Pretyman tells us that ‘Mr. Pitt greatly lamented this failure,’7 but as Harriot wrote: ‘The Opposition brought up all their forces, but they are not very considerable; and the question was lost by the disinclination of the country gentlemen particularly of all the western gentle-men.’8 The defeat was taken as a further sign that this was ‘a very loose Parliament’9 rather than as a vote of no confidence in Pitt.
Pitt’s education in the uncertainties of parliamentary support and the dangers of Cabinet division was now complete, and his recovery from it would be spectacular. He had been working for months on finding a way of steadily repaying the national debt, telling Wilberforce that he was ‘half mad with a project which will give our supplies the effect almost of magic in the reduction of debt’.10 The proposals were developed in typical Pitt fashion. Drawing on the ideas of the celebrated economist Dr Price and the conclusions of a commission set up by Lord North, he hammered out the actual proposals with Rose, William Grenville and a small group of talented experts. Grenville, Pitt’s cousin and an increasingly useful aide and confidant, simultaneously chaired a Commons Committee to examine in detail the government’s income and expenditure.
The manner of Pitt’s preparation for the unveiling of his master plan in a flawless three-hour speech to the Commons on 29 March 1786 tells us a great deal about his intellectual confidence and verbal facility. Pretyman remembered:
Mr. Pitt passed the morning of this day in providing the calculations which he had to state, and in examining the Resolutions which he had to move; and at last he said that he would go and take a short walk by himself, that he might arrange in his mind what he had to say in the House. He returned in a quarter of an hour, and told me he believed he was prepared. After dressing himself he ordered dinner to be sent up; and learning at that moment that his sister (who was then living in the house with him) and a lady with her were going to dine at the same early hour, he desired that their dinner might be sent up with his, and that they might dine together. He passed nearly an hour with these ladies, and several friends who called in their way to the House, talking with his usual liveliness and gaiety, as if having nothing upon his mind. He then went immediately to the House of Commons, and made this ‘elaborate and far-extended speech,’ as Mr. Fox called it, without one omission or error.11
Observers of Pitt’s speeches always found that ‘every word seemed to be the best which the most diligent study could have selected’.12
It is hard to imagine in a later age the extent of the preoccupation of late-eighteenth-century politicians and commentators with the national debt. We are accustomed to the debt inflating in bad times and being reduced in good ones, and have often seen it greatly diminished as a problem by either inflation or economic growth. But the policy-makers of the 1780s did not know that they were on the brink of an Industrial Revolution which would multiply the size of their economy many times over; their experience of recent decades was of the inexorable growth of the nation’s debt until it was now some sixteen times greater than the annual income of the state. Pitt was therefore responding to what was seen as a national problem of immense importance, and he and his proposals were acclaimed because he not only announced a policy, but also the method and resources by which it could be put into effect.
Pitt was able to announce that government revenues were now rising strongly, partly due to ‘the happy æra of the restoration of the peace’ and partly ‘owing to the regulations that have been taken to crush clandestine trade’.13 As a result, his revenues were now £15.4 million a year against expenditure of £14.5 million, even allowing for the largest peacetime navy Britain had ever maintained. The creation of a £900,000 surplus after so many years of deficit was in itself regarded as a huge achievement; Pitt now went on to propose additional taxes on spirits and hair powder* to round the surplus up to £1 million, and to commence immediately an annual payment of £1 million into a Sinking Fund. Furthermore, he proposed to add to the fund the interest on the debt redeemed so that it would grow at a compound rate, and to entrench it by an Act of Parliament with independent Commissioners set up to supervise it. Parliament would only be able to go back on it by passing a new Act. The ‘magic’ of compound interest meant that within twenty-eight years, Pitt claimed, each £1 million set aside would provide £4 million for repayment of debt.
