This preference for redesign rather than revolution also explains what many have considered to be his political about-turns. Parliamentary reform was dear to his heart in peacetime, but he saw it as unthinkable when revolution arose across the Channel. Catholic emancipation he would press for, but not to political destruction – he saw it as one thing to persuade the King of the merits of a measure, but quite another to force on him something to which he was diametrically opposed. Such pragmatism and concern with stability allowed Pitt’s memory to be traduced in later years, and was quoted in aid of those who flatly opposed Catholic emancipation or parliamentary reform.
Less forgivable is Pitt’s greatest failure: the inability to secure final abolition of the slave trade. The sincerity of his opposition to this dreadful trade was all too plain, but so is the fact that he lost the energy, focus and will to pursue the matter to a successful conclusion in the early 1800s. The fact that abolition was so speedily secured by Grenville and Fox soon after Pitt’s death suggests that he too could have secured it if he had marshalled his forces to do so. The truth was that by 1805, weighed down by the conduct of the war and deeply troubled by domestic controversies, Pitt was a spent force as a reformer. It is a lesson that the energy and force of a political career are finite – Pitt tested the natural limits of how long it is possible to be at the top. From 1783 to 1792 he faced each fresh challenge with brilliance; from 1793 he showed determination but sometimes faltered; and from 1804 he was worn down by the simultaneous combination of a narrow parliamentary majority and a war on a knife-edge, all to be faced with his own strength much reduced.
It was reported by Lord Stanhope that when Pitt’s mother was asked whether father or son was the more brilliant statesman, she came down in favour of the father. In truth, while both the elder and the younger Pitt possessed the ability to dominate the House of Commons, their skills in government were very different. Pitt’s analytical mind and attention to detail performed wonders in the peacetime years after 1783 on matters on which Chatham could never have focused. But once war came, ‘the guidance of Chatham would have been worth an army’.60 While each wartime decision by Pitt can be justified on its merits, it is impossible to escape the sense that if his father had been there all energies would have been galvanised towards some single aggressive stroke which would have ended the war.
Such criticism of Pitt, however, has often been excessive. He had to work with troublesome and often selfish allies, and was frequently let down. At the same time he inherited a British army which was a weak and inefficient instrument for waging war in Europe – it would take some years after his death for Wellington and the experience of the Peninsular War to mould it into the force which would finally shatter the dreams of Napoleon at Waterloo. In naval matters, Pitt was both more fortunate and more far-sighted. The political attention and financial priority he gave to naval armament even in peacetime were vindicated by events, as were some of his extremely delicate and risky strategic decisions on naval deployment during the war. The naval pre-eminence he helped to engineer was vital to British security.
So while it is possible that a better strategist might indeed have come nearer to winning the war, a worse one could have lost it outright. As the years of conflict went by, Pitt’s unending creative ability to finance the war, produce resources, return to the fray and simply persist made his own person into a symbol of endurance and national resilience. No alternative leader could provide such a combination: Addington was not warlike, Grenville would have been more inflexible, Fox for peace at any price, and Portland uninspiring. Thus while Pitt can easily be criticised by historians, it is little wonder that he had so many adherents in his own time.
The final and perhaps gravest charge made against Pitt is that in his desire for power and his partnership with George III he made war on France unnecessarily, and accompanied it with an unwarranted degree of domestic repression. Yet it is hard to see how Britain in 1793 could have avoided going to war with France either then or shortly thereafter. Pitt himself had been determined on peace, but Britain could not accept French domination of the Low Countries without putting herself through national humiliation and at permanent strategic risk. Given that the national consensus for war was sufficiently powerful to split the Whig party asunder, it is difficult to maintain that any viable British government could have remained at peace. As for repression, it is true that Pitt erred on the side of safety rather than liberty, but it is vital to understand the uncertainties and fears of the times. The collapse of France, the most populous and powerful nation of Europe, from absolutist monarchy into untrammelled revolution, brought the sweeping away of a long-established and dominant system. Authorities in other countries experienced a huge shock. Of course, British society was different from that of France. Its history, social structure and economic condition made it less prone to revolution. But Pitt had no academic papers to assure him of this at the time, and no reliable means of forecasting how opinion might develop in an age when ideas could be transmitted far faster than ever before. His erring on the side of safety, and therefore of ‘repression’, was absolutely in line with his own attachment to the continuity of the nation’s institutions and with the instincts of most of his countrymen. He should therefore be absolved of the severest criticisms made of him. He had long desired to split the Whigs, but he did not declare war in the interests of doing so. Nor did he use repressive policies to do so, although he did seize on the conjunction of circumstances to impose domestic order and simultaneously split the opposition in the manner of any skilled politician worth his salt.
Pitt’s motivation was to manage and preserve the state rather than drastically to change it. As a result, he did not come into office to carry out a fixed programme and then retire. In his mind the endurance of the British constitution and the tenure of his own role had no limit. It is not surprising therefore that he was attacked for conservatism. Equally, it is unsurprising that in the eyes of many he provided a bulwark of stability and a reassuring sense of protection. Such is the spirit of the tributes made to him, which emphasise a sense of loss rather than of lasting achievement. His monument in Westminster Abbey laments ‘the irreparable loss of that great and disinterested Minister’, whereas that to his father salutes the man under whom ‘divine providence exalted Great Britain to an height of prosperity and glory unknown to any former age’.
Pitt himself would have greeted all such verdicts with a philosophical air. One of his most appealing characteristics was that however stern the appearance he felt it necessary to present to the world, he did not take himself too seriously in private. He did, however, give himself an extremely serious purpose in life. He chose for himself a vast but simple role. He would use the abilities which nature and education had given him to lead, improve and maintain the country he genuinely loved, admitting into his life nothing which would deflect him. Once Pitt is understood in this light, the paradoxes of his personality fall away. His concept of himself was breathtaking in its ambition but also in its simplicity; his drive to power and leadership so great that all other considerations, including his own health and lifestyle, were subordinate to it. Therein lies his true rarity, just as much as it lies in his youth and longevity in office, for the result was a dedication to public service so intense as to be rare even in the annals of Prime Ministers. He was Prime Minister of Britain in a turbulent period of history, and faced some of the greatest crises which peace or war in their turn could bring. He was by far the youngest person ever to hold such office. Yet above all, he is a source of fascination because from his early childhood to the hour of death, he so aligned his life with the fate of his country that at no moment of his existence could he separate himself from it.
NOTES
Prologue
1 Gazette and New Daily Advertiser, 10 June 1778
2 Morning Post, 10 June 1778
3 Ayling, The Elder Pitt, p.275
4 Black, Pitt the Elder, p.43
5 Ibid., p.308
6 Ayling, The Elder Pitt, p.262
7 London Evening Post, 9–11 June 1778
8 Morning Post, 10 June 1778
