William Pitt and national revival E-Book

J. Holland Rose

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

IN the course of the session of 1782, when the American War was dragging to its disastrous close and a change of Ministers was imminent, one of the youngest members of the House of Commons declared that he would accept no subordinate office in a new administration. At the close of 1783, during a crisis of singular intensity, he became Chief Minister of the Crown, and thenceforth, with one short interval, controlled the destinies of Great Britain through twenty-two years marked by grave complications, both political and financial, social and diplomatic, ending in wars of unexampled magnitude. Early in the year 1806 he died of exhaustion, at the age of forty-seven. In these bald statements we may sum up the outstanding events of the life of William Pitt the Younger, which it is my aim to describe somewhat in detail.

Leseprobe

WILLIAM PITTAND NATIONAL REVIVAL

Emery Walker Ph. sc.

William Pitt as Chancellor of the Exchequer from a painting by T. Gainsborough

WILLIAM PITTANDNATIONAL REVIVAL

BYJ. HOLLAND ROSE, Litt.D.

A rarer spirit never

Did steer humanity; but you, gods, will give us

Some faults to make us men.

Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra.

© 2024 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385745929

PREFACE

I

n

this volume I seek to describe the work of national revival carried out by William Pitt the Younger up to the time of the commencement of friction with Revolutionary France, completing the story of his life in a volume entitled “William Pitt and the Great War.” No apology is needed for an attempt to write a detailed description of his career. The task has not been essayed since the year 1862, when the fifth Earl Stanhope published his monumental work; and at that time the archives of the Foreign Office, War Office, Admiralty, and Home Office were not open for research in the period in question. Excellent monographs on Pitt were given to the world by Lord Rosebery and Mr. Charles Whibley in the years 1891 and 1906, but they were too brief to admit of an adequate treatment of the masses of new materials relating to that career. Of late these have been greatly augmented by the inclusion among the national archives of the Pitt Manuscripts, which comprise thousands of letters and memoranda hitherto little used. In recent years also the records of the Foreign Office and Home Office have become available for study, and at many points have yielded proofs of the influence which Pitt exerted on the foreign and domestic policy of Great Britain. Further, by the great kindness of the Countess Stanhope and Mr. E. G. Pretyman, M.P., I was enabled to utilize the Pitt Manuscripts preserved at Chevening and Orwell Park; and both His Grace the Duke of Portland and the Earl of Harrowby generously placed at my disposal unpublished correspondence of Pitt with their ancestors. These new sources render it necessary to reconstruct no small portion of his life.

Among recent publications bearing on this subject, the most important is that of “The Manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue, Esq.,” preserved at Dropmore (Hist. MSS. Comm., 7 vols., 1892–1910), the seventh volume of which comprises details respecting the death of Pitt. This collection, containing many new letters of George III, Pitt, Lord Grenville, and British ambassadors, has proved of incalculable service. Many Memoirs, both English and foreign, have appeared of late. Among foreign historians who have dealt with this period, Sorel holds the first place; but his narrative is often defective on English affairs, to which he gave too little attention. The recent monograph of Dr. Felix Salomon on the early part of Pitt’s career (Leipzig, 1901), and those of Herren Beer, Heidrich, Luckwaldt, Uhlmann, Vivenot, and Wittichen on German affairs, have been of service, as well as those of Ballot, Chassin, and Pallain on Anglo-French relations. The bias of Lecky against Pitt detracts somewhat from the value of the latter part of his work, “England in the Eighteenth Century”; and I have been able to throw new light on episodes which he treated inadequately.

Sometimes my narrative may seem to diverge far from the immediate incidents of the life of Pitt; but the enigmas in which it abounds can be solved only by a study of the policy of his rivals or allies at Paris, The Hague, Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. These questions have not received due attention from English students; for Lecky did not treat the period 1793–1800 except in regard to Irish affairs. Accordingly, while by no means neglecting the private and social life of Pitt, I have sought in this volume to describe his achievements during the period dominated by Catharine of Russia, Joseph of Austria, and Mirabeau. That age is also memorable for political, fiscal, and social developments of high interest; and I have dealt with them as fully as possible, often with the aid of new materials drawn from Pitt’s papers. It being impossible to extend the limits of this work, I ask the forbearance of specialists for not treating those problems more fully. It is a biography, not a series of monographs; and I have everywhere sought to keep the figure of Pitt in the foreground. New letters of George III, Pitt, Grenville, Windham, Burke, Canning, etc., which could only be referred to here, will be published in a volume entitled “Pitt and Napoleon Miscellanies,” containing also essays and notes.

I wish to thank not only those whose generous assistance I have already acknowledged, but also Mr. Hubert Hall, of the Public Record Office, for advice given during my researches; the Rev. William Hunt, D.Litt., for a thorough recension of the proofs of this work; the Masters of Trinity College and Peterhouse, Cambridge; Professor Firth, and Mr. G. P. Gooch, M.A., for valued suggestions; the Ven. Archdeacon Cunningham and Mr. Hewins for assistance on economic subjects; M. Raymond Guyot and Herr Doctor Luckwaldt for information on French and German affairs; also Mr. E. G. Pretyman, M.P., for permission to reproduce the portrait of the first Countess of Chatham; Mr. R. A. Tatton, for similar permission to include Gainsborough’s portrait of William Pitt; and last, but not least, Mr. A. M. Broadley for the communication of new letters relating to Pitt and his friends.

J. H. R.

February 1911.

CONTENTS

WILLIAM PITT AND NATIONAL REVIVAL

PREFACE

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS OF THE TITLES OF THE CHIEF WORKS REFERRED TO IN THIS VOLUME

ERRATA

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

FOOTNOTES

INDEX

ABBREVIATIONS OF THE TITLES OF THE CHIEF WORKS REFERRED TO IN THIS VOLUME

ERRATA

On page 157, l. 23, for “Richard” read “Thomas.”

