Funeral arrangements and private affairs were one thing, but the most pressing and monumental question which arose immediately on Pitt’s death was who was to govern the country and prosecute the war. His Cabinet colleagues showed sufficient self-awareness to decide on the day after his death that it was hopeless for them to continue. As a result, George III, who had been ‘deeply affected’ by news of Pitt’s impending demise,59 was driven to the extremity against which he had struggled for so long: he sent for Grenville to be First Lord of the Treasury, knowing full well that it would mean Fox entering a senior position in government. The King bowed quietly to the inevitable, and what was to be known as ‘the Ministry of All the Talents’ took office in early February with Grenville as Prime Minister, Fox as Foreign Secretary and Sidmouth as Lord Privy Seal. This proved to be a most uneasy coalition, whose initial hopes for negotiating peace were soon disappointed. It did, however, succeed in finally winning parliamentary approval for the complete and immediate abolition of the slave trade, which was enacted in law early in 1807.
‘Pitt’s friends’ went into opposition, but they would not be there for long. Having pursued a parallel career to that of Pitt, Fox now followed him swiftly to the grave, and died of dropsy in September. Although Grenville strengthened his position with a general election in 1806, his attempts to pursue an extension of the toleration of Catholics in the armed forces came up against the predictably rigid intransigence of George III, precipitating his removal from office and a fresh and divisive general election in 1807.
Pitt’s friends were soon back in government, this time to stay. They governed Britain for many years in the spirit and amid circumstances he would have recognised – slowly inching towards victory over Napoleon while struggling to maintain domestic order in the face of regular shortages and a quickening Industrial Revolution. Their government would be led initially by Portland, then by Spencer Perceval until his assassination in 1812, then for almost fifteen years by Liverpool (formerly Hawkesbury), then briefly by Canning and finally by the Duke of Wellington. Taken together, Pitt’s friends and admirers would be in government for twenty-three consecutive years, more than even their hero had managed. Their power was uninhibited by the accession of the Prince of Wales as Regent in 1811, and as George IV in 1820.
The final defeat of France in 1815 opened the way for Castlereagh to construct a European settlement of which Pitt would have heartily approved, the Royal Navy remained mistress of the seas, and the economy and population grew rapidly. Catholic emancipation would not be conceded until 1829, and Pitt’s successors would succeed in obstructing parliamentary reform until the triumphant Whigs secured the Great Reform Act of 1832. In a broadened political system, the party of Liverpool, Canning and Wellington would develop into that of Peel, Derby and Disraeli. William Pitt, the man who saw himself as above considerations of party, and once described himself as ‘an independent Whig’, would have had no idea that he had left behind him an enduring political force – the Conservative Party.
In purely statistical terms, the unique status of William Pitt in British history is beyond challenge. The extraordinary event of a twenty-four-year-old becoming Prime Minister had never happened before, and it is a safe assumption that it will never happen again. Pitt’s youth sets him completely apart from all other British leaders: even when he lay dying he was still younger than almost any other holder of his office. Of the thirty-seven British Prime Ministers who have succeeded him, only two, the second Earl of Liverpool and Tony Blair, have served at an age younger than that of Pitt at the time he died – and even they were respectively eighteen and nineteen years older than Pitt when he first took office. Pitt served at the head of government for a total of eighteen years and eleven months, second only to Walpole in length of service, and far longer than any subsequent Prime Minister: almost half as long again as Gladstone and Salisbury, eight years longer than Margaret Thatcher, and more than twice as long as Asquith, Wilson, Churchill or Baldwin. To hold such high office for so long is in itself an extraordinary feat, made possible only by a combination of unusual circumstances and exceptional abilities.
That Pitt’s oratorical and intellectual abilities were indeed exceptional is not in doubt. From the beginning to the end of his twenty-five years in the House of Commons his ‘transcendent eloquence’ was the indispensable foundation of his power. In an age when the art of parliamentary debate stood at one of the highest levels in its history, with the benches of the Commons resonating to the voices of Fox, North, Sheridan and Burke, Pitt stood at the peak, always the equal and sometimes the master of the greatest orators Westminster has ever known. The incomplete records and expansive speaking style of the eighteenth century mean that his phrases have not flowed easily into the language of later centuries, but it is clear that even in an age of eloquence his contemporaries regarded some of his efforts – on the slave trade in 1792, on union with Ireland in 1799, and on the resumption of war in 1803 – as among the greatest and most sustained displays of declamation they had ever witnessed. With rarely an error, never a word out of place, and never a speech without a clear and logical architecture, Pitt exercised to its full range the natural speaking ability which his father’s tuition had extended until it was extraordinary. It was in the House of Commons, and only there, that he was wholly comfortable in a public arena, where all stiffness and reserve fell away, and where he could confidently display his true personality knowing he could not be matched.
