Any eighteenth-century government could therefore usually rely on a large majority in the House of Lords. The combination of large-scale patronage and a general predisposition among the ‘country gentlemen’ that the King should be able to get his way, provided he did not directly assault the role and power of the aristocracy, meant that governments usually held the upper hand in the Commons as well. At any one time, about a quarter of the Commons might hold some government office, sinecure or pension. More than a third would regard themselves as entirely independent of any factional party, although some would certainly be open to ‘influence’ at its most persuasive. On top of that, there would be about twenty MPs whose seats had been directly purchased for them by the Treasury. These various groups tended to coalesce around the leading members of one of the factions chosen by the King to head his ministry. And so it was that Pitt would have looked across the Chamber at the ‘King’s friends’ and the ‘country gentlemen’ massed behind the complacent-looking figure of Lord North, First Lord of the Treasury for more than a decade.*
Lord North is generally remembered in British history without much respect or affection. Overweight and perhaps overpromoted, he is thought of as an uninspiring figure who carelessly lost the American colonies. He did indeed lack the administrative drive required from the centre of government at a time of war, but he was nevertheless an astute politician and a formidable parliamentarian. Despite his corpulence and tendency to doze off in debates, he could still command the House of Commons by means of powerful speeches and a noted sense of humour. During one long speech by George Grenville which reviewed the history of government revenues, North went into a sound sleep, having asked his neighbour to wake him when the speaker reached modern times. When he duly received a nudge, he listened for a moment and then exclaimed, ‘Zounds! You have waked me a hundred years too soon.’8
North is often thought of as a ‘Tory Prime Minister’, but he himself would have rejected both labels. True, there were Tories among the ‘country gentlemen’ who backed him, but these were the remnants of a now meaningless term. As for ‘Prime Minister’, he had explicitly denied being such a thing, lest he be held even more accountable for the failings of the government of which he was undoubtedly the senior member. Desperate to give up office for at least the last two years, but bound to the King by a mixture of duty and gratitude (George III had paid off his debts of £18,000), he had soldiered on with a war he no longer believed in. Despite experiencing some kind of nervous breakdown, he had maintained his outward good humour and amiability: ‘Constant threats of impeachment, fierce attacks upon himself and all his connexions, mingled execration of his measures and scorn of his capacity, bitter hatred of his person … seemed to have no effect on his habitually placid deportment, nor to consume his endless patience.’9
Lord North governed with the support of a small band of his own followers, along with the factions commanded by Lord Sandwich and Lord Gower, as well as the ever-helpful friends of the King. Alongside him on the front bench in the Commons Pitt would have seen Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, who had borne the brunt of directing the war and was even now hoping that the thrust into the southern colonies by Lord Cornwallis and his troops would finally defeat George Washington. Elsewhere on the Treasury bench would be Henry Dundas, the Lord Advocate for Scotland, who had begun developing an iron grip on the forty-five Scottish seats and was now a leading spokesman of the government in the Commons, albeit one who doubted that the government’s remaining life would be very long. Altogether, North could rely on around eighty MPs from his own and allied factions along with 140 ‘King’s friends’, so he needed the support of about fifty of the more than two hundred independents in order to win a majority in a full House.10
Facing North’s Ministers and sitting on the front bench of the opposition side of the House was Charles James Fox. Fox, thirty-two years old the next day and son of the politician Henry Fox, who had become Lord Holland, was considered the most eloquent debater in Parliament. Brilliant, generous, impulsive, emotional and hugely persuasive, he was an unceasing opponent of North and the war. The King hated and mistrusted him, and the feeling was mutual. Fox was inconsistent, unpredictable, a chronic gambler and a relentless womaniser, but his friends adored him and his hold over his followers was powerful. His colourful private life – he would shortly commence an affair with Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire – would undoubtedly damage his political prospects. One critical MP noted that it was not possible to ‘trace in any one action of his life anything that had not for its object his own gratification’.11 He and his brother were said to have lost £32,000 in a single night of gambling, and when he was not betting at Brooks’s he was doing so at the races. Horace Walpole, son of the longest-serving Prime Minister Robert Walpole, and writer of extensive but biased political memoirs, recalled him as ‘the hero in Parliament, at the gaming table, at Newmarket. Last week he passed four-and-twenty hours without interruption at all three, or on the road from one to the other; and ill the whole time.’12 In a life which from this point on would be increasingly intertwined with that of Pitt, Fox would stand out as his opposite in almost every personal respect: a rounded figure who enjoyed social gatherings, cultivated a party following, revelled in all the pleasures of the senses and in no way regarded political success as the sole object of his life. He would become Pitt’s arch-rival, and would eventually consider that he had only one thing in common with him: ‘The only thing like good about him is his inattention to money.’13 But for the moment he would attempt to draw Pitt into his circle, and he would do so as a dominant figure in the opposition, enjoying the devoted support of a wide circle of friends who considered that, in the words of Gibbon, ‘perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity or falsehood’.14
Fox was the spokesman and inspiration of the Rockingham Whigs. Near him would have been Edmund Burke, secretary to Lord Rockingham, another figure of immense eloquence and persecutor of the King’s Ministers. Self-righteous and impassioned, he was driven on by his belief that the power and habits of George III were destroying the balance of the settlement of 1688. Around and behind Fox and Burke sat much the largest opposition grouping, comprising seventy to eighty Members.
