He would have been better advised to have said nothing. Pitt is reported to have slapped his thigh in an unusually public display of relish, and said to his companions, ‘I’ll unwhig him for the rest of his life.’ For, convenient as it may have been for Fox to put this argument at this particular moment, it sat ill with the Whig attachment to the constitution of 1688, which he had always pledged himself to defend. The supremacy of Parliament was fundamental to the Whig view of Britain’s history and constitution, and the implication that anyone had the right to assume the powers of the monarchy in defiance of deliberations in Parliament was a blatant contradiction of Whig orthodoxy.
Pitt responded ‘with the rapidity of lightning’.20 He seems to have seen at once that Fox’s speech had given him both strategic and tactical opportunities. Strategically, he could now be the defender of the constitution as well as of the King, and tactically a whole new argument had been opened up which would take yet more time to be considered. Thus every statement of Fox was immediately turned back on him, with Pitt arguing that ‘the doctrine advanced by the right honourable gentlemen was itself … the strongest and most unanswerable for appointing the committee he had moved for’.21 Furthermore, ‘To assert such a right in the Prince of Wales, or any one else, independent of the decision of the two houses of parliament, was little less than treason to the constitution of the country.’ He told the Commons that as a result ‘A new question presented itself, and that of greater magnitude even than the question which was originally before them … The question now was, the question of their own rights.’ Attacked by Burke as ‘one of the Prince’s competitors’, Pitt repeated the charge of treason against the opposition benches. He achieved his objective: the debate on the Regency was now enlarged from one on practical implementation to one on fundamental principles. While the Committee on precedents met the next day, predictably coming up with nothing new, Fox’s speech caused disquiet in the opposition and sarcasm in the press. The Morning Chronicle noted: ‘An old Whig wishes a reduction of prerogative, a new Whig wishes to extend it, if it will serve his faction.’22
On 12 December, when the Commons met to receive the report on precedents, Sheridan made matters worse for the opposition by reminding Pitt of ‘the danger of provoking that claim to be asserted which had not yet been preferred’, in other words the threat that the Prince of Wales would simply assume the throne. Pitt replied that the Commons should ‘do their duty in spite of any threat, however high the authority from which it might proceed’,23 and liberally embellished his case that the question of ‘right’ must now be fully debated since ‘it was a question that shook the foundation of the constitution’.24 By focusing debate on this question, Pitt was able to postpone further the consideration of the practical implementation of a Regency, even though the King’s condition had now been well known and persistent for some six weeks. He prepared to move resolutions on 16 December asserting ‘the right and duty’ of Parliament to determine what should now happen, throwing in for good measure that it was still necessary to determine how to give Royal Assent to an Act of Parliament needed to create a Regency when the King himself was unable to signify it.
The question of Parliament’s rights would provide the climactic debate, and would reveal the strength of support in these changed circumstances for both Pitt and Fox. Some thirty MPs and twenty peers had already formed the ‘Armed Neutrality’ group, and had in effect defected to the opposition in expectation of its victory. Such a large-scale defection made it possible for the Whigs to run Pitt very close. Yet the night before the debate the biggest of the ‘rats’ threw himself back into the government’s ship. Faced with uncertain offers of employment from the Whigs, the confidence of Dr Willis about the King’s eventual recovery and the strength of Pitt’s constitutional arguments, Thurlow joined battle with Lord Loughborough in the House of Lords very much on Pitt’s side. For even greater effect, he made an emotional declaration of loyalty to the King, clutching his heart and declaring, ‘When I forget my King, may God forget me!’ These dramatic words flew around the country in newspapers and pamphlets, the readers no doubt little suspecting the background of treachery behind Thurlow’s protestations. MPs, on the other hand, watched from the Bar of the House with incredulity. Pitt’s reported comment was ‘Oh, what a rascal!’