On page 267, ad fin., for “Bob” read “Tom.”

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF WILLIAM PITT

INTRODUCTION

ENGLAND AT THE CLOSE OF THE AMERICAN WAR (1780–3)

I think it proper before I commence my proposed work to pass under review the condition of the capital, the temper of the armies, the attitude of the provinces, and the elements of weakness and strength which existed throughout the whole Empire, so that we may become conversant, not only with the vicissitudes and issues of events, which are often matters of chance, but also with their relations and causes.—Tacitus, The History, bk. i, ch. iv.

I

n

the course of the session of 1782, when the American War was dragging to its disastrous close and a change of Ministers was imminent, one of the youngest members of the House of Commons declared that he would accept no subordinate office in a new administration. At the close of 1783, during a crisis of singular intensity, he became Chief Minister of the Crown, and thenceforth, with one short interval, controlled the destinies of Great Britain through twenty-two years marked by grave complications, both political and financial, social and diplomatic, ending in wars of unexampled magnitude. Early in the year 1806 he died of exhaustion, at the age of forty-seven. In these bald statements we may sum up the outstanding events of the life of William Pitt the Younger, which it is my aim to describe somewhat in detail.

Before reviewing his antecedents and the course of his early life, I propose to give some account of English affairs in the years when he entered on his career, so that we may picture him in his surroundings, realize the nature of the difficulties that beset him, and, as it were, feel our way along some of the myriad filaments which connect an individual with the collective activities of his age.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, died in 1778. His second son, named after him, began his political career at the close of the year 1780, when he was elected Member of Parliament for Appleby. The decade which then began marks a turning point in British history. Then for the first time the old self-contained life was shaken to its depths by forces of unsuspected power. Democracy, Athene-like, sprang to maturity in the New World, and threatened the stability of thrones in the Old World. For while this militant creed won its first triumphs over the soldiery of George III, it began also to colour the thoughts and wing the aspirations of the masses, especially in France, so that, even if the troops of Washington had been vanquished, the rising tide of thought would none the less have swept away the outworn barriers of class. The march of armies may be stayed; that of thought never.

The speculations enshrined in the “Social Contract” of Rousseau and the teachings of the Encyclopaedists contained much that was crude, or even false. Nevertheless, they gave an impulse such as no age ever had known, and none perhaps ever will know again. The course of the American War of Independence and the foundation of a State based on distinctly democratic principles proved that the new doctrines might lead to very practical results. The young giant now stood rooted in mother-earth.

Side by side with this portent in the world of thought and politics there came about another change. Other centuries have witnessed experiments in the direction of democracy; but in none have social speculations and their results been so closely accompanied by mechanical inventions of wonder-working potency. Here we touch on the special characteristics of the modern world. It is the product of two Revolutions, one political, the other mechanical. The two movements began and developed side by side. In 1762 Rousseau gave to the world his “Contrat Social,” the Bible of the French Revolutionists; while only two years later Hargreaves, a weaver of Blackburn, produced his spinning-jenny. In 1769 Arkwright patented his spinning-frame, and Watt patented his separate condenser. The year 1776 is memorable alike for the American Declaration of Independence, and for the publication of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.” In 1779 the Lancashire weaver, Crompton, produced his “mule-jenny,” a vast improvement on the machines of Arkwright and Hargreaves. The year 1785 witnessed not only the Diamond-Necklace scandal, so fatal to the prestige of the French monarchy, but also the patenting of Watt’s double-acting steam-engine and Cartwright’s “power loom.” In the year 1789, which sounded the knell of the old order of things on the Continent, there appeared the first example of the modern factory, spinning-machinery being then driven by steam power in Manchester. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, when the democratic movement had for the time gone astray and spent its force, the triumphs of science and industry continued peacefully to revolutionize human life. In 1803, the year of the renewal of war with France, William Radcliffe of Stockport greatly increased the efficiency of the power loom, and thereby cheapened the production of cloth. Finally, the year 1814 ought to be remembered, not only for the first abdication of Napoleon, but also for that peaceful and wholly beneficent triumph, George Stephenson’s “No. 1,” Killingworth locomotive.1

The list might be extended far beyond the limits of the period treated in this work, but enough has been said to show that the democratic and industrial forces closely synchronized at the outset, and that while the former waned the latter waxed more and more, proving in the years 1830–2 the most potent ally of English reformers in efforts which Pitt and his friends had failed to carry through in the years 1780–5. So intimate an interaction of new and potent forces had never been seen in the history of man. In truth no one but a sciolist will venture to ascribe the problems of the present age solely to the political movement which found its most powerful expression in the French Revolution. Only those can read aright the riddle of the modern sphinx who have ears for both her tones, who hearken not only to the shouts of leaders and the roar of mobs, but also listen for the multitudinous hum of the workshop, the factory, and the mine.

* * * * *

The lot of William Pitt the Younger was cast in the years when both these revolutions began their mighty work. The 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; from his Pisgah-mount he could only warn, and vainly warn, the dwellers in the plain below. His son was destined to enter that unknown land; and he entered it when his people were burdened by debt, disaster, and disgrace.

What were the material resources of the nation? Were they equal to the strain imposed by a disastrous war? Could they resist the subtly warping influences of the coming age? The questions closely concern us in our present inquiry. For the greatness of a statesman is not to be assessed merely by an enumeration of his legislative, diplomatic, and warlike successes. There is a truer method of valuation than this haphazard avoir-dupois. It consists in weighing his achievements against his difficulties.

