J. Holland Rose

“ It is the mark of a great statesman to keep his gaze on all the chief matters of public interest, to weigh their importance, and to make his policy the resultant, as it were, of the leading forces and best tendencies of his age. No one who has not a clear vision and ripe judgement can give such an assessment and act on it with tact and firmness. ”

“ Neither in London nor Paris had any inspiring personality come to the front. Pitt had not fully emerged. Robespierre was intent on his briefs at Arras; the Corsican, who was to quicken the pulse of all peoples, still studied under the monks of Brienne; and Horace Walpole could therefore complain of the pettiness of politics, the aimless brawlings of Westminster, the lighter vagaries of Versailles, and the dullness of the world. ”

“ In any case the right of Louis XVI to declare war and make peace would have been challenged—for how can Democracy allow a Sovereign wholly to control its policy at the most important of all crises—but now the need was overwhelming. If the old prerogative held good, the rusty link that bound together the fortunes of France and Spain would compel free Frenchmen to fight their English neighbours whenever a Spanish captain thought fit to clap in irons British voyagers to the Pacific. ”

“ The way being thus left clear for the two great questions that would admit of no delay, Pitt sought to lay the ghost of national bankruptcy. The imminence of the danger can scarcely be realized. In that decade we link together the thought of bankruptcy with that of France; but if those years closed with the Revolution in France and prosperity in England, the result may be ascribed very largely to the wasteful financial system pursued at Versailles and to the wise husbanding of Britain’s resources by Pitt. ”

“ As by contact with Adam Smith he marched at the head of the new and peaceful commercialism, so too through his friendship with Wilberforce he felt the throb of the philanthropic movements of his times.
For the new stirrings of life in the spheres of religion, art, and literature, Pitt felt no deep concern. Like his father, and like that great genius of the South who wrecked his career, he was “a political being.” ”

“ For the present, however, no one in England dreamt of any such change. The spirit of the nation, far from sinking under the growing burdens of the American War, seemed buoyant. Sensitive littérateurs like Horace Walpole might moan over the ruin of the Empire; William Pitt might declaim against its wickedness with all his father’s vehemence; but the nation for the most part plodded doggedly on in the old paths and recked little of reform, except in so far as it concerned the abolition of sinecures and pensions. ”

“ There is little room for doubt that the continuance of his life would have involved the loss of the Belgic provinces, Galicia, and, perhaps, even Bohemia. The Hohenzollerns would have leaped to heights of power that would always challenge to conflict; and Europe, a prey to Revolution in the West, must have been torn at the heart by deadly strifes, both dynastic and racial.
In closing the sluices against the currents about to be let loose at Berlin, Pitt had latterly counted on the well-known prudence of Leopold of Tuscany. ”

“ The woes of the slaves have not yet struck a chill to his life, and he lives amidst a buzz of friends and admirers. He reminds us of that character in Disraeli’s “Lothair,” who proved an irresistible magnet at every party—no one quite knew why; but every one sought to be next him. The magnetism of Wilberforce is easily intelligible; it lay in his lovable and gifted nature, which welled forth freely in genial anecdote, friendly parody, sparkling retort.
For Pitt, too, there were as yet no oppressive cares. ”

“ A Regent is to a King what the moon is to the sun—a merely borrowed and temporary splendour. Apart, then, from an inconsistency of conduct highly damaging to a statesman, Fox committed the mistake of pledging himself to a scheme of government which was not only obsolete but unworkable.
Those who plod through the wearisome debates on the Regency must be conscious of an air of unreality. The references on both sides of the House to the cases of Edward VI or Henry VI were, after all, illusory; for in those times the powers of Parliament were ill defined. ”

“ In politics, as in war, victories sometimes prove to be more disastrous than defeats. When triumph lures a leader on into ever increasing difficulties, he may well rue his seeming good fortune; while, on the other hand, the retreat of his opponents may lessen their responsibilities, and, by enabling them to concentrate, double the strength of their next blow.
Such was the case with Fox and Pitt. Fox’s triumph over the former was seen by discerning friends to be of the Pyrrhic kind. He owed it to an unprincipled alliance, and for it he threw away the support of public opinion. ”

