Pitt

“ 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. ”

“ Pitt speak for the first time, I was astonished that a man of so youthful an appearance should stand up at all; but I was still more astonished to see how, while he spoke, he engaged universal attention. He seems to me not to be more than one-and- twenty. This same Pitt is now minister, and even Chancellor of the Exchequer.
It is shocking to a foreigner, to see what violent satires on men, rather than on things, daily appear in the newspapers, of which they tell me there are at least a dozen, if not more, published every day. ”

“ Pitt with difficulty escaped from the tumultuous kindness of an innumerable multitude which insisted on drawing his coach from Saint Paul’s Churchyard to Downing Street. This was the moment at which his fame and fortune may be said to have reached the zenith. His influence in the closet was as great as that of Carr or Milliers had been. His dominion over the Parliament was more absolute than that of Walpole or Pelham had been. He was at the same time as high in the favour of the populace as ever Wilkes or Sacheverell had been. Nothing did more to raise his character than his noble poverty. ”

“ After a season of rare glory, of resplendent triumph, Pitt found himself face to face with a formidable coalition of interests against him, a coalition of interests none the less formidable because it was headed by a man for whose attainments, opinions, and ability Pitt must have felt, and scarcely concealed, the greatest contempt. ”

“ Pitt subsequently in life, and observed that his external carriage [62] and demeanour remained unaltered. Yet he had opportunity of knowing from those who lived with Pitt in the greatest familiarity and intimacy, that in the privacy of retirement, he was condescending and affable, even to playfulness, and would read with glee the lighter kinds of poetry to the ladies.—One expression can never be forgotten, which was used by the man who knew him best, namely, his private secretary.—“Mr. Pitt was so very amiable in private and domestic life, that it was like living with an angel.” ”

“ No impassioned personage wishes he had been born in the age of Pitt, that his ardent youth might have eaten the dearest bread, dressed itself with the longest coat-tails and the shortest waist, or heard the loudest grumbling at the heaviest war-taxes ”

“ No person, on the other hand, could hear Pitt without perceiving him to be a man of high, intrepid and commanding spirit, proudly conscious of his own rectitude and of his own intellectual superiority, incapable of the low vices of fear and envy, but too prone to feel and to show disdain. ”

“ We must however record that the Pitt family was gentle and honourable; 'it had,' says one of them, 'been near two centuries growing into wealth without producing anything illustrious.' [1] But in the eighteenth century it was destined to blossom into no less than four peerages, Londonderry, Rivers, Camelford, and Chatham, not one of which survives. William Pitt's great-grandfather was Vicar of Blandford in Dorsetshire; and there was born Thomas, his grandfather, better known as Governor Pitt, and associated in history with the famous Pitt diamond. ”

“ Under these circumstances, Pitt was not disposed to proceed to extremities against his predecessors in office. Something, however, was due to consistency; and something was necessary for the preservation of his popularity. He did little; but that little he did in such a manner as to produce great effect. He came down to the House in all the pomp of gout, his legs swathed in flannels, his arm dangling in a sling. ”

“ Pitt controlled himself. We have seen his reply [258] to Newcastle's shuffling apologies. He continued to write to Lyttelton, but with less cordiality. To George Grenville he wrote a tepid note of congratulation. To Temple, who had been omitted from the arrangements, he addressed himself more cordially, and sent the portrait for which he had been sitting to Hoare. It represents no formidable orator, but a simpering man of the world; yet, after the fashion of mankind, who secretly cherish the portraits least like themselves, Pitt commended the resemblance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ordinary men have been more faithful to asserted principles, but no statesman more frequently departed from asserted principles to secure achievements which redounded to the honor of the nation. During the thirty years in which Pitt exercised the magic spell of his eloquence and power over the English Parliament, the stakes for which he contended against the world were no less than the dominion of North America and of India. ”

“ Pitt, writing the same day to Temple, says: 'I hope my letter to the Duke of Newcastle will meet with the fraternal approbation. It is strong, but not hostile, and will, I believe, operate some effect. I am still more strongly fixed in my judgement that the place of importance is employment, in the present unsettled conjuncture. It may not to us be the place of dignity, but sure I am it is that of the former. I see, as your Lordship does, the treatment we have had: I feel it as deeply, but I believe, not so warmly. ”

“ A conspicuous member of the fraternity was Thomas Pitt, the progenitor of two of the greatest British statesmen, and himself a man who in later life won considerable distinction. Pitt was a born free lance. He had gauged to a nicety the foibles of the Oriental and he played upon them with a master hand during a career of almost unbroken prosperity extending from the year 1674 into the new century. The Directors, when they got to hear of him, as they soon did, sent out orders that he should be seized and imprisoned pending the arrival of a ship in which he could be dispatched to England. ”

“ Pitt, the stately, austere leader of the House of Commons, who, on entering its precincts, fixed his eyes straight on his seat, and tilted his nose loftily in air during his State progress thither, with not so much as a nod to his supporters367—yet here, on the lawn of Lauriston House, is all fun and laughter, sharpening his wit against the edge of Wilberforce’s fancy, answering jest with jest, quotation with quotation, in a fresh mingling of jollity and culture. As yet all is joyous in the lives of the friends. ”