He spoke without a note, telling the House that ‘we have nothing indeed to fear. We may lay despondent thoughts aside.’14 Wraxall described the huge attendance in the Commons and said that ‘Pitt seemed on that evening to put into action all his powers of captivating, convincing, and subduing his hearers. The rapidity with which he laid open the state of the finances could only be equalled by the luminous manner of conveying his ideas, and the facility, as well as perspicuity, that accompanied all his calculations. The meanest intellect might follow and comprehend his positions: they were apparently simple and level to every capacity … The universal attention which had been concentrated upon Pitt while he spoke became liberated when he closed his oration, the floor soon presenting a scene of disorder, noise, and confusion.’15 The proposal for the Sinking Fund and the manner of presenting it seemed to crown the pervading sense of Pitt’s honesty and ability in financial affairs. It also widened a growing separation between him and his kinsman Lord Mahon, now Earl Stanhope, who had worked on a different scheme and tried in vain to insist on it, but in general the effect was to confirm Pitt’s popularity and to leave the opposition with little to say. Pretyman noted: ‘Never was the admiration of any public measure more warm and general … Mr. Fox … pledged himself to produce a plan on a future day, which should have a preferable claim to the concurrence of the house: this was probably said without much consideration, as he never mentioned the subject again.’16
In part, Pitt was the beneficiary of a general improvement in trade which followed the end of the American War, and he recognised as much. Nevertheless, his measures cemented his reputation and meant that financial recovery and the name William Pitt were clearly linked in people’s minds. Throughout 1786 he focused not only on sound finance, but on the expansion of trade: frustrated on the Irish policy with which he sought greater trade within the British Isles, he turned his attention to treaties with other European powers. To help him do this, he recruited ‘men of business’ with an ability to handle matters of trade and international negotiation which the initial membership of the government could not muster.
As the years went by, Pitt would show himself increasingly happy to recruit able men whatever their previous political inclination, and particularly happy to enlist them from the ranks of the Whig opposition, whose strength was thereby eroded. Already in 1784 he had sent one prominent Whig, Sir James Harris (later Earl of Malmesbury), to The Hague as Ambassador; now in 1786 he recruited William Eden from the ranks of the opponents of his Irish propositions. John Beresford was the mutual friend who brought Eden over to Pitt. Rose commented caustically that it was ‘a remarkable confirmation of Walpole’s satirical axiom, that every man in the British Legislature had his price; for Pitt thought him worth purchasing. And, though he had previously been engaged in active opposition to him up to the session of 1785 … he evinced so much insight into matters of finance and trade, that no pains were spared to secure his cooperation.’17 The Whigs were not amused, and probably even less so when Pitt brought into the government another able man, Charles Jenkinson, soon to be Lord Hawkesbury, as President of the Board of Trade. Jenkinson had been so closely associated with George III that Pitt had not dared to include him in his initial administration: he was the archetypal ‘King’s friend’. Pitt was now emboldened to bring him in, for ‘the cry of secret influence, which during Lord North’s administration made Jenkinson unpopular, had become almost extinct, while his talents rose every day in the public estimation’.18 Pitt wrote to his mother in July 1786, saying of Jenkinson’s promotion: ‘This, I think, will sound a little strange at a distance, and with a reference to former ideas; But he has really f
airly earned it and attained it at my hands.’19
With William Grenville in place as Jenkinson’s deputy, Pitt had assembled a strong team to secure commercial treaties for the Empire. In pursuing such treaties he was once again giving energy to the fashion and opportunity of the time, rather than inventing an original idea: many Continental countries were seeking commercial treaties with each other – France had already concluded a treaty with Portugal and would later do so with Russia and Spain. As a disciple of Adam Smith, Pitt needed no encouragement to seek freer trade, but in the late eighteenth century commercial treaties did not constitute free trade as we would know it today. Rather they were reciprocal agreements which reduced certain duties or gave access to otherwise highly protected shipping. The conclusion of a commercial treaty with France was in any case required by the terms of the peace treaty of 1783. Pitt carefully supervised the intensive negotiations between Eden and the French which resulted in the signing of a treaty at Versailles on 26 September, the day after Harriot’s death. The terms were generally advantageous to Britain, because they made it easier to trade manufactured goods in France; and where they helped the French, such as in the reduction of duty on French brandy, they suited Pitt’s approach to finance. Four million gallons of French brandy were being smuggled into Britain every year, while the duty was paid on only 600,000. As with tea, the smuggling of brandy could now be made a futile exercise.
