William Pitt the Younger: A Biography

by William Hague

  Many of Pitt’s former Cabinet colleagues were appalled by the peace terms. Windham described them as ‘the death-warrant of their country.’22 Grenville was trenchantly opposed, bemoaning ‘the sacrifice of those points on which our security in a new contest may principally depend’.23 Dundas would not cause trouble out of loyalty to Pitt, but privately complained that the surrender of Martinique, Malta, Minorca, the Cape and the Dutch settlements in the East and West Indies, ‘and to have obtained nothing in return but the name of peace, is such an act of weakness and humiliation as nothing in my opinion can justify’.24

  Most ex-Prime Ministers would have removed themselves a good distance from such tricky and controversial negotiations, yet Pitt, according to Malmesbury, ‘counselled, and, of course, directed, the whole’.25 His readiness to do so is deeply revealing of his attitude to politics: whatever the merits of the agreement it is clear that his sense of public duty, goodwill to his successor and responsibility for the nation’s affairs whether in or out of office all had genuine substance. Grenville complained that Pitt had ‘by some strange infatuation so implicated himself in the present system of folly & weakness’.26 But Pitt was being entirely consistent with his previous stance and his conception of himself. On 3 November he gave a strong endorsement of the proposals in a Commons debate, making a classic Pitt analysis: ‘If we had retained all our conquests, it would not have made any difference to us in point of security … They would only give us a little more wealth; but a little more wealth would be badly purchased by a little more war.’ What mattered was the nation’s ‘pecuniary resources’, which Britain still had ‘in abundance’; but they should not be ‘lavished away in continuing a contest with the certainty of enormous expense’ when the nation ‘could not now think of balancing the powers on the continent’.27 In peace Britons could look to the ‘immense wealth of this country, and the natural and legitimate growth of that wealth, so much superior to the produce of rapacity and plunder’ which the French had relied on.28 This was what Pitt had always believed: national success would be built on finance, not war.

  In any event, the signing of peace proved hugely popular across the nation. Towns and cities were illuminated, crowds celebrated in London, and the terms were endorsed by naval and military leaders such as Nelson and Cornwallis. Parliamentary approval was overwhelming. By April 1802 Addington was able to introduce the first peacetime budget for ten years, repealing Pitt’s income tax and greatly reducing the armed forces. Once again Pitt was consulted in detail and gave his approval, although he sounded a cautionary note in closing yet another Commons speech on 5 April 1802 with a warning to Addington that his proposals must not cut across his cherished Sinking Fund.

  Addington had enjoyed a successful first year in office. His confidence had grown, and he was beginning to like the job. Pitt had given him more robust support and involvement than any Prime Minister has ever given to his successor. Now, however, the work in which Pitt had been engaged at the time of his resignation had been rounded off, and Addington was more firmly established; a situation which led naturally to less frequent consultation and less easy agreement. Pitt’s friends believed he was being used, and his detractors were jealous of his seemingly undiminished stature. Exceptional as their long friendship and recent cooperation may have been, nothing could prevent Pitt and Addington from becoming a threat to each other.

  Those close to Addington, such as his brother Hiley, made the most of the early successes of his administration as they spread the word for the government in the coffee houses of Westminster. It was Addington, not Pitt, who was presiding over peace, tax reductions, plentiful food and a supportive Parliament, and there was a general election in the offing. Newspapers such as The Times, which had withdrawn its support from Pitt’s government when he stopped financing it,* had swung behind the Addington ministry. The need to influence both press and backbench opinion meant that the age of ‘spin’ had already arrived. But it was natural that attempts to cast the new Prime Minister in a more favourable light than his predecessor would cause tensions behind the scenes of their steadfast alliance. As is common in politics, the groups around two powerful men became locked in rivalry even while the principals were perfectly content with each other.

