William Pitt the Younger: A Biography

by William Hague

  On 9 February while at Walmer he ‘suffered severely from a bilious attack, which however had yielded to the Prescriptions of Mr. Hulke the Apothecary at Deal’,54 but which was accompanied by gout in one of his feet. Sick as he was, his mind would not be still; he wrote to his brother, who remained in the Cabinet, of the need for ‘a firm determination’ to raise taxes and prepare for war. Fox commented that ‘half the world’ thought Pitt’s illness a ‘sham’,55 and it certainly did not check an increasing demand for his return, Wilberforce noting on 8 March: ‘Pitt’s return talked of and wished.’56 On 19 March none other than Henry Dundas, now First Viscount Melville, arrived at Pitt’s door. Pitt’s staunchest ally and drinking companion now came as a messenger from Addington. He brought a specific proposal: neither Addington nor Pitt would be Prime Minister – they would both serve as senior members of the government while Pitt’s brother, Chatham, would be First Lord of the Treasury.

  Addington’s proposal was his attempt at a compromise, and harked back to arrangements often made in the eighteenth century, such as in the Fox – North coalition, in which a neutral but respected figure became the nominal head of a government and the genuinely powerful Ministers became Secretaries of State. Melville no doubt thought he was being helpful, but it seems surprising that anyone so familiar with Pitt’s personality could entertain any hope of this proposal being successful. To his brother, Pitt had been generous to a fault, raising him to the Cabinet and persuading him to stay there, lending him money and arranging the Knighthood of the Garter. But the idea that Pitt would serve beneath him in government was ludicrous in the extreme. Moreover, Pitt had himself changed the nature of Cabinet government so that a powerful Treasury stood at its centre. He would have considered a power-sharing arrangement in government as old-fashioned and utterly inappropriate in war.

  Pitt’s response, as recounted by Melville to Addington, constitutes one of the clearest and earliest definitions of prime ministerial power in the British system of government:

  Besides this consideration, he stated, not less pointedly and decidedly, his sentiments with regard to the absolute necessity there is, in the conduct of the affairs of this country, that there should be an avowed and real minister possessing the chief weight in council and the principal place in the confidence of the King. In that respect there can be no rivality or division of power. That power must rest in the person generally called the First Minister; and that minister ought, he thinks, to be the person at the head of the finances … If it should come … to a radical difference of opinion … the sentiments of the Minister must be allowed and understood to prevail, leaving the other members of administration to act as they may conceive themselves conscientiously called upon to act under such circumstances.57

  True to himself, and no doubt mindful of his experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1782–83 as well as of his father’s final administration, Pitt was not interested in office if it was divorced from genuine power and authority. Neither his reason nor his pride would suffer it.

  If political calculation also entered into Pitt’s rejection of Addington’s first proposal, it did not take long to produce the desired effect. Ten days after Melville’s visit to Walmer, another of his old friends, Charles Long, arrived as a further messenger from Addington. He brought with him an offer unique in the annals of British politics: a proposal from the incumbent Prime Minister voluntarily to surrender his office to a leading rival who was not then a member of the government. Addington had decided to settle for a more junior position in the government he had constructed, with the intention that most of his colleagues would continue in post under Pitt’s leadership. Ministers such as Hawkesbury and Castlereagh were in any case clear that Pitt should be in charge. Addington was even happy to see Pitt’s acolytes such as Canning and Rose join the administration, while keeping out Grenville, who had provided the lead for the ‘new opposition’.

  On 3 April 1803, as Pitt considered this new situation, his mother died at Burton Pynsent. There is little record of his reaction, other than of his talking to Rose ‘a good deal … respecting the death of his mother, and of feelings awakened by that event’.58 It must be likely that a man who had always been so conscious of his mother’s feelings experienced deep emotions on her death, but it did not affect Pitt’s sense of political purpose. His visit to London would now take in a meeting with Addington on 10 April and his mother’s funeral in Westminster Abbey on the sixteenth. Whatever the distress of the moment, Addington must have been reasonably confident that his offer would be accepted by Pitt, with resulting harmony all round. He had committed himself to an act of rare political generosity, albeit out of realism, and few politicians in history would have turned him down.