“ Having a sure belief that Austria desires to draw closer to me and my Allies, and that the Emperor has declared to the Empress of Russia that he cannot assist her in a war that might result from her refusal to accept the status quo, I wish England to consider whether the best course of action would not be that of inducing Russia by means of superior forces, both naval and military, to follow the example of the Emperor. But, in case England cannot resolve on so vigorous a course of action, the cession of Oczakoff would be its natural outcome. ”

“ No one, not even Pitt himself, could foresee the rich harvest of results one day to be reaped from his action in that summer and autumn. The winning of a few log huts at Nootka Sound seemed a small thing then. But in this age of the triumphs of steam and electricity we can discern its importance in world politics. The infant settlement on Vancouver Island, and on the mainland opposite, inspired the pioneers of Canada with hope as they threaded their way through the passes of the Rockies and the Selkirks. ”

“ Thus pride of family and pride of race must have helped to stiffen the mental fibre of a youth on whom nature and art alike showered the gifts and graces of a chivalrous order. In a coarse nature the result would have been snobbishness. In William Pitt the outcome was devotion to the ideals of his father and buoyant confidence as to their ultimate triumph.
In some respects there is truth in the statement of Windham that Pitt never was young. Certainly for so delicate a plant the forcing process was perilously early and prolonged. ”

“ The Whigs, the erstwhile guardians of popular freedom and the rights of Parliament, were straining every nerve to prove the King hopelessly insane, to foist upon the English people a hated Prince with unrestrained powers, as if Parliament had no voice in the matter, and to discredit the Prime Minister by representing his conduct as unconstitutional, and his letter to the Prince as insolent. ”

“ There are times when the foresight and imagination of a statesman mean infinitely much to the future of the race; and no action is more fruitful in results than the settlement of a new Continent. The Greeks did well to solemnize the sending forth of colonists by the honours of the State and the sanction of religion. And what they did for the founding of one more Greek city, Great Britain ought to have done for the occupation of a coast-line known to possess vast possibilities of growth.
The painful truth must be faced that in this matter Pitt lacked the Imperial imagination. ”

“ Her astonishingly quick recovery may be ascribed partly to the exertions of the great man whose public life will here be set forth. But one man can do little more than direct the toil of the many to fruitful issues; and the fruitfulness that marked the first decade of his supremacy resulted from the contact of the nation’s roots with a new and fertile layer of soil.
Below the surface of the national life, with its wars and party intrigues, there lay another world, in which the thoughts of Watt and Trevithick, of Hargreaves, Arkwright and Cartwright, were slowly taking shape in actuality. ”

“ Meanwhile the course of events in the Netherlands should have brought Prussia and England to terms. They need not have been public, still less offensive in aim; for that would have brought about a close union of France with Russia as well as Austria, an event which Pitt no less than Frederick sought to avert. But why Pitt and Carmarthen should not have welcomed a secret defensive compact with Prussia it is hard to say. If the princes and counts of Germany did not hesitate to brave the wrath of Joseph by union with Prussia, why should Great Britain? Frederick’s shiftiness may be granted. ”

“ We can now see that British Columbia holds in the West a strategic position not unlike that of Egypt in the Orient. Both are vital links in our chain of communication. Pitt, could he have known it, helped to fashion the keystone of the arch of Empire in the Occident. He played his part manfully in preparing for a day when Canada would stretch hands across the seas to India and Australia; when the vivifying forces of science and commerce would endow with a common life the conquests of Wolfe and Clive, and the lands discovered by Captain Cook. ”

“ In truth, while defeat led patriotic Britons to tread the humble paths of retrenchment and reform, the triumph of France allured her politicians into the stately avenues ending in bankruptcy and Revolution.
During the period of war, philosophy, science, and industry had been waging their peaceful campaigns; and now in the exhaustion or quiescence which beset both peoples, the still small voice of reason was heard. The responsiveness of thought in England and France is one of the most remarkable facts in the eighteenth century. ”

“ Reverting to England, with which alone we are concerned, we find the Quakers striving to stop the worst abuses of the Slave Trade. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) had handed over to England a great part of that traffic; and Chatham himself boasted that his conquests in Africa during the Seven Years’ War had placed almost the whole of it in British hands. When a man of his elevation of thought held this language, we can imagine that the many looked on the trade as a pillar of the Empire, and derided its few opponents as lunatics. ”