When the Commons met for the key debate on 16 December, the betting at Brooks’s on the outcome was even. Both main protagonists were ill, Fox apparently with dysentery and other ailments (at times in this period he thought he was dying), while Pitt was developing a severe cold and a sore throat. Yet for both everything was at stake. Grenville thought Fox gave one of the best speeches he had ever delivered. He asked whether the practice in their enlightened times should be ‘grounded on precedents drawn from so dark and barbarous a period of our history as the reign of Henry VI’,25 and poured scorn on Pitt’s arguments: ‘When the King of England is in good health the monarchy is hereditary; but when he is ill, and incapable of exercising the sovereign authority it is elective.’
Once again, however, Pitt turned every argument of Fox against him. Fox had said that Pitt had been ‘so long in the possession of power, that he cannot endure to part with it from his grasp’.26 Pitt responded that this was ‘unfounded, arrogant, and presumptuous’.27 Fox had ‘thought proper’ to announce himself as the new administration. This, Pitt argued, made it all the more necessary to examine the precise restrictions to be imposed on a Regency, since it was now clear that a particular party intended to install itself in government in that event, with consequences for ‘his Majesty’s being able to resume the exercise of his own authority’.
With MPs wavering and the ‘Armed Neutrality’ group at large, these points mattered. Pitt won the arguments in a House in which he had in any case a natural advantage, and at the end of the debate won the vote by 268 votes to 204. It was a triumph, and it revealed that he was still in control of Parliament. The days before Christmas were spent in further debates on Pitt’s resolutions, but for all his success in taking up time, he could not avoid setting to work on the terms of the Regency. Despite his parliamentary victories, the triumph he really needed was the recovery of the King.
Throughout December the King was quieter, but showed little sign of recovering his senses. Warren and Willis continued to disagree about the prospects for recovery. Despite continued majorities in the debates of later December of approximately the same size as in the key decision of 16 December – majorities sufficiently convincing that on Christmas Day Thurlow told Fox that their negotiation was at an end – Pitt now had to set out exactly how a Regency would operate. He first did so in a private letter to the Prince of Wales on 30 December, containing proposals which, according to the Prince himself, imposed ‘such restrictions as no Dictator could possibly … ever have been barefaced enough to have brought forward’.28
Pitt’s proposals specifically vested control of the Royal Household in the Queen, laid down that the Prince as Regent would have no power to grant peerages except to his brothers, and that he would not be able to dispose of any property of the King nor grant permanent offices or pensions except in specified circumstances. The Prince worked with Fox, Loughborough and Burke to produce his reply of 2 January 1789. He argued that such tight restrictions would be ‘injurious’ both to the monarchy and the public interest: ‘It is with deep regret the Prince makes the observation, that he sees … a project for producing weakness, disorder and insecurity in every branch of the administration of affairs. – A project for dividing the Royal Family from each other – for separating the court from the state.’29 This was not far wide of the mark. Pitt intended the Prince and the Whigs to be almost paralysed while in office, and to be denied the opportunity to win support by using patronage. By imposing such tight limitations, he would protect the King’s interests in the event of his recovery and ease his own return to power.
Three days later Pitt wrote again to the Prince, courteously but firmly, and this time on behalf of
the whole government. ‘The King’s servants … beg leave respectfully to assure your Royal Highness that if the plan which they took the liberty of submitting to your Royal Highness had appeared to them in the light in which they have the mortification to observe that it is considered by your Royal Highness, it would never have occurred to them to propose it,’ but nevertheless, ‘They still feel themselves bound to adhere to these principles in the propositions to be offered to the consideration of Parliament.’30
A Regency Bill was now due to be prepared, it having been agreed that Parliament could be opened and Royal Assent to Acts signified by means of the Great Seal during the incapacity of the King and before the appointment of a Regent. Yet further delay ensued, for as with so many events in the preceding years Pitt was not only skilful but also lucky. The death of Charles Cornwall, the Speaker of the House of Commons, on 2 January necessitated an election, and it did not help the supporters of Dr Warren’s views that Cornwall had been in his care. The process of election not only took up time, it enabled Pitt to install a loyal acolyte in the Speaker’s chair to deal favourably with any procedural disagreements: William Grenville was duly put forward and elected by 215 to 144, against the protests of the opposition. The opposition then added to its own difficulties by proposing a new Committee of Inquiry to examine the King’s physicians, in the apparent belief that this would show the King’s illness to be sufficiently serious that the proposed restrictions on the Regency would be harder to sustain. Consequently another ten days were taken up without Pitt having to produce his Bill, and the result was in any case the opposite of that which the Whigs desired: the optimism of Dr Willis and most of the physicians was becoming greater. Pitt had agreed to this new inquiry with a show of reluctance, but no doubt with private satisfaction. He was being delivered from disaster by the errors of his opponents, who in retrospect would have done far better to say very little until government was within their grasp.