Two centuries on, in an age of much freer trade, the conclusion of such a treaty may seem of obvious merit. Yet at the time, a commercial treaty with France was fraught with political risks for Pitt. The debate on the Irish propositions had shown how easily manufacturers could be roused against a reduction in import duties, and France was widely regarded, for obvious reasons, as a basically hostile country. It has been rightly argued that the negotiation of the treaty is another example of ‘Pitt’s idealism and optimism leading him into a potentially dangerous political situation’.20 Yet in this instance he was successful, partly because he had learned his lessons from Ireland and kept the negotiations under his own strict control with a constant view to domestic opinion, and partly because Eden managed to negotiate a remarkably advantageous treaty, benefiting British manufacturers of products as varied as hardware, cutlery, cottons, woollens, porcelain and glass. The French concessions were the first outward sign of the weakness of the French state and economy, which was now only three years away from revolution. Despite the risk of embarrassing the French, Pitt had no scruple about arguing in the Commons that the terms massively favoured Britain: ‘France could not gain the accession of £100,000 to her revenue by the treaty; but England must necessarily gain a million.’21 He was determined not to be defeated again.
Ironically in the light of later events, it was Fox who argued that a treaty with France was dangerous to national security, stating that ‘France is the natural political enemy of Great Britain … and that she wishes, by entering into a commercial treaty with us, to tie our hands and prevent us from engaging in any alliance with other Powers.’22 Responding to such sentiments from Fox and also from Burke, Pitt argued that ‘I shall not hesitate to contend against the too frequently advanced doctrine that France is, and must be, unalterably the enemy of Britain. My mind revolts from this position, as monstrous and impossible. To suppose that any nation can be unalterably the enemy of another is weak and childish.’23 As the treaty passed the Commons in February 1787 by 134 votes (252 to 118), Pitt may indeed have believed he was strengthening the peace. He did not know that he would spend half the remainder of his life leading his country in the greatest war with France Britain would ever know.
However much the autumn of 1786 was marred by personal sorrow over Harriot’s death, the reception accorded to the Sinking Fund and the French treaty had greatly bolstered Pitt’s position. Additionally that summer, he had confounded the opposition and manoeuvred himself away from a potentially serious embarrassment by surprising all observers with his attitude to the impeachment of Warren Hastings.
Hastings’ achievements in India had been immense but controversial, and when Pitt and Dundas declined to create a single supreme authority in India, he decided he had had enough of the infighting and sailed for home at the beginning of 1785. Pitt replaced him as Governor General with Lord Cornwallis, who had surrendered to the American forces at Yorktown, to whom he soon granted the very powers which Hastings had desired. Pitt’s doubts about Hastings were therefore evident from the beginning; Dundas had himself moved the vote of censure against Hastings in 1782. Nevertheless, when Hastings arrived home in June 1785 with a far from immense fortune of £74,000, he seems to have expected honours rather than trouble. He hastened to see Pitt, who was courteous towards him while making no mention of an honour, but only days later Burke was giving notice of his intention to move resolutions in the Commons regarding ‘a gentleman just returned from India’.
These developments were ominous for Hastings, who, although admired by Thurlow and George III, lacked effective allies in the House of Commons. Ranged against him were formidable parliamentary operators in Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, constantly abetted by Philip Francis, an implacable enemy of Hastings who had fought a duel with him in India and was now an MP himself. In April 1786 Burke began to put before the Commons twenty-two charges of tyrannical or arbitrary conduct on the part of Hastings. Pitt argued in response that Hastings should be able to make a statement of his own in his defence at the Bar of the House, and suggested that while Hastings’ administration of India had certainly had faults, ‘Those faults were highly compensated and fully counterbalanced by the general tenor of his conduct.’ With characteristic care, he also said: ‘For my part I am neither a determined friend nor foe to Mr. Hastings … his innocence or guilt must be proved by incontestable evidence.’24
Pitt had given Hastings his chance. The result, from Hastings’ point of view, was catastrophic. To this day, the two easiest ways to lose the sympathy of the House of Commons are to talk down to it or to bore it. Hastings managed to do both. Failing to take his cue from Pitt and to argue in a short statement that his alleged crimes were more than counterbalanced by his achievements, he mounted a lengthy rebuttal which lasted well over a full day, and the latter part of which had to be read out by the clerks. The effect of this ‘on a popular assembly accustomed to splendid displays of eloquence was tame and tedious after the lapse of the first hour’.25 ‘I left Bengal’, Hastings informed the Commons, ‘followed by the loudest proofs of universal gratitude and since I landed in England I have had the unanimous thanks of the Court of Directors for my services of five-and-thirty years … It did not occur to my mind that any other person could urge an accusation against me.’26 This dismissive attitude won him no friends in the Commons.