It is well, therefore, to remember that the British people of the year 1780 was a small and poor people, if we compare it not merely with modern standards (a method fallacious for the present inquiry), but with the burdens which it had to bear. The population of England and Wales at that time has been computed a little over 7,800,000; that of Scotland was perhaps about 1,400,000. That of Ireland is even less known. The increase of population in England and Wales during the years 1770–80 exceeded eight per cent., a rate less, indeed, than that of the previous decade, which had been one of abounding prosperity, but surpassing that of any previous period for which credible estimates can be framed.2

The wealth of the nation seems also to have suffered little decline; and after the conclusion of peace in 1783 it showed a surprising elasticity owing to causes which will soon be considered. But in the years 1780–3 there was a universal conviction that the burden of debt and taxation was unendurable. Parliament in 1781 voted the enormous sum of £25,353,857 for Ways and Means, an increase of £814,060 on the previous year. As the finances and debt of Ireland were kept entirely separate up to the end of the century, this burden fell upon some 9,200,000 persons, and involved a payment of about £2 15s. per head, an amount then deemed absolutely crushing.

But two important facts should be remembered: firstly, that the investments of British capital in oversea undertakings, which are now enormous, were (apart from the British East and West Indies) practically non-existent in the year 1780, Great Britain being then an almost self-sufficing unit financially; secondly, that modern methods of taxation are less expensive in the collection and less burdensome to the taxpayer than those prevalent in that non-scientific era. The revenue of 1781 included the following items: £12,480,000 for “Annuities and Lottery,” £2,788,000 for “Certain Surpluses of the Sinking Fund,” £2,000,000 Bank Charter, and so on. Only about one fourth of the requisite amount was raised by means that would now be considered sound.3

The National Debt was then reckoned at £177,206,000; and the annual interest, amounting to £6,812,000, ate up considerably more than one fourth of the “bloated estimates” of that year. The burden of debt seemed appalling to that generation; and the Three per cent. Consols sank from 60¼ in January 1781 to 55 in November. But further blows were soon to be dealt by Ministers at the nation’s credit; and the same stock ranged between 56 and 58 when William Pitt became Prime Minister in December 1783. Predictions of national bankruptcy were freely indulged in; and it should be remembered that Great Britain, vanquished by a mighty Coalition and bereft of her most valuable colonies, seemed far more likely to sink into the gulf of bankruptcy than triumphant France. The events of the next six years turned essentially on the management of the finances of the rival Powers by Pitt and by the Controllers-General of Versailles. Apart from the personal questions at issue, the history of that time affords the most instructive proof that victory may bear within itself the seeds of future disease and collapse; while a wise use of the lessons of adversity may lead the vanquished to a lease of healthier life.

* * * * *

If we turn our gaze away from the material resources of Great Britain to the institutions and sentiments of our forefathers, there will appear many bizarre contrasts and perplexing symptoms. At first sight the self-contained, unreceptive, torpid society of the Georgian era might appear to be wholly unfitted to bear the triple strain of a serious national disaster, and of the warping influences of the new democracy and the new industrialism. The situation was indeed most alarming: “What a dismal fragment of an Empire!” wrote Horace Walpole in June 1780, “Yet would that moment were come when we are to take a survey of our ruins.” In truth, had the majority of Britons been addicted to morbidly introspective broodings, they would have been undone. There are times when a nation is saved by sheer stolidity; and this characteristic alike in monarch and people, which was responsible for the prolongation of the war, helped to avert collapse at its close. The course of the narrative will show that the brains of Englishmen were far from equal to the task of facing the problems of the age then dawning; but Englishmen were equal to the task of bearing the war-burdens manfully, and thus were able to supply the material out of which Pitt, aided by the new manufacturing forces, could work financial marvels.

Then again, British institutions offered that happy mixture of firmness and adaptability which at many crises has been the salvation of the race. Had they been as rigid as those of Sparta they must have cracked and fallen asunder; had they been as fluid as those of Athens they might have mouldered away. But, like the structure of English society of which they form the framework, they lend themselves to reverent restoration, and thwart all efforts at reckless innovation. Sir Henry Maine happily assessed the worth of this truly national safeguard in the statement that our institutions had, however undesignedly, arrived at a state in which satisfaction and impatience, the chief sources of political conduct, were adequately called into play. Of this self-adjusting process Pitt, at least during the best years of his career, was to be the sage director.

There were many reasons why Englishmen should be a prey alternately to feelings of satisfaction and discontent. Instinct and tradition bade them be loyal to the throne and to the institutions of their fathers. Reason and reflection bade them censure the war policy of George III and the means whereby he sought to carry it through to the bitter end. St. Stephen’s, Westminster, had been the shrine of the nation’s liberties; it now, so Burke declared, threatened them with a slow and inglorious extinction. Obedience to the laws had ever been the pride of the nation; but now that virtue might involve subservience to a corrupt and greedy faction.

Yet however great the provocations, Britons were minded to right these wrongs in their own way, and not after the fashions set at Geneva or Paris. In truth they had one great advantage denied to Continental reformers. At Paris reform almost necessarily implied innovation; for, despite the dictum of Burke to the contrary, it is safe to say that the relics of the old constitution of France offered no adequate basis on which to reconstruct her social and political fabric. In England the foundations and the walls were in good repair. The structure needed merely extension, not rebuilding. Moreover, British reformers were by nature and tradition inclined towards tentative methods and rejected wholesale schemes. Even in the dull years of George II the desire for a Reform of Parliament was not wholly without expression; and now, at the time of the American War, the desire became a demand, which nearly achieved success. In fact, the Reform programme of 1780 satisfied the aspirations of the more moderate men, even in the years 1791–4, when the excitements of the French Revolution, and the writings of Thomas Paine for a time popularized the levelling theories then in vogue at Paris.