Pitt was also being increasingly encouraged and sustained by popular opinion. In the crisis of 1784 the weight of public addresses in his support had been one of the decisive factors in his favour. The lesson had not been lost on him, and it is probably no coincidence that the first address on this occasion came from his own city of Cambridge. The ever loyal merchants and bankers of the City of London voted their thanks to Pitt at a meeting on 7 January, and took advertisements in newspapers to say so. Other addresses came in from as far afield as Perth, Aberdeen, Stirling, Glasgow, Gateshead, Southampton, Maidstone and Leicester. Well might the opposition Morning Herald attack such addresses: Gateshead was ‘A borough which probably most of our readers have not heard of before … where shopkeepers of the lowest order, keelmen, and pitmen reside,’31 but the trend in public opinion was undeniable. Lord Fitzwilliam was told that in Yorkshire ‘the neighbourhood hereabouts seem so horridly infatuated in their opinions of the rectitude of Mr. Pitt’s conduct’.32 The fact was that George III was very popular, widely respected for his diligence and personal morality. In the opinion of some Pitt was even more popular, and the Whig Sir Gilbert Elliot complained: ‘Mr. Pitt is the only object the nation can perceive, and the only thing they think valuable in the world; and I rather think they would be content and pleased to set aside the whole Royal Family, with the Crown and both Houses of Parliament, if they could keep him by it.’33 In pamphlets, the opposition tried to turn Pitt’s pre-eminence to its advantage:
PRINCE PITT! or the Minister of the Crown. Greater than the HEIR APPARENT! who, having already destroyed the People’s Rights by an undue Exertion of the Prerogative of the Crown, is now willing to raise himself above the Prerogative by seizing on the Sovereignty of these Kingdoms.34
Its efforts were to no avail. Both the Whigs and the Prince were thoroughly unpopular, on grounds of presumption, disunity, licentiousness and the grave disadvantage of not being Pitt.
As Pitt presented five resolutions to the Commons on 16 January embodying his unaltered restrictions on the powers of a Regent, he could therefore count on solid parliamentary and public support. Sheridan attacked his prohibition on the Prince’s creation of peerages, pointing out that Pitt himself had created forty-eight peerages up to this time, but this key proposal was carried by fifty-seven votes, and the other restrictions by larger majorities. By the end of January, Fox’s health was giving way, and while the Whigs continued protracted negotiations about the formation of their new government they were despondent and divided. Pitt had run rings round them.
Even so, Pitt’s situation at the end of January 1789 was, in Wraxall’s words, ‘peculiarly arduous and critical. From the summit of power, he beheld himself suddenly about to be precipitated by an event of the most unexpected nature, against which he neither had taken, or could take, any measure of precaution. Three months had already elapsed since the King’s seizure, and no indications of restoration to intellect were as yet perceptible … Pitt possessed no landed estate, no funded property, nor even life annuity.’
We do not know for certain what Pitt intended for himself if he were to be ejected from office in the subsequent few weeks. It is said that he intended to return to the Bar, and certainly his fame and ability would have guaranteed him a good living from it. What we can be sure about is that he was taking every possible measure, down to the smallest detail, to maximise his chances of survival in office on his own terms. He had now dragged matters out for a good twelve weeks, and his principal objective was to continue the debate until the King recovered. His fallback plan was to create such tight restrictions on the Regency that the Whigs would be unable to entrench themselves in power unless the King’s madness continued for years. It may also have occurred to him that such restrictions, combined with his own successful assertion of his parliamentary dominance, might make a Whig administration so difficult to operate that the Prince would have to keep him on for the moment, with all the further opportunities that would bring. There could only be a remote chance of such an outcome, but Pitt had made the chances of one of these things happening as high as it was possible to make them. His mind remained, as it always had been, utterly focused on power.
