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

joined the concert;[17] and this waiting on the action of a

Power which had already declared its resolve to do nothing enables us to

test the sincerity of the continental monarchs. As for the Czarina, her

royalist fervour expended itself in deposing the busts of democrats, in

ordering the French Minister to remain away from Court, and in

condemning any Russian who had dealings with him to be publicly flogged.

Moreover, while thus drilling her own subjects, the quondam friend of

Diderot kept her eyes fixed upon Warsaw. The shrewdest diplomatist of

the age had already divined her aims, which he thus trenchantly summed

up: "The Empress only waits to see Austria and Prussia committed in

France, to overturn everything in Poland."[18] Kaunitz lived on to see

his cynical prophecy fulfilled to the letter.

 

                  *       *       *       *       *

 

The reader will have noticed with some surprise the statement of Burke

that Pitt and Grenville had not the slightest fear of the spread of

French principles in England. As we know, Burke vehemently maintained

the contrary, averring that the French plague, unless crushed at Paris,

would infect the world. In his survey of the European States he admitted

that we were less liable to infection than Germany, Holland, and Italy,

owing to the excellence of our constitution; but he feared that our

nearness to France, and our zeal for liberty, would expose us to some

danger. Why he should have cherished these fears is hard to say; for to

him the French Revolution was "a wild attempt to methodize anarchy," "a

foul, impious, monstrous thing, wholly out of the course of moral

nature."[19] Surely if British and French principles were so utterly

different, we were in no more danger of infection from the Jacobins than

of catching swine fever.

 

This was virtually the view of Pitt and Grenville; for there were no

premonitory symptoms of infection, but much the reverse. Londoners

showed the utmost joy at the first news of the escape of the King and

Queen from Paris, and were equally depressed by the news from Varennes.

As we shall presently see, it was with shouts of "Long live the King,"

"Church and State," "Down with the Dissenters," "No Olivers," "Down with

the Rump," "No false Rights of Man," that the rabble of Birmingham

wrecked and burnt the houses of Dr. Priestley and other prominent

Nonconformists of that town. Only by slow degrees did this loyal

enthusiasm give place to opinions which in course of time came to be

called Radical. It may be well to trace briefly the fluctuations of

public opinion, to which the career of Pitt stands in vital relation.

 

The growth of discontent in Great Britain may be ascribed to definite

evils in the body politic, and it seems to have arisen only secondarily

from French propaganda. The first question which kindled the fire of

resentment was that of the civic and political disabilities still

imposed on Nonconformists by the Corporation and Test Acts of the reign

of Charles II. Pitt's decision in the session of 1787 to uphold those

Acts ensured the rejection of Beaufoy's motion for their repeal of 176

votes to 98; but undeterred by his defeat, Beaufoy brought the matter

before the House on 8th May 1789, and, despite the opposition of Pitt,

secured 102 votes against 122. The Prime Minister's chief argument was

that if Dissenters were admitted to civic rights they might use their

power to overthrow the Church Establishment.[20] Clearly the opinion of

the House was drifting away from him on that question; and it is a proof

of his growing indifference to questions of Reform that now, four days

after the assembly of the States-General of France at Versailles, he

should have held to views so repugnant to the spirit of the age.

 

Thenceforth that question could not be debated solely on its own merits.

The attacks made by the French National Assembly on the Church of

France, particularly the confiscation of its tithes and landed property,

soon aroused heated feelings in this country, though on a subject of a

wholly different kind. The result was that, while Dissenters peacefully

agitated for permission to act as citizens, they were represented as

endeavouring to despoil the Church, after the fashion of Talleyrand and

Mirabeau. A work by a Manchester merchant, Thomas Walker, reveals the

influence of this question on the political activities of the time. The

Nonconformists of that town and county hoped to gain a majority in next

session or in the following Parliament, while the High Churchmen, to the

cry of "The Church in Danger," declared the two Acts of Charles II to be

the bulwarks of the constitution.[21] This cry was everywhere taken up,

with the result that in the Parliament elected in 1790 the Tories gained

ground. Consequently, even the able advocacy of Fox on behalf of

religious liberty failed to save Beaufoy's motion from a crushing

defeat. Pitt spoke against the proposal and carried the House with him

by 294 votes to 105. This vote illustrates the baleful influence exerted

by the French Revolution on the cause of Reform in these islands.

 

A second example soon occurred. Only three days later Flood brought

forward a motion for Parliamentary Reform which the wildest of alarmists

could not call revolutionary. He proposed to add to the House of Commons

one hundred members, elected by the resident householders of the

counties, those areas being far less corrupt than the towns; and he

suggested that, if the total number of members were deemed excessive,

fifty seats in the smallest boroughs might be declared vacant. This

proposal differed but little from that of Pitt in the session of 1785,

which aimed at disfranchising thirty-six decayed boroughs and

apportioning their seventy-two members to the larger counties, as also

to London and Westminster. In a speech which might have been made by

Pitt in pre-Revolution times Flood declared that the events in France

showed the need of a timely repair of outworn institutions.

 

This was as a red rag to Windham, a prominent recruit from the Whigs,

who now used all the artifices of rhetoric to terrify his hearers. He

besought them in turn not to repair their house in the hurricane season,

not to imitate the valetudinarian of the "Spectator," who read medical

books until he discovered he had every symptom of the gout except the

pain. These fallacious similes captivated the squires; and Pitt himself

complimented the orator on his ingenious arguments. For himself, he

declared his desire of Reform to be as zealous as ever; but he "could

see no utility in any gentleman's bringing forward such a motion as the

present at that moment," and feared that the cause might thereby suffer

disgrace and lose ground. Fox, on the other hand, ridiculed all thought

of panic on account of the French Revolution, but he admitted that the

majority both in Parliament and the nation did not want Reform.

