Attitudes to age and power were bound to be different from today in a period when immense and absolute power was wielded throughout Europe by monarchs who were themselves very young. Maria Theresa had assumed the throne of Austria and precipitated the War of the Austrian Succession at the age of twenty-three in 1740. Her successor Joseph II, on the throne in the 1780s, had been co-Regent at the age of twenty-four. Of the other great monarchs of Europe at the time Pitt took office as Chancellor, Louis XVI of France had become King at the age of twenty, Frederick the Great King of Prussia at twenty-eight, Catherine the Great Empress of Russia at thirty-three, and Gustavus III King of Sweden at twenty-five. George III himself, albeit without the absolute power of his fellow monarchs, had ascended to the throne at twenty-two. At a time when inheritance was more widely prized, it was easier to believe that the offspring of great leaders could themselves take on the burdens of leadership at an early age. There seems no doubt that Pitt was a beneficiary of that belief, and his early oratorical performances had strengthened its applicability to him.
A final consideration in the eighteenth-century acceptance of youthful success is that the number of young prodigies in many disparate fields was far greater than it is today. Perhaps the greater risk of early death produced an impulse to young brilliance, and certainly the intensive use of private tutors added to it: Alexander Pope wrote his first verses aged twelve, and was famous at twenty-three; Henry Fielding’s plays were being performed in London when he was twenty-one; Adam Smith was a Professor of Logic at twenty-eight; the evangelist George Whitfield was preaching to crowds of tens of thousands in London when aged twenty-five; Isaac Newton had commenced his revolutionary advances in science in the previous century at the age of twenty-five; and Mozart had composed symphonies when eight years old and completed tours of Europe at the ripe old age of fifteen. If a young man seemed brilliant enough he would be accepted, indulged and given patronage, and so it was with William Pitt.
Pitt had never had a spacious residence in London, having become accustomed to staying in his rooms at Lincoln’s Inn or at his brother’s house in Grafton Street. Since Shelburne preferred to stay in his house in Berkeley Square rather than move into the Downing Street house given by King George II in the 1730s to the incumbent First Lord of the Treasury, Pitt was able to look forward to moving in there instead. Lord North had lived there for many years as First Lord of the Treasury, and had been in no hurry to move out upon losing his job. Pitt wrote to his mother on 16 July:
Our new Board of Treasury has just begun to enter on business; and tho’ I do not know that it is of the most entertaining sort, it does not seem likely to be very fatiguing. In all other respects my situation most perfectly satisfies, and more than satisfies me, and I think promises every thing that is agreeable … Lord North will, I hope, in a very little while make room for me in Downing Street, which is the best summer Town House possible.8
The residence in question was one of fifteen terraced houses erected in the 1680s along the northern side of Downing Street. They were of poor quality, with inadequate foundations, but one of them was linked in the 1730s with the impressive house behind it, overlooking Horseguards Parade and originally built for the Countess of Lichfield, daughter of Charles II. The house was originally No. 5 Downing Street, and it was only three years before Pitt moved in that it was renumbered No. 10. Little did those who carried out the renumbering suspect that they were changing the vocabulary and symbolism of power in Britain for centuries to come. In August 1782 Pitt moved in. Although his initial occupation of No. 10 would last only eight months, he would go on to live there for by far the greater part of his adult life, and for longer than any other person since. It is not surprising that to begin with he found it a huge place: ‘I expect to be comfortably settled in the course of this week,’ he wrote on 30 July, ‘in a part of my vast, awkward house.’9
He benefited from the construction of a new vaulted kitchen and from a series of major repairs in 1766 which resulted in many of the characteristic features recognisable today: the lamp above the door, the lion’s-head doorknocker, and the black-and-white chequerboard floor in the entrance hall. Other alterations, such as the creation of the modem Cabinet Room, would take place later in his tenure, in 1796. Externally, Downing Street at that time still had terraced houses along the other side from No. 10, as the new Foreign Office building was not constructed until the 1860s. It would have looked and seemed much more like a normal street, albeit a well-to-do one, and for Pitt it provided the great advantage of a short walk or ride to the Houses of Parliament.
In the summer of 1782 Britain was still at war, and Ministers found it difficult to get away from London despite the parliamentary recess. Pitt managed to go shooting briefly in September, and described his lifestyle in a letter to his mother:
My dear Mother,
I am much obliged to you for your letter, which I received yesterday on my return from Cheveley, where I had been for two days. A short visit for such a distance; but as my brother was going there, I thought it worth the exertion, and it was very well repaid by a great deal of Air and Exercise in shooting, and the finest weather in the world. The finest part of all indeed is a fine east wind, which, as the fleet is just sailed for Gibraltar, is worth every thing. I assure you I do not forget the lessons I have so long followed, of riding in spite of Business; tho’ I indeed want it less than ever, as I was never so perfectly well. All I have to do now is to be done quite at my own Hours, being merely to prepare for the busy season; which is very necessary to be done, but which at the same time is not a close Confinement. We are labouring at all sorts of official Reform, for which there is a very ample Field, and in which I believe we shall have some success.