Elsewhere on the opposition benches were the leaders of another but much smaller opposition faction, less than ten in number: John Dunning, who the previous year had successfully proposed the motion calling for a reduction in the powers of the Crown, and Colonel Barré, famed for accompanying General Wolfe in the storming of the cliffs at Quebec. The leaders of their grouping were the Earl of Shelburne and Lord Camden, who, like Rockingham, sat in the House of Lords. This grouping were the heirs of Chatham – Shelburne and Camden having served in his last government – and they were now joined in the new Parliament by Lord Mahon, John Pratt and, inevitably, William Pitt. As a new MP Pitt therefore looked to the Earl of Shelburne as his nominal leader. Shelburne was, after all, one of the few people who had encouraged Pitt in his bid for election at Cambridge the previous year. Intellectually brilliant, well informed about the full range of political and economic issues, and an enthusiastic exponent of the mix of economic liberalism and administrative improvements which Pitt would strongly support, Shelburne was nevertheless handicapped by what others saw as deficiencies of character. He could not resist displaying his brilliance and allowing others to see that he was manipulating them: ‘He flattered people in order to gain them, and he let it appear by his actions that his smooth words were sheer hypocrisy.’15 For the moment, however, he headed the small group of Chathamite loyalists.
These factions in Parliament manoeuvred for position and waited on events, but the politician who still mattered the most in the kingdom was George III himself. The King was a man of simple and straightforward views. The constitution must be upheld, which meant the rights of the Crown must be asserted. His coronation oath was inviolate. No politician should be trusted. No colon
ies could be surrendered in case others, including Ireland, rebelled. A good life required a regular diet, a huge amount of exercise, and marital fidelity. The Royal Family should set an example. His son, the Prince of Wales, was incapable of setting an example and had become a total disgrace. Disappointed by Bute, who had failed him, by George Grenville, who had lectured him, and by Chatham, who had let him down, George III had at last found in Lord North a politician with the pleasing combination of political staying power and a propensity to be bullied by his monarch. There was no question but that the policies carried out by North and his colleagues were the King’s policies, and that detailed decisions about political and military appointments and the approach to the war had been made by the King himself. When the opposition in Parliament attacked the policies of North, they were in fact attacking the actions of the King; the assaults of Burke on Crown appointments and the Civil List were another proxy for doing so.
The King was desperately worried that the war would end in defeat, and even spoke privately of abdicating rather than bearing the humiliation of himself and his kingdom. Not least among his concerns was that defeat in the war would mean the fall of North. The only other group of leaders in Parliament with widespread support were the Rockingham Whigs, to whom he could be forced to turn. That could mean being forced to accept Ministers he disliked intensely, and measures he would hate to see carried out in his name. Such Ministers would impose peace with America, abolish much of his patronage, and insist on having as junior Ministers some of his strongest opponents whom they would wish to reward. In contemplating these questions, George III was having to face up to some of the problems left unresolved by the ‘perfect’ constitutional arrangements resulting from 1688. The King had the right to choose a government, and the Commons the right to hold that government to account and even overturn it, requiring the King to nominate another. But what happened if a majority of the Commons decided to force a particular government upon the King? Rockingham and Fox intended to do so. George III would hate it. There was no answer written down in the settlement of 1688. The King still controlled many appointments and sinecures throughout the country, including Army appointments. What happened if the Commons insisted on taking all of those powers of appointment for itself? The King normally retained the right to choose particular Ministers and to continue some from one government to the next, even when the leading Minister changed. What happened if a new leading Minister came to him with a list of Ministers already decided and a majority of the House of Commons behind him?
George III was a wily political operator, and was determined not to show the weakness of his grandfather George II. The Duke of Newcastle had once forced George II into a corner in 1746 by presenting the collective resignation of all senior Ministers; when George III heard that he might try the same thing in 1762 he had fired him before he could open his mouth.
As 1781 opened, these political and constitutional questions hung in the balance. The war had gone a little better over the previous year, and the election had been satisfactorily concluded. The opposition seemed to have run out of steam and now, according to one of its members, was ‘if not dead at least asleep’.16 This was the political scene as William Pitt considered how to make his maiden speech.
A maiden speech in the House of Commons, then as now, was usually a rather humble affair. A Member would prepare for it for days, or even weeks, and would then rise nervously to advance a not too controversial proposition and accompany it with many thanks and pleasantries. Pitt’s maiden speech, delivered on 26 February 1781, was the exact opposite: delivered apparently on the spur of the moment and certainly without a note, radiating confidence despite taking place in a packed House debating a crucial motion, advancing a strong argument against the policies of the government and the Crown, and incidentally demolishing a key point of the previous speaker’s argument. The effect was to make him a major figure in the House of Commons from the very beginning of his career in it.
The occasion of Pitt’s speech was a major debate on Edmund Burke’s renewed attempt to introduce economical reform. Uncertain of the government’s majority. North had not prevented Burke from reintroducing his proposed legislation, but with the government’s confidence growing by late February Ministers determined upon voting the Bill down at its second reading on 26 February. In the fierce debate which ensued, Lord Nugent had just finished speaking against the Bill and in defence of the government when opposition Members cried out ‘Mr. Pitt! Mr. Pitt!’, trying to get him to speak Some historians have taken the view that this was merely spontaneous impatience from some Members who thought that Pitt had been in the House for more than a month and ought now to take a speaking role. Stanhope’s account, in which the Middlesex MP George Byng asks Pitt during Nugent’s speech whether he will reply to it, receives an uncertain reply, and then spreads the word to other Members that Pitt is about to rise even though he has now resolved not to, seems a more likely explanation.17 Since this was a subject dear to Pitt’s heart and he had been sitting through the debate for some time, it is fair to assume that he had a good idea about what he would say in a speech, even if he had not committed himself to making one. Members who thought they were listening to an entirely unplanned performance were therefore probably under a misapprehension, but it was one that added to the awesome impression that this new parliamentary orator now made on them.
Pitt’s speech was clear, logical and consistent with his known views. The government, he said, should have come forward itself with reductions in the Civil List, rather than the opposition have to bring the matter up:
They ought to have consulted the glory of their Royal Master, and have seated him in the hearts of his people, by abating from magnificence what was due to necessity. Instead of waiting for the slow request of a burdened people, they should have courted popularity by a voluntary surrender of useless revenue … It would be no diminution of true grandeur to yield to the respectful petitions of the people … magnificence and grandeur were not consistent with entrenchment and economy, but, on the contrary, in a time of necessity and of common exertion, solid grandeur was dependent on the reduction of expense.
The House was riveted. Pitt then pointed out that Lord Nugent had said he would have been happy to support the Bill if the reduction in Crown expenditure it called for was to be given to the ‘public service’ instead, in which case he would have become one of its warmest advocates. Nugent had told the House there was no such provision in the Bill, and therefore he opposed it. He was now to be briskly swatted in a manner that became entirely familiar to Members of Parliament over the next twenty-five years. Pitt said that the only merit he could claim in a competition with the noble Lord was that his eyes were somewhat younger than his. He could therefore read the clause in the Bill which demonstrated the exact opposite of what Lord Nugent had suggested. Pitt read out the whole of the relevant clause, and went on to read out another which had caused Nugent’s confusion. Having fitted this unanswerable point into his general argument, he then argued that the Bill should be supported because it would reduce the influence of the Crown. He attacked the idea that the £200,000 that would be saved was too insignificant a sum to bother with. ‘This was surely the most singular and unaccountable species of reasoning that was ever attempted in any assembly. The calamities of the crisis were too great to be benefited by economy! Our expenses were so enormous, that it was ridiculous to attend to little matters of account! We have spent so many millions, that thousands are beneath our consideration! We were obliged to spend so much, that it was foolish to think of saving any!’ Finally, he said that ‘it ought to be remembered, that the Civil List revenue was granted by Parliament to His Majesty for other purposes than those of personal gratification. It was granted to support the power and the interests of the Empire, to maintain its grandeur, to pay the judges and the foreign ministers, to maintain justice and to support respect; to pay the great offices that were necessary to the lustre of the Crown; and it was proportione
d to the dignity and the opulence of the people.’ He said he considered the Bill essential to the being and the independence of his country, and he would give it the most determined support.
Pitt’s speech did not win the debate. Sufficient of the independents and country gentlemen rallied to Lord North to allow him to defeat Burke’s Bill by 233 votes to 190. But there is no doubt that the speech catapulted Pitt into the front rank of parliamentary orators. It was the evidence that, although still only twenty-one years old, he had entered the Commons fully formed as a politician and debater, able to marshal an argument and engage in a debate on equal terms with Members two and three times his age. It was the first exposure of other politicians to the speaking style which had resulted from the years of rehearsing and reciting with Chatham and Pretyman: structured, logical and controlled. In recent years Fox had been idolised as the greatest of parliamentary orators, with Pitt himself later referring to him wielding ‘the wand of the magician’,18 but Pitt’s style was in complete contrast to that of Fox. Fox’s style was to embrace his hearers with emotions, his speeches charging back and forth repeatedly but returning again and again to the point on which he hoped to stir his hearers to action. Pitt’s style was to encircle his listeners with logic, building up his argument piece by piece in a structure always clear in his mind, and forsaking emotion for the objective of leaving his audience with no intellectual option but to agree with his final unifying conclusion. One observer recalled: ‘Mr. Fox had a captivating earnestness of tone and manner; Mr. Pitt was more dignified than earnest … It was an observation of the reporters in the gallery that it required great exertion to follow Mr. Fox while he was speaking, none to remember what he had said; that it was easy and delightful to follow Mr. Pitt, not so easy to recollect what had delighted them.’19
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