Grenville, Wilberforce, and Burke opposed the motion, while even

Duncombe declined to vote for it at present. It was accordingly

adjourned _sine die_.[22]

 

Disappointment at the course of these debates served to band

Nonconformists and reformers in a close alliance. Hitherto they had

alike supported Pitt and the royal prerogative, especially at the time

of the Regency struggle. In May 1789, when Pitt opposed the

Nonconformist claims, Dr. Priestley wrote that Fox would regain his

popularity with Dissenters, while Pitt would lose ground.[23] Now, when

the doors of the franchise and of civic privilege were fast barred,

resentment and indignation began to arouse the groups of the

unprivileged left outside. The news that Frenchmen had framed a

Departmental System, in which all privileges had vanished, and all men

were citizens, with equal rights in the making of laws and local

regulations, worked potently in England, furthering the growth of an

institution little known in this country, the political club. As the

Jacobins had adapted the English idea of a club to political uses, so

now the early Radicals re-adapted it to English needs. "The Manchester

Constitutional Society"[24] was founded by Walker and others in October

1790, in order to oppose a "Church and King Club," which High Churchmen

had started in March, after the news of the triumph of their principles

in Parliament. The Manchester reformers struck the key-note of the

coming age by asserting in their programme that in every community the

authority of the governors must be derived from the consent of the

governed, and that the welfare of the people was the true aim of

Government. They further declared that honours and rewards were due only

for services rendered to the State; that all officials, without

exception, were responsible to the people; that "actions only, not

opinions, are the proper objects of civil jurisdictions"; that no law is

fairly made except by a majority of the people; and that the people of

Great Britain were not fully and fairly represented in Parliament.[25]

 

The Church and King Club, on the contrary, reprobated all change in "one

of the most beautiful systems of government that the combined efforts of

human wisdom has [_sic_] ever yet been able to accomplish." The issue

between the two parties was thus sharply outlined. The Tories of

Manchester gloried in a state of things which shut out about half of

their fellow-citizens from civic rights and their whole community from

any direct share in the making of laws. In their eyes the Church and the

monarchy were in danger if Nonconformists became citizens, and if a

score of Cornish villages yielded up their legislative powers to

Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and other hives of industry.

 

Scotland also began to awake. The torpor of that keen and intellectual

people, under a system of misrepresentation which assigned to them

forty-five members and forty-four to Cornwall, is incomprehensible,

unless we may ascribe it to the waning of all enthusiasm after the

"forty-five" and to the supremacy of material interests so

characteristic of the age. In any case, this political apathy was now to

end; and here, too, as in the case of England, Government applied the

spur.

 

On 10th May 1791 Sir Gilbert Elliot (afterwards Earl of Minto) brought

forward a motion in Parliament for the repeal of the Test Act, so far as

it concerned Scotland. He voiced a petition of the General Assembly of

the Church of Scotland, and declared that the Presbyterians felt the

grievance of being excluded from civic offices unless they perverted. On

wider grounds also he appealed against this petty form of persecution,

which might make men hypocrites but never sincere converts. Henry Dundas

and his nephew, Robert Dundas (Lord Advocate for Scotland), opposed the

motion, mainly because it would infringe the terms of the Act of Union;

but Henry added the curious argument that, if Scottish Presbyterians

were relieved from the Test Act, then the English Dissenters would have

been "unjustly, harshly, and cruelly used." Pitt avowed himself "not a

violent friend, but a firm and steady friend" of the Test Act, as being

essential to the security of the Church and therefore of the civil

establishment of the country. Accordingly, Elliot's motion was defeated

by 149 votes to 62.[26] It is curious that, a month earlier, the House

had agreed to a Bill granting slightly wider toleration to "Catholic

Dissenters."[27]

 

While Pitt was thus strengthening the old buttresses of Church and

State, the son of a Quaker had subjected the whole fabric to a battery

of violent rhetoric. It is scarcely too much to call Thomas Paine the

Rousseau of English democracy. For, if his arguments lacked the novelty

of those of the Genevese thinker (and even they were far from original),

they equalled them in effectiveness, and excelled them in

practicability. "The Rights of Man" (Part I) may be termed an insular

version of the "Contrat Social," with this difference, that the English

writer pointed the way to changes which were far from visionary, while

the Genevese seer outlined a polity fit only for a Swiss canton peopled

by philosophers. Paine had had the advantage of close contact with men

and affairs in both hemispheres. Not even Cobbett, his literary

successor, passed through more varied experiences. Born in 1737 at

Thetford in Norfolk, Paine divided his early life between stay-making,

excise work, the vending of tobacco, and a seafaring life. His keen

eyes, lofty brow, prominent nose, proclaimed him a thinker and fighter,

and therefore, in that age, a rebel. What more natural than that he, a

foe to authority and hater of oppression, should go to America to help

on the cause of Washington? There at last he discovered his true

vocation. His broadsides struck home. "Rebellious staymaker, unkempt,"

says Carlyle, "who feels that he, a single needleman, did by his

'Common Sense' pamphlet, free America; that he can, and will free all

this world; perhaps even the other." Tom Paine, indeