Earl of Archibald Philip Primrose Rosebery

“ And yet up to this time the career of Pitt has been, eloquence apart, not unlike that of other ambitious and not very scrupulous politicians. He begins by attacking Sir Robert Walpole. Why? He has no particular objection to Sir Robert Walpole; in after years he acknowledges that he was a great statesman. It was partly a freak of youth. Who is the biggest man to attack, the man by combating whom one can acquire the most honour and reputation? Obviously Walpole. So tilt at him. He is asked to an important house; for the first time he finds himself in the great world. ”

“ All that is notable in these crumbs of debate is the strategy of Pitt; to hammer at the enemy without ceasing, not to allow him a moment to breathe or recover, but to display him to the country day and night pummelled, bewildered and helpless, until he should succumb from exhaustion; when the country should insist on the removal of the defeated combatant, and the substitution of his conqueror. Pitt was openly set on the destruction of the Newcastle Government for more reasons than one. ”

“ Newcastle has long been a byeword; he was so all through his protracted public life; and he has remained in history a synonym for a certain jobbing and fussing incapacity. Justice has, perhaps, been scarcely done to his laborious life; his disinterestedness about money, rare in any age, especially in that; above all to his unequalled capacity for remaining in office, a virtue not unappreciated by the great mass of politicians. ”

“ When it took place Pitt was taking time which he could ill spare to write letters of anxious and affectionate solicitude to Camelford at Cambridge, and receiving in return the most unbounded assurances of grateful devotion.
Pitt's love letters, alas! survive; the treasures of his wife, but the despair of posterity. That a great genius presumably in love should send such stilted, pompous, artificial documents as tokens of his passion to the object of his affections is one of the mysteries of brain and heart. ”

“ Pitt fortunately prevailed. Newcastle's grotesqueness was part of his temperament, for all through his life his jealousy and suspicion kept him in a perpetual froth of nervous excitement. His jealousy was of power,175 his suspicion of those who aimed at it. And by power he meant patronage. Throughout his long life his god or goddess was patronage. Indeed his voluminous correspondence rather resembles the letter-bag of an agency for necessitous persons of social position than the papers of a Prime Minister or Secretary of State. ”

“ All careers have their blots. The best and happiest are those in which the blemishes are obscured by high achievement. That was supremely the case with Pitt. His upward ascent was much like other ascents, neither better nor worse. But when he reached the summit, and acted in full light and freedom, his triumph was so complete that none deem it worth while to scan his previous record. None should care now, were it not a healthy propensity to seek to know as much as possible of the lives of great men. It is preposterous to depict Pitt as an angel of light. ”

“ Let us, while contemplating this grievous and pathetic spectacle, at least take comfort that we have arrived at the priceless narrative of Lord Waldegrave, a man not brilliant, but shrewd and honest, who guides us past the waspish partiality of Horace Walpole, the bitterness of Glover, and the corrupt cynicism of Dodington with a light which we feel to be the lamp of truth. Newcastle, delighted with the consent of Sir Thomas, and with the apparent acquiescence of Fox, hastened to complete his arrangements with the squalid instinct of a jobber. ”

“ The marriage marks a new ascent in Pitt's career; love seemed to have transformed him; always powerful and eloquent, he became sublime. Into his former qualities there had passed an inspiration kindred to the divine passion which makes the poet. The timid warblers of the grove, as he was afterwards to call them, the politicians who sought quiet lives and safe places, the arch-jobber himself who had for years deluded him, were in an instant to realise that a new terror was added to life. ”

“ Of this talk a famous fragment survives, characteristic of political language in those days. 'Are you going to Stowe?' asked Fox. 'I ask because I believe you will have a message of consequence from people of consequence.' 'You surprise me,' answered Pitt, 'are you to be of the number?' 'I don't know,' said Fox, taken aback. 'One likes to say things to a man of sense,' rejoined Pitt, 'and to men of your great sense, rather than to others. And yet it is difficult even to you.' Fox caught his hint at once. 'What! You mean that you will not act with me as Minister.' 'I do,' replied Pitt. ”

“ Walpole at any rate did not escape the particular fate that he deserved. A year of glowing and successful war might yet have saved him; a year of failure and calamity fixed his doom.
He had held on to the last possible moment, and so fell with little of grace or dignity. An inevitable political catastrophe only becomes more overwhelming by delay; each day that a minister remains in power against the will of the nation adds force to the torrent against him. ”