  Canning in particular was frustrated by Pitt’s position, writing to John Frere: ‘I do love him, and reverence him as I should a Father – but a father should not sacrifice me, with my good will. Most heartily I forgive him. But he has to answer to himself, and to the country for much mischief that he has done.’29 Rose remained contemptuous of Addington’s ability in financial matters, telling Pretyman that Pitt had prepared ‘a grand Plan of Finance which he has given to Mr. A but I fear the latter will hardly be made to understand it’.30 Pretyman himself took the opportunity of a walk with Pitt in December 1801 to tell him that unquestioning support for Addington would be ‘a betrayal of the interests of his country. I mentioned the pains which had been taken, and which were still continued, to lower him in the estimation of the public, and I ventured to say that his present conduct was precisely what his enemies wished and his friends could not approve.’31

  For the moment, Pitt held firm, telling Canning that ‘Addington’s power is established for this reign at least and that the safety of the country would be hazarded by any attempt to shake him.’32 Canning would complain of Pitt’s ‘blind obedience and self-abasement … yet this is the mind that governed the world’.33 But the seeds of suspicion had been planted, and Pitt’s sensitivity was heightened. In February 1802, when Tierney attacked Pitt’s financial stewardship while complimenting Addington, and Addington made only the briefest defence of his predecessor, Pitt was furious. On 10 February a stinging letter hurtled from Walmer Castle to Downing Street:

  My Dear Sir,

  You will not wonder if the account which has reached me this morning, of Monday’s debate, has engaged not a little of my attention. I know how little newspapers can be trusted for the exactness of their reports … But if the substance of what passed is anything like what is represented, I should not deal honestly if I did not take the first moment to own to you that I think I have much to wonder at, and to complain of, and that what is due to my own character will not suffer me to leave the matter without further explanation …34

  Addington was suitably stung, describing Pitt’s letter as ‘a severe addition to the trials which it has been my lot to undergo’.35 He assured Pitt of his friendship and sent Thomas Steele, Pitt’s old friend who now served under him, to explain in detail what had happened and how Tierney had been answered earlier in the debate. Pitt was content, but he was now on the alert.

  Although Pitt was on his guard to defend his reputation, he did not take active steps to promote it. It was not his style to court MPs, and the age of the well-placed interview or carefully-staged speech outside Parliament had not yet arrived. Nevertheless, attempts to denigrate his achievements in office produced a counter-reaction from his admirers, who decided positively to celebrate his policies, his character and in particular his wartime endurance. In May 1802, when opposition MPs moved for a Committee of Inquiry into Pitt’s administration, Pitt loyalists led by Lord Belgrave responded by not only defeating the opposition move, but passing a motion ‘That the Right Hon. William Pitt has rendered great and important services to his country, and especially deserves the gratitude of this House.’36

  Such a motion was highly unusual, but it was carried by a large majority, and capped on 28 May by a huge celebration of Pitt’s forty-third birthday organised by Canning and held in the Merchant Taylors Hall. Pitt himself did not attend, and Canning would not have intended him to, since he would have been embarrassed by the proceedings. Nearly a thousand people attended the dinner, and many more could not obtain tickets. The culmination of the evening was a song written by Canning called ‘The Pilot that Weathered the Storm’. A sample of its eight verses gives its flavour:

  At the footstool of Power let Flattery fawn;

 
Let Faction her idols extol to the skies;

  To Virtue in humble retirement withdrawn,

  Unblamed may the accents of gratitude rise!

  And shall not his memory to Britain be dear,

  Whose example with envy all nations behold?

  A statesman unbiased by int’rest or fear,

  By power uncorrupted, untainted by gold!

  It ended with an explicit call for Pitt’s return in the event of the resumption of war:

  And O! if again the rude whirlwind should rise,

  The dawning of peace should fresh darkness deform,

  The regrets of the good and the fears of the wise

  Shall turn to the pilot that weathered the storm.

  This notion of Pitt, brilliantly put into words by Canning, would live on for decades. Commemorative medals printed after his death would show on their obverse a rock against which waves pounded to no effect. Pitt’s qualities of phlegmatic self-sacrifice and resilience under intense pressures gave rise, now that he was out of office, to a legend of endurance and integrity. He remained by far the best-known and most recognised politician in the country: when he unexpectedly visited Shepton Mallet that December the crowds removed the horses from his carriage and pulled him to the inn. New Members of the Parliament about to be elected were awed when they saw him for the first time. He could be forgiven for thinking that his time would come again.