Downing Street, Thursday Sept. 12 [1782]15
Incredibly by today’s standards, Pitt as Chancellor of the Exchequer did not need any dedicated officials of his own. He explained to his mother that his secretary was an army friend of his brother, but since the job had no duties but that of receiving about £400 a year, ‘no profession is unfit for it’. Otherwise, ‘I have not yet any private secretary, nor do I perceive, at least as yet, any occasion for it.’16
The standards of ministerial conduct were also rather different from those expected today: Pitt’s sister Harriot was soon expecting him to find a job for a friend, and his mother evidently looked to him to rectify the arrears in the payment of her annuity. Pitt showed early on the characteristics which would be with him throughout his ministerial life and would mark him out from other politicians of the time: his sense of propriety, which in this instance made him reluctant to push his mother’s case while Lord Shelburne was dealing with it, and a lack of interest in the lesser forms of patronage which led him to tell his sister that he would do what he could for her friend, but ‘of all the secrets of my office I have in this short time learnt the least about Patronage’.17 He was always embarrassed when pressed to deal with minor issues by acquaintances or relatives, sending on one such to Shelburne with the note: ‘Mr. Pitt cannot help forwarding this trifling request.’18
Pitt attended the Treasury Board conscientiously, and worked on two specific schemes of reform which would be put to Parliament the following year. One was to streamline and clean up the operation of the Customs, abolishing sinecure positions granted for life and discontinuing fees on business done. The other measure was intended to regulate public offices, stopping the sale of positions and the abuse of perquisites, which resulted, for example, in the large-scale theft of government stationery. But although Pitt appears to have worked diligently, he did not become an intimate colleague or confidant of the First Lord, Lord Shelburne.
By all accounts, Shelburne was a difficult person to get to know or like. He was clever and hardworking, and intellectually attracted to much the same causes as Pitt, favouring economical and parliamentary reform, peace treaties which emphasised the enhancement of free trade, a liberal commercial settlement with Ireland, and the creation of a new S
inking Fund to repay the national debt. Like Pitt he was a disciple of Adam Smith, who had recently provided the intellectual framework for advocates of free trade. Yet for all his qualities, Shelburne was never generally trusted. He had a sound grasp of diplomacy, trade and finance, but did not understand the psychology of his individual colleagues, who found that he was too remote, too critical, or at other times too given to flattery for his sincerity to be accepted. George Rose, who became Secretary to the Treasury that summer and who would subsequently be one of Pitt’s closest colleagues, described Shelburne in his diaries as ‘sometimes passionate or unreasonable, occasionally betraying suspicions of others entirely groundless, and at other times offensively flattering. I have frequently been puzzled to decide which part of his conduct was least to be tolerated.’19 Shelburne, he said, had ‘a suspicion of almost anyone he had intercourse with, a want of sincerity, and a habit of listening to every tale-bearer who would give him intelligence or news of any sort’.20 Even worse for the new government, Shelburne’s public character bore out this private assessment. Before the Lords had risen for the summer, Shelburne had claimed that Fox had never raised his differences over policy towards America in the Cabinet. Fox demanded a retraction, and Lord Derby the following day accused Shelburne in the Lords of ‘a direct deviation from the truth’. Shelburne’s pathetic reply was that ‘he made no such assertion; but he had certainly said, that “in his opinion” that was the cause, and the exclusive cause; but he had not asserted it as a fact’.21 In August, Christopher Wyvill was very pleased to receive a letter from Shelburne saying that he would ‘deal nobly’ with the reform ideas of the Yorkshire Association, but soon afterwards when Shelburne realised that many Ministers were opposed to parliamentary reform he had to tell Wyvill that his letter was meant ‘as a communication to you personally’,22 and not as a statement of government policy. The impression spread that this First Minister could not be trusted.
Far and away the most important task of the Shelburne government was to conduct the peace negotiations in Paris. Within weeks of taking charge, Shelburne was forced to concede the point on which Fox had tried to insist: the unequivocal acknowledgement of American independence. Previously he had pursued his ideal of the American colonies remaining in some form of association with Great Britain while being granted extensive territory towards the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, some of it provided from Canada. Finally dropping the idea of any such association, he now concluded with the colonies by the end of November the preliminary articles of peace which gave them both the territory they desired and the acknowledgement of their complete independence. The settlement with America allowed Britain to drive a far harder bargain with France and Spain, including on the vital issue of the Spanish claim to Gibraltar. In September the Spaniards had attacked Gibraltar but met with a crushing defeat. Shelburne and the King were inclined to exchange Gibraltar for Puerto Rico or West Florida, but too much blood had now been spilled in the defence of the Rock for British opinion willingly to give it up. This was a view shared by many senior Ministers, probably including Pitt, and Shelburne was only able to maintain unity in the Cabinet by the unusual device of not calling it together for a meeting.