  Yet William Pitt was different. Some mixture of pride, experience, contempt or correctness made him question even now the value of the proffered chalice. As Charles Long departed Walmer he noticed Lord Grenville arriving. Grenville told Pitt that he should only return to office at the invitation of the King, not through negotiation with Addington. What is more, Pitt as Prime Minister should have the freedom to dispose of other offices as he wished, with Addington out of the senior ranks of the ministry, members of the opposition brought in, and Ministers free to air their views on the Catholic question even if they did not pursue it as a policy. It is easy to imagine the case he would have put: Addington had betrayed his weakness, and Pitt could hold out for accepting office on his own terms. He should be free to employ the best talents available in a national life-or-death struggle with Napoleon. How could he enter a government committed to maintain much of its mediocrity?

  Grenville knew his man. His arguments were in line with Pitt’s long-standing approach. Melville had warned Pitt that ‘no step could be more injudicious on your part than an attempt to form an administration mixing in it Lord Grenville with the leading parts of His Majesty’s present Government. None of them, in my opinion, could sit down in council with him without depreciating their character in the eye of the public,’59 but Pitt decided he would rather have the support of the Grenvillites, who had once been his colleagues, than that of the Addingtonians, whom he was coming to despise. He met Addington at Long’s house in Bromley on 10 April. There he told him that he would return as Prime Minister at the invitation of the King and on the recommendation of the present Ministers, but that any members of his previous administration as well as the current one could be included in his new government. He envisaged Addington leaving the government altogether, and taking a peerage along with a newly created position as Speaker of the House of Lords.

  Pitt was clear: he would only hold office on his own terms. For that, he was prepared to gamble that a sitting Prime Minister and Cabinet with a large majority in Parliament would recommend not only his leadership, but in large measure their own dissolution.

  * * *

  *At the time of writing Pitt’s former residence is a branch of Pret-à-Manger, a chain of sandwich shops.

  *It had been common in the late eighteenth century for governments and political factions to pay small subsidies to friendly newspapers, but by this stage newspaper sales had grown so strongly that such payments were ceasing to carry much influence.

  25

  The Old Addiction

  ‘Is it upon the wisdom, the vigilance, and the energy of these ministers that we can rely, when we have seen that no one measure for the public defence can they be truly said to have originated, when several they have retarded or enfeebled?’

  WILLIAM PITT, 23 APRIL 18041

  ‘I admire my uncle most particularly when surrounded with a tribe of military attendants.’

  LADY HESTER STANHOPE, 18032

  NO STUDENT OF POLITICS would be surprised at what happened when Addington took to his Cabinet Pitt’s demand that they themselves should support giving him unfettered freedom to replace them. It is a sign of how cowed Addington was by Pitt, how nervous he was of his disapproval, and how uncertain he was about the waging of war, th
at he was prepared to put this proposition to his colleagues at all. Even though he had now been Prime Minister for two years, he could not escape from a feeling of inferiority towards his old friend who had now become a rival. His long friendship with Pitt, and the many years of observing his talents as Prime Minister from the Speaker’s chair in the 1790s, meant that Addington could not in his own heart believe that he should be Prime Minister if Pitt wished to return – a relationship between a Prime Minister and his predecessor probably unique in British history. In April 1803, Addington was caught between this deference to Pitt on the one hand, and his wish to preserve some measure of dignity for himself, his policies and his colleagues on the other. It would take several days for the second of these influences marginally to outweigh the first, a process which, in Pitt’s eyes, produced a degree of dissembling and confusion that further lowered Addington in his esteem.

  According to Rose, on 10 April ‘Mr. A. cheerfully consented to’ the various stipulations which Pitt had made.3 But on the twelfth, no doubt after some reflection and discussion with Cabinet colleagues, Addington wrote to Pitt to say that he ‘continued to think the arrangement, as proposed by Mr. Pitt, would not be considered admissible by his colleagues; trusting, therefore, he would not tenaciously adhere to it’,4 and asking for further discussions following a meeting of the Cabinet the next day. Pitt, who was ‘much struck with Mr. A. saying that he continued to be of an opinion, the contrary of which he had distinctly expressed in conversation’,5 sent the categoric response that ‘the arrangement as proposed by him was indispensable’.6

  It seems that the Cabinet, which duly met on the thirteenth at the home of Pitt’s brother, would have happily acquiesced in the return of Pitt at their head: many of them, after all, had served under him only two years before and, like Addington, did not wish to be opposed to him. Understandably, however, they could not stomach the idea of Pitt being free to bring in such figures as Grenville and Windham, who had so vociferously attacked the Treaty of Amiens and gone into outright opposition. They could not therefore agree ‘to new-model, reconstruct and in part to change the government, instead of strengthening it’.7

  Given that it was Addington who had proposed that Pitt should return as Prime Minister and gone on to agree to his conditions, even under some protest, Pitt was highly unamused by this subsequent response. He resolved that ‘He would in future receive no overtures but such as may be made by the express command of His Majesty’,8 and sent Addington an extremely curt response:

  My dear sir,

  I need only acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and am yours sincerely

  W. Pitt

  Addington had been hamfisted; Pitt rather unrealistic. Addington’s muddled attempts to do something highly unusual had come up against Pitt’s experience of the need for genuine power. The result of this botched negotiation between two long-standing friends and allies left both of them in a weaker political position as well as mutually estranged. Addington had revealed his weakness as Prime Minister just as war was breaking out, and now risked Pitt’s public wrath and opposition. From Pitt’s point of view, his chances of forming a strong government in the future were diminished by the bad blood that now duly flowed: his followers and those of Addington became more hostile to each other, and some of his friends such as Melville and Malmesbury held Grenville to blame for ruining the negotiations, pushing the latter further into becoming a separate political force. Pitt’s attempt to dissolve the Addington administration brought some scorching criticism from former colleagues whom he had earlier persuaded to become members of it. Lord Redesdale, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, addressed him in no uncertain terms. He recalled that Pitt had asked him to serve under Addington ‘for his sake’, so that government did not fall into the hands of the opposition: ‘how then could those who consented to assist in different ways towards the forming of that administration, conceive that they were acting in a manner disagreeable to you; & particularly how could they conceive that they were acting so as to warrant your sacrificing them at a future period to men who apparently were acting in contradiction to your wishes’9 – a reference to Grenville and others who left the government in 1801. Pitt was also weakened in the eyes of George III, who when Addington belatedly told him of the negotiations considered it ‘a foolish business from one end to the other’, and that Pitt might have wished to carry ‘his plan of removals so extremely far and so high that it might reach him’.10

  The recriminations were such that both principals tried to set on record what they thought they had been doing, with Addington referring back to the discussion in January in which he had understood Pitt to be ready to take office without such sweeping conditions. Pitt set out his own position in four letters to Addington over nine days between 15 and 24 April, with the obvious objective of protecting his position with the King. He made clear that all he had asked for was ‘full authority to form, for his Majesty’s consideration, a plan of arrangement in any manner I thought best for his service, as well out of those who were in the former, as those who are in his present government’.11 Nevertheless, he was further from power at the end of the negotiation than at the beginning of it. The Speaker of the Commons recorded: ‘Mr. Pitt left town to go to Walmer. His conduct in the whole transaction is very much disapproved by Lord Melville, Lord Chatham, Lord Castlereagh, Lord Hawkesbury, Steele, &c.’12 It must have been still more vexing for Pitt that Addington now turned to the Whigs to help strengthen his ministry: in May, Tierney, Pitt’s long-standing critic and duelling opponent, was appointed Treasurer of the Navy. Addington was burning his bridges.

