Henry Montagu Butler

“ Pitt may speak again.
Amid shouts of 'Go on, Go on', the incensed combatant proceeds to his final assault. And with what arms, with what artillery? We still seem to hear its thunder.
'Gentlemen, Sir'—so he begins—'have been charged with giving birth to sedition in America. Several have spoken their sentiments with freedom against this unhappy Act, and that freedom has become their crime. Sorry I am to hear the liberty of speech in this House imputed as a crime. But the imputation shall not discourage me. It is a liberty I mean to exercise. No gentleman ought to be afraid to exercise it. ”

“ Whatever brings together the noblest impulses of two great imperial nations over a seeming gulf of two thousand years, and again—may a Cambridge man presume to say it?—whatever brings back even for a moment the name and thoughts of a great Oxford teacher to whom all that is noblest in Education is eternally indebted, can never perhaps, in his own beloved Oxford, be thought wholly irrelevant. ”

“ Then he proceeds to give his now well-known opinion of what we should call the unconstitutional character of the Stamp Act.
'It is my opinion that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the Colonies.... The colonists are the subjects of this kingdom, equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen.... The Americans are the sons, not the bastards, of England.'
Imagine the effect of such a sentence at such a time, the atmosphere throughout the land so charged with electricity! ”

“ It is impossible to close our sketch without at least naming the final scene, which, like the death-bed on the conquered heights of Abraham, and the death-bed in the cockpit of the Victory, and the death-bed in the house at Putney Heath with the rolling up of the map of Europe and the last sad words, 'How I leave my country!', is one of the august and mournful memories that Englishmen have agreed to cherish as a nation's heirlooms. ”

“ Popular and antipopular parties had gone to sleep together. The great Minister wielded the energies of the whole united nation. France and Spain were trampled in the dust; Protestant Germany saved; all North America was the dominion of the British Crown; the vast foundations were laid of our empire in India.'
Add to this one significant sentence from Macaulay, 'the Journals of the House of Commons, during four sessions, contain no trace of a division on a party question.'
But it is not in halcyon days of calm that we expect to meet the Orator. Eloquence loves, and almost needs, the storm. ”

“ He impressed me with the highest idea of him as a great and most noble statesman.' Writing afterwards to Lord Stanhope, Chatham's kinsman, he says, 'he is filled with admiration of that truly great man. He has seen in the course of his life sometimes eloquence without wisdom, and often wisdom without eloquence'—perhaps we might put it the other way—'but in the present instance he sees both united, and both, as he thinks, in the highest degree possible.'
This, you will remember, was early in 1775. For nearly two years Chatham was again a recluse, and for the same reason of health. ”

“ Burke said of Chatham more generally, 'He talks fustian'? Even if this harsh verdict be recorded, it will hardly be extended to one other short sentence with which we will take leave of this once celebrated speech:
'My Lords, I am sensible of the importance and difficulty of this great crisis. At a moment such as this we are called upon to do our duty without dreading the resentment of any man. But if apprehensions of this kind are to affect us, let us consider what we ought to respect most, the representative or the collective body of the people. ”

“ Lord Stanhope and Macaulay described it very beautifully more than fifty years ago. Mr. Frederic Harrison, Dr. Holland Rose, and Sir George Trevelyan have in recent works again refreshed our memories. It is one of the most touching passages in Sir George's latest volume, George the Third and Charles Fox. For ourselves at this moment a few plain words must suffice.
The news from America grows worse and worse. There is a growing conviction in the country, and among Ministers themselves, that Lord Chatham must be called in; that he and he alone is equal to the crisis. ”

“ I know of no sentence by any English speaker more exactly like Chatham, more unlike nearly all others.
One more topic in this historic speech—the comparative strength of the combatants; on the one side the great Mother Country that under Pitt's inspiration, between 1758 and 1761, had performed such wonders in every part of the world; and on the other side three millions of irritated colonists, without generals, without artillery, without fleets. ”

“ The Americans have not acted in all things with prudence and temper.' No indeed, their violence and their insults at Boston have infuriated even moderate men at home. But, says Pitt, 'The Americans have been wronged. They have been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness which you have occasioned?
'Rather let prudence and temper come from this side. I will undertake for America that she will follow the example. ”

“ The Duke of Richmond made his motion, to which Chatham listened with profound attention. Soon after, he rose from his seat slowly and with difficulty, leaning on his crutches, and supported by his two young kinsmen.
You will allow me to give you just the opening and the closing sentences. Taking one hand from his crutch, he raised it, and, casting his eyes towards heaven, he said: 'I thank God that I have been enabled to come here this day to perform my duty, and to speak on a subject which has so deeply impressed my mind. I am old and infirm—have one foot, more than one foot, in the grave. ”

“ I know the skill of your officers.
'There is not a company of foot that has served in America out of which you may not pick a man of sufficient knowledge and experience to make a Governor of a Colony there. But on this ground, on the Stamp Act, where so many here will think it a crying injustice, I am one who will lift up my hands against it.
'In such a cause even your success would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man. ”