9 London Evening Post, 9–11 June 1778
10 Morning Post, 10 June 1778
11 London Evening Post, 9–11 June 1778
12 PRO, Pitt Papers
ONE: Elder and Younger
1 Rogers, Recollections by Samuel Rogers, p.187
2 Rosebery, Pitt, p.6
3 Chatham to Benjamin Keene, 23 August 1757, Pitt Mss, William L. Clements Library, Michigan
4 Newcastle to Hardwicke, 25 October 1759, BL Add Mss 35419, fol.36
5 Bussy to Choiseul, 30 August 1761, quoted in Black, Pitt the Elder, p.215
6 Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne. 1st Marquis of Lansdowne, Vol. I, p.72
7 Hibbert, George III, p.3
8 Pelham to Lord Ilchester, 1 May 1746, Ilchester (ed.), Letters to Henry Fox, Lord Holland, pp.12–13
9 Waldegrave, Memoirs from 1754–1758
10 Ayling, The Elder Pitt, p.99
11 Speech assigned to Pitt under the character of Julius Florus, in the London Magazine of the year 1744, Thackeray, A History of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Vol. I, pp.126–7
12 Undated anecdote, quoted in Black, Pitt the Elder, p.198
13 Chatham to Sir James Eyre, 14 October 1761, Pitt Mss, William L. Clements Library, Michigan
14 Rose, A Short Life of William Pitt, p.2
15 Chatham to Sister Ann, 28 May 1759, Rosebery, Chatham: His Early Life and Connections, p.111
16 Chatham to Lady Chatham, Williams, The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Vol. II, p.128
17 Ayling, The Elder Pitt, p.248
18 Lady Holland to Lord Holland, Russell, Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, Vol. I, p.25
19 Reverend Wilson to Lady Chatham, 13 September 1766, Taylor and Pringle (eds), Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Vol. III, p.65
20 Rose, William Pitt and National Revival, p.49
21 Reverend Wilson to Lady Chatham, 2 August 1766, Taylor and Pringle (eds), Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Vol. III, p.27
22 Hayley, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Hayley, Vol. I, p.127
23 Rose, A Short Life of William Pitt, p.3
24 Taylor and Pringle (eds), Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Vol. IV, p.184n
25 Earl of Chatham to Pitt, 22 September 1777, ibid., p.440
26 Earl of Chatham to Lady Chatham, 3 April 1772, ibid., pp.207–8
27 Lady Chatham to Earl of Chatham, undated, ibid., p.207n
28 Tomline, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, p.4
29 Stanhope, Address delivered by Earl Stanhope at the ceremony of his installation as the Lord Rector of Marischal College and University, Aberdeen, 25 March 1858, p.20
30 Williams, The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Vol. II, p.173
31 Gray to Wharton, 26 April 1766, Ayling, The Elder Pitt, p.355
32 Keppel to Lord Rochford, 23 January 1767, Pitt Mss, William L. Clements Library, Michigan
TWO: Cambridge and the World
1 Lord Chatham to Joseph Turner, 3 October 1773, Pembroke College Archives
2 Tomline, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, p.6
3 Pembroke College Cambridge Society, Annual Gazette, No.8, June 1934, p.18
4 Ibid., p.19
5 Pitt to Chatham, 8 October 1773, Taylor and Pringle (eds), Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Vol. IV, pp.288–9
6 Pitt to Chatham, 15 October 1773, ibid., p.294
7 Chatham to Pitt, 30 October 1773, ibid., p.310
8 Ibid., pp.311–12
9 Chatham to Lady Chatham, 18 January 1775, ibid., p.370
10 Pitt to Chatham, 15 and 27 July 1774, ibid., pp.355, 358
11 Pitt to Chatham, 31 August 1774, ibid., p.362
12 Tomline, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, p.5
13 Ibid., p.6
14 Ibid., p.8
15 Ibid., p.7
16 Pitt to Mr William Johnson, 1 May 1773, Pembroke College Archives
17 Tomline, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, p.6
18 Wilberforce, Sketch of Mr Pitt, quoted in Rosebery, Pitt and Wilberforce, p.15
19 Rose, William Pitt and National Revival, p.30
20 Moritz, Journey of a German in England in 1782, p.76
21 Ibid., p.29
22 Wrigley and Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871, pp.208–9
23 Macaulay, essay in Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition, p.667
24 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 21 January 1775, Taylor and Pringle (eds), Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, pp.376–7
25 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 31 May 1777, ibid., pp-437–8
26 Ibid., pp.519–20n
27 Pretyman Mss HA 119/108/39/112
28 See Phillips, The Cousins’ Wars, p.64
29 Pitt to Lady Chatham, June 1780, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.182
THREE: Ambition on Schedule
1 Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, pp.23–4
2 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 30 November 1778, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.32
