Smuggling had become a way of life in many coastal areas of Britain, and it is estimated that some 40,000 people were engaged in it. At the heart of this huge trade was the smuggling of tea, which had become a household staple in the Britain of the eighteenth century, but attracted import duties averaging 119 per cent. Pitt now announced that he would ‘lower the duty on tea to such a degree as to take away from the smuggler all temptation to his illicit trade’.10 He reduced the average duty to 25 per cent, making up the immediate shortfall of revenue by increasing the window tax (not introducing it, as is sometimes thought) on a graduated scale for people with more than four windows. In time, the huge reduction in smuggling which followed would in any case bring an increase in revenue. This was not achieved without a difficult tussle with the smugglers, who responded to the budget by trying to starve the market of tea and to bid up its price to impossible levels. Pitt’s response was methodical and effective, extending the distance from the coast within which smugglers’ ships could be seized and, with the close advice of the leading tea merchant Richard Twining, bringing in emergency stocks, pledging government support for the purchase of extra tea in Europe and encouraging responsible dealers into the market at a crucial juncture. The whole manoeuvre was extremely successful, and would pave the way for a similar attack on the smuggling of spirits at a later stage. While Fox tried in vain to oppose the move, on the thin basis that people would have to pay more tax on other things to make up for the tea-drinkers, it was generally popular, and was well received by the less well-off, who now enjoyed cheaper tea while still not having to pay tax on their windows.
Notwithstanding the intense pressures on taxes and debt, Pitt went out of his way at this time to provide for major expenditure on the navy. The war with America had not only wrecked the state’s finances, it had also exposed the inability of the navy to control the seas and protect British trade, along with appalling maladministration and corruption in the dockyards. Pitt allocated more than £2 million for the building of new warships, and instituted a Parliamentary Inquiry into the state of the fleet and dockyards. The importance he placed on the expansion of trade, and his attachment to the attitudes and successes of his father, made maritime power a natural interest and one he would maintain throughout his life.
On 6 July 1784, fresh from the successful presentation of his budget, Pitt brought his India Bill before the House of Commons. This was essentially the same measure as the one narrowly rejected earlier that year: it set up a Board of Control appointed by the King and consisting of Ministers responsible for ‘the superintendence and control over all the British territorial possessions in the East Indies and over the affairs of the Company’. The key question of the appointment of the officials of the Company was left in the hands of its Directors. The dramatic consequences of the 1784 election were demonstrated by the fact that in January, Fox had been able to defeat this bill; now Pitt was able to carry it by a majority of 211 (271 to sixty). Pitt was himself appointed to the Board of Control, along with the relevant Secretary of State Lord Sydney, and Pitt’s two most rapidly rising stars, Dundas and William Grenville. In the years to come Dundas, in Pitt’s absence, would preside at most of the meetings and become the real power in the government on Indian matters. The India Bill had been put together as a compromise amidst the urgent need to present an alternative to Fox’s plans, yet it was to stand the test of time. While Indian affairs, in the shape of the record as Governor General of Warren Hastings, would consume a vast amount of parliamentary time in the coming decade, the form of government for India, save for an occasional amending Act, was now settled for the next three quarters of a century.
The ease of Pitt’s mastery of finance and victory on India impressed even seasoned observers. Edward Gibbon, who was scarcely predisposed in Pitt’s favour, wrote from Lausanne that autumn that people on the Continent were ‘biassed by the splendour of young Pitt, and it is a fair and honourable prejudice. A youth of five-and-twenty, who raises himself to the government of an empire by the power of genius and the reputation of virtue, is a circumstance unparalleled in history, and, in a general view, is not less glorious to the country than to himself.’11
Pitt’s first budget had displayed an approach to problem-solving which was unusual among the politicians of the time. He clearly enjoyed finance, administration and the business of government as such, in contrast to Lord North, who was reliable but lazy, or Fox, who saved his greatest energies for more exciting or sensuous pleasures. Pitt loved to gather experts and bright younger people around him, with whom he could then get to the heart of the matter and come up with a solution. He had been eager to draw on the talents of the most enterprising tea merchants as he attacked smuggling, and even went himself down to Leadenhall Street to confer with them. As Ireland began to preoccupy him that autumn he would draw to him another talented expert, John Beresford, who would spend many hours with him, and write out for him a good deal of his correspondence and instructions. Pitt’s ready mastery of detail led officials and outsiders to enjoy working with him, one of them noting his ‘extraordinary memory’, which was ‘so tenacious that he never forgot anything he had once learned’.12
This is the Pitt familiar to us, whether in Cambridge tutorials or at his father’s knee. He liked to pick up ideas from other people and then apply his own mind to improving them – Lord Mahon, for instance, had produced proposals on tackling smuggling through a sharp reduction in duty – and Dudley Ryder, a friend and later Cabinet colleague, would refer to his ‘peculiar talent of making persons with whom he conversed pleased with themselves by taking up their ideas – and enlarging upon them and improving them’.13 As a result Pitt preferred to do his thinking informally, with work and companionship blending into one.
