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Unhappily his Government, though one of the best that has ever existed in our
country, was also one of the weakest. The King's friends assailed and obstructed
the ministers at every turn. To appeal to the King was only to draw forth new
promises and new evasions. His Majesty was sure that there must be some
misunderstanding. Lord Rockingham had better speak to the gentlemen. They should
be dismissed on the next fault. The next fault was soon committed, and his
Majesty still continued to shuffle. It was too bad. It was quite abominable; but
it mattered less as the prorogation was at hand. He would give the delinquents
one more chance. If they did not alter their conduct next session, he should not
have one word to say for them. He had already resolved that, long before the
commencement of the next session, Lord Rockingham should cease to be minister.
We have now come to a part of our story which, admiring as we do the genius and
the many noble qualities of Pitt, we cannot relate without much pain. We believe
that, at this conjuncture, he had it in his power to give the victory either to
the Whigs or to the King's friends. If he had allied himself closely with Lord
Rockingham, what could the Court have done? There would have been only one
alternative, the Whigs or Grenville; and there could be no doubt what the King's
choice would be. He still remembered, as well he might, with the uttermost
bitterness, the thraldom from which his uncle had freed him, and said about this
time, with great vehemence, that he would sooner see the Devil come into his
closet than Grenville.
And what was there to prevent Pitt from allying himself with Lord Rockingham? On
all the most important questions their views were the same. They had agreed in
condemning the peace, the Stamp Act, the general warrant, the seizure of papers.
The points on which they differed were few and unimportant. In integrity, in
disinterestedness, in hatred of corruption, they resembled each other. Their
personal interests could not clash. They sat in different Houses, and Pitt had
always declared that nothing should induce him to be First Lord of the Treasury.
If the opportunity of forming a coalition beneficial to the State, and honorable
to all concerned, was suffered to escape, the fault was not with the Whig
ministers. They behaved towards Pitt with an obsequiousness which, had it not
been the effect of sincere admiration and of anxiety for the public interests,
might have been justly called servile. They repeatedly gave him to understand
that, if he chose to join their ranks, they were ready to receive him, not as an
associate, but as a leader. They had proved their respect for him by bestowing a
peerage on the person who, at that time, enjoyed the largest share of his
confidence, Chief Justice Pratt. What then was there to divide Pitt from the
Whigs? What, on the other hand, was there in common between him and the King's
friends, that he should lend himself to their purposes, he who had never owed
anything to flattery or intrigue, he whose eloquence and independent spirit had
overawed two generations of slaves and jobbers, he who had twice been forced by
the enthusiasm of an admiring nation on a reluctant Prince?
Unhappily the Court had gained Pitt, not, it is true, by those ignoble means
which were employed when such men as Rigby and Wedderburn were to be won, but by
allurements suited to a nature noble even in its aberrations. The King set
himself to seduce the one man who could turn the Whigs out without letting
Grenville in. Praise, caresses, promises, were lavished on the idol of the
nation. He, and he alone, could put an end to faction, could bid defiance to all
the powerful connections in the land united, Whigs and Tories, Rockinghams,
Bedfords, and Grenvilles. These blandishments produced a great effect. For
though Pitt's spirit was high and manly, though his eloquence was often exerted
with formidable effect against the Court, and though his theory of government
had been learned in the school of Locke and Sydney, he had always regarded the
person of the sovereign with profound veneration. As soon as he was brought face
to face with royalty, his imagination and sensibility were too strong for his
principles. His Whiggism thawed and disappeared; and he became, for the time, a
Tory of the old Ormond pattern. Nor was he by any means unwilling to assist in
the work of dissolving all political connections. His own weight in the State
was wholly independent of such connections. He was therefore inclined to look on
them with dislike, and made far too little distinction between gangs of knaves
associated for the mere purpose of robbing the public, and confederacies of
honorable men for the promotion of great public objects. Nor had he the sagacity
to perceive that the strenuous efforts which he made to annihilate all parties
tended only to establish the ascendancy of one party, and that the basest and
most hateful of all.
