William Pitt the Younger: A Biography

by William Hague

  Pitt told his friend Pepper Arden that summer that he had experienced more sleepless nights that year ‘than during the rest of his administration put together’.61 According to Pretyman, he had become ‘so wholly engrossed by the State of Public Affairs that he had no leisure, and lost all relish, except for the company of his intimate friends’.62 The emotional pain of dismissing his brother from the Admiralty seems to have affected him considerably, and the accumulating strain of so many near resignations and terrible disappointments, along with unfamiliar unpopularity, must have been enormous. While always known among his friends for his ability to ‘put his cares aside’, those cares were now too great to be forgotten in the dead of night. From 1795 onwards, the mental pressures on Pitt had a pronounced physical effect. The physician Sir Walter Farquhar, who would attend him for the rest of his life, first saw him in 1795. He later wrote:

  I found him in a state of general debility – the functions of the stomach greatly impaired & the Bowels very irregular – much of which I attributed to the excess of public business and the unremitting attention upon subjects of anxiety and interest. I thought myself called upon to urge the necessity of some relaxation from the arduous Duties of Office, in order to regain strength & afford the natural functions time & opportunity to rally. This Mr. Pitt stated to be impossible. There appeared at this time to be little or no constitutional mischief done, but the symptoms of debility with a gouty tendency, which Dr. Addington (as Mr. Pitt mentioned to me) had always remarked from his infancy, were likely to become formidable if neglected.63

  Pitt wrote to Henry Addington, Speaker of the Commons, that October: ‘I am going next Thursday for a week or ten days to Walmer, and hope to return with my Budget prepared to be opened before Christmas; and if that goes off tolerably well, it will give us peace before Easter.’64 He would show that he and Britain were still prepared to fight. But he also said to Lord Mornington and Wilberforce around the same time: ‘My head would be off in six months were I to resign.’ His sense of duty and superiority would in any case have made it hard for him to give up the burdens he had now carried for nearly twelve years. In the midst of war and disorder, he felt absolutely bound to carry on as Prime Minister. His career was reaching a point familiar in the lives of politicians with a long tenure of office, where it ceases to be fulfilling and instead becomes consuming. It marks the transition in his life story from the fable of brilliant youth to the legend of grinding endurance.

  19

  Insurmountable Obstacles

  ‘My sentiments are only those of disappointment. But I have the satisfaction of knowing that this feeling of disappointment is unaccompanied with any reflection, unmingled with regret, unembittered with despondency.’

  WILLIAM PITT, 30 DECEMBER 17961

  ‘What I have done so far is nothing. I am only at the beginning of the career that lies before me. Do you suppose that I have triumphed in Italy for the mere aggrandizement of the Directory lawyers, the Carnots, the Barras of this world? What an idea! A republic of thirty million men! With our habits, our vices! How can it be possible? It is a wild dream, with which the French are infatuated, but it will pass like so many before it. They must have glory, the satisfactions of vanity. But as for liberty, they understand nothing about it.’

  NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, MAY 17962

  IN PRIVATE, in the autumn of 1795 many of Pitt’s senior colleagues in the government were opposed to making overtures for peace. Some of the new Ministers adopted the hardest line: it was, after all, the intensity of their opposition to the French Revolution that had pushed them into Pitt’s Cabinet in the first place. Portland and Windham were appalled at talk of peace without a comprehensive victory. Dundas and Grenville were also sceptical, although the latter was certainly concerned about growing domestic hostility to the war, and thought that peace negotiations would help the government’s case by demonstrating the intractability of the French.

  George III himself was deeply suspicious of any negotiations. At Pitt’s behest he sent a message to Parliament on 9 December 1795 indicating that Britain would ‘meet any disposition to negociation on the part of the enemy with an earnest desire to give it the fullest and speediest effect, and to conclude a treaty of general peace’,3 but his private views were much less pacific. In a memorandum to Pitt he argued that time should be given for the West Indies expedition to succeed. Pitt’s reply argued that this would take too long (particularly as a large part of the expedition had been forced back to port in Britain by the weather), and that if the government waited any longer, parliamentary opinion might force it to seek peace from a correspondingly weaker position.