  For the moment, Pitt’s refusal to be drawn into open controversy with Addington was trenchant. In the same week as the Merchant Taylors dinner, Canning, who wanted to ‘worry the doctor like a polecat’,37 precipitated a Commons debate on the slave trade with the deliberate intention of publicly dividing Pitt and Addington. Canning, however, was still a novice compared to the two Prime Ministers; Pitt stayed silent, and Addington simply granted Canning’s wish that grants of land in Trinidad would not be made without further consideration of ‘the gradual abolition’ of the slave trade. At the end of June Addington was careful to consult Pitt on the text of the King’s Speech closing the session of Parliament. Pitt thought the speech ‘excellent’, but suggested alterations to ‘heighten a little the principal tirade’ and the insertion of two or three additional topics.38

  On 29 June Addington called a general election. Pitt proceeded to Pembroke Hall to commune with his Cambridge constituents, who once again returned him unopposed. Overall, the elections were uneventful, and certainly satisfactory from Addington’s point of view. The opportunity to ‘make’ his own Parliament strengthened his position, which with the support of Pitt and the acquiescence of much of the ‘old opposition’ of the Foxite Whigs (as opposed to the ‘new opposition’ collecting around Grenville) seemed on paper to be very strong indeed. Harmony was maintained: Pitt visited Addington after the election, Addington generously but unsuccessfully offered Pitt the Clerkship of the Pells, and Pitt persuaded Castlereagh to join the government.

  On Addington’s horizon, however, was appearing the blackest of clouds. Only months after the signing of the Treaty of Amiens, mutual suspicion between London and Paris was again raising the prospect of war. Steadily through the autumn the situation would deteriorate: Britain objected to the French occupation of Switzerland and annexations in northern Italy, while noting that Napoleon had now been declared First Consul for Life; the French were furious at attacks on Napoleon in the English press and the British refusal to evacuate Malta in the light of French activities and the absence of international guarantees. No one had regarded Addington as a war leader, probably even including himself. The pressure from Pitt’s friends now became intense, and he began to concede in private that Addington would not be up to the job. By August, Canning thought Pitt ‘disgusted with the Doctor and his system as much as one could wish … but – as to acting, no hopes of that yet’.39

  As it happened, talk of returning to power had to be put to one side when Pitt fell seriously ill. After leaving office the previous year he had experienced a fresh bout of stomach pains and vomiting. Now, in September 1802 he wrote to Farquhar, who recorded that Pitt ‘complained of severe morning sickness, & absolute dislike to all food, with all the unpleasant Symptoms of aggravated debility. In consequence of this Letter I went down to Walmer, & remained there for a Week. I found the Stomach rejecting everything, & the bowels obstinately refusing their office – the nerves seriously affected – the habit wasted – & the whole system deranged. These distressing and discouraging Symptoms continuing for some days unabated in spite of the most powerful remedies, Mr. Pitt expressed himself with his usual good humour, that he believed he had at last baffled the art of Medicine, and that the Expedients to rescue him were at an end.’40 Eventually, a tepid bath and a strong ‘night draught’ appeared to produce a ‘sudden & surprising’ recovery. As ever, Pitt’s first instinct was to write to his mother in case she heard ‘an exaggerated account of my having been unwell’. He reassured her that he was well recovered from an attack ‘brought on partly by a sudden change of weather, and partly by a little over-exercise in shooting’.41 By contrast, Pretyman’s account refers to ‘a most violent illness of a bilious nature, and his life was for some hours in imminent danger’.42

  Pitt had now suffered serious gastro-intestinal problems for at least four out of five consecutive years, usually in the late summer and autumn after a busy period of travel or work. Yet his illness in 1802, which took the most alarming form so far, could not have been brought on by the strains of office, and followed a period in which he was thought to have been drinking less heavily than in previous – or later – years. Medical opinion of the time tended to think of Pitt’s problem as a diffused form of gout, but whatever type of inflammation or ulcering was crippling his digestion, it was chronic, and each bout was more severe. He at last acceded to Farquhar’s advice to pay an extended visit to the spa waters at Bath. He would not, however, obey any injunction to remove his mind from public business.