Certainly, before the outbreak of the French Revolution, the writings of Continental thinkers had little vogue in Great Britain. The “Social Contract” of Rousseau was not widely known, and its most noteworthy theses, despite the fact that they were borrowed from Hobbes and Locke, aroused no thrill of sympathy. This curious fact may be explained by the innate repugnance of the islanders alike to the rigidly symmetrical form in which the Genevese prophet clothed his dogmas, and to the Jacobins’ claim for them of universal applicability. The very qualities which carried conviction to the ardent and logic-loving French awakened doubts among the cooler northern folk.

Then again, however sharp might be the resentment against George III for this or that action, national sentiment ran strongly in the traditional channels. After the collapse of the Stuart cause loyalty to the throne and to the dynasty was the dominant feeling among all classes. As Burke finely said of the Tories after the accession of George III, “they changed their idol but they preserved their idolatry.” The personality of George III was such as to help on this transformation. A certain bonhomie, as of an English squire, set off by charm of manner and graciousness of speech,4 none too common in that class, went to the hearts of all who remembered the outlandish ways of the first two Georges. Furthermore, his morals were distinctly more reputable than theirs, as was seen at the time of his youth, when he withstood the wiles strewn in his path by several ladies of the Court with a frankness worthy of the Restoration times.5 His good sense, straightforwardness, and his love of country life and of farming endeared him both to the masses of the people and to the more select circles which began to learn from Versailles the cult of Rousseau and the charms of butter making. Queen Charlotte, a princess of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, also set her face against vice and extravagance, but in a primly austere manner which won few to the cause of virtue. Domesticity in her ceased to be alluring. Idle tongues wagged against her even when she sought to encourage the wearing of dresses woven in Spitalfields rather than those of ever-fashionable Paris; or again, when she prohibited the wearing of ostrich feathers at Court.6

The reader will fail to understand the political life of that time and the difficulties often besetting Pitt until he grasps the fact that George III not only reigned but governed. His long contest with the Whig factions left him victor; and it is singular that the shortsightedness of the elder Pitt signally aided the King in breaking up their power. Both of them aimed at overthrowing the supremacy of the old Whig families, but it was George III who profited by the efforts of the Earl of Chatham.7 The result was seen in the twelve years of almost personal rule (1770–82), during which Lord North and the well-fed phalanx of the King’s Friends bade fair to make the House of Commons the mere instrument of the royal will. The King’s influence, impaired for a time by the disasters of the American War, asserted itself again at the time of the Lord George Gordon Riots in June 1780. That outbreak of bigotry and rascality for a time paralyzed with fear both Ministers and magistrates; but while all around him faltered, George III held firm and compelled the authorities to act.8 The riots were quelled, but not before hundreds of drunken desperadoes had perished in the flames which they had kindled. Those who saw large parts of London ablaze long retained a feeling of horror at all popular movements, and looked upon George III as the saviour of society. This it was, in part, which enabled him to retain his influence scarcely impaired even by the disasters of the American War. The monarchy stood more firmly rooted than at any time since the reign of Queen Anne. Jacobitism survived among a few antiquated Tories, like Dr. Johnson, as a pious belief or a fashionable affectation; but even in the year 1763 the lexicographer, after receiving a pension from George III, avowed to Boswell that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover and of drinking King James’s health was amply overbalanced by an income of three hundred pounds.

As a sign of the reality of the royal power, we may note that public affairs were nearly at a stand-still at the time of the lunacy of George III (November 1788 to February 1789). The following Foreign Office despatch, sent to the British Ambassador at Berlin at a critical time in our diplomatic relations, shows that Pitt and the Foreign Secretary, the Marquis of Carmarthen, considered themselves the King’s Secretaries of State, and unable to move until the royal will was known:

Whitehall, January 6 1789.

To Mr. Ewart,

Sir,

I have received your letters up to No. 93, but I have not any commands to convey to you at present, the unhappy situation of His Majesty’s health making it impossible for me to lay them before him. The present situation of this country renders it impossible for me to send you any particular or precise instructions. I trust, however, that the system for supplying the present unfortunate interruption in the executive part of the Government will be speedily completed, at least with as little delay as the importance of the object will admit of, and which, being once more formed, will of course restore that part of the Constitution to its usual energy and effect.9

Ewart and our other ambassadors were therefore urged to mark time as energetically as might be; and no orders were sent to them until after 17th February 1789, when the King began to recover.

At ordinary times, then, the King’s authority was looked upon as essential to the working of the Government, a fact which explains the eager interest, even of men not place-hunters, in the Regency disputes of 1788–9. In truth, the monarchy was the central fact of the nation’s life; and, as it acquired stedfastness from the personal popularity of George III, the whole of the edifice had a solidity unknown in the years 1680–1760.10

* * * * *

Montesquieu praised the English constitution as providing without undue friction a balance of power between King, Lords, and Commons. This judgment (penned in 1748) still held good, though the royal authority had in the meantime certainly increased. But the power of the nobles was still very great. They largely controlled the House of Commons. The Lowthers secured the election of 11 Members in the Lake District; and through the whole country 71 Peers were able directly to nominate, and secure the election of, 88 commoners, while they powerfully influenced the return of 72 more. If we include all landowners, whether titled on untitled, it appears that they had the power to nominate 487 members out of the 658 who formed the House of Commons.