It may be doubted whether he would have been thus misled, if his mind had been
in full health and vigor. But the truth is that he had for some time been in an
unnatural state of excitement. No suspicion of this sort had yet got abroad. His
eloquence had never shone with more splendor than during the recent debates. But
people afterwards called to mind many things which ought to have roused their
apprehensions. His habits were gradually becoming more and more eccentric. A
horror of all loud sounds, such as is said to have been one of the many oddities
of Wallenstein, grew upon him. Though the most affectionate of fathers, he could
not at this time bear to hear the voices of his own children, and laid out great
sums at Hayes in buying up houses contiguous to his own, merely that he might
have no neighbors to disturb him with their noise. He then sold Hayes, and took
possession of a villa at Hampstead, where he again began to purchase houses to
right and left. In expense, indeed, he vied, during this part of his life, with
the wealthiest of the conquerors of Bengal and Tanjore. At Burton Pynsent, he
ordered a great extent of ground to be planted with cedars. Cedars enough for
the purpose were not to be found in Somersetshire. They were therefore collected
in London, and sent down by land carriage. Relays of laborers were hired; and
the work went on all night by torchlight. No man could be more abstemious than
Pitt; yet the profusion of his kitchen was a wonder even to epicures. Several
dinners were always dressing; for his appetite was capricious and fanciful; and
at whatever moment he felt inclined to eat, he expected a meal to be instantly
on the table. Other circumstances might be mentioned, such as separately are of
little moment, but such as, when taken altogether, and when viewed in connection
with the strange events which followed, justify us in believing that his mind
was already in a morbid state.
Soon after the close of the session of Parliament, Lord Rockingham received his
dismissal. He retired, accompanied by a firm body of friends, whose consistency
and uprightness enmity itself was forced to admit. None of them had asked or
obtained any pension or any sinecure, either in possession or in reversion. Such
disinterestedness was then rare among politicians. Their chief, though not a man
of brilliant talents, had won for himself an honorable fame, which he kept pure
to the last. He had, in spite of difficulties which seemed almost
insurmountable, removed great abuses and averted a civil war. Sixteen years
later, in a dark and terrible day, he was again called upon to save the State,
brought to the very brink of ruin by the same perfidy and obstinacy which had
embarrassed, and at length overthrown his first administration.
Pitt was planting in Somersetshire when he was summoned to Court by a letter
written by the royal hand. He instantly hastened to London. The irritability of
his mind and body were increased by the rapidity with which he traveled; and
when he reached his journey's end he was suffering from fever. Ill as he was, he
saw the King at Richmond, and undertook to form an administration.
Pitt was scarcely in the state in which a man should be who has to conduct
delicate and arduous negotiations. In his letters to his wife, he complained
that the conferences in which it was necessary for him to bear a part heated his
blood and accelerated his pulse. From other sources of information we learn,
that his language, even to those whose co-operation he wished to engage, was
strangely peremptory and despotic. Some of his notes written at this time have
been preserved, and are in a style which Lewis the Fourteenth would have been
too well bred to employ in addressing any French gentleman.
In the attempt to dissolve all parties, Pitt met with some difficulties. Some
Whigs, whom the Court would gladly have detached from Lord Rockingham, rejected
all offers. The Bedfords were perfectly willing to break with Grenville; but
Pitt would not come up to their terms. Temple, whom Pitt at first meant to place
at the head of the Treasury, proved intractable. A coldness indeed had, during
some months, been fast growing between the brothers-in-law, so long and so
closely allied in politics. Pitt was angry with Temple for opposing the repeal
of the Stamp Act. Temple was angry with Pitt for refusing to accede to that
family league which was now the favorite plan at Stowe. At length the Earl
proposed an equal partition of power and patronage, and offered, on this
condition, to give up his brother George. Pitt thought the demand exorbitant,
and positively refused compliance. A bitter quarrel followed. Each of the
kinsmen was true to his character. Temple's soul festered with spite, and Pitt's
swelled into contempt. Temple represented Pitt as the most odious of hypocrites
and traitors. Pitt held a different and perhaps a more provoking tone. Temple
was a good sort of man enough, whose single title to distinction was, that he
had a large garden, with a large piece of water, and had a great many pavilions
and summer-houses. To his fortunate connection with a great orator and statesman
he was indebted for an importance in the State which his own talents could never
have gained for him. That importance had turned his head. He had begun to fancy
that he could form administrations, and govern empires. It was piteous to see a
well meaning man under such a delusion.