On 5 February Pitt introduced a Regency Bill into the House of Commons, to give effect to the resolutions he had already moved. Once it passed the Commons and the Lords, and Royal Assent was signified by means of the Great Seal, the Prince would be the lawful Regent and Pitt’s job would be at his disposal. The Bill passed the Commons on 12 February, the debates having been distinguished only by Pitt’s acceptance of a three-year time limit on the restriction on the creation of peerages – a period so long as to be academic – and Burke’s intemperate explosions against Pitt and the King. Burke was deeply dissatisfied with Fox and his other colleagues for their ineffective handling of the crisis, and had all along urged a more forensic approach. Now in frustration he exclaimed, ‘Have we forgotten that we are debating relative to a monarch smitten by the hand of Omnipotence? Do we recollect that the Almighty has hurled him from his throne, and plunged him into a condition that may justly excite the pity of the meanest peasant in his dominions!’35 This did little for the opposition’s case, and Pitt maintained his majorities.
On 16 February the Bill was introduced into the House of Lords. Within days Pitt’s five-year-old administration could be dismissed. In the Irish Parliament the government had been defeated, and a Loyal Address to the Prince was being prepared. From Bath, Fox was telling his supporters to ignore reports that the King’s condition was improving: ‘I hope by this time all ideas of the Prince or any of us taking any measure in consequence of the good reports of the King, are at an end; if they are not, pray do all you can to crush them … let me know by the return of the post on what day the Regency is like to commence.’36 But on the very day on which Fox wrote these words, 17 February, the public bulletin issued by the King’s physicians referred to ‘a state of convalescence’. George III had recovered. Thurlow, who the King called to Windsor that day, was able to confirm it. After a Cabinet meeting o
n the nineteenth, Thurlow went to the Lords to move the postponement of consideration of the Regency Bill, while Pitt dashed off an excited note to his mother: ‘The public account this morning is that the King continues advancing in Recovery. The private one is that he is to all appearance perfectly well, and if it were the Case of a Private man, would be immediately declared so … This intelligence will be welcome enough to excuse a short letter, and I could not resist the pleasure of communicating it.’37 Four days later the King wrote to Pitt:
Kew, Feb. 23d, 1789.
It is with infinite satisfaction I renew my correspondence with Mr. Pitt by acquainting him with my having seen the Prince of Wales and my second son; care was taken that the conversation should be general and cordial … I am anxious to see Mr. Pitt any hour that may suit him to-morrow morning, as his constant attachment to my interest and that of the public which are inseparable must ever place him in the most advantageous light.
G.R.38
Pitt’s triumph was complete. The King’s recovery had saved him with only days to spare, but if it had not been for his own skill in extending the debate and exploiting the blunders of the opposition, George III would have recovered to find his enemies in power. London rose up in a tumult of rejoicing, displaying ‘a blaze of light from one extremity to the other’. From late March onwards, formal festivities celebrated the King’s recovery. On 1 April, two thousand people attended a Victory Ball organised by White’s at the Pantheon: Pitt attended it after a celebratory dinner with his brother, Dundas, the Duchess of Gordon and the now renowned Dr Willis. On the following night the King gave a concert and dinner at Windsor. The table setting in front of Pitt included ‘the number 268, the first majority in the House of Commons, written in sugar-plums or sweetmeats’.39 On 23 April, St George’s Day, a Service of Thanksgiving was held at St Paul’s Cathedral amidst all the splendour of the British state and the unrestrained enthusiasm of the crowds. Six thousand children sang for the King, but the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York were widely criticised for laughing and giggling during the service, and Fox was greeted with ‘an universal hiss which continued with very little intermission’ throughout his journey to the cathedral. Pitt’s reception was reminiscent of 1784, the cheering crowds insisting that the horses of his carriage be removed so that they could pull him back to Downing Street themselves.
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 31