William Pitt the Elder

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lot of William Pitt the Younger was cast in the years when both these revolutions began their mighty work. The4 active part of his father’s career fell within the old order of things; the problems which confronted Chatham were merely political. They therefore presented none of that complexity which so often baffled the penetration and forethought of his son. It is true that, with a prophetic vision of the future, the old man foretold in thrilling words the invincibility of the American cause, but then his life-work was done ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nevertheless, as the duty of a pioneer is not merely to hew a path, but also to note the lie of the land and the signs of the weather, we must admit that Pitt did not possess the highest instincts of his craft. He cannot be ranked with Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, Edward I, or Burleigh, still less with those giants of his own age, Napoleon and Stein; for these men boldly grappled with the elements of unrest or disloyalty, and by wise legislation wrought them into the fabric of the State. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The child's genius and ambition displayed themselves with a rare and almost unnatural precocity. At seven, the interest which he took in grave subjects, the ardour with which he pursued his studies, and the sense and vivacity of his remarks on books and on events, amazed his parents and instructors. One of his sayings of this date was reported to his mother by his tutor. In August 1766, when the world was agitated by the news that Mr Pitt had become Earl of Chatham, little William exclaimed, "I am glad that I am not the eldest son. I want to speak in the House of Commons like papa." ”

“ There were present in Paris two political agents to whom Pitt had confided the task of humouring the French democrats and dissolving the Family Compact. These were William Augustus Miles and Hugh Elliot. The former was a clever but opinionated man, half statesman, half busy-body, capable of doing good work when kept well in hand, but apt to take the bit into his teeth and bolt. He had already looked into the affairs of Brabant, Liége, and Frankfurt for Pitt; and as early as 4th March the Prime Minister summoned him to Downing Street for the purpose of sending him to Paris ”

“ Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry.
We do not know whether Pitt’s feelings at this time were akin to those of Wordsworth, who entered St. John’s in 1787. Pitt’s surroundings were not such as to favour the infiltration of new ideas. In his first two years he mixed scarcely at all with undergraduates, and even after 1776 his circle seems to have been limited, doubtless owing to his intense shyness, ill-health, and constant association with Dr. Pretyman. ”

“ In every respect the accession of another Minister was to be desired. Pitt closed this painful correspondence with a letter, also of 3rd February, requesting a pension of £1,500 a year for Long, one of the secretaries of the Treasury, whose private means were so slender as to leave him in discomfort if he should resign. The King briefly assented to Pitt's retirement and to Long's pension. To Long's services the King accorded a few words of thanks: to those of Pitt not a word. This is the more remarkable as Pitt was then suffering from an attack of gout which depressed him greatly ”

“ Pitt had been, from his school-days, cruelly tormented by the gout, and was advised to travel for his health. He accordingly left Oxford without taking a degree, and visited France and Italy. He returned, however, without having received much benefit from his excursion, and continued, till the close of his life, to suffer most severely from his constitutional malady.
His father was now dead, and had left very little to the younger children. It was necessary that William should choose a profession. He decided for the army, and a cornet’s commission was procured for him in the Blues. ”

“ No human being who 220has been more than seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And it is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance with what he would himself have called the aufractuosities of his intellect and of his temper serves only to strengthen our conviction that he was both a great and a good man.
WILLIAM PITT (Encyclopædia Britannica, January 1859.) William Pitt, 221the second son of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and of Lady Hester Grenville, daughter of Hester, Countess Temple, was born on the 28th of May, 1759. ”

“ 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 defection or apathy of many of his friends in the session of 1785 was undoubtedly a severe blow to Pitt. It sounded the death-knell of his earlier idealism, and led him on, somewhat dazed, to a time marked by compromise and a tendency to rely upon “influence.” Daniel Pulteney noted, when he saw him in the park on the day following the rebuff, that he was in deep sorrow.278 That was natural in a man who had hoped to arouse the nation to a vivid interest in good government, and suddenly found himself headed back to the old paths. ”

“ Explain it as we may, her judgement is certainly a signal instance of self-effacement; for the gifts of tact, prudence, and consistency whereby Pitt restored England to her rightful place in the years 1783–93 were precisely those which he derived from her.
It has often been remarked that great men have owed more to the mother’s nature than to that of the father ”

