Pitt’s thoughts were on planning for a government. With Parliament due to resume on 11 November, he had intended to return to England in late October. On 22 October a special messenger arrived from London, asking him to return immediately. Who sent the messenger is not known, but between George III, Temple and Thurlow the cogs of a conspiracy against the government were turning once again. Pitt had enjoyed his summer of youthful play, from the garden at Wimbledon to the forest of Fontainebleau. He had experienced for six months a relatively carefree existence. On 22 October 1783, the clatter of hooves in a French courtyard brought it forever to an end.
* * *
*This expression arose from the King’s use of a small room, ‘the closet’, for meetings with Ministers.
*Fencing with a weapon designed for thrusting or lunging – but in this context meaning verbal fencing.
*One of these rooms was known as ‘Pitt’s room’ until the demolition of the house in 1958.
*Instead she married the Swedish Ambassador in Paris, becoming Madame de Staël. She became a powerful intellectual force in European politics, a friend of Goethe and an antagonist of Napoleon. If Pitt had married her it would have made a formidable combination.
8
From Plotter to Prime Minister
‘We are in the midst of a contest, and I think, approaching to a crisis.’
WILLIAM PITT, NOVEMBER 1783
‘The deliberations of this evening must decide whether we are to be henceforward free men or slaves; whether this House is the palladium of liberty or the engine of despotism.’
CHARLES JAMES FOX, 17 DECEMBER 1783
PITT AND HIS COMPANIONS returned to Dover from their sojourn in France on 24 October 1783. Within weeks they would be embroiled in one of the great constitutional crises of British history, and within months Pitt himself would exercise a domination of British politics which would span more than two decades and end only with his death. Yet few observers could have charted the course which would bring the ungainly and no doubt weary-looking young man making his way across Kent to London to such pre-eminence in so short a time, for no one could foresee with confidence the results of a head of state mounting a political coup d’état against his own government.
Pretyman tells us that Pitt returned to England ‘with an intention of resuming his profession of the law, if there should appear a fair probability of the administration being permanent’.1 In fact, he was feverishly busy with political meetings immediately on his return to London, knowing that something dramatic could happen in the coming session. By 3 November he was writing to Lord Mahon that he had hoped to visit him at his country house, Chevening, ‘but I have had so much to do ever since I have been in town that I have found it impossible … Time is every day more precious … I trust you will be in town in a very few days, for there are several things in which I am quite at a loss without you.’2 While Pitt prepared for the meeting of Parliament in London, Temple called other opponents of the government together at his own country residence, Stowe, mindful of the King’s request to be ready to rescue him from his ‘thraldom’. Nothing in the summer had changed George III’s attitude. Fox had hoped that ‘if we last the Summer, the Public will think that the King has made up his mind to bear us, and this opinion alone will destroy the only real cause of weakness that belongs to us’.3 But as Wraxall observed, George allowed his Ministers to ‘dictate measures; gave them audiences, signed papers, and complied with their advice; but he neither admitted them to his confidence nor ceased to consider them as objects of his individual aversion’.4
George III opened the new session of Parliament on 11 November, dutifully reading from the throne the speech written for him by the Ministers he hated. Opposition spokesmen found little to criticise in this broad statement of government intention: in the Lords Temple criticised the state of government finances, and in the Commons Pitt pointed out that the definitive peace treaties were almost identical to the much-criticised provisional articles of peace which he and Shelburne had defended. There was nothing at this stage to vote against or object to, and Pitt wrote to his mother that night: ‘We have to-day heard the King’s Speech, and voted the Address without any opposition. Both were so general that they prove nothing of what may be expected during the Session. The East India business and the funds promise to make the two principal objects.’5
The ‘East India business’ would indeed provide the spark to ignite the coming conflagration. All were agreed that the methods by which Britain governed its Indian dominions must be reformed, but the disagreement about how to do so would be spectacular. In the days when ‘Diamond Pitt’ had made his fortune in Madras British affairs in India were controlled exclusively by the East India Company. Even then, the huge sums to be made from holding positions of influence in India made the Company’s affairs increasingly important in domestic British politics. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the designs of the French on developing an Indian empire made Indian affairs even more directly a matter of governmental concern. From 1751, when Robert Clive wrecked the plans of the French and succeeded in holding Arcot against an enemy army which outnumbered his by forty to one, British power and responsibilities in India grew rapidly. By 1754 Britain was sending regular troops to India rather than relying solely on those employed by the Company, and three years later Clive routed the French and their allies at the Battle of Plassey. In 1764 a hostile coalition of Indian Princes was similarly annihilated at the Battle of Buxar. Backed by conquering troops, the East India Company had acquired the power to nominate Indian rulers, depose local governments and expel foreign invasions. Originally established to conduct trade, the Company was now ruling an empire.