Hastings had thrown away a good deal of parliamentary sympathy. Even so, the government was still prepared to defend him. On 1 June Burke brought forward the first charge, the so-called ‘Rohilla charge’, dealing with Hastings’ war on the Rohillas (an Afghan tribe who had ruled an area north of the Ganges) in 1781, the very point on which Dundas had led the original censure. The opposition hugely enjoyed the fact that Dundas now defended Hastings, partly on the grounds that the slate had since been wiped clean by Hastings’ reappointment under Lord North. Ministers and government supporters joined Dundas in defeating the charge by 119 to sixty-seven.
All seemed set for this process to be repeated on other charges. To increase the discomfiture of the government, Fox himself brought forward on 13 June the ‘Benares charge’, alleging tyrannical conduct towards the Indian Prince Cheit Sing. Fox was not particularly interested in India, but he enjoyed turning the event into a major parliamentary occasion, with queues forming at six in the morning to hear him speak. By forcing Pitt himself to defend Hastings, Fox would gain a new stick with which to beat the government, and Pitt would offend many of a liberal conscience, including some of his own friends such as Wilberforce.
What followed was a political bombshell. Th
e Benares charge dealt with Hastings’ conduct in a desperate situation during the Mahratta War in 1781 when he had responded to Cheit Sing’s failure to pay a levy by increasing it ten times over and deposing him. Typically, Pitt had immersed himself in the subject shortly before the debate. During it he beckoned to Wilberforce to speak to him behind the Speaker’s Chair, where he asked: ‘Does not this look very ill to you?’ ‘Very bad indeed,’ Wilberforce replied.27 Pitt then rose, saying that ‘by a most laborious investigation’ he had now ‘been able to form … a final and settled opinion’.28 He then ‘laid open the whole system of feudal tenures, together with the nature of military and civil subordination as recognised throughout Hindostan’,29 and proceeded to demolish the arguments of Fox and Burke as being based on a misunderstanding of Indian circumstances. Nevertheless, he went on to say that he regarded the level of the fine imposed by Hastings as ‘beyond all proportion exorbitant, unjust, and tyrannical’,30 and without committing himself to a final vote of impeachment added that it was his opinion that ‘this act of oppression was such as ought to be made one of the articles of that impeachment, being in his judgement a very high crime and misdemeanour … This proceeding destroyed all relation and connection between the degrees of guilt and punishment; it was grinding; it was overbearing.’31
Suddenly the whole position was reversed. With Pitt voting aye, ‘full fifty individuals followed Pitt without hesitation. Dundas never opened his lips during the whole evening, but he took care to vote with his principal.’32 The Benares charge was carried by 119 votes to seventy-nine. From that moment the impeachment of Warren Hastings for his conduct as Governor General of India moved from being an improbability to a near certainty. Months later Pitt would vote for further charges against Hastings, and he and Dundas would actively cooperate with the opposition in the final framing of the impeachment. Instead of retirement and a seat in the Lords, Hastings would face trial in Westminster Hall, possible imprisonment and certain financial ruin. Indeed, the trial was to drag on for seven years, from a splendid and hugely well attended opening in 1788 to Hastings’ ultimate acquittal in 1795, by which time about one third of the peers who were to have passed judgement on him had died. Burke and the other opposition MPs who managed the impeachment were regularly preoccupied with it, as was a good part of the House of Lords. Hastings spent £71,000 in his defence. By that stage, the whole business reflected little credit on anybody.
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 27