It was in the middle of these disagreements and negotiations, with the preliminaries of peace with America signed on 30 November but the negotiations with the European powers still underway, that Parliament assembled in early December. With both Fox and North, along with their followers, on the opposition benches, the government’s position was precarious, and much would ride on Pitt’s ability to put its case in the Commons. Observers had expected Shelburne to use the recess to bring some of the opposition forces into the government’s ranks and thereby secure a majority. But ‘on the opening of the session, it soon … became evident that no such Ministerial approximation had taken place, and the Administration relied for support upon its own proper strength or ability’.23 Historians have estimated the strength of the parliamentary factions that Christmas at 140 MPs behind Shelburne (including the ‘King’s friends’), 120 followers of North, and ninety supporters of Fox.24 The government was thus heavily outnumbered unless all the independents came to its aid.
There were several reasons why Shelburne had done nothing to strengthen his government when he had the opportunity. The first was that he did not understand the House of Commons, and had taken some highly speculative and wildly over-optimistic assessments of the numbers from the normally reliable government official John Robinson as facts. He wrote to one colleague that he would have the support of ‘almost all the property of the Country, and that he did not believe his opponents in the H. of Commons would exceed 60’.25 The second reason was that although Shelburne himself could not countenance negotiating once again with Fox, Pitt would under no circumstances serve alongside Lord North, and any alliance with an opposition grouping would therefore make the existing government difficult to hold together. At least, Shelburne assured himself, Fox and North were such long-standing opponents that they could not join forces against him.
The government that met in Parliament that winter was therefore hamstrung, overconfident, and preoccupied with its own differences over the peace negotiations. Within days it was under pressure. On the opening day, Shelburne was asked whether the peace terms with America would stand whatever happened in the European negotiations, to which he replied: ‘This offer is not irrevocable; if France does not agree to peace, the offer ceases.’26 On the following day, when Fox raised this in the Commons, all the Ministers present gave an answer diametrically opposite to that of their leader, with Pitt twice insisting that the agreement with America was unconditional. Shelburne was now in difficulties, with the King asking him to persuade Pitt to recant his ‘mistake’, but with Pitt sticking to his honest reply, declaring that ‘on mature consideration, and he persisted in it … recognition could not be revoked, even if the present treaty should go off’.27
Shelburne was on the brink of a successful negotiation in Paris, but he had embarrassed his government and alienated more of his colleagues. Ministers found that they were shut out of the peace negotiations, and by the end of January 1783 both Keppel and Richmond resigned. The government was thus in grave difficulties as it prepared to present the final outcome of the negotiations to Parliament on 27 January, with a debate arranged for 17 February. In the final articles of peace, the French gained Tobago and St Lucia, but had to hand back all their other conquests. Britain recognised Spanish control of Minorca and the Floridas, but kept Gibraltar. The Dutch recovered Trincomalee in Ceylon, but had to accept free navigation by British ships in the East Indies. Given all the circumstances it was not a dishonourable settlement, and Shelburne was proud of the fact that it laid the foundations for the expansion of trade with both America and the Continent. Sadly for him, the parliamentary position of his government was now so perilous that the merits of his peace proposals were lost amidst the scramble for power of February 1783.
The morale of government supporters was low as both Houses gathered on 17 February to debate the preliminaries of peace. Ministers tabled a modest motion expressing ‘satisfaction’ at a settlement which offered ‘perfect reconciliation and friendship’, but try as he might Pitt could not persuade William Grenville, his cousin and future Foreign Secretary, to second the motion; William Wilberforce agreed to do so instead. Even as Parliament met, the government’s disintegration gathered pace. The Duke of Grafton, upon hearing that Richmond’s seat in the Cabinet would be taken by Pitt’s friend the young Duke of Rutland, without prior consultation with himself, resigned on the spot. Rutland was to have the unusual distinction of turning up to his first Cabinet meeting on the same day that the government resigned. A senior resignation on the day of a vital debate was bad enough, but as government Members entered the Commons they witnessed a spectacle far more ominous: Charles James Fox and Lord North were sitting together on the opposition front bench.
In the preceding days two of the most dedicated enemies in eig
hteenth-century politics had buried their differences and come together. Fox had actually opened contact with North the previous July, only days after denouncing Shelburne on the grounds that he might do the same. On 14 February North and Fox had met, agreeing to differ on parliamentary reform, with Fox promising to make no further attacks on the influence of the Crown. It seems that he was prepared to pay any price in order to ditch Shelburne and defeat the machinations of the King. If necessary he would denounce the results of the peace negotiations, on which he had himself been working the previous year with no prospect of achieving a better result.
The Ministers had realised in early February that their situation was desperate. Pitt had persuaded Shelburne to let him approach Fox with a view to bringing him back within the government. On 11 February he had called on Fox at his house off St James’s Street. Fox asked whether Shelburne would remain First Lord of the Treasury. Pitt said he would. Fox said that ‘It was impossible for him to belong to any administration of which lord Shelburne was the head.’ Pitt responded that ‘if that was his determination, it would be useless for him to enter into any farther discussion’, as ‘he did not come to betray lord Shelburne’, and left.28 Pretyman observed: ‘This was, I believe, the last time Mr. Pitt was in a private room with Mr. Fox; and from this period may be dated that political hostility, which continued through the remainder of their lives.’29
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 13