  It is hard to know how seriously to take Pitt’s concern that MPs could break ranks – only eighty-six had so far voted against the war, including Wilberforce, who was now returning to the fold in the belief that an honourable peace was not available – but it certainly suggests that he thought his huge majority was shaky. George III, never one to be impressed by parliamentary opinion of any kind, was not impressed: ‘My mind is not of a nature to be guided by the obtaining a little applause or staving off some abuse; rectitude of conduct is my sole aim. I trust the rulers in France will reject any proposition from hence short of a total giving up any advantage we may have gained, and therefore that the measure proposed will meet with a refusal.’4

  The King’s confidence that negotiations would fail almost certainly made him happier to agree to them. On the other hand, Pitt was influenced to try for peace by some of his closest advisers: Auckland wrote a pamphlet advocating negotiations, and George Rose had written to Pretyman: ‘It is heart-breaking that they should go on without a rational Hope in the Mind of a human Being of the smallest possible Advantage to the Country in the Cause it is embarked in.’5

  To Pitt, the arguments for negotiation were stacked high: the French appeared to be ruined financially, exhausted militarily and divided politically, and the Revolution seemed at last to have run its course; the prospect of the major British effort heading to the West Indies would be a further inducement for them to make peace on terms which ended their aggression; a continuation of the war presented the risk of Austria making peace and leaving Britain feeing France more or less alone; domestic distress and discontent had reached a new peak with the violence directed at the King and 150,000 people gathering to protest before the opening of Parliament; and the French would in any case be shown up as the aggressors if a reasonable attempt at negotiation was rebuffed. The importance of negotiations in allowing Pitt to get back on top of the domestic political situation would have been a powerful factor in his mind, and much more so than in the calculations of other Ministers and the King.

  Perhaps equally telling in Pitt’s head was his understanding that the approach he had taken to financing the war could not be sustained for much longer. In his budget of 7 December he announced another loan of £18 million, and a new tax on legacies, part of which he would not succeed in getting through Parliament. This continued his policy of making the most of the immense creditworthiness of Britain to finance the war through loans, while only raising taxes to cover the interest. Since the beginning of the war he had so far raised taxes by a little over £1 million, while expenditure had increased by over £20 million a year. By the following year, some £70 million would have been added to the national debt, almost equal after three years of war to the entire expense of the eight-year American War of Independence. He could continue this for another year, and no Minister available at the time could have matched Pitt’s resourcefulness in financing a war or the confidence he enjoyed throughout the financial system. Nevertheless, he knew this could not go on much longer without paying exorbitant rates of interest or seeking huge increases in domestic taxation. The prospect of presenting such measures to a Parliament which he already feared might turn in greater measure against the war was not an attractive one.

  Pitt therefore decided in late 1795 that notwithstanding royal and ministerial misgivings, he would seek peace
if it could be obtained on honourable and durable terms. In February 1796, instructions would be given to the British envoy in Berne to make an approach to his French counterpart. But in the meantime Pitt had also been clear in his mind that it would not be possible to achieve a worthwhile peace or win the war without the restoration of domestic order.

  The new and highly dangerous factor in the riots and protests of the second half of 1795 had been the shortage of bread. Such a difficulty was well suited to being resolved by Pitt’s problem-solving brain. The government had already started buying grain from overseas on its own account, rather than relying on traders. In November 1795, within days of the opening of Parliament, Pitt established a Parliamentary Inquiry into the high price of corn, resulting in government intervention being replaced by bounties on particular types of imports. In early 1796 government stocks of grain were released judiciously into the market, accelerating a sharp fall in prices which was by then underway. Pitt also instigated a new Act permitting bread to be made with a mixture of inferior grains and substitutes, the loaves concerned to be marked with the letter ‘M’ (signifying a mixture). This did not prove to be acceptable even to hungry eighteenth-century consumers, but a variety of other expedients provided some marginal help and showed he was taking the problem seriously: the use of wheat was prohibited in distilleries, and in the manufacture of starch and hair powder. (Whatever Pitt had against hair powder, the combination of this measure with the taxes he had already imposed on it soon drove it out of general use.)