Pitt’s passions and preoccupations became clear very early in his life: the mathematics, classical texts, political issues and humorous repartee which made up almost his entire existence at Cambridge remained his favourite pastimes until the day he died. Concentration on each of them fortified the quickness of a versatile mind, so that if Fox blundered on the floor on the Commons, as he did in December 1788, it was not many seconds before Pitt was ready with his counterthrust. The same quickness of mind and enjoyment of solving problems gave him the earnest enthusiasms of the early years in office – the freeing of Irish trade, the commercial treaty with France, the budgetary measures to defeat smuggling, the creation of the Sinking Fund – projects which drove him ‘half mad’ with excitement and concentration.
Allied to his youthful alignment with the emerging intellectual influences of his time – the economist Adam Smith, the philosopher John Locke, the writer William Paley – these intellectual abilities produced in Pitt an aptitude for financial reform and enlightened politics which was on full display in the 1780s. He was lucky to preside over a period of natural economic expansion as the Industrial Revolution took shape, and his reforms were often based on the thinking of commentators or Commissions who had gone before him, but even so his achievements in creating a simpler and more sustainable basis for the nation’s finances and cutting through many of the complexities of regulation and administration were great. His confident exposition of the benefits of freer trade helped to create the climate in which later governments could go further, his struggle to produce a fair and productive method of taxation proved to be the basis of income tax, and his reforms of the financial system helped to keep Britain creditworthy through a war which lasted long after his death. At the same time he ended much of the corruption with which that system had previously been associated.
Such advances must always be immensely to his credit, for although they seem in retrospect necessary things to have done, no Lord North would have bothered to tackle such a wide range of issues, and no Fox would have done so in such intricate detail. Pitt’s dedication to driving the processes of government from the centre, and, in his early years at least, with a minute attention to its intricacies, allowed him not only to enact much-needed reforms but also to enhance the preeminence of the Treasury in British government, and greatly to strengthen the coordination of government departments. By doing so, he fortified the British state for a lengthy war and against the buffetings of social discontent through the Industrial Revolution, while helping to prepare i
t for the management of an Empire which would encompass a quarter of the globe. As the first First Lord of the Treasury systematically to intervene in the work of other departments and happily to take over their functions at times of crisis, Pitt was arguably the first modem Prime Minister. By defending at all costs his own reputation for integrity and ending a good deal of the ‘jobbing’ and jostling for sinecures, he helped to restore faith in the British state after a period in which it had been much discredited among its own people.
These achievements are unambiguous. On the basis of them and his unusual longevity in office, Pitt cannot be denied a place among the major figures of British history. Yet there is room for dispute about the rest of his legacy, which calls for finer judgements, as well as a paradox about his personality which has made him hard to know. Often professing his dedication to peace, Pitt nevertheless became Britain’s longest-serving war leader. Despite his tireless efforts, no decisive advantage was gained in war during his lifetime. A champion of domestic reform, he undoubtedly became the author of repression, and despite his trenchant stands in favour of parliamentary reform, Catholic emancipation and the abolition of the slave trade, he was unable to bring any of them to enactment. How do we explain these apparent failures or changes of view? Was Pitt, as Fox always maintained, too interested in power to advance the cause of any principle? Was he ineffective as a war leader? And were those political failings, if that is what they were, somehow bound up with his complex personality? It is, after all, undeniable that he exhibited an unusual mixture of personal traits: a man who won ardent friends but to others was distant and aloof, a brilliant debater who could be profoundly shy; the undisputed master of the nation’s finances whose neglect of his own pocket left him with vast personal debts.
Even admirers of Pitt must concede that he did not become a fully rounded personality. Not only was he apparently uninterested in sexual relationships, but without any interest in music, art, society or modern literature and languages he was cut off from many of the interests of the vast majority of his social and political peer groups. There can be no doubt that the spectacular speed of his political ascent contributed to this personal isolation. Even single-minded politicians often develop a wide range of other interests when they are out of office or waiting at length for a parliamentary seat or ministerial promotion. Yet even the most rounded politician finds the pursuit of new interests while holding ministerial office to be almost impossible. Pitt was in such a situation, with only two intervals in his entire life, from the age of twenty-three onwards. As a result he was, in his forties, very much the same person as in his twenties. This left him with certain weaknesses, such as his lifelong tendency to be too sanguine about people and too optimistic about impending events, in addition to his narrowness of personal enjoyments and tastes. On the other hand, an unchanging personality had its good side. It is to his credit that after a lifetime of political batterings Pitt still possessed the endearing personal attributes which appealed so much to his closest friends: a ready wit, an enjoyment of simple fun, an ability to put his troubles to one side, and a freedom from rancour, bitterness, or any tendency to blame others for his misfortunes.
There is no doubt that, had he chosen to, Pitt could have used his position as Prime Minister to widen his circle of interests and friends. He chose not to. He had set his course when very young, and had mentally committed himself exclusively to public life. To him, relaxing among his established friends was appealing, but adding other pursuits or friendships for the sake of being sociable would have been pointless. His lack of wider interests can even be seen as a necessary part of the selflessness on which he prided himself and which he always exhibited.