In spite of all these difficulties, a ministry was made such as the King wished
to see, a ministry in which all his Majesty's friends were comfortably
accommodated, and which, with the exception of his Majesty's friends, contained
no four persons who had ever in their lives been in the habit of acting
together. Men who had never concurred in a single vote found themselves seated
at the same board. The office of Paymaster was divided between two persons who
had never exchanged a word. Most of the chief posts were filled either by
personal adherents of Pitt, or by members of the late ministry, who had been
induced to remain in place after the dismissal of Lord Rockingham. To the former
class belonged Pratt, now Lord Camden, who accepted the great seal, and Lord
Shelburne, who was made one of the Secretaries of State. To the latter class
belonged the Duke of Grafton, who became First Lord of the Treasury, and Conway,
who kept his old position both in the Government and in the House of Commons.
Charles Townshend, who had belonged to every party, and cared for none, was
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pitt himself was declared Prime Minister, but
refused to take any laborious office. He was created Earl of Chatham, and the
Privy Seal was delivered to him.
It is scarcely necessary to say, that the failure, the complete and disgraceful
failure, of this arrangement, is not to be ascribed to any want of capacity in
the persons whom we have named. None of them was deficient in abilities; and
four of them, Pitt himself, Shelburne, Camden, and Townshend, were men of high
intellectual eminence. The fault was not in the materials, but in the principle
on which the materials were put together. Pitt had mixed up these conflicting
elements, in the full confidence that he should be able to keep them all in
perfect subordination to himself, and in perfect harmony with other. We shall
soon see how the experiment succeeded.
On the very day on which the new Prime Minister kissed hands, three-fourths of
that popularity which he had long enjoyed without a rival, and to which he owed
the greater part of his authority, departed from him. A violent outcry was
raised, not against that part of his conduct which really deserved severe
condemnation, but against a step in which we can see nothing to censure. His
acceptance of a peerage produced a general burst of indignation. Yet surely no
peerage had ever been better earned; nor was there ever a statesman who more
needed the repose of the Upper House. Pitt was now growing old. He was much
older in constitution than in years. It was with imminent risk to his life that
he had, on some important occasions, attended his duty in Parliament. During the
session of 1764, he had not been able to take part in a single debate. It was
impossible that he should go through the nightly labor of conducting the
business of the Government in the House of Commons. His wish to be transferred,
under such circumstances, to a less busy and a less turbulent assembly, was
natural and reasonable. The nation, however, overlooked all these
considerations. Those who had most loved and honored the Great Commoner were
loudest in invective against the new-made Lord. London had hitherto been true to
him through every vicissitude. When the citizens learned that he had been sent
for from Somersetshire, that he had been closeted with the King at Richmond, and
that he was to be first minister, they had been in transports of joy.
Preparations were made for a grand entertainment and for a general illumination.
The lamps had actually been placed round the monument, when the Gazette
announced that the object of all this enthusiasm was an Earl. Instantly the
feast was countermanded. The lamps were taken down. The newspapers raised the
roar of obloquy. Pamphlets, made up of calumny and scurrility, filled the shops
of all the booksellers; and of those pamphlets, the most galling were written
under the direction of the malignant Temple. It was now the fashion to compare
the two Williams, William Pulteney and William Pitt. Both, it was said, had, by
eloquence and simulated patriotism, acquired a great ascendancy in the House of
Commons and in the country. Both had been entrusted with the office of reforming
the Government. Both had, when at the height of power and popularity, been
seduced by the splendor of the coronet. Both had been made earls, and both had
at once become objects of aversion and scorn to the nation which a few hours
before had regarded them with affection and veneration.
