sir 



PITT, WILLIAM, EARL OP CHATHAM. 



PITT, WILLIAM, EARL OF CHATHAM. 



813 



uxl the hrad of a new administration, with bii friend Grenville for 

 secretary of mate ; but it was found that this project could not be 

 carrie<l through, and four days afterwards Pel ham and all his colleagues 

 were again in the occupation of their several offices. On the 22nd 

 Pitt w appointed one of the joint vice-treasurers for Ireland, and 

 on the Cth of May following lie was promoted to the more lucrative 

 office of paymaster-general. After each of these appointment* he was 

 (elected for Old Sarum. To the next parliament however, which 

 met in November 1747, he was returned by the influence of the 

 government for Seaford, one of the Cinque Ports. On this occasion 

 the Duke of Newcastle is said to hare personally interfered in the 

 election in the most open manner ; but when the return was petitioned 

 against OD this account, Mr. Pitt, according to the report of the debate, 

 " treated the petition with great contempt, and turned it into a mere 

 jest;" and the motion for its being taken into consideration was 

 negatived by a great majority. The opposition in fact was now 

 reduced to a helplessly inconsiderable fraction of the house. 



A few years before, Pitt's pecuniary circumstances had been rendered 

 much easier by a legacy of 10,0002. left to him by the Duchess of 

 Marlborough, " in reward," as her will expressed it, "for the noble 

 disinterestedness with which he had maintained the authority of the 

 laws, and prevented the ruin of his country." He hod thereupon 

 resigned bis post in the household of the Prince of Wales, and indeed 

 had separated himself entirely from his royal highness, who still 

 remained the recognised head of the opposition, such as it was, till 

 his death in March 1751. Mr. Pitt distinguished himself in his new 

 place by an honourable disdain of certain sources of emolument of 

 which hU predecessors had been accustomed to avail themselves ; and 

 also by the frank and courageous style in which he went on urging 

 and defending the course of national policy, especially in relation to 

 foreign affairs, which his previous parliamentary life had been spent 

 in opposing and reprobatin .-. 



The discussions upon the Regency Bill, which in this session 

 followed the death of the Prince of Wales, first brought out that 

 opposition between Pitt and Henry Fox (afterwards the first Lord 

 Holland) which not only made them rivals during their lives, but 

 gave rise to a competition for the chief power in the state in which 

 their two celebrated sons also spent their days. For the present the 

 influence of the Pelham section of the cabinet, which Pitt represented, 

 prevailed over that of the Bedford section, which supported Fox. 

 Fox himself, who was secretary at war, kept his place, as well as Pitt ; 

 but his patron the Duke of Bedford resigned, along with one or two 

 friends who also belonged to the cabinet, and whose seats were imme- 

 diately filled by connections or dependants of the Pelhams. The 

 arrangements now motle subsisted till the sudden death of Mr. Pelham 

 in March 1754, upon which the Duke of Newcastle vita appointed first 

 lord of the treasury and premier. A few weeks after the parliament 

 was dissolved. This year Pitt drew closer bis connection with the 

 Qrenvilles by his marriage with Hester, sister of the Right Hon. 

 George Grenville, and of his brother, the then Viscount Cobbam, 

 afterwards Earl Temple. 



To the new parliament, which met in November 1754, Pitt was 

 returned for the Duke of Newcastle's borough of Aldborough in York- 

 shire. Before the end of the session however a complete breach had 

 taken place between Pitt and bis grace, which ended, after about a 

 year, in a reconstruction of the government. On the 15th of Novem- 

 ber 1755 Fox was appointed secretary of state, and five days after 

 Pitt and his friend Grcuville both received intimations that his Majesty 

 had no further occasion for their 'services. But after about another 

 year Newcastle, already deserted by Fox, found it necessary to resign 

 position for which the nearly unanimous voice of the public had 

 pronounced him unfit, and his occupation of which bad only been 

 HiKnalised by a series of national disasters and disgraces. In this 

 crisis of affairs the king, after a thort struggle, found it necessary to 

 call in the popular favourite ; and although the office of first lord of 

 the treasury was given for the present to the Duke of Devonshire, 

 Pitt, appointed secretary of state, became the actual premier, with a 

 cabinet consisting of bis personal friends and the other chief members 

 of his party, in December 1756. He was now returned both for the 

 town of Buckingham and for Oakbainpton, and chose to sit for the 

 Utter. But this first ministry of Pitt's lasted only for a few months. 

 The king's old aversion had not been weakened by the manner in 

 which the nun of the people bad been forced upon his acceptance ; 

 and in April of the year following (1757) his Majesty abruptly sent 

 Lord Temple his dismissal from the post he held of first lord of tbe 

 Admiralty an act which was immediately followed, as must have 

 been foreseen and designed, by Mr. Pitt's resignation. For two 

 months and a half the country remained without a government, 

 during which time the court applied in succession to almost every 

 section of party-men in the country, without being able to prevail 

 upon any individual to undertake the management of affairs. At 

 last, on the llth of June, Lord Man.ficM received full powers from 

 his Majesty to open noiroriations with Mr. Pitt and the Duke of New- 

 castle, the result of which was that before tbe end of tho mouth l'itt 

 was again premier, with the seals of secretary of state. Newcastle 

 was re-appointed first lord of the treasury ; Pitt's friendi, Earl 

 Temple, Ueorgo Orenville, and Mr. Legge, became respectively lord 

 privy seal, treasurer of the navy, and chancellor of the exchequer; 



Mr. Fox was made paymaster of the forces ; and even Lord Oranville 

 obtained a seat in this comprehensive cabinet as president of the 

 council. Upon this new appointment Mr. Pitt was chosen member 

 for Bath, for which he was also returned to the next parliament, 

 which met in November 1761,' and which was the last place he 

 represented. 