“ The principle that 'Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power,' he argues at length and with lively vehemence, but the rebellion of the colonists which is in every one's mind has not yet come. He even sits down, as if weak and exhausted, without dealing with this crucial topic.
Then follows a considerable pause.
At length General Conway speaks on behalf of the Government, and then George Grenville in defence of his own offspring, the accursed Stamp Act. As he sits down, Mr. Pitt again rises, with several other members. There are loud shouts for 'Mr. Pitt, Mr. Pitt'. ”

“ My Lords, any state is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort, and if we must fall, let us fall like men.'
Mr. Vice-Chancellor, I should scarcely venture to offer any comment of my own on this solemn scene. But one Oxford memory comes over me which you, and perhaps others, will, I think, pardon.
I know not whether the Roman History of Dr. Arnold is still read and respected in his own University, but I do know that as far back as 1840 he wrote some words in his second volume which, more than sixty years ago, deeply moved one young Harrow and Cambridge man. ”

“ Conscience said, 'Keep faith with the Vice-Chancellor.' Judgement said, plainly and more plainly, 'It would be hopeless in one hour's address, even before the most indulgent audience, to deal even tolerably with a period in which at least fifteen orators of the highest class were mighty in Parliament, Chatham, Burke, Charles Fox, William Pitt, Sheridan, Grattan, Plunket, Canning, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Brougham, Lord Derby, Macaulay, John Bright, Disraeli, Gladstone. ”

“ It would seem that at Cambridge a hundred and fifty years ago there was a gracious custom that whenever our great Cambridge orators, Prime Ministers or ex-Prime Ministers, were to make great speeches in Parliament, their sons were allowed a College Exeat for the night for the purpose of reporting to the University on the proficiency or consistency of their fathers. ”

“ Even in dull ears there is an involuntary pricking up at the most delicate overture of a 'l'État c'est moi'. But the egotist must be a Somebody, if not quite a Louis XIV.
'It is a long time, Mr. Speaker,' so Mr. Pitt begins, 'since I have attended in Parliament. When the resolution was taken in this House of Commons'—that is, as we have seen, early in 1765 by his brother-in-law George Grenville—'I was ill in bed.' The gout, as we shall see, and the crutch play a prominent part in Pitt's later oratory. ”

“ It seems to me beyond all doubt that had Lord Chatham's last and fatal illness been delayed a few weeks, perhaps even a few days longer, he would have been called to the head of public affairs, and invited, with such friends as he might choose, to solve the problem he had himself propounded—to regain the affections, while refusing the independence, of America.'
Strong as this language is, that of Mr. Lecky [12] is scarcely less emphatic. 'There was one man to whom, in this hour of panic and consternation, the eyes of all patriotic Englishmen were turned.... ”

“ They understood the rights of humanity, and they had spirit to maintain them. My Lords, I think that history has not done justice to their conduct, when they obtained from their Sovereign that great acknowledgement of national rights contained in Magna Charta. ”

“ So it was with Pitt in 1766, and for a time the general expectation seemed likely to be gratified. On the 18th of March the Bill to repeal the Stamp Act received the Royal Assent. A few weeks afterwards, the Ministry of Lord Rockingham, which passed it, was dismissed by the King, and on the 30th of July Mr. Pitt became Prime Minister as Lord Privy Seal, and, to the general amazement, entered the House of Lords as the Earl of Chatham.
To-day we are dealing with this great man not directly as a Statesman but as an Orator. ”

“ Rather I would urge you to adopt some lenient measures, which may lure them to their duty. Act like a kind and affectionate parent towards a child whom he tenderly loves.... Pass an amnesty on all their youthful errors. ”

“ Then followed the amazing outburst which critics will estimate according to their temperaments, in which the impassioned orator, scarcely remembering what he had himself sanctioned twenty years before, denounces such 'abominable principles as equally abhorrent to religion and humanity'; 'they shock me as a lover of honourable war and a detester of murderous barbarity'.
And then he makes his fervent appeal to the Bishops and the Judges to join in protest against such a pollution ”

“ Abroad fresh wrongs were inflicted on America, wrongs which no timely legislation could any longer repeal.
At length, at the beginning of 1770, Lord Chatham returned to Parliament, I had almost said returned to life. As Macaulay says of this startling resurrection, 'It was a strange recovery. Men had been in the habit of talking of him as of one dead ”

“ The news of the riots reached England in the course of the autumn. The violence of the rioters was everywhere denounced. The House of Commons met on January 14. Mr. Pitt spoke early in the debate. There was keen excitement to know what line the Great Commoner would adopt. For two years he had been rarely heard in Parliament. ”

“ Perhaps, indeed, there is now but little new to be said of Chatham by any man, certainly not by me, after the witness of Walpole, Wraxall, Charles Butler, Grafton, Burke, and others at the time, and, since then, the searching, penetrating analyses of men like Grattan, Brougham, Macaulay, Lord Stanhope, Lecky, Frederic Harrison, Lord Rosebery, Sir George Trevelyan, Dr. ”