The clamor against Pitt appears to have had a serious effect on the foreign
relations of the country. His name had till now acted like a spell at Versailles
and Saint Ildefonso. English travelers on the Continent had remarked that
nothing more was necessary to silence a whole room full of boasting Frenchmen
than to drop a hint of the probability that Mr. Pitt would return to power. In
an instant there was deep silence: all shoulders rose, and all faces were
lengthened. Now, unhappily, every foreign court, in learning that he was
recalled to office, learned also that he no longer possessed the hearts of his
countrymen. Ceasing to be loved at home, he ceased to be feared abroad. The name
of Pitt had been a charmed name. Our envoys tried in vain to conjure with the
name of Chatham.
The difficulties which beset Chatham were daily increased by the despotic manner
in which he treated all around him. Lord Rockingham had, at the time of the
change of ministry, acted with great moderation, had expressed a hope that the
new Government would act on the principles of the late Government, and had even
interfered to prevent many of his friends from quitting office. Thus Saunders
and Keppel, two naval commanders of great eminence, had been induced to remain
at the Admiralty, where their services were much needed. The Duke of Portland
was still Lord Chamberlain, and Lord Besborough Postmaster. But within a quarter
of a year, Lord Chatham had so deeply affronted these men, that they all retired
in disgust. In truth, his tone, submissive in the closet, was at this time
insupportably tyrannical in the Cabinet. His colleagues were merely his clerks
for naval, financial, and diplomatic business. Conway, meek as he was, was on
one occasion provoked into declaring that such language as Lord Chatham's had
never been heard west of Constantinople, and was with difficulty prevented by
Horace Walpole from resigning, and rejoining the standard of Lord Rockingham.
The breach which had been made in the Government by the defection of so many of
the Rockinghams, Chatham hoped to supply by the help of the Bedfords. But with
the Bedfords he could not deal as he had dealt with other parties. It was to no
purpose that he bade high for one or two members of the faction, in the hope of
detaching them from the rest. They were to be had; but they were to be had only
in the lot. There was indeed for a moment some wavering and some disputing among
them. But at length the counsels of the shrewd and resolute Rigby prevailed.
They determined to stand firmly together, and plainly intimated to Chatham that
he must take them all, or that he should get none of them. The event proved that
they were wiser in their generation than any other connection in the State. In a
few months they were able to dictate their own terms.
The most important public measure of Lord Chatham's administration was his
celebrated interference with the corn trade. The harvest had been bad; the price
of food was high; and he thought it necessary to take on himself the
responsibility of laying an embargo on the exportation of grain. When Parliament
met, this proceeding was attacked by the Opposition as unconstitutional, and
defended by the ministers as indispensably necessary. At last an act was passed
to indemnify all who had been concerned in the embargo.
The first words uttered by Chatham, in the House of Lords, were in defense of
his conduct on this occasion. He spoke with a calmness, sobriety, and dignity,
well suited to the audience which he was addressing. A subsequent speech which
he made on the same subject was less successful. He bade defiance to
aristocratical connections, with a superciliousness to which the Peers were not
accustomed, and with tones and gestures better suited to a large and stormy
assembly than to the body of which he was now a member. A short altercation
followed, and he was told very plainly that he should not be suffered to
browbeat the old nobility of England.