In these days, when the thought and activities of the towns overbear those of the country districts, we cry out against a system that designedly placed power in the hands of nobles and squires. But we must remember that the country then far outweighed the towns in importance; that the produce of the soil was far more valuable than all the manufactures; and that stability and stolidity are the characteristics of an ancient society, based on agriculture and reared in Feudalism. If we except that metropolitan orgy, the Wilkes’ affair, London and Westminster were nearly as torpid politically as Dorset. Even in the year 1791 the populace of Manchester and Birmingham blatantly exulted in a constitution which left them without any direct voice in Parliament. It was in the nature of things that Grampound, Old Sarum, Gatton, and Castle Rising should return eight members; the choice of the Tudor Sovereigns had lit upon those hamlets or villages as test-places for consulting the will of the nation, and the nation acquiesced, because, even if Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Sheffield had enjoyed that privilege, they would probably have sent up country gentlemen of the same type, and after a far greater output of money and beer. Where the will of the nation is almost entirely homogeneous there is no injustice in selecting representatives by the haphazard methods then in use.

Strong in their control of Parliament, the nobles sought to hem in the throne by meshes of influence through which even the masterful and pertinacious George III could with difficulty break. Their circle was small. True, they had failed in their effort of 1719 to limit the number of creations at any one time to six; but jealousy had almost the force of law. Ultimately we find George III declining to confer a dukedom on any but princes of the blood, and Pitt incurred the displeasure of his cousin, Earl Temple, because he failed to bend the royal will on that question. The need of caution in respect to the granting of titles may be inferred from the Pitt Papers, no small part of which refer to requests for these honours. Pitt has been reproached with his lavish use of this governmental device, for he created about 140 peerages in the years 1783–1801. I have, however, found proofs that he used it reluctantly. In the Pitt Papers are several letters which the statesman wrote refusing requests for peerages. On this matter, as also with regard to places and appointments, he treated any attempt at bargaining with cold disdain, witness this crushing reply to an Irish peer who, in September 1799, applied for a British peerage: “... There is a passage in the conclusion of your Lordship’s letter on which it is impossible for me not to remark that it appears to convey an intimation with respect to what may be your political conduct, which would at all events induce me to decline being the channel of bringing your application before His Majesty.”11

But rebukes and refusals seem to have made little impression on that generation, imbued as it was with a deep-seated belief that the victors had a right to the spoils and should apportion them among their followers according to rank and usefulness. The whole matter was spoken of under the convenient euphemism “influence,” which, when used in a political sense, denoted the secret means for assuring the triumph of the Crown and the reward of the faithful. While not implying actual bribery, it signified persuasion exerted through peerages, places, and pensions. According to this scheme of things, strenuous support of “the King’s cause” would earn a title, a bishopric, a judgeship, or a receivership in the customs or excise. These allurements offered irresistible attractions in an age which offered far fewer means of independent advancement than the present. With the exception of those strange persons who preferred to make their own way in life, men of all classes had their eyes fixed on some longed-for perch above them, and divided their attention between the symptoms of decay in its occupant and the signs of the favour of its patron. The expectant part of Society resembled a gigantic hen-roost at the approach of evening, except that the aspirations upward were not signs of quiescence but of ill-suppressed unrest. Those who delve among the confidential letters of that time must often picture the British nation as a mountain-climber. Perhaps one sixth part of Pitt’s time was taken up in reading and answering requests of bewildering variety. College friends dunned him with requests for preferment, with or without cure of souls. Rectors longed to be canons; canons to be deans; deans to be bishops; and wealthy bishops coveted sinecure deaneries, among which, curiously enough, that of London was the greatest prize. The infection spread to all classes. Gaugers of beer longed to be collectors of His Majesty’s revenue; faithful grooms confidently expected a gaugership; and elderly fishermen, who in their day had intercepted smugglers, demanded, as of right, the post of harbourmaster. A Frenchman once defended the old régime on the ground that it ranged all classes about the King in due gradations of privilege. Similarly Britons of their own free will grouped themselves around the throne on steps of expectancy.

A curious example of the motives which led to influential requests for preferment in the Church is to be found in the correspondence of the Marquis of Carmarthen (afterwards Duke of Leeds), who was at that time Foreign Secretary under Pitt. His letter to his chief may speak for itself:

Private.

Grosvenor Square, Nov. 13 1787.12

My dear Sir,

I fear it will not be in my power to return to Hollwood to-day, by which I shall be prevented from so soon troubling you viva voce with the only subject I do not like to converse with you upon, viz., asking for Preferment. But my anxiety for my friend Jackson, and understanding that the Bishopric of Chester is not yet given away, will, I hope, plead my excuse to you for asking it for him, and perhaps you may forgive me adding that from local circumstances that preferment in his hands would be particularly agreeable to me, on account of a large part of my northern property being situated in the Diocese of Chester. I do assure you that a compliance with this request would make me truly happy.

Believe me, etc.Carmarthen.

Reverting to matters which are purely secular, we may note that in the year 1783, at the time of Pitt’s assumption of power, the number of English peers was comparatively small, namely about 240, and of these 15, being Roman Catholics, could not sit in Parliament.13

This select aristocracy was preserved from some of the worst evils incident to its station by healthful contact with men and affairs. The reversion of its younger sons to the rank of commoners prevented the formation of the huge caste of nobles, often very poor but always intensely proud, which crusted over the surface of society in Continental lands; and again, the infusion of commoners (generally the ablest governors, soldiers, and lawyers of the age) preserved the Order from intellectual stagnation such as had crept over the old noblesse of France. Both the downward and the upward streams kept the mass free from that decay which sooner or later besets every isolated body. Nor did the British aristocracy enjoy those flagrant immunities from taxation which were the curse of French social and political life.