“ With Pitt’s refusal of power in the spring of 1783 we may compare Napoleon’s prudent reserve in the French political game of the years 1797–8, based as it was on his declaration to Talleyrand in October 1797: “It is only with prudence, wisdom and great dexterity that obstacles are surmounted and important ends attained.... I see no impossibility in attaining, in the course of a few years, those splendid results of which the heated and enthusiastic imagination catches a glimpse, but which the extremely cool, persevering and positive man alone can grasp.” ”

“ Pitt did not so readily forget the independence now and again displayed by Bankes, for instance, in opposing Parliamentary Reform, the Westminster Scrutiny, and the continuance of the war. Though they were friendly at Cambridge, and afterwards at Goostree’s Club and in the House, Pitt never warmed to Bankes, whose nature indeed was too precise, cold, and prudent ever to call forth affection. Respected by all for his sound but stolid speeches, he for forty years sat at Westminster as member for Corfe Castle. No one seems ever to have thought of making Bankes either a Minister or a peer. ”

“ After the fall of the Bastille, he wrote to the Duke of Leeds that “the greatest Revolution that we know of has been effected with, comparatively speaking, ... the loss of very few lives. From this moment we may consider France as a free country, the King as a very limited monarch, and the nobility as reduced to a level with the rest of the nation.” He described the tactful visit of Louis XVI to Paris on 17th July as the most humiliating step he could possibly take. “He was actually led in triumph like a tame bear by the deputies and the city militia.” ”

“ Only four days previously the Commons of France had sworn by the Tennis Court Oath that they would frame a constitution for their land—a declaration which rang trumpet-tongued through England; but not the faintest echo of it appears in the official language of Pitt and the Duke of Leeds. Their arguments are wholly those of the old school, but of the old school at its best. For, secondly, they deprecate changes of territory forced by a mediating Power on the people it ostensibly befriends, which tend to their detriment and its own benefit. ”

“ This very fact damned the India Bill in the eyes of the public, which cared not a jot for parliamentary majorities held together by hopes of booty. Men who had formerly inveighed against George III now began to revise their judgements and to pronounce even his last device justifiable when directed against Ministers who were about to perpetrate the most gigantic job of the century. In looking away from the votes of a corrupt Parliament to the will of the nation, Pitt was but following in the footsteps of his father, who had more than once made a similar appeal, and never in vain. ”

“ Here was the weakness of the Triple Alliance. The Allies had almost nothing in common, except that the British and Dutch both wished to live in peace and develop their trade. Prussia, on the contrary, saw in this time of turmoil the opportunity of consolidating her scattered Eastern lands by a scheme not unlike the Belgic-Bavarian Exchange. On the score of morality we may censure such plans; but vigorous and growing States will push them on while their rivals are abased, and will discard Allies who oppose them. ”

“ Pitt’s fostering care of the national resources, and his rehabilitation of the navy had made it virtually impossible for the semi-bankrupt French State to enter single-handed on a war with Great Britain and Prussia. This was the determining factor in the problem; and every statesman at Paris, London, and Berlin knew it.
But something more than sound finance is needed in a complex and critical situation. There the qualities of foresight, tact, and determination are of priceless worth; and on all sides it was admitted that Pitt displayed them to a high degree. ”

“ True, a Ministry composed of Pitt, Grenville, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, and Wilberforce might perhaps have forced the measure through the Commons (to see it fail in the Lords) ; but so monstrous a coalition could scarcely have seen the light; certainly it could not have lived amid the storms of the war. Besides, the first duty of a Minister after 1792 was to secure for his country the boon of a solid peace. As we shall see, that was ever Pitt’s aim; and grief at seeing it constantly elude his grasp finally cost him his life. ”

“ A vicious man may excel as a ruler; an unstable man, never. Frederick William had scarcely a feature in common with the masterful race of the Hohenzollerns. The contrast between him and his uncle was startling. In place of that silent, cynical, and dogged ruler, Berlin and Sans-Souci rejoiced in a handsome, affable monarch, who seemed made to win the hearts of all at first sight and to lose them on closer acquaintance. For it was found that with him work and policy depended on whims and moods. ”