The detail of the brilliant military successes which distinguished 

 Mr. 1'itt's administration belongs to the general history of the country, 

 but an enumeration of the principal results of his conduct of tho war 

 may be found in the article on UEOROE II. Tbe new reign however 

 brought along with it tbe ascendancy in the cabinet of Lord Bute and 

 bis friends [Him:, EARL or, and GEORUE III.] ; and on tbe 5th of 

 October 1761, a few weeks before the meeting of parliament, Mr. l'itt, 

 on tbe refusal of his colleagues to acquiesce in his proposition of 

 declaring war against Spain, resigned, along with his friend Karl 

 Temple, the only member of the cabinet who had supported his views. 

 On bis retirement a pension of 30002. a year for the lives of himself, 

 his wife, and his eldest son, was conferred on Pitt, and his wife was 

 made a peeress with the title of Baroness Chatham. These honours 

 and rewards did not increase the popularity of the Ute premier. 



In his new position nevertheless Pitt acted a sufficiently iudependent 

 part. Without engaging in any factious opposition, but on the contrary 

 giving a general suppoit to the government, he directed his eloquence 

 against certain of their measures with all his old energy and fervour. 

 In particular he denounced tbe preliminaries of peace signed in 

 November 1762 ; resisted as far as he could, though ineffectually, the 

 famous bill for extending the excise regulations to the manufacture 

 and sale of cider, brought forward in the same session ; and the next 

 session took a conspicuous part in maintaining against ministers the 

 illegality of general warrants on the proceedings that arose out of the 

 affair of Wilkes and bis ' North Briton.' Before this lost question 

 arose, the premiership, by the sudden resignation of Lord Bute in 

 April 1763, had fallen for a time into the hands of George Grenville, 

 who had continued in office when his brother Lord Temple and l'itt 

 bad retired in October 1761, and had ever since remained separated 

 from his old friends. In September 1763 an attempt had been made 

 to bring Pitt again into the cabinet, but he declined the overtures 

 made to him when he found he was not to have the first place : and 

 when parliament met in November the head of the ministry was 

 considered to be the Duke of Bedford, who, on the failure of the 

 uegociation with Pitt, bad been appointed to the office of president of 

 the council. 



Another attempt which the king mode in May 1705 to obtain the 

 assistance of Mr. Pitt in forming a new cabinet proved equally unsuc- 

 cessful with the lost, and so did a renewal of it in June following. 

 The result of these negociatipus was the accession of the Buckingham 

 administration, in which Pitt had no place, but whose meaiures 

 generally had his support, although in the debate on the address in 

 January 1 766 he declared that he could not give them bis confidence, 

 adding, while he bowed to the treasury bench, " Pardon me, gentlemen, 

 confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom ; youth is the 

 season of credulity." It was upon this occasion that bo announced 

 his peculiar view of the constitutional question involved in the dispute 

 already begun with America : " It is my opinion," he said, " that 

 this kingdom baa no right to levy a tax upon the colonies. At the 

 same time I assert tbe authority of this kingdom over the colonies to 

 be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of government and 

 legislation whatsoever. Taxation is no part of the governing or legis- 

 lative power. The taxes are a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons 

 alone. In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike concerned ; 

 but the concurrence of the peers and the crown to a tax is only 

 necessary to close with the form of a law. The gift and grant is of the 

 Commons alone." To this singular and not very intelligible theory 

 Pitt clung to the end of his days, dying indeed, it may be said, iu the 

 utterance and vindication of it. 



Meanwhile in the difficulties to which this ministry also soon found 

 itself reduced, another application was made to Pitt, so early as tho 

 end of February 1766. At that time it came to nothing, but tbe 

 attempt was renewed after a few mouths ; and in the end Pitt received 

 a ' carte blanche ' to frame a new cabinet, which was completed about 

 tbe beginning of August. And a very extraordinary piece of handy- 

 work it turned out. " He made an administration," as Burke has said 

 in a famous passage, " so chequered and speckled : he put together a 

 piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed ; a 

 cabinet eo variously inlaid ; such a piece of diversified mosaic ; such a 

 tessellated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and 

 there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers, king's friends and repub- 

 licans, Whigs and Tories, treacherous friends and open enemies, that 

 it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and 

 unsure to stand on." What most astonished the public in the whole 

 arrangement was tbe manner in which Pitt disposed of himself : he 

 appropriated the almost sinecure place of lord privy seal, and. 1< aving 

 the old scene of his glory, went to the Upper House as Viscount Pitt 

 and Earl of Chatham. " The joko hero is," wrote Lord Chesterfield 

 to a friend on the occasion, " that ho has had a fall ujsiairs, and has 

 done himself so much hurt that he will never be able to stand upon 

 his legs again." 



We cannot enter into the history of the rickety administration thus 