  These measures did something to reduce the political temperature out on the streets, which in any event dropped sharply in the opening months of 1796. But Ministers were also conscious that previous unruly episodes had ceased when the government showed its toughness and strength. There seems to have been no doubt in the minds of Pitt, Portland and the others directly concerned that the violence directed at the King’s person and the atmosphere which accompanied it required a parallel response from the authorities. Pitt told the Commons on 10 November that ‘the public had seen with becoming indignation, that a virtuous and beloved sovereign had been attacked in the most criminal and outrageous manner … if, instead of stating grievances, the people were excited to rebellion; if, instead of favouring the principles of freedom, the very foundation of it was to be destroyed, and with it the happiness of the people, it was high time for the legislature to interpose with its authority’.6

  The LCS had effectively invited this response by calling at huge meetings and demonstrations in the previous weeks not only for parliamentary reform but for opposition to the war and the government’s policies across the board. Literature had apparently been distributed showing ‘prints of guillotining the King and others’.7 The ‘others’ no doubt included the First Lord of the Treasury. Pitt responded with two new Bills: the Seditious Meetings Bill, which he introduced into the Commons, and the Treasonable Practices Bill, which Grenville introduced in the Lords. These were to become known as Pitt’s ‘gagging Bills’, and they represented a significant ratcheting-up of his repressive response to discontent. Meetings of more than fifty people were to be banned unless they had the permission of the magistrates, any meeting could be dispersed and the speakers arrested on magistrates’ orders, and severe penalties were to be imposed on those who attacked the constitution or gave support to the nation’s enemies.

  For Fox, these measures were an outrageous attack on liberty, intended to ‘prohibit all public discussion, whether in writing or in speaking, of political subjects’. He told the Commons that ‘if you silence remonstrance and stifle complaint, you then leave no other alternative but force and violence’.8 He called a huge public meeting in mid-November, and maintained an eloquent parliamentary attack:

  Say at once, that a free constitution is no longer suitable to us; say at once, in a manly manner, that upon an ample review of the state of the world, a free Constitution is not fit for you … But do not mock the understandings and the feelings of mankind by telling the world that you are free – by telling me that if out of the House, for the purpose of expressing my sense of the public administration of this country, of the calamities which this war has occasioned, I state a grievance by petition, or make any declaration of my sentiments which I always had a right to do; but which if I now do, in a manner that may appear to a magistrate to be seditious, I am to be subjected to penalties which hitherto were unknown to the laws of England.9

  For Pitt, by contrast, what was at stake was the primacy of Parliament over the mob: ‘The sole object of the bill was, that the people should look to parliament, and to parliament alone, for the redress of such grievances as they might have to complain of, with a confident reliance of relief being afforded them, if their complaints should be well founded and practically remediable.’10 Alarmed by the turn of events, the massed ranks of his supporters did not waver. A second reading of the Seditious Meetings Bill was carried in the Commons by 213 to forty-three.

  Pitt was conscious that the argument had to be won out in the country as well as in Parliament, but was convinced that the great majority of people were on his side. He was worried when he heard at the end of November that his old ally in fighting for parliamentary reform, the Reverend Christopher Wyvill, who had grown disillusioned with him during the war, had called at short notice a county meeting in Yorkshire to oppose the gagging Bills. Yorkshire still carried immense weight among the English counties: Pitt considered it vital that the government’s view should prevail there.