By the early 1770s the individuals within the East India Company controlled vast patronage and wealth, while the Company itself was virtually bankrupt as a result of taking on so many responsibilities at the same time as paying out huge dividends. In 1773 the government of Lord North introduced a Regulating Act to put the governing of British possessions in India more nearly within political control, creating a Governor General, a Council and a Supreme Court, and regulating the conduct of the Company’s business and behaviour. This system did not work, largely because the Council was usually at bitter loggerheads with the Governor General, Warren Hastings. In 1779, beset by internal divisions, Hastings had to face a wave of Indian revolts and the arrival of a new French fleet in the East at a time when no British reinforcements were available because of the war in America. He resolved the crisis with immense skill and ruthlessness, using, as one historian put it, ‘diplomacy, bribery, threats, force, audacity, and resolution’,6 demolishing every enemy and extending British power still further. In the process, and perhaps inevitably, he committed acts of retribution against enemies and paid vast sums of money to allies. Such tactics produced the desired result, but, when written down on paper in the House of Commons and examined by high-minded people who had never set foot in India, they seemed to have a doubtful ethical basis, to say the least.
In 1781 a Select Committee of the Commons was set up to investigate the judicial system of Bengal, numbering among its members Edmund Burke. Burke had become obsessed with Indian affairs, and would years later bring about the impeachment and trial of Warren Hastings. Now, as a member of the Fox—North government, he was able to frame a Bill which would bring true political control and accountability to Indian affairs. It was this Bill, the East India Bill, which an excited Charles James Fox presented to the House of Commons on 18 November 1783, a week after the opening of Parliament. And it was this Bill which, within a month, would bring down his government.
Ostensibly, the Bill was designed to separate the political and commercial functions of the Company. The key proposal was to create a Board of seven Commissioners, with great powers over the Company’s officers in India, and eight Assistants who would manage the Company’s commercial affairs. The Commissioners would be answerable to Parliament for their decisions, thereby creating the accounta
bility hitherto missing. Crucially, they would also be appointed by Parliament. The Crown would neither appoint them, nor have the right to dismiss them. For Fox and Burke this proposal was perfectly natural: they had long criticised the extent of Crown patronage, and were clearly in favour of making the Company’s political actions accountable to Parliament. Surely, then, the Board must be appointed by Parliament. The storm of controversy this proposal would arouse lay in its practical effect: while Fox controlled the majority in Parliament these extremely powerful Commissioners would be nominated by him. Even if he left office thereafter, his appointees would still be in place, and because in practice their power would reach into commercial matters, they would control patronage and wealth on a scale which could rival that of the rest of the Kingdom combined.
We do not know whether this side-effect of the Bill was one of the principal objectives Fox and Burke had in mind, but we do know that they were alert to the controversy it would create. Fox said that the debates on the Bill would be ‘vigorous and hazardous’ and ‘of a very delicate nature’. Their strategy for getting it through was to take the moral high ground on Indian affairs, and to rush it through its parliamentary stages before concerted opposition to it could be mounted. In the opening debates on 18 and 27 November Fox argued that this business had forced itself upon him and upon the nation, since the ‘rapacity’ of the Company’s servants had produced ‘anarchy and confusion’. The government was called upon to save the Company from imminent bankruptcy. In the first debate Pitt responded that ‘Necessity was the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It was the argument of tyrants: it was the creed of slaves.’7 He called for more time to debate the Bill, and also for a ‘call of the House’ to take place two weeks later as, seeing his opportunity, he attempted to bring the country gentry to Parliament as soon as possible. Four days later he wrote to Rutland:
We are in the midst of a contest, and I think approaching to a crisis. The Bill which Fox has brought in relative to India will be, one way or other, decisive for or against the coalition. It is, I really think, the boldest and most unconstitutional measure ever attempted, transferring at one stroke, in spite of all charters and compacts, the immense patronage and influence of the East to Charles Fox, in or out of office. I think it will with difficulty, if at all, find its way through our House, and can never succeed in yours. Ministry trust all on this one die, and will probably fail … If you have any member within fifty or a hundred miles of you who cares for the Constitution or the country, pray send him to the House of Commons as quick as you can.8
Pitt was perceptive in his letter about the course events would now take, except in relation to the House of Commons, where he was far too optimistic: Fox was able to steamroller all before him. In the decisive Second Reading debate of 27 November, Pitt sought to whip up opposition with extreme language in denouncing the Bill – ‘One of the boldest, most unprecedented, most desperate and alarming attempts at the exercise of tyranny that ever disgraced the annals of this or any other country’9 – but found himself defeated at the end of the day by 229 votes to 120. A triumphant Fox had won the votes and the arguments. As the Bill passed rapidly through its remaining stages in the Commons, Burke delivered his great tribute to the leadership of Fox: ‘He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will remember that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory; he will remember that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph … He is now on a great eminence, where the eyes of mankind are turned to him. He may live long, he may do much; but here is the summit, – he never can exceed what he does this day.’10 This was classic Burke, emotional, grandiloquent, and completely carried away with the feelings of the moment, but it demonstrated the exultation now arising in the ranks of the government’s supporters. With three-figure majorities behind them in the Commons, and the knowledge that any eighteenth-century government was seldom defeated in the Lords, they thought they were home and dry. On 3 December Fox was even emboldened to announce the names of the prospective Commissioners. Needless to say, these were all supporters of the Fox – North coalition, including Lord North’s eldest son. The Chairman was to be Earl Fitzwilliam, nephew of the deceased Rockingham and another grandee of the Whigs. It was said with some justice that all the nominees were better known at Brooks’s than in India. Despite this confirmation that the personal patronage of Fox and his allies would be vastly extended, the opposition in the Commons had been vanquished, and Pitt did not even attend the final debates. On 9 December Fox himself carried the Bill to the House of Lords, accompanied by excited supporters and telling his friends that his majority in the Lords would be at least two to one.