“ But no man knew England better; none had a bolder faith in her perseverance and principle; none had more broadly laid the foundations of victory in national honour. I shall never be driven into the belief that William Pitt despaired of his country.
He died in the vigour of his genius, in the proudest struggle of the empire, in the midst of the deepest trial which for a thousand years had demanded all the faculties of England. Yet, what man within human recollection had lived so long, if we are to reckon life not by the calendar but by triumphs? ”

“ In the time of his supremacy he had carried himself with a haughty arrogance, with an austere disdain which had set the smaller men about him raging in secret antagonism. The King, driven on by his own dreams of personal authority, disliked the great minister. Bute, drunk with the wild ambitions of a weak man, seems to have believed that in succeeding to Pitt's place he could also succeed to Pitt's genius. Pitt soon became aware of the strength of the cabal against him. While some of his colleagues were disaffected, others were almost openly treacherous. ”

“ Pitt possessed a fine personal presence and a powerful voice; he was very popular with the people, and is often called the "Great Commoner." He was created "Earl of Chatham" in 1766. ###
The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with hoping that I may be one of those whose follies cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. ”

“ In fine, a man who needed only the spur of ambition, or the stroke of calamity, to achieve a respectable success. It is said that Pitt early bade him fix his gaze on the Speaker’s chair, to which, in fact, he helped him in 1789, after Grenville’s retirement. But, for the present, nothing stirred Addington’s nature from its exasperating calm. As worldly inducements failed, Pitt finally made trial of poetry. During a ride together to Pitt’s seat at Holwood, the statesman sought in vain to appeal to his ambition ”

“ 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. ”

“ These passages explain why the personality of Pitt attracted all that was purest and most patriotic in the public life of England. Men might disagree with particular actions, but they saw in him the saving genius of the State ”

“ A statesman should know more than a part of human life; and Pitt never realized the full extent of his powers because he spent his time almost entirely amongst politicians of the same school. His mind, though by no means closed against new ideas, lacked the eager inquisitiveness of that of Napoleon, who, before the process of imperial fossilization set in, welcomed discussions with men of all shades of opinion, and encouraged in them that frankness of utterance which at once widens and clarifies the views of the disputants. It is true that Pitt's private conversations are almost unknown. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Shelburne's glittering unreality, his showy unreliability, were to have no place in Pitt's scheme of things. Abandoned by Temple, abandoning Shelburne, Pitt went his own way, doing the best he could in the face {237} of tremendous odds and doing it very well. One of his first acts of office was to bring in an India Bill of his own, which was decisively defeated in the Commons. For some months Pitt fought his hard and thankless fight as a minister with a minority behind him. At last, in the end of March, he saw his opportunity for a dissolution and resolved to take it. ”

“ As the political thermometer rose towards fever point through the years 1792–3, Government kept closer watch upon the political [Pg 171] Societies; but for a long time Pitt took no action against them. It seems probable that, if they had confined themselves to their professed programme (that of the Westminster Reformers of 1780) he would have remained passive. He did not prosecute those which in November 1792 congratulated the French Convention on the triumph of its arms in Belgium and the advent of a Gallic millennium. What, then, were the developments which met with his stern opposition? ”

“ Here, as in other parts of this philanthropic movement, Pitt displayed little or no initiative. To the cause of abolition he gave the support of his eloquence and his influence in Parliament; but he gave no decided lead in these and cognate efforts, a fact which somewhat detracts from his greatness as a statesman in this formative period. The merit of starting the movement and of utilizing new openings belongs to the Quakers, to Granville Sharp, Clarkson, Wilberforce and his friends. ”

“ Pitt was a younger brother of no great family, as I believe the founder of it was Governor Pitt his grandfather, commonly known by the name of Diamond Pitt, on account of a vast large diamond which he obtained I know not how in the East Indies. I have never had an opportunity of inquiring much about his family or origin; but if they were not remarkable for their rank or property, they must have been so for their talents. It is no scandal to say there was a great degree of madness in the family ”