It gradually became clearer and clearer that he was in a distempered state of
mind. His attention had been drawn to the territorial acquisitions of the East
India Company, and he determined to bring the whole of that great subject before
Parliament. He would not, however, confer on the subject with any of his
colleagues. It was in vain that Conway, who was charged with the conduct of
business in the House of Commons, and Charles Townshend, who was responsible for
the direction of the finances, begged for some glimpse of light as to what was
in contemplation. Chatham's answers were sullen and mysterious. He must decline
any discussion with them; he did not want their assistance; he had fixed on a
person to take charge of his measure in the House of Commons. This person was a
member who was not connected with the Government, and who neither had, nor
deserved to have the ear of the House, a noisy, purseproud, illiterate
demagogue, whose Cockney English and scraps of mispronounced Latin were the jest
of the newspapers, Alderman Beckford. It may well be supposed that these strange
proceedings produced a ferment through the whole political world. The city was
in commotion. The East India Company invoked the faith of charters. Burke
thundered against the ministers. The ministers looked at each other, and knew
not what to say. In the midst of the confusion, Lord Chatham proclaimed himself
gouty, and retired to Bath. It was announced, after some time, that he was
better, that he would shortly return, that he would soon put everything in
order. A day was fixed for his arrival in London. But when he reached the Castle
inn at Marlborough, he stopped, shut himself up in his room, and remained there
some weeks. Everybody who traveled that road was amazed by the number of his
attendants. Footmen and grooms, dressed in his family livery filled the whole
inn, though one of the largest in England, and swarmed in the streets of the
little town. The truth was that the invalid had insisted that, during his stay,
all the waiters and stable-boys of the Castle should wear his livery.
His colleagues were in despair. The Duke of Grafton proposed to go down to
Marlborough in order to consult the oracle. But he was informed that Lord
Chatham must decline all conversation on business. In the meantime, all the
parties which were out of office, Bedfords, Grenvilles, and Rockinghams, joined
to oppose the distracted Government on the vote for the land tax. They were
reinforced by almost all the county members, and had a considerable majority.
This was the first time that a ministry had been beaten on an important division
in the House of Commons since the fall of Sir Robert Walpole. The
administration, thus furiously assailed from without, was torn by internal
dissensions. It had been formed on no principle whatever. From the very first,
nothing but Chatham's authority had prevented the hostile contingents which made
up his ranks from going to blows with each other. That authority was now
withdrawn, and everything was in commotion. Conway, a brave soldier, but in
civil affairs the most timid and irresolute of men, afraid of disobliging the
King, afraid of being abused in the newspapers, afraid of being thought factious
if he went out, afraid of being thought interested if he stayed in, afraid of
everything, and afraid of being known to be afraid of anything, was beaten
backwards and forwards like a shuttlecock between Horace Walpole who wished to
make him Prime Minister, and Lord John Cavendish who wished to draw him into
opposition. Charles Townshend, a man of splendid eloquence, of lax principles,
and of boundless vanity and presumption, would submit to no control. The full
extent of his parts, of his ambition, and of his arrogance, had not yet been
made manifest; for he had always quailed before the genius and the lofty
character of Pitt. But now that Pitt had quitted the House of Commons, and
seemed to have abdicated the part of chief minister, Townshend broke loose from
all restraint.
While things were in this state, Chatham at length returned to London. He might
as well have remained at Marlborough. He would see nobody. He would give no
opinion on any public matter. The Duke of Grafton begged piteously for an
interview, for an hour, for half an hour, for five minutes. The answer was, that
it was impossible. The King himself repeatedly condescended to expostulate and
implore. "Your duty," he wrote, "your own honor, require you to make an effort."
The answers to these appeals were commonly written in Lady Chatham's hand, from
her lord's dictation; for he had not energy even to use a pen. He flings himself
at the King's feet. He is penetrated by the royal goodness so signally shown to
the most unhappy of men. He implores a little more indulgence. He cannot as yet
transact business. He cannot see his colleagues. Least of all can he bear the
excitement of an interview with majesty.
Some were half inclined to suspect that he was, to use a military phrase,
malingering. He had made, they said, a great blunder, and had found it out. His
immense popularity, his high reputation for statesmanship, were gone for ever.
