William Pitt and the Great War by John Holland Rose (book club reads txt) 📕

bring forward Catholic Emancipation during his life, an

act which annoyed the Grenville-Windham group. His rash promise to

support Addington tied his hands in the following years; and even after

the renewal of war he too scrupulously refrained from overthrowing a

Ministry whose weakness had invited foreign aggressions and was

powerless to avenge them. Finally, the Grenvilles joined Fox; and thus

the King's perversity nullified the efforts of Pitt to form an

Administration worthy to cope with Napoleon.

 

Nevertheless, the challenge flung down to England by the French

regicides in 1793 was such as to enhance the person of the Monarch in

these islands; and the Revolutionary War, which was fatal to several

dynasties on the Continent, served to consolidate the power of the House

of Brunswick. For, though Pitt sought to keep the war from becoming a

royalist crusade, it almost inevitably assumed that character. During

hostilities there can be but two sharply defined parties. Accordingly,

Pitt, who opened his career with a bold attack upon the prerogatives of

George III, ended it as his champion, even consenting to surrender a

cherished conviction in order that the Monarch's peace of mind might not

be troubled. Was ever a Minister beset by more baffling problems, by

more hampering restrictions? Peace might have solved and shattered

them. But peace he could not secure in the years 1796, 1797; and when

finally it came it proved to be no peace, merely a pause before a still

greater cycle of war.

 

The grandeur of Pitt's efforts for ensuring the independence of Europe

has somewhat obscured his services as Empire builder. Yet, with the

possible exception of Chatham, no statesman has exercised a greater

influence on the destinies of the British race. On two occasions he

sternly set his face against the cession of Gibraltar; he took keen

interest in the settlement of New South Wales; his arrangements for the

government of Canada deserve far higher praise than they have usually

secured; and his firmness in repelling the archaic claims of Spain to

the shores of the Northern Pacific gained for his people the future

colony of British Columbia. Cherishing a belief in the pacific nature of

Bonaparte's policy at the time of the Treaty of Amiens, he condoned the

retrocession of the Cape of Good Hope and of Malta, on condition of the

gain of Ceylon and Trinidad; but after the revival of French schemes of

aggression in the East he saw the imperative need of planting or

maintaining the Union Jack at those commanding points. He, who has been

accused of excessive trust in allies, prepared to forego the alliance of

Russia rather than give up Malta; and, even before Nelson gained the

mastery at sea, Pitt sent forth an expedition to conquer the Cape. In

his magnanimous desire of securing to Europe the blessings of a lasting

peace he was ready to surrender maritime conquests of greater pecuniary

value so long as England held the keys of the overland and sea routes to

India. To that empire his just and statesmanlike policy brought a new

sense of confidence and therefore a time of comparative rest, until the

threatening orientation of Bonaparte's plans once more placed everything

at hazard. Thanks to the exertions of Dundas and the Wellesleys, the

crisis was averted; but the policy which assured British supremacy in

the East was essentially that of Pitt.

 

                  *       *       *       *       *

 

It is far easier to assess the importance of the life work of Pitt than

to set forth his character in living traits. Those who knew him well

agree as the charm of his personality; but they supply few illuminating

details, perhaps out of respect for the reserve which was his usual

panoply. Like Chatham he rarely revealed his inmost self. The beauties

of his conversation, informed with learning, sparkling with wit, always

vivacious yet never spiteful, never appeared in their full glow except

in the circle of his dearest friends; but by singular ill fortune they

who could have handed on those treasures, were satisfied with entries

such as: "Pitt talked a great deal among his friends"; or, "In society he

was remarkably cheerful and pleasant, full of wit and playfulness";[786]

or again, "His great delight was society. There he shone with a degree

of calm and steady lustre which often astonished me more than his most

splendid efforts in Parliament; ... he seemed utterly unconscious of his

own superiority and much more disposed to listen than to talk; ... his

appearance dispelled all care, his brow was never clouded even in the

severest public trials."[787] These are only the _hors d'oeuvres_ of

what must have been a feast of delight; but even they suffice to refute

the Whig slanders as to Pitt's austerity and selfishness. Under happier

auspices he would have been known as the most lovable of English

statesmen; and his exceptional fondness for children would alone suffice

to expose the falsity of his alleged reply to a manufacturer who

complained that he could not get enough men--"Then you must take the

children."[788] Cynicism at the expense of the weak was a trait utterly

alien to him. It is also incorrect to assert, with Macaulay, that "pride

pervaded the whole man, was written in the harsh rigid lines of his

face, was marked by the way in which he walked, in which he sat, in

which he stood, and, above all, in which he bowed." The Whig historian,

here following the Whig tradition, formed his estimate of the whole man

from what was merely a parliamentary mannerism. Pitt, as we have seen,

was a prey to shyness and _gaucherie_; and the rigid attitude which he

adopted for the House was not so much the outcome of a sense of

superiority (though he had an able man's consciousness of worth) as a

screen to hide those defects. A curiously stilted manner has been the

bane of many gifted orators and actors; but the real test is whether

they could throw it off in private. That Pitt threw it off in the circle

of his friends they all agree. The only defects which Wilberforce saw in

him were an inadequate knowledge of human nature, a too sanguine

estimate of men and of the course of events, and, in later years,

occasional displays of petulance in face of opposition.[789] The first

are the defects of a noble nature, the last those of a man whose

strength has long been overtaxed.

 

In fact, Pitt's constitution was unequal to the prolonged strain. In

childhood his astonishingly precocious powers needed judicious

repression. Instead, they were unduly forced by the paternal pride of

Chatham. At Cambridge, at Lincoln's Inn, and in Parliament the

intellectual pressure was maintained, with the result that his weakly

frame was constantly overwrought and attenuated by a too active mind.