It is impossible to understand Pitt without appreciating the importance in his personality of that sense of self-sacrifice. Many politicians feel a conflict between public ambition and their private needs. For Grenville it was always important to acquire money and land at the same time as pursuing a political career; for Fox the temptations of social, sensual and intellectual pursuits outside Parliament generally competed with it. Many of the MPs around Pitt were ambitious for titles, money or social standing. Pitt reached beyond them all to a point where selflessness and political purpose joined together; where the sacrificing of such objects was indistinguishable from his own sense of unsurpassable ambition. His disdain for wider society, indifference to money and refusal of honours were not in conflict with his desire to run the country but were a direct result of it. The shunning of such attractions allowed him to hold in his own mind to a concept of virtue, but also marked him out as extraordinary and incorruptible in the perception of others. It is the extent of Pitt’s self-sacrifice that illustrates his devotion to seeking power – his refusal of the permanent income of the Clerkship of the Pells in 1784 and his resistance to generous offers of assistance or ideas of employment after his resignation in 1801 both confirmed that his mind was only ever fixed on holding office for the long term. Whereas to others it may have seemed bizarre to pursue a public career while being heedless of money or society or titles, to Pitt, eyes always focused on leading the nation, such abstinence went along with devotion to country. Wilberforce maintained that ‘love of country’ was Pitt’s dominant attribute, and there is no reason to doubt it. It is clear, too, that his love could only be consummated in power. Service and ambition formed a single identity in his mind.
This unchanging conception of himself gave Pitt the qualities he would be remembered for: endurance, self-sacrifice, concentration, and a carelessness for personal consequences. It also impelled him to take the highest office in the land when it was made available to him, provided it came with its powers unimpeded. His careful refusal of office in 1783 and 1803 occurred because on both occasions he felt he might be hamstrung, and because he wanted to respond only to a more powerful and wider call for him to step forward; similarly, in 1801 he resigned because his power was being impaired. When offered real power he took it, whatever the risks: in 1783 despite the risk of impeachment, in 1804 despite the risk of political isolation, and he battled on in 1806 despite the risk of his own physical demise. His view of the purpose of his life was so overpowering that on each occasion he felt he had to serve, despite all the dangers. His painful death, trying to work on as Prime Minister in a desperate crisis, was the logical culmination of his approach to life.
That Pitt’s mind was focused on winning and holding power is clear from the way he bent his abilities to all the necessities of practical politics. While he always demonstrated his own purity and applied a rigorous standard of independence to himself, he knew he could achieve nothing without pulling the various political levers which caused others to move as he wished. He was happy to see the liberal distribution of peerages to secure his government in place in 1784, and again to persuade the doubtful of the merits of Irish Union in 1800. He was even happy to bribe his way to success if it was truly necessary for overriding national purposes, as Irish MPs and French Ministers knew. On at least one occasion he told a direct and crucial lie. Idealism did not cloud his practical thinking. ‘Honest Billy’ marked himself out as different, with great success, while treating others in accordance with the established habits of the time.
One of the charges against Pitt is that he was too interested in power at the expense of his principles. To Fox, Pitt was the man who sold out to George III and his court in both 1783 and 1804. In the Whig view, Pitt corrupted the constitution by coming to the rescue of George III on the former occasion, and prevented the formation of a broadly based ministry by taking office without Fox and Grenville on the latter one. It can be argued that by being prepared to take office and rescue the King, Pitt actually stood in the way of some of the more liberal policies he purported to support. But there is, of course, an argument of at least equal power the other way, and one which Pitt would have felt very strongly. If the King was to retain the power to nominate Ministers, then it was important that capable people were ready to serve. What Fox re
ally sought in both 1783 and 1804 was to leave the King with no choice at all. Catholic relief and parliamentary reform were not in any case enacted until a quarter of a century after Pitt’s death, and it may have been unrealistic to have expected him to carry them through. Pitt’s one resignation and various refusals of office show that he was not prepared to be the King’s puppet. He believed in a balanced constitution in which a clearly identified and powerful Prime Minister served under a King who nevertheless retained a good deal of his prerogative, the alternative to which was chaos and constitutional deadlock.
In his political outlook, Pitt was an improver rather than a radical. His attachment to planting and cutting in the gardens of Holwood and Burton Pynsent, and to toying with architectural improvements to wherever he lived, mirrored his approach to politics. His financial measures and changes to the machinery of government were sometimes far-reaching, as his attempts at parliamentary reform were intended to be, but the purpose of all of them was to make the existing order work more effectively, rather than to replace it altogether. He enjoyed redesigning the structures of government, but would on no account risk their collapse. This is what would define him as a Tory in the eyes of later generations, and at a time of international instability there was much to be said for a leader of such a disposition. The drawback was that it sometimes limited his vision and adaptability, leaving it to others to make the first responses to the social and economic problems thrown up by low agricultural wages and the rise of factories. In his analysis of trade and finance, he showed little evidence of knowledge or thought about social consequences.
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 68