Such an approach often led to powerful ideas, but it was not easily suited to Cabinet government. A list of the bright young men with whom Pitt liked to surround himself would not have included a single member of his Cabinet Furthermore, he had only served in government for eight months prior to becoming First Lord of the Treasury himself, and that had been under Shelburne, who was anything but a model of consultation and collective decision-making. Pitt had thus received no education in Cabinet government. The effect of this would be compounded by all of the early decisions of his government being concerned with matters on which he could act without the detailed involvement of his Cabinet colleagues: the budget, which fell entirely within his own sphere; India, on which policy had already been decided before the election; and Ireland, on which he needed the advice of the Duke of Rutland and Thomas Orde, as Lord Lieutenant and Chief Secretary of Ireland respectively, rather than that of Cabinet Ministers. Consequently he did not need to get into the habit early on of informing and involving his senior colleagues. The style of discussion evolved in Cambridge common rooms made no provision for colleagues to be kept informed of decisions.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Pitt would always have colleagues, from senior Ministers to the less expert or intelligent MPs, who felt excluded from his circle. He would usually overcome the problems this caused by sheer ability, but sometimes he would be caught unawares by objections or opposition. Having arrived at a chosen policy through rational deliberation, he could be vulnerable to over-optimism when not all the people he had to deal with were susceptible to reason. He would also find that Ministers or MPs who had not been involved in arriving at a particular view felt free to express a different one. Such realities were probably not apparent to him as the Commons rose for its recess in August 1784. The coming year would reveal them.
When Parliament was sitting, Pitt was now fully back in residence at 10 Downing Street, with Wilberforce and Eliot as regular house-guests. Once the session was over he hankered as usual for more rural air, and from the summer of 1784 to the autumn of 1785 he rented a house on Putney Heath, a short distance from the noise and smells of eighteenth-century London. He wrote to his mother on 28 August: ‘The end of the Session has hardly yet g
iven me any thing like leisure; as the Continual Hurry of some months leaves of course no small Arrear of Business now to be despatched. I hope, however, in about Ten days, or possibly a week, to be able to get as far as Brighthelmstone … I am already in a great measure a country gentleman, because, tho full of Business, it is of a nature which I can do as well at Putney … I look forward with impatience to being enough released to be with you at Burton, and work the more cheerfully in Hopes of it.’14
A few weeks later he wrote to his mother that his excursion to the south coast had taught him that he could not afford to be more than a day’s distance from London. ‘The principal cause of my being detained at present is the Expectation of materials from Ireland, and persons to consult with from that country … The scene there is the most important and delicate we now have to attend to, but even there I think things wear a more favourable Aspect.’15 Pitt was now bringing his powers of analysis and sense of optimism to Irish affairs. It was to be a serious trial for both these attributes.
The economic condition of the people of Ireland throughout the eighteenth century was characterised by deep and enduring poverty. Attempts to develop successful industries were repeatedly frustrated by laws passed at Westminster: any study of Irish history in this period provides some understanding of how a lasting sense of grievance against the English was developed. Central to trading arrangements at this time were the Navigation Acts, which provided that exports from Britain to the colonies must be carried in British ships. Amendments to these laws in the 1660s removed the right of Irish ships to carry exports from either Britain or Ireland to the rest of the Empire. The English response to the development of a successful cattle trade in Ireland was to forbid the import of Irish cattle into England, thus destroying the Irish trade. The Irish also had the prospect of developing a strong trade in wool and woollen goods, but this was destroyed by an Act of 1699 that prohibited the export from Ireland of all goods made up or mixed with wool – except to England and Wales, where they were subject to a level of duties which made them completely unsaleable. The devastation of such a principal industry caused immense economic hardship.