But let us view this question in a more searching light. Montesquieu finely observes that an aristocracy may maintain its full vigour, if the laws be such as will habituate the nobles more to the perils and fatigues, than to the pleasures, of command.14 In this respect the British aristocracy ran some risk of degeneration. It is true that its members took an active part in public business. Their work in the House of Lords was praiseworthy. The debates there, if less exciting than those of the Commons, bear signs of experience, wisdom, dignity, and self-restraint, which were often lacking in the Lower House. The nobles also took a large share in the executive duties of the State. Not only did they and their younger sons fill most of the public offices, including the difficult, and often thankless, diplomatic posts, but they were active in their counties and on their estates, as lords-lieutenant, sheriffs, and magistrates. The days had not yet come when “Society” fled from the terrors of the English winter. For the most part nobles spent the parliamentary vacations at their country seats, sharing in the duties and sports which from immemorial times had knit our folk into a compact and sturdy whole. Yet we may question whether the pleasures of command did not then far exceed its perils and fatigues. Apart from the demoralizing struggle for higher honours, there were hosts of court and parliamentary sinecures to excite cupidity and encourage laziness. The rush after emoluments and pleasure became keener than ever after the glorious peace of 1763, and a perusal of the letters addressed to any statesman of the following age must awaken a doubt whether public life was less corrupt than at the time of Walpole.

Then, again, in the making and working of laws, the privileges of the nobles and gentry were dangerously large. Throughout the eighteenth century those classes strengthened their grip both on Parliament and on the counties and parishes. Up to the year 1711 no definite property qualification was required from members of Parliament; but in that year a law was passed limiting the right of representing counties to those who owned land worth £600 a year; and a rental of half that sum was expected from members of boroughs. This was equivalent to shutting out merchants and manufacturers, who were often Dissenters, from the county representation; and the system of pocket boroughs further enabled landowners to make a careful choice in the case of a large part of the members of towns. Again, the powers of the magistrates, or justices of the peace, in the affairs of the parish, were extraordinarily large. A French writer, M. Boutmy, computes them as equalling those of the préfet, the conseil d’arrondissement, the maire, the commissaire de police, and the juge de paix, of the French local government of to-day. Of course the Shallows of Pitt’s time did not fulfil these manifold duties at all systematically; for that would be alien to the haphazard ways of the squires and far beyond their talents. Local despotism slumbered as much as it worked; and just as the Armenians prefer the fitful barbarities of the Turks to the ever-grinding pressure of the Russian bureaucracy, so the villagers of George III’s reign may have been no more oppressed than those of France and Italy are by a system fruitful in good works and jobs, in officials and taxes. On this point it is impossible to dogmatize; for the Georgian peasantry was dumb until the years after Waterloo, when Cobbett began to voice its feelings.

The use of the term “despotism” for the rule of the squires is no exaggeration. They were despots in their own domains. Appeals against the rulings of the local magistrates were always costly and generally futile. It was rare to find legal advisers at their side; and the unaided wits of local landowners decided on all the lesser crimes (many of them punishable with death at the assizes) and the varied needs of the district. With the justices of the peace it lay to nominate the guardians of the poor and “visitors,” who supervised the relief of the poor in the new unions of parishes resulting from Gilbert’s Act of 1782. The working of the Draconian game-laws was entirely in their hands, and that, too, in days when the right of sporting with firearms was limited to owners of land worth £100 a year. Finally, lest there should be any community of sentiment between the bench and the dock, at the oft-recurring trials for poaching, the same land and money test was applied to all applicants for the honoured post of magistrate. The country gentlemen ruled the parish and they virtually ruled the nation.15 The fact was proclaimed with characteristic insolence by the Lord Justice Clerk, Macqueen of Braxfield, in his address to the jury at the close of the trial of Thomas Muir for sedition, at Edinburgh in August 1793: “A Government in every country should be just like a Corporation; and in this Country it is made up of the landed interest, which alone has a right to be represented. As for the rabble, who have nothing but personal property, what hold has the nation upon them? What security for the payment of their taxes? They may pack up all their property on their backs and leave the country in the twinkling of an eye. But landed property cannot be removed.”16 The Scottish nobles, especially in the Highlands, still claimed extensive rights over their vassals; and several of them made patriotic use of these powers in raising regiments during the great war with France. Thomas Graham, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, is the best known example of this feudal influence.17

In many districts the squires received unwelcome but powerful support from “nabobs.” Those decades witnessed a steady flight homewards of Indian officials, for the most part gorged with plunder. They became an appreciable force in politics. Reckless of expense so long as they could enter the charmed circle of the higher gentry, they adopted the politics and aped the ways of their betters; so that many a countryside felt the influence of their greed and ostentation. The yeomen and villagers were the victims of their land-hunger; while the small squires (so says Grose in his Olio of the year 1792) often fell in the course of the feverish race for display. As the Roman moralist inveighed against the influx of Syrian ways into the life of his city, so too might Johnson have thundered at the blending of the barbaric profusion of the Orient with the primal simplicity of the old English life.