  He was now to benefit from the complete absence of bitterness in his personality, as his friendly and forgiving behaviour towards Wilberforce since their disagreement over the war at the beginning of the year had helped to bring Wilberforce back to his side. Wilberforce was the leading politician of Yorkshire, and his presence at the meeting in York called for Tuesday, 1 December would provide a chance of defusing it. As he discussed the matter with Pitt in Downing Street on Sunday, 29 November, it seemed impossible for him to get to York in time. But Pitt immediately lent him one of his own coaches and four horses (Wilberforce was told by a Minister: ‘If they find out whose carriage you have got, you will run the risk of being murdered’11) to enable him to perform an amazing feat for the eighteenth century. Hurtling up the Great North Road, he covered sixty-seven miles to Alconbury by Sunday night, and another 106 miles to Ferrybridge, north of Doncaster, by Monday night. Outriders cleared the way for him on the last twenty miles into York, where he arrived in the nick of time, utterly unexpected, and delivered one of the best speeches of his life to a crowd of thousands in the castle yard. The result was a loyal address to the King rather than a statement of opposition. A horseman was sent to London to take the news to Pitt. The episode illustrated that once again the nation was prepared to rally to him.

  The mood in early 1796 showed that the immediate domestic crisis had passed. Even so, the previous year had revealed the narrow margin of subsistence by which many people lived, and it gave rise to further parliamentary discussion of how to alleviate their situation. Pitt responded sympathetically in February 1796 to the introduction by the opposition MP Samuel Whitbread of a bill to regulate agricultural wages. He produced ideas of his own, and committed himself to further examination of the issue: ‘The present situation of the labouring poor in this country, was certainly not such as could be wished, upon any principle, either of humanity, or policy.’12 He did indeed apply himself to this issue in the course of 1796, and introduced a Bill at the end of the year ‘for the better support and maintenance of the poor’. In the circumstances which followed it did not receive his continuous attention, nor parliamentary time and support, joining the list of other reforming measures which Pitt abandoned during the exigencies of war. He was always liable to put off certain things while concentrating on a simple objective, intending to return to them at a later stage. This was as true with policy initiatives as with letters seeking his patronage. In 1796 he evidently felt that, above all, the country needed a secure peace, and
that everything else would have to wait.

  Pitt’s efforts to reclaim his mastery of domestic opinion were largely successful. Cheaper bread, French aggression and the government’s firm response produced a collapse in support for the radical Societies during 1796. By the end of the year the LCS was in debt and no longer a political threat. The new and parallel policy of seeking peace abroad, however, was sharply rebuffed. On 22 March 1796 the French responded to the British approaches in Berne by demanding the retention of all their conquests (including Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, and Savoy), while the British must surrender all of theirs (in Corsica and the West Indies). Peace was clearly not on the table, although the government’s tactic of putting the French in a worse light had certainly succeeded. According to Grenville they had ‘in fact played our Game better for us than we could have hoped’.13

  Yet the peremptory French rejection of peace feelers also showed their confidence: since the allies were once again at loggerheads over subsidies while the French were preparing a sweep into northern Italy under Bonaparte, such confidence was not misplaced. Pitt cannot have been happy when he responded to a full-scale onslaught by Fox on the whole conduct of the war and the failed attempt to negotiate, on 10 May 1796. His defence of the latter was that ‘the terms proposed by the enemy cut short all further treaty; and as to the communication of the result, it will have, at least, the important consequence of dividing the opinions of France, and uniting those of England’.14

  His majority was unaffected by events, and was confirmed in the country after his decision to hold a general election that summer. As in 1790, he had let the Parliament run for six years of its seven-year maximum. There now seemed to be a window between the domestic unrest of the previous winter and the further trials soon expected in the war. The election produced neither excitement nor any discernible shift of opinion. With the advantage of adding the Portland Whigs to what was already a large majority, the government could claim 424 seats against ninety-five for the opposition and thirty-nine independents or waverers.15