this he immediately drew back. He made it clear to Dundas that he could only carry on if it was ‘a spontaneous desire’ of Addington that he should do so, ‘much beyond a bare acquiescence’.62 Even such acquiescence was not forthcoming. It was too late. Some time later, Pitt explained to a dejected Canning: ‘I make no scruple of owning that I am ambitious – but my ambition is character not office. I may have engaged myself inconsiderately, but I am irrecoverably engaged.’63
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