Intoxicated by pride, he had undertaken a task beyond his abilities. He now saw
nothing before him but distresses and humiliations; and he had therefore
simulated illness, in order to escape from vexations which he had not fortitude
to meet. This suspicion, though it derived some color from that weakness which
was the most striking blemish of his character, was certainly unfounded. His
mind, before he became first minister, had been, as we have said, in an unsound
state; and physical and moral causes now concurred to make the derangement of
his faculties complete. The gout, which had been the torment of his whole life,
had been suppressed by strong remedies. For the first time since he was a boy at
Oxford, he had passed several months without a twinge. But his hand and foot had
been relieved at the expense of his nerves. He became melancholy, fanciful,
irritable. The embarrassing state of public affairs, the grave responsibility
which lay on him, the consciousness of his errors, the disputes of his
colleagues, the savage clamors raised by his detractors, bewildered his
enfeebled mind. One thing alone, he said, could save him. He must repurchase
Hayes. The unwilling consent of the new occupant was extorted by Lady Chatham's
entreaties and tears; and her lord was somewhat easier. But if business were
mentioned to him, he, once the proudest and boldest of mankind, behaved like a
hysterical girl, trembled from head to foot, and burst into a flood of tears.
His colleagues for a time continued to entertain the expectation that his health
would soon be restored, and that he would emerge from his retirement. But month
followed month, and still he remained hidden in mysterious seclusion, and sunk,
as far as they could learn, in the deepest dejection of spirits. They at length
ceased to hope or to fear anything from him; and though he was still nominally
Prime Minister, took without scruple steps which they knew to be diametrically
opposed to all his opinions and feelings, allied themselves with those whom he
had proscribed, disgraced those whom he most esteemed, and laid taxes on the
colonies, in the face of the strong declarations which he had recently made.
When he had passed about a year and three quarters in gloomy privacy, the King
received a few lines in Lady Chatham's hand. They contained a request, dictated
by her lord, that he might be permitted to resign the Privy Seal. After some
civil show of reluctance, the resignation was accepted. Indeed Chatham was, by
this time, almost as much forgotten as if he had already been lying in
Westminster Abbey.
At length the clouds which had gathered over his mind broke and passed away. His
gout returned, and freed him from a more cruel malady. His nerves were newly
braced. His spirits became buoyant. He woke as from a sickly dream. It was a
strange recovery. Men had been in the habit of talking of him as of one dead,
and, when he first showed himself at the King's levee, started as if they had
seen a ghost. It was more than two years and a half since he had appeared in
public.
He, too, had cause for wonder. The world which he now entered was not the world
which he had quitted. The administration which he had formed had never been, at
any one moment, entirely changed. But there had been so many losses and so many
accessions, that he could scarcely recognize his own work. Charles Townshend was
dead. Lord Shelburne had been dismissed. Conway had sunk into utter
insignificance. The Duke of Grafton had fallen into the hands of the Bedfords.
The Bedfords had deserted Grenville, had made their peace with the King and the
King's friends, and had been admitted to office. Lord North was Chancellor of
the Exchequer, and was rising fast in importance. Corsica had been given up to
France without a struggle. The disputes with the American colonies had been
revived. A general election had taken place. Wilkes had returned from exile,
and, outlaw as he was, had been chosen knight of the shire for Middlesex. The
multitude was on his side. The Court was obstinately bent on ruining him, and
was prepared to shake the very foundations of the constitution for the sake of a
paltry revenge. The House of Commons, assuming to itself an authority which of
right belongs only to the whole legislature, had declared Wilkes incapable of
sitting in Parliament. Nor had it been thought sufficient to keep him out.
Another must be brought in. Since the freeholders of Middlesex had obstinately
refused to choose a member acceptable to the Court, the House had chosen a
member for them. This was not the only instance, perhaps not the most
disgraceful instance, of the inveterate malignity of the Court. Exasperated by
the steady opposition of the Rockingham party, the King's friends had tried to
rob a distinguished Whig nobleman of his private estate, and had persisted in
their mean wickedness till their own servile majority had revolted from mere
disgust and shame. Discontent had spread throughout the nation, and was kept up
by stimulants such as had rarely been applied to the public mind. Junius had
taken the field, and trampled Sir William Draper in the dust, had well-nigh
broken the heart of Blackstone, and had so mangled the reputation of the Duke of
Grafton, that his grace had become sick of office, and was beginning to look
wistfully towards the shades of Euston. Every principle of foreign, domestic,
and colonial policy which was dear to the heart of Chatham had, during the
eclipse of his genius, been violated by the Government which he had formed.
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