  On 18 May 1803 Britain declared war on France. The Treaty of Amiens, greeted with such acclamation by the British public, had lasted less than fourteen months. The final British ultimatum had not been one that was likely to be accepted: it required French withdrawal from Holland and Switzerland, and continued British occupation of Malta. The British decision to bring matters to a head caused anger and surprise in Paris – Napoleon reacted harshly by imprisoning all British subjects who happened to be travelling in France at the time – but it reflected tacit recognition in London that a trusting and generous peace settlement with Napoleon was not going to work, and that the further passage of time would strengthen the power of France vis-à-vis Britain. Russian mediation, accepted in principle by the government after Pitt’s intervention in its favour, came to nothing. After the briefest of interruptions, the long war would be resumed.

  Neither country was prepared for immediate hostilities. Although the French army remained huge, neither their navy nor the British forces in general was manned for all-out conflict. The early moves would involve a British blockade of Continental ports and the assembly by the French of an invasion force across the Channel. While Ministers inexperienced in warfare struggled to mobilise the armed forces, Pitt’s mind was alive with proposals. Wilberforce had recorded at the end of April: ‘To Long’s, Bromley Hill. There found Pitt … Heard the complete story of the late negociation with Addington – his plan of defending the country, if war. His mind of the same superior cast. Did not get to dinner till almost eight o’clock. William Long, Lord Camden, Pitt, and I, chatted till bed-time, half-past twelve. Tuesday, After breakfast long discussion with Pitt. Talked about navy’s state, as day before …’13 As the Commons met to debate the war on 23 May, Pitt was ready to burst forth with plans of action. Whatever the failings of the government, he would explain how war should be conducted. He would do so in a House of Commons many of whose Members had not encountered him before – he had not attended since the general election of the previous year – using all the powers of oratory which had matured during twenty-two years of debates.

  Even Pitt’s arrival in the House of Commons that day was sufficient to cause excitement. While some 150 new Members buzzed with anticipation of him speaking, older hands noted the change in his appearance from previous years. The repeated bouts of ill-health had taken a visible toll, and one politically unsympath
etic diarist, Thomas Creevey, recorded: ‘I really think Pitt is done: his face is no longer red, but yellow; his looks are dejected; his countenance I think much changed and fallen, and every now and then he gives a hollow cough. Upon my soul, hating him as I do, I am almost moved to pity to see his fallen greatness.’14 Pitt himself admitted to Pretyman that he ‘came to Town a good deal unwell’.15 But as the Members called ‘Mr. Pitt! Mr. Pitt!’ for him to speak, the adrenalin would have run strongly in his veins. He loved the House of Commons, and his greatest moments had been addressing it; now in a moment of great crisis he was being called on to use his abilities to the full.

  He did not disappoint. Keyed up with a genuine desire both to advise the nation and to display his spellbinding techniques to a new generation, Pitt delivered a speech which, in the generous words of Fox, ‘Demosthenes might have envied’.16 It has always been deeply unfortunate for historians that a change in the procedures for admission to the Public Gallery that day left reporters unable to hear Pitt’s speech. Consequently it was not widely reported in the press, but there can be no doubting its impact on the Commons. Perhaps the best account of the occasion was written by a new Member, John Ward. He recounted that Pitt was ‘cheered before he had uttered a syllable’, and sat down to ‘the longest, most eager, and most enthusiastic bursts of applause I ever heard in any place on any occasion’. It was ‘The greatest, of his harangues … “Bonaparte absorbing the whole power of France;” “Egypt consecrated by the heroic blood that had been shed upon it;” “the liquid fire of Jacobinical principles desolating the world;” … an electrifying peroration on the necessity and magnitude of our future exertions; all this was as fine as anything he ever uttered.’17 The hostile Creevey agreed: ‘Then came the great fiend himself – Pitt – who, in the elevation of his tone of mind and composition, in the infinite energy of his style, the miraculous perspicuity and fluency of his periods outdid (as it was thought) all former performances of his. Never, to be sure, was there such an exhibition: its effect was dreadful.’18