“ On this scene, coming more and more into prominence as the King became older, and as the Prince of Wales, or rather Bute and his clique, waxed bolder, appears the mysterious and elusive influence of Leicester House. It is difficult to trace or measure this combination, except in the naked fact of an old King and a young heir, nor is it easy to trace the connection of Pitt with this party. Every movement in Leicester House was jealously watched by the politicians, much as a late Sultan is said to have tracked the movements of the least menial of his dethroned and secluded predecessor. ”

“ Would he have been a great popular orator at mass meetings and the like? We cannot imagine Pitt a platform speaker, yet we can scarcely imagine a better. His graceful appearance, his terrible eye, the winning and majestic modulations of his voice, his spontaneity, his magnetic power, his wealth of ridicule, his poignant personalities, his dramatic force, his variety and unexpectedness constituted the most formidable equipment for platform oratory ever possessed by mortal man. ”

“ There was no chance of a fair trial for the unhappy man. To the merchants of London bringing one of the addresses for his exemplary punishment Newcastle, not sorry to have a scapegoat, had blurted out, 'Oh! indeed he shall be tried immediately: he shall be hanged directly.' And executed he was, after an agony of eight months, in spite of justice, in spite of Pitt, who had the fine courage to support him, in deference to the nation and the King who were bent on his death. ”

“ A man who could hold the seals of Secretary of State for thirty continuous years of stress and intrigue, who filled high office for forty-five years in succession, could not be without invaluable qualities for steering with persistence and astuteness through intricacies of parliamentary navigation. His ambition, such as it was, had indeed an elastic but stubborn tenacity; the ties of blood, friendship, or principle availed nothing against it. His industry, such as it was, is attested by his long tenure of office and the vast mass of his correspondence. ”

“ Horace Walpole, who had come to hate all Pitts, confirms this in his sardonic way. 'Did I tell you that Mrs Ann Pitt is returned and acts great grief for her brother?' and he goes on to say that Camelford himself 'gave a little into that mummery, even to me; forgetting how much I must remember of his aversion to his uncle.'
There were perhaps few genuine tears save those of wife and children shed over the grave of the grim, disconcerting old statesman, for men of his type are beyond friendship: they inspire awe, not affection; they deal with masses, not with individuals ”

“ At last it bursts its trammels, he tosses patronage and intrigue to the old political Shylocks, and inspires the policy of the world. Vanity of vanities! Twenty years after his epoch of glory, three years after his death, Britain has reached the lowest point in her history. But still she is the richer for his life. He bequeaths a tradition, he bequeaths a son; and when men think of duty and achievement they look to one or the other. It will be an ill day for their country when either is forgotten. ”

“ He already saw that his power lay with the people, and that it was based not merely on his genius and eloquence, but on a faith in his public spirit and scrupulous integrity. His virtues were his credentials, and it was necessary that they should be conspicuous. Pulteney and St. John had wielded greater Parliamentary power, yet Pulteney and St. John had perished from want of character. Character he saw was the one necessary thing, but character must be known to be appreciated. Pitt was perhaps the first of those statesmen who sedulously imbue the public with a knowledge of their merit. ”

“ It was distinguished by that famous effort which gave Single-speech Hamilton his nickname. Walpole, in recording and eulogising it, says: 'You will ask, what could be beyond this? Nothing but what was beyond what ever was, and that was Pitt.' Pitt, indeed, after sitting through the eleven hours of the debate, rose and delivered, with inimitable spirit and all the dramatic force that the greatest actor of his age could impart, a speech of an hour and a half, which contains his most famous figure, and which perhaps he never exceeded. ”

“ This was the result of Pitt's verbal refusal to join him, made by a Minister who held the great mass of the House of Commons in the hollow of his hand, who clung to office as to life, and yet, though he knew Pitt was indispensable to its retention, would not once more, as in 1746, face his Sovereign and say so. Nothing can better illustrate the trembling plank on which the Duke was content to walk, wavering and helpless, depending only on Hardwicke's counsel and his own jobs. ”

“ But the indirect profits of the Paymastership, which earlier in the century had founded the dukedom of Chandos and the palace of Canons, and which later endowed the peerage of Henry Fox and the glories of his exquisite residence at Kensington, besides furnishing great fortunes for his graceless sons to squander at the gaming-table, were, as Dr. Johnson would have said, beyond the dreams of avarice. It was held in that day of loose political morality to be noble, if not unique, for a man with a patrimony of a hundred a year and a legacy of ten thousand pounds to refuse to receive such profits. ”