Rebellion in Ireland had sometimes taken the form of a boycotting of trade with England, which of course only made the economic situation worse, but there is no doubt that the legal framework under which the Catholic majority in Ireland were forced to live was deeply oppressive. Catholics were excluded from Parliament and from property rights, and even the poorest had to pay tithes to the established Church, notwithstanding their different religion. The needs of war and the intensity of Irish discontent had led to some relaxation of the economic restrictions on Ireland in 1780. Irish ships were permitted to sail as British, the right to export wool and glass was restored, and Catholics were allowed to inherit property. Nevertheless, a myriad of restrictive laws and prohibitive duties remained, and the war had contributed to a recession in the Irish linen trade, one of the few industries which had established itself successfully. The Duke of Rutland, on taking office as Lord Lieutenant, found Ireland in a state of political and economic disorder, writing to Pitt from Dublin on 15 August 1784: ‘This city is in a great measure under the dominion and tyranny of the mob. Persons are daily marked out for the operation of tarring and feathering; the magistrates neglect their duty … the state of Dublin calls loudly for an immediate and vigorous interposition of Government.’16
With the budget and India now out of the way, Pitt brought the searchlight of his enquiring mind to bear on the Irish situation through the autumn of 1784. He exchanged long letters with Rutland and Thomas Orde, the Chief Secretary whom he had sent over with him. In addition, he drew heavily on the expertise of John Beresford, the Chief Commissioner of the Revenue in Ireland, requesting that he come to London for several months. Beresford was to spend many hours on an almost daily basis with Pitt as he developed his thinking. For Pitt believed that the economic condition of Ireland was the root cause of its discontents, and began to think of a radical liberalisation of English-Irish trade as the answer. While meant to be on holiday at Brighton in September 1784, he was not only sending so many notes to Sydney that he added to one, ‘I am afraid I shall completely tire you with seeing my hand,’17 but also writing at considerable length to Orde, saying that the great question was ‘what is it that in truth will give satisfaction and restore permanent tranquillity to Ireland? Much has been given already, and the effect has been very little in proportion … I believe what you have stated to be perfectly just – that the internal poverty and distress of the country is the radical cause of all the discontent that prevails. Of that the cure must be gradual and probably slow … If we remove some things that are perhaps not barely pretexts but real additional causes of discontent, that one great cause will still remain. In such a situation we … must trust to the progressive operation of a prudent system to extinguish at length the seeds of this disorder.’18
Orde had pressed Pitt to respond to Irish problems with the ‘utmost liberality’, and Pitt was inclined to do so, writing to Rutland in October: ‘I own to you that the line to which my mind at present inclines … is to give Ireland an almost unlimited communication of commercial advantages, if we can receive in return some security that her strength and riches will be our benefit, and that she will contribute from time to time in their increasing proportions to the common exigencies of the empire.’19 Such a solution was not only supported by Pitt and Beresford’s conclusion that small measures of amelioration would make little difference to the problem; it was also in line with beliefs dear to Pitt’s heart and which would influence his policies throughout his lifetime. The first of these, strongly influenced by Adam Smith’s recent publication of The Wealth of Nations, was that the growth of trade would bring benefits to all the countries involved, even if temporarily painful adjustments had to be made in industries hitherto shielded from competition. The second belief was that a lasting solution to the Irish hostility towards England could only be achieved by somehow unifying first the economic and then the political interests of the two countries. The solution which therefore naturally presented itself to him was a major opening up of trade between England and Ireland, accompanied by a modest contribution from Ireland to the defence needs of the whole kingdom. Over time this would alleviate poverty in Ireland, while giving people on both sides of the Irish Sea a greater economic and political stake in each other’s success.
In the longer term, Pitt may have already been thinking of a more radical and permanent solution. Rutland suggested to him that ‘without an union Ireland will not be connected with Great Britain in twenty years longer’.20 The amalgamation of the two Parliaments would indeed represent the culmination of Pitt’s policy, and sixteen years later, in the midst of another great crisis, he would bring it about. For the moment he framed his proposals as ten resolutions, reducing the duties on all manufactures and produce levied in Britain and Ireland on each other’s goods to the lowest rate levied by either, and giving Ireland the freedom to import from and export to Britain the goods of other countries without them being subject to increased duties. He accompanied this with an eleventh ingenious formula requiring the Irish to contribute a varying amount to defence expenditure when their total revenue was above a certain level.
In early February Orde presented the proposals to the Irish Parliament. The carefully balanced package was seriously undermined, and in retrospect fatally so, by a concession made by Orde in order to get it through in Ireland: the contribution to defence would only be made when the overall Irish budget was in surplus. Pitt was not pleased, telling Orde that he wished ‘any consequence had been risked rather than such a concession’. He asked Rutland and Orde to try to restore the original proposal, but in the meantime decided to go ahead in putting the resolutions to the House of Commons in London.
The new session of Parliament at Westminster had been opened by the King on 25 January 1785, with Pitt in an apparently strong political position. His plan was to carry his Irish pr
oposals through Parliament, present a budget that would build on the success of his first one the previous year, and finally to succeed in winning a majority in Parliament for parliamentary reform, on which he had been working hard with Wyvill since December. Naturally optimistic, and confident in the force of his arguments, everything seemed to go well when Pitt presented the Irish resolutions to the Commons on 22 February. It was a classic Pitt speech, answering all possible objections one by one while providing a seemingly unanswerable argument for change. He condemned the treatment of Ireland over the previous century, describing it as a ‘system of cruel and abominable restraint’.21 He said ‘the system had been that of debarring Ireland from the enjoyment and use of her own resources; to make the kingdom completely subservient to the interests and opulence of this country, without suffering her to share in the bounties of nature, in the industry of her citizens, or making them contribute to the general interests and strength of the empire’.22 He called for ‘a system of equality and fairness’ which would create a ‘community of benefits’ and a ‘community of burdens’, describing a system of trade with Ireland that would not ‘aggrandize the one or depress the other’ but ‘should seek the aggregate interests of the empire’.23 And in a peroration of great power he told the Commons: ‘Surely, after the heavy loss which our country has sustained from the recent severance of her dominions, there ought to be no object more impressed on the feelings of the House than to endeavour to preserve from further dismemberment and diminution – to unite and to connect – what yet remains of our reduced and shattered empire … Of all the objects of my political life, this is in my opinion the most important that I ever have engaged in; nor do I imagine I shall ever meet another that shall rouse every emotion of my heart in so strong a degree as does the present.’24
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