  When Grenville visited Pitt at Walmer in October for a rapprochement, he found him ‘very thin’, his complexion and looks ‘by no means … those of a man in health’,43 but considering renewed war as inevitable and contemplating returning to office. Pitt’s stipulation, wholly in character and in line with his conduct for the previous twenty years, was that it must be ‘manifest that the thing was not of his seeking’, and that he would undertake it ‘only … if His Majesty should think it useful to His services to lay these commands upon him’.44 By early November he was in Bath, pronouncing himself much better already and asking Rose to visit him. Rose prevailed on him to remain absent from the opening sittings of the new Parliament and, eventually, to cease advising Addington and his colleagues: ‘By giving his unqualified support to the present Ministry he would lose the confidence of the country.’45

  Pitt stayed at Bath for some weeks through November and December 1802 and took the opportunity to visit his mother, whom he would never see again. While reflecting and receiving news, he became increasingly incensed at the conduct of the Addington ministry. He was ‘beyond measure surprised’46 that Dundas was ennobled as Lord Melville without any prior consultation with himself – Dundas had helped to keep Scotland safe for the ministry in the general election – and seemed to take this as an attempt to nobble his closest ally. Then he was furious when former Ministers were attacked in The Times for ‘deserting their post in the hour of danger upon some frivolous pretext, or for some mysterious intrigue’.47 To cap it all, he found the presentation of Addington’s budget on 8 December to be offensive and its content appalling. Addington’s policy of raising extra finance for current expenses through unfunded debt went against the principles which had guided Pitt throughout his budgets, and violated his most cherished views and achievements.

  By the time Pitt left Bath on Christmas Eve to spend Christmas with George Rose, he was fuming. Even so, he had become recalcitrant again about taking office unless war broke out, and intervened to prevent Canning rounding up the signatures of senior figures to call for changes in the
government. He told Malmesbury at the end of December that he would wait. He would judge Ministers by their actions. Not to do so would be ‘a dereliction of character, and … a breach of faith’.48 He prevented Rose from mounting an open attack on the budget even though he was ‘perfectly persuaded that the whole of these statements were founded on gross errors’.49 In the meantime, debate on his possible return to power had surfaced in the House of Commons. While Sheridan argued that if the nation depended on only one man it would not deserve to be saved, Canning produced the over-excited rejoinder in reference to Pitt: ‘He cannot withdraw himself from the following of a nation; he must endure the attachment of a people whom he has saved.’50

  As he contemplated his battered health, the approach of war, and the incompetence of Addington’s financial management, Pitt clung to the vision of ‘character’ he had pursued throughout his whole career. But that vision no longer provided the answer. While ‘character’ impelled him to keep his word and to avoid any grasping for office, it also required him to serve the country and to take charge when others could not cope. His friends chafed while he waited on events. In Malmesbury’s perceptive phrase that Christmas, ‘He did not know very well how to separate himself from himself.’51

  However high Addington may have been riding in the summer of 1802, he knew by the end of the year that the threat of war and the ominous silence of Pitt spelt trouble of the most serious nature. He persuaded Pitt, whose friends were trying to keep him away from Addington, to visit him at Richmond early in the new year. Rather alarmingly for Addington, Pitt’s acceptance was written from Dropmore, the home of Grenville. Then and on other occasions in January the two men made an effort to get on, despite Pitt’s private criticisms of the budget. Pitt told Rose that Addington would need to withdraw some of his budget or he, Pitt, would expose the errors in it ‘both for the sake of my own character and the deep public interests involved’.52 Pitt and Addington spent many hours together without any discussion of a reshuffle, apparently until the final minutes of their conversation, and then, Pitt told Rose, ‘In the chaise, coming into town, when they had reached Hyde Park, Mr. A., in a very embarrassed manner, entered on the subject by saying that if Lord Grenville had not stated the indispensable necessity of Mr. Pitt coming into office to carry on the government, he should have been disposed himself to propose his return to administration.’53 The offer seems to have been vague and unspecific, and the response was not surprisingly non-committal. Addington would later maintain that at some stage that January Pitt had expressed a willingness to take a Cabinet post, a claim which Pitt would always deny. The result was inconclusive, with Pitt still absenting himself from Parliament.