“ But Fox had one incurable flaw which was wholly wanting in Pitt: his aims were base and material. He was content for long years to be Paymaster, amassing a huge fortune from all the emoluments, legitimate and semi-legitimate, of that lucrative office, when a noble ambition would not have stooped to so gross an obscurity. And besides money he had another weakness. He longed to be a lord. In the moment of his rival's triumph and his own fall we find him writing to Lady Yarmouth soliciting a peerage in almost abject terms. ”

“ One of the difficulties of a life of Chatham lies in the rough notes of his speeches preserved by Horace Walpole. They are often confused, often dreary, sometimes incomprehensible; but they must be included, for there is nothing else; though they weigh heavy on a book. Sometimes, however, they reveal a flash of the man, and Pitt permits little else. Such being his deliberate scheme of life, adopted partly from policy, partly from considerations of health, there seems little more material for a biography of the man, apart from his public career, than exists in the case of a Trappist. ”

“ Cumberland, who had lost every battle but the one-sided affray of Culloden, was the brain to devise. Braddock, a brutal soldier of parade experience, whose only warfare had been in Hyde Park or Hounslow, was the hand to execute. Braddock took his troops through the American bush as if they were marching fromJuly 9, 1755. London to Windsor, and was annihilated ten miles from the French stronghold, Fort Duquesne, where now smokes toiling Pittsburg. British troops then first faced the most formidable of adversaries, an invisible foe. ”

“ Pitt was enchanting.' He also quotes Wilkes, who was a good judge of social qualifications. 'Mr. Pitt, by the most manly sense and the fine sallies of a warm and sportive imagination, can charm the whole day, and, as the Greek said, his entertainments please even the day after they are given.' But, after all, these must have been rare occasions, as Pitt does not seem to have seen much of society, for his health kept him a recluse; and as years went on he seems to have found it both irksome and impolitic to see much of mankind. ”

“ Permit, my Lord, a man, whose affectionate attachment to your Grace, I believe, you don't doubt, to expose simply to your view his situation, and then let me entreat your Grace (if you can divest your mind of the great disparity between us) to transport yourself for a moment into my place. From the time I had the honour to come into the King's service, I have never been wanting in my most zealous endeavours in Parliament on the points that laboured the most, those of military discipline and foreign affairs ”

“ There was nothing left but the rank and file; ardent supporters with nothing to support. The Government was doomed.
Instructions from counties and boroughs were coming up as in the days of the impeachment of Walpole. Addresses were presented to the Throne. The country was thoroughly roused. And its hopes and gaze were fixed solely on Pitt, a private member, untried in affairs, with scarce a follower in Parliament. He, at any rate, had not failed, a negative merit indeed, but one which he alone of the leading statesmen of the time could claim.
Newcastle was left alone with Hardwicke. ”

“ How could an open country be defended against an enemy who could march 150,000 men into it,446 and if necessary reinforce them by as many more? Should Hanover suffer by her connection with Great Britain, we ought not to make peace without exacting full and ample compensation for all the damage and injury she might have sustained. But the idea of defending Hanover by subsidies was preposterous, absurd, and impracticable. Then, excited by this favourite theme beyond the limits he had imposed on himself, he struck home at the King and his darling patrimony. ”

“ The orator is probably unconscious or at most half-conscious of what seems dramatic, he is moved by an irresistible blast of passion which carries him as well as his audience away. The passion may have been stirred beforehand, but at the moment of outpouring it is genuine enough. Pitt no doubt had trained himself to be graceful in animation, had studied and enhanced the beauties of his voice, so that when excited his tones were always musical, and his action harmonious. ”

“ We had promised her abundant assistance when she was fighting Prussia alone; when France intervened we shrank back and left her in the lurch. That, he declared, was not our only discredit. When Prussia attacked the Queen of Hungary, and Spain, Poland, and Bavaria laid claim to her father's succession, we should have known that the preservation of the whole was impossible, and advised her to yield the part claimed by Frederick. But the words from the Throne and the speeches of the courtiers had persuaded the Austrian Government that Great Britain was determined to support her. ”

“ Pitt, I think myself bound in honour and gratitude to show my sense of it in the best way I am able. I must therefore desire that neither you nor any of my friends would give into any clamour or row that may be made against him from any of the party on account of his differing as to the number of seamen. For after the kind part he has acted to me, and (as far as I am allowed to be part of it) the meritorious one to the administration, I cannot think any man my friend who shall join in any such clamour, and who does not do all in his power to discourage it. ”

“ We have reached our limits. The youth of Pitt has passed, his apprenticeship is over, he has now his foot in high office, he is soon to be supreme. The weary period of proscription and conflict has come to an end, he is henceforth to command where he has obeyed, and he is to raise his country to a singular height of glory and power. ”