“ In fact, there is not any other kind, Pitt. What passes for it is just fancy, and struggling to make believe. The really independent man is the man who need not ask anybody else's leave to do anything.'
Pitt let the question drop, and went on with his breakfast, for which he seemed to have a good appetite.
'Your muffins are as good as ever, mother,' he remarked.
Mrs. Dallas, to judge by her face, found nothing in this world so pleasant as to see Pitt eat his breakfast, and nothing in the world so important to do as to furnish him with satisfactory material. ”

“ If we wish to arrive at a correct judgment of Pitt’s merits and defects, we must never forget that he belonged to a peculiar class of statesmen, and that he must be tried by a peculiar standard. It is not easy to compare him fairly with such men as Ximenes and Sully, Richelieu and Oxenstiern, John de Witt and Warren Hastings. The means by which those politicians governed great communities were of quite a different kind from those which Pitt was under the necessity of employing. ”

“ His ample leisure he devoted to theology. His father soon resigned his prebendal stall at Winchester in his favour, and in 1787 he undertook the charge of the populous parish of Alton. Subsequently, perhaps through the influence of the Marquis of Buckingham, he was presented to the rectory of St. Magnus, London Bridge. When he proceeded D.D. at Cambridge, in 1794, he preached a commencement sermon on the French revolution which impressed Pitt, who called him ‘the Demosthenes of the pulpit.’ In 1797 Pitt urged him to accept the mastership of the Temple. ”

“ He was followed by other speakers, Murray delivering a fine argument in defence of the treaties. Pitt, meanwhile, contrary to his habit, possessed himself in silence, collecting all his powers for his reply. When he arose he delivered one that was memorable and overwhelming. 'You never heard such a philippic as Pitt returned. Hume Campbell was annihilated. Pitt, like an angry wasp, seems to have left his sting in the wound, and has since assumed a style of delicate ridicule and repartee. But think how charming a ridicule must be that lasts and rises, flash after flash, for an hour and a half! ”

“ 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.” ”

“ After the severe disappointments of the session of 1785, the signs of friskiness vanish from the life of Pitt. Up to that time his hopefulness is of almost boyish intensity. Confidence in himself, and in the goodness of his cause, and determination to carry out a work of national revival, lead him to grapple with great enterprises in a way that astonishes friends and baffles opponents. ”

“ This affair deserves mention here because it illustrates what was the chief weakness of Pitt. His secluded childhood, his education apart from other youths, even at Cambridge, his shyness in general company, and his decided preference for the society of a few friends, gave him very few opportunities for knowing ordinary men. ”

“ When Pitt resigned, in 1761, Francis wrote a libel against him under the title of ‘Mr. Pitt's Letter Versified,’ the notes to which, according to Horace Walpole, were supplied by Lord Holland, and he followed this with ‘A Letter from the Anonymous Author of “Mr. Pitt's Letter Versified,”’ in which he reflected on Pitt's indifference to the truculent language of Colonel Barré. ”

“ Now we know the real Pitt; the men of these times saw only the professional mask; and therefore we find exclamations like that of Sir Gilbert Elliot who, after hearing the almost inspired speech of Pitt on the abolition of275 the slave-trade, remarked: “One felt almost to like the man”;378 or again Lady Anne Hamilton in her “Memoirs of the Court of George III,” asserted that Pitt was always cold and carried his frostiness even into his carouses. ”

“ The entrance of this distinguished statesman, whose friendship for the great Pitt kept him constantly in the public eye, caused little less than a sensation. As he took the oath, I had a near view of him; his dignified bearing, his age, and his notable integrity showing at every turn, the tones of his voice filling the court with a peculiar resonance while he deponed as follows:
"I come," he said, "as a messenger from Mr. Pitt, who regrets that his Majesty's affairs, connected with the troublous times in France, prevent his leaving London. ”

“ Scarcely had Pitt obtained possession of unbounded power when an aged writer of the highest eminence, who had made very little by his writings, and who was sinking into the grave under a load of infirmities and sorrows, wanted five or six hundred pounds to enable him, during the winter or two which might still remain to him, to draw his breath more easily in the soft climate of Italy. ”

“ A still richer inheritance is the story of the lives of the men who conquered the wilderness and subdued the Indians, French and British; and this inheritance is held in common by all good citizens of Pittsburgh, whether or not their ancestors fought with Braddock or Bouquet, or marched with Forbes. In the stir and bustle of the busy city, above the noise of the trolley and the iron wagon, one faintly hears the names of streets whose unfamiliar sound recalls to our minds these illustrious dead. ”

“ Pitt is not only a most ingenious Young man, but a most amiable one: he has already acted in the most noble style-I don't mean that he took a quarter of Quebec, or invaded a bit of France, or has spoken in the House of Commons better than DemostheneS'S nephew: but he has an odious father, and has insisted on glorious cuttings off of entails on himself, that his father's debts might be paid and his sisters provided for. ”

“ CHATHAM, William Pitt, Earl of, British statesman, b. in Boconnoc, Cornwall, England, 15 Nov., 1708; d. in Hayes, Somerset, 11 May, 1778. His grandfather, Thomas Pitt, was governor of Madras, and brought from India the celebrated Pitt diamond, which he had purchased for £24,000. The Regent Orleans bought it of him for £135,000, and it was esteemed the most precious of the crown jewels of France as long as the monarchy lasted. Gov. Pitt used his wealth in buying rotten boroughs until he acquired for his family a vast parliamentary influence. ”