Further, the pressure at Westminster was so continuous as to preclude

all chance of widening his nature by foreign travel. He caught but a

glimpse of the life of France in 1783; and his knowledge of other

peoples and politics was therefore perforce derived from books. It is

therefore surprising that the young Prime Minister displayed the

sagacity and tolerance which marked his career.

 

But his faculties, though not transcendently great, were singularly well

balanced, besides being controlled by an indomitable will and tact that

rarely was at fault. In oratory he did not equal Sheridan in wit and

brilliance, Burke in richness of thought and majesty of diction, or Fox

in massive strength and debating facility; but, while falling little

short of Fox in debate, he excelled him in elegance and conciseness,

Burke in point and common sense, Sheridan in dignity and argumentative

power, and all of them in the felicitous wedding of elevated thought or

vigorous argument to noble diction. By the side of his serried yet

persuasive periods the efforts of Fox seemed ragged, those of Burke

philosophic essays, those of Sheridan rhetorical tinsel. And this

harmony was not the effect of long and painful training. His maiden

speech of 26th February 1781 displayed the grace and forcefulness which

marked his classic utterance at the Lord Mayor's banquet ten weeks

before his death.

 

Precocious maturity also characterized his financial plans, which

displayed alike the shrewd common sense of those of Walpole and the

wider aims of Adam Smith. Before his twenty-sixth year Pitt laid the

basis of a system which, whatever its defects, ensured the speedy

recovery of national credit and belied the spiteful croakings of foreign

rivals. Four days after his death, Fox freely admitted that the

establishment of the Sinking Fund had been most beneficial; and this

belief, though we now see it to be ill-founded, certainly endowed the

nation with courage to continue the struggle against the overgrown power

of France. Scarcely less remarkable is his record of legislative

achievement. His India Bill of 1784, his attempt to free Anglo-Irish

trade from antiquated shackles, his effort to present to Parliament a

palatable yet not ineffective scheme of Reform, raise him above the

other law-givers of the eighteenth century in the grandeur of his aims

if not in his actual achievements. By the India Bill of 1784 he

reconciled the almost incompatible claims of eastern autocracy and

western democracy. If he failed to carry fiscal and Parliamentary

Reform, it was due less to tactical defects on his part than to

prejudice and selfishness among those whom he sought to benefit.

 

On the other hand, his intense hopefulness often led him to overlook

obstacles and to credit all men with his own high standard of

intelligence and probity, a noble defect which not seldom marred his

diplomatic and military arrangements during the Great War. At no point

have I slurred over his mistakes, his diffusion of effort over too large

an area of conflict, and his perhaps undue trust in doubtful allies.

But, even so, as I have shown, a careful examination of all the

available evidence generally reveals the reasons for his confidence; and

failures due to this cause are far less disastrous, because less

dispiriting to the nation, than those which are the outcome of

sluggishness or cowardice. Of those unpardonable sins Pitt has never

been accused even by his severest critics. After the repulse of his

pacific overtures by the French Directory in September 1797 his attitude

was one almost of defiance, witness his curt rejection of similar offers

by Bonaparte early in 1800, which may be pronounced the gravest defect

of his diplomatic career.

 

In that age the action of statesmen was often dilatory; and we must

admit that in regard to the Act of Union with Ireland Pitt's procedure

was halting and ineffective, so that finally he was driven to use

corrupt means to force through the corrupt Irish Parliament a measure

which in the autumn of 1798 would have been accepted thankfully by the

dominant caste. His Bill of 1797 for the relief of the poor and his Land

Tax Commutation Act of 1798 are examples of improvident legislation. But

from a leader overburdened with the details of war and diplomacy we

should not expect the keen foresight, the minute care as to details,

which distinguished Gladstone. To compare the achievements of a

statesman hard pressed by the problems of the Revolutionary Era with

those of a peaceful age when the standard of legislative effort had been

greatly raised is unfair; and the criticism of Pitt by a distinguished

historian evinces partiality towards the Victorian statesman rather than

an adequate appreciation of the difficulties besetting a Minister of

George III in those times of turmoil.[790] It is true that Pitt did not

inaugurate Factory legislation; that was the work of the Addington

Cabinet in 1802; he did not link his name with the efforts of Romilly

and others for the reform of the brutal Penal Code; and he did little

for art and literature; but neither the personality of George nor the

state of the national finances favoured the rise of a Maecenas.

 

Concentration of effort on political and diplomatic questions was the

alpha and omega of Pitt's creed. The terrible pressure of events forbade

his looking far ahead or far afield; he marched straight onward, hoping

by his untiring efforts first to restore national prosperity and

thereafter to secure a peace which would inaugurate a brighter future.

His overtaxed strength collapsed when the strain was most tense; and his

life therefore figures as a torso, which should not be criticized as if

it were the perfect statue. Yet, as moral grandeur is always inspiring,

Pitt's efforts were finally to be crowned with success by the statesmen

who had found wisdom in his teaching, inspiration in his quenchless

hope, enthusiasm in his all-absorbing love of country. An egoist never

founds a school of the prophets. But Pitt, who

 

    Spurn'd at the sordid lust of pelf

    And served his Albion for herself,

 

trained and inspired a band of devoted disciples such as no other leader

of the eighteenth century left behind him. Some were unimaginative

plodders, as Perceval; others were capable administrators and shrewd

diplomatists, as Castlereagh; to one alone was vouchsafed the fire of

genius,