For the most part, however, that life still showed the tenacity that marks our race. Certainly in Court circles there were no signs of the advent of commercialism, still less of democracy. The distinctions of rank in England seemed very strict, even to a German, who was accustomed to the formalities of the Hanoverian and Rhenish Courts. Count von Kielmansegge in 1761 noted the precision of etiquette at the State balls: “Rank in England is decided exclusively according to class, and not according to service; consequently the duchesses dance first, then marchionesses, then dukes’ daughters, then countesses. Foreigners had no rank at all in England, so they may not dance before the lords and barons.... For this reason foreigners seldom dance at Court.” It was not etiquette for the King and Queen to dance at the state balls; but, even so, the formalism of those functions must have been pyramidal. The same spirit of formality, fortified by a nice sense of the gradations of rank, appears in the rules of a county club at Derby, where the proceedings seem to have been modelled on the sun and planets, the latter being always accompanied by inferior satellites.18

The customs of the beau monde in London were regulated by one all-absorbing preoccupation, that of killing time in a gentlemanly and graceful manner. Fielding, in his “Joseph Andrews,” thus maps out the day of a fop about the middle of the century:

In the morning I rose, took my great stick, and walked out in my green frock, with my hair in papers, and sauntered about till ten. Went to the Auction; told Lady B. she had a dirty face, laughed heartily at something Captain G. said (I can’t remember what, for I did not very well hear it), whispered to Lord ——, bowed to the Duke of ——, and was going to bid for a snuff-box, but did not, for fear I should have had it. From 2 to 4 dressed myself; 4 to 6 dined; 6 to 8 coffee-house; 8 to 9 Drury Lane Playhouse; 10 to 12 Drawing-room.

The sketch of West End life given by Moritz, a Prussian pastor who visited England in 1782, is very similar, but he enters into more detail. He describes fashionable people as walking about all the morning in a négligé attire, “your hair not dressed but merely rolled up in rollers, and in a frock and boots.” The morning lasted till four or five o’clock, then the fashionable time for dinner. The most usual dress in that summer was a coat of very dark blue, a short white waistcoat, and white silk stockings. Black was worn for full dress, and Moritz noticed that the English seemed to prefer dark colours. Dress seemed to him to be one of the chief aims and occupations of our people; and he remarked on the extraordinary vogue which everything French then enjoyed.

One is tempted to pause here and dwell on the singular fact that, at the time when England and France were still engaged in deadly strife, each people should be intent on copying the customs and fashions of the other. The decade of the “eighties” witnessed the growth of “Anglomania” to ridiculous proportions in France; while here the governing class thought it an unfailing proof of good breeding to trick out every other sentence with a French phrase. Swift alone could have done justice to the irony of a situation wherein two great nations wasted their resources in encompassing one another’s ruin, while every day their words and actions bore striking witness to their admiration of the hereditary foe. Is it surprising that Pitt should have used all his efforts in 1786 to bring about an entente cordiale on the basis of the common interests of the two peoples?

To revert to our theme: the frivolities and absurdities of Mayfair, which figure so largely in the diaries and letters of the period, probably filled a smaller space in the life of the nation than we are apt to infer from those sources. Moritz, who had an eye for the homely as well as the courtly side of life, noticed the good qualities which kept the framework of society sound. He remarked that in London, outside the Court circles, the customs were plain and domestic, the people generally dined about three o’clock, and worked hard.19 His tour on foot through the Midlands also gave him the impression that England enjoyed a well-balanced prosperity. He was everywhere pitied or despised, it being assumed that a pedestrian must be a tramp. There can be little doubt that even at the end of that disastrous war, our land was far more prosperous than any of the States of North Germany.

The wealth of the proud islanders was nowhere more obvious than at the chief pleasure resorts of Londoners, Vauxhall and Ranelagh. These gardens and promenades impressed Moritz greatly, and he pronounced the scene at the rotunda at Ranelagh the most brilliant which he had ever witnessed: “The incessant change of faces, the far greater number of which were strikingly beautiful, together with the illumination, the extent and majestic splendour of the place, with the continued sound of the music, makes an inconceivably delightful impression.” Thanks to the curiosity of the Prussian pastor, we can look down with him on the gay throng, and discern the princes, lords, and knights, their stars far outshining all the commoners present; we see also a difference in the styles of wearing the hair, the French queues and bags contrasting markedly with plain English heads of hair or professional wigs. Most of the company moved in “an eternal circle, to see and to be seen”; others stood near to enjoy the music; others again regaled themselves at the tables with the excellent fare provided for the inclusive sum of half-a-crown; while a thoughtful minority gazed from the gallery and moralized on the scene. The display and extravagance evidently surprised Moritz, as it surprises us when we remember that it was at the close of a ruinous war. In the third year of the struggle, the mercurial Horace Walpole deplored the universal distress, and declared that when he sat in his “blue window,” he missed nine out of ten of the lordly chariots that used to roll before it. Yet, in the seventh year, when the half of Europe had entered the lists against the Island Power, the Prussian pastor saw nothing but affluence and heard nothing that did not savour of a determined and sometimes boastful patriotism. At Ranelagh he observed that everyone wore silk stockings, and he was informed that even poor people when they visited that abode of splendour, dressed so as to copy the great, and always hired a coach in order to draw up in state at the entrance.20

Ranelagh and Vauxhall, we may note in passing, were beyond the confines of the London of 1780. The city of Westminster was but slowly encroaching on Tothill Fields; and the Queen’s House, standing on the site of the present Buckingham Palace, commanded an uninterrupted view westwards over the fields and market gardens spreading out towards the little village of Chelsea. On the south of the Thames there was a mere fringe of houses from the confines of Southwark to the Archbishop’s palace at Lambeth; and revellers returning from Vauxhall, whether by river or road, were not seldom sobered by visits from footpads, or the even more dreaded Mohawks. Further afield everything was completely rural. Trotter, Fox’s secretary, describes the statesman as living amidst bowers vocal with song-birds at St. Ann’s Hill, Wandsworth; and Pitt, in his visits to Wilberforce or Dundas at Wimbledon, would probably pass not a score of houses between Chelsea and the little old wooden bridge at Putney. That village and Wimbledon stood in the same relation to London as Oxshott and Byfleet occupy to-day. North of Chelsea there was the hamlet of Knightsbridge, and beyond it the villages of Paddington and “Marybone.”