In any normal parliamentary situation, Fox would indeed now have been assured of success. He had a large majority, his most controversial piece of legislation was nearly through, his power would shortly be greatly extended, and there was no sign of any dispute with the King. But this was not a normal situation. Beyond the debating chambers of Westminster, powerful forces began to stir. Initially taken by surprise, the Court of Proprietors of the East India Company now pulled themselves together, censured their Chairman for supporting Fox and petitioned Parliament to say that the Company was in a better financial position than the government had declared, and that the Bill amounted to a ‘total confiscation’ of its property. Newspapers began to attack the Bill, saying that if it passed Fox would be ‘the most dangerous subject in Europe’. Caricatures were published depicting a rampaging Fox taking the spoils to himself. Such opposition Fox knew about, and could live with, but he did not know of Temple’s memorandum to the King, delivered by Lord Thurlow on 1 December. In it, Temple warned George that the India Bill was ‘a plan to take more than half of the Royal power, and by that means to disable His Majesty for the rest of the reign’. He went on to consider how the passage of the Bill could be prevented, ruling out the long-disused royal prerogative of simply refusing assent to it: ‘The refusing the Bill, if it passes the Houses, is a violent means … An easier way of changing his Government would be by taking some opportunity of doing it, when, in the progress of it, it shall have received more discountenance than hitherto. This must be expected to happen in the Lords in a greater degree than can be hoped for in the Commons. But a sufficient degree of it may not occur in the Lords if those whose duty to His Majesty would excite them to appear are not acquainted with his wishes, and that in a manner which would make it impossible to pretend a doubt of it, in case they were so disposed.’11 Stated much more bluntly, the King carried sufficient weight in the House of Lords to have the Bill defeated there, and then use that defeat as a reason for throwing out the government. He could only achieve this, however, if he made it absolutely clear to those Lords susceptible to his influence that this was his wish.
In league with Thurlow and Temple was John Robinson, the former government official who had managed a succession of elections for the Treasury, but whose opposition to the India Bill now led him to assist the opposition. He calculated that if the opposition was suddenly to be placed in government it would have 149 definite supporters in the Commons and 231 certain opponents, with 178 ‘hopeful’ or ‘doubtful’. These numbers were not encouraging, and were consistent with the large majorities Fox had enjoyed. Nevertheless, it was thought that a significant number of Members could be induced to change sides once the government itself had changed hands, and that if, additionally, an election were held, the new government could secure 253 supporters against 123 opponents. Such figures were highly speculative, and this was after all the same House of Commons in which it had not been possible to form an alternative government earlier in the year. Nevertheless, more was now at stake, and the opportunity to ditch the Fox – North coalition might not recur.
Whatever the calculations, Temple and Thurlow knew they could not succeed without the cooperation of Pitt, and that so far he had repeatedly re
fused to take office. On 9 December they approached him, using the ageing Lord Clarendon, a long-serving but middle-ranking Minister under North, as a go-between, since any meeting between the principal conspirators would have aroused suspicions. Clarendon recorded that he had been sent to find out ‘the sentiments of him, who must from the superiority of his talents and the purity of his character be a leader in this important business. He was found well disposed to the work and not deterred from the situation of things and the temper of men. He concurred in the opinion that there should be no dismission till a strong succession was secured, that the future plan should be well formed before the present was dissolved. He prudently asked if this overture proceeded from authority, and could be carried on through a proper and safe channel to the fountain head. Those judicious questions being answered in the affirmative, he said he would consider and consult on the matter, and that there should be no delay in speaking more positively on it.’12
By the eleventh Pitt was sending, through Clarendon, his advice on tactics to the King: ‘His opinion is to see by a division the force on each side in the House of Lords … The great Patriot’s sentiments should be known and enforced to all who, from their situation, affection or regard for his honour and for the constitution, ought to be attentive to them, no one who can be directly or indirectly influenced to do right should be left unreminded of the necessity to appear in numbers whenever the bill now depending is agitated. The passing it may change the nature of government, the rejecting it may lessen even to dissolution the power of those who formed it.’13
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 17