3 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 18 December 1779, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.127
4 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 3 January 1780, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.132
5 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 30 November 1778, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.32–3
6 Tomline, unpublished Chapter XXVII of his Life of Pitt, Rosebery, Bishop Tomline’s Estimate of Pitt, p.34
7 Burges, Selections from the Letters and Correspondence of Sir James Bland Burges, p.61
8 Mr Jekyll, quoted in Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, pp.63–4
9 ‘The Present State of the Boroughs in the County of Cornwall’, Chatham Papers, PRO, quoted in Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, p.299
10 Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, p.78
11 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 27 March 1780, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.155
12 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 3 July 1779, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.93
13 Marquis of Rockingham to Pitt, 7 August 1779, Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, pp.31–2
14 Temple to Pitt, 18 July 1779, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/182, fol.95
15 Pitt to Robert Wharton, 16 July 1779, Pembroke College Archives
16 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 14 March 1780, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.149
17 Pitt to Edward Eliot, 14 March 1780, Pretyman Mss HA 119/T108/39/250
18 Pitt to Shelburne, c.June 1780, Pitt Mss, William L. Clements Library, Michigan
19 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 16 September 1780, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.191
20 Pitt to Pretyman, 1780, Tomline, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, p.20
21 Pitt to Lady Chatham, November 1780, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.201–2
FOUR: Brilliant Beginnings
1 Duke of Newcastle to Lord Chancellor, 3 September 1755, Yorke, The Life and Correspondence of Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke, Vol. II, p.238
2 Walpole (ed. Jarrett), Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, Vol. III, p.107
3 Moritz, Journeys of a German in England in 1782, pp.50–3
4 Pitt to Westmorland, 26 July 1779, Duke Mss, quoted in Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, Vol. I, p.58
5 Heads of my Conversation with Mr. Pitt [in the King’s handwriting]; Fortescue, The Correspondence of King George III …, Vol. I, no. 100, p.124
6 Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, p.2
7 Jenyns, Thoughts on a Parliamentary Reform, pp.29–30
8 Bickley, The Diaries of Sylvester Douglas, Lord Glenbervie, Vol. I, p
.238, quoted in Valentine, Lord North, p.174
9 Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen who Flourished in the Time of George III, pp.55–6
10 For more information on Lord North’s support see Christie, The End of North’s Ministry 1780–1782, pp.208–10
11 Selwyn to Carlisle, 12 March 1782, Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle Preserved at Castle Howard, p.591
12 Walpole to Mann, 17 May 1781, Walpole, The Letters of Horace Walpole, Vol. VIII, p.41
13 Fox to O’Bryen, 19 February 1801, BL Add Mss 47566, fol.75
14 Gibbon, Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Vol. I, p.168
15 Rae, Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox: The Opposition under George III, p.314
16 Lord Hillsborough to William Eden, 21 March 1801, BL Add Mss 34417, fol.325
17 Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, pp.54–5
18 Ibid., p.133
19 Butler, Reminiscences of Charles Butler, Vol. I, p.161
20 Wraxall, The Historical and the Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall 1772–1784, Vol. II, p.77
21 Russell, Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, Vol. I, p.261
22 Wraxall, The Historical and the Posthumous Memoirs …, Vol. II, p.78
23 Russell, Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, Vol. I, p.262
24 Pitt to Lady Chatham, 27 February 1781, Chatham Papers, PRO 30/8/12, fol.205–6
25 Horace Walpole on Pitt, quoted in Rose, William Pitt and National Revival, p.88
26 Wraxall, The Historical and the Posthumous Memoirs …, Vol. II, p.122
27 Dundas, 12 June 1781, quoted in Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Vol. I, p.62
28 Germain to Clinton, 7 March 1781, quoted in Christie, The End of North’s Ministry 1780–1782, p.262
29 R.I. and S.W. Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, Vol. I, p.18
FIVE: Death of Two Governments
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography Page 69