As Hyde Park Corner marked the western limit of London, so Bedford House and its humbler neighbour, the British Museum, bounded it on the north. The Foundling Hospital stood in open fields. St. Pancras, Islington Spa, and Sadler’s Wells were rivals of Epsom and Tunbridge Wells. Clerkenwell Church was the fashionable place for weddings for the richer citizens who dwelt in the northern suburbs opened up by the new City Road completed in 1761. On the east, London ended at Whitechapel, though houses straggled on down the Mile End Road. The amount of the road-borne traffic is curiously illustrated by the fact that the Metropolis possessed only three bridges, London Bridge, Westminster Bridge, and Blackfriars Bridge; and not till the year 1763 did the City Fathers demolish the old houses standing on London Bridge which rendered it impossible for two carts to pass. Already, however, suburbs were spreading along the chief roads out of London. In the “Connoisseur” of September 1754 is a pleasingly ironical account of a week-end visit to the villa of a London tradesman, situated in the desolate fields near Kennington Common, from the windows of which one had a view of criminals hanging from gibbets and St. Paul’s cupola enveloped in smoke.

Nevertheless, the Englishman’s love of the country tended to drive Londoners out to the dull little suburbs around the Elephant and Castle, or beyond Tyburn or Clerkenwell; and thus, in the closing years of the century, there arose that dualism of interests (city versus suburbs) which weakens the civic and social life of the metropolis. A further consequence was the waning in popularity of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, as well as of social clubs in general. These last had furnished a very desirable relief to the monotony of a stay-at-home existence. But the club became less necessary when the family lived beyond the river or at “Marybone,” and when the merchant spent much time on horseback every day in passing from his office to his villa. Another cause for the decline of clubs of the old type is doubtless to be found in the distress caused by the Revolutionary War, and in the increasing acerbity of political discussions after the year 1790. Hitherto clubs had been almost entirely devoted to relaxation or conviviality. A characteristic figure of Clubland up to the year 1784 had been Dr. Johnson, thundering forth his dicta and enforcing them with thumps on the table. The next generation cared little for conversation as a fine art; and men drifted off to clubs where either loyalty or freedom was the dominant idea. The political arena, which for two generations had been the scene of confused scrambles between greedy factions, was soon to be cleared for that deadliest of all struggles, a war of principles. In that sterner age the butterfly life of Ranelagh became a meaningless anomaly.

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. In 1779–80 County Associations were founded in order to press on the cause of “œconomical reform”; but most of them expired by the year 1784. Alike in thought and in customs England seemed to be invincibly Conservative.

The reasons, other than racial and climatic, for the stolidity of Georgian England would seem to be these. Any approach to enthusiasm, whether in politics or religion, had been tabooed as dangerous ever since the vagaries of the High Church party in the reign of Anne had imperilled the Protestant Succession; and far into the century, especially after the adventure of “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” all leanings towards romance were looked on as a reflection on the safe and solid House of Brunswick. Prudence was the first of political virtues, and common sense the supreme judge of creeds and conduct.

External events also favoured the triumph of the commonplace, which is so obvious in the Georgian literature and architecture. The call of the sea and the influence of the New World were no longer inspirations to mighty deeds. The age of adventure was past, and the day of company promoters and slave-raiders had fully dawned. Commerce of an almost Punic type ruled the world. Whereas the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had turned mainly on questions of religion, those of the eighteenth centred more and more on the winning of colonial markets as close preserves for the mother-country. By the Peace of Utrecht (1713) England gained the first place in the race for Empire; and a clause of that treaty enabled her to participate in the most lucrative of trades, the kidnapping of negroes in Africa for the supply of Spanish-America. Never was there a more fateful gain. It built up the fortunes of many scores of merchants and shipowners, but it degraded the British marine and the populace of our ports, in some of which slaves were openly sold. The canker of its influence spread far beyond ships and harbours. Its results were seen in the seared conscience of the nation, and in the lowering of the sense of the sanctity of human life, which in its turn enabled the blind champions of law, especially after the scare of 1745, to multiply capital punishments until more than 160 crimes were punishable by death.

The barbarities of the law and the horrors of the slave-trade finally led to protests in the name of humanity and religion. These came in the first instance from the Society of Friends.21 But the philanthropic movement did not gather volume until it was fed by the evangelical revival. Clarkson, Zachary Macaulay, Wilberforce (the ablest champion of the cause), and John Howard, the reformer of prisons, were living proofs of the connection which exists between spiritual fervour and love of man. With the foundation, in the year 1787, of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the philanthropic movement began its career of self-denying effort, which for some five years received valuable support from Pitt. Other signs of a moral awakening were not wanting. In 1772 Lord Chief Justice Mansfield declared that all slaves brought to the United Kingdom became free—a judgement which dealt the death-blow to slave markets in this country. In 1773 John Howard began his crusade for the improvement of gaols; and seven years later Sunday Schools were started by Robert Raikes. The protests of Burke and Sir Charles Bunbury against the pillory, the efforts of the former in 1784–5 to prevent the disgraceful overcrowding of the prisons, and the crusade of Romilly against the barbarities of the penal code are also a tribute to the growth of enlightenment and kindliness.

These ennobling efforts, however, failed to make any impression on what is termed “Society.” The highest and the lowest strata are, as a rule, the last to feel the thrill of new movements; for surfeit and starvation alike stunt the better instincts. Consequently, Georgian England became strangely differentiated. The new impulses were quickly permeating the middle classes; but there their influence ceased. The flinty hardness of the upper crust, and the clayey sediment at the bottom, defied all efforts of an ordinary kind. The old order of things was not to be changed save by the explosive forces let loose in France in 1789. That year forms a dividing line in European history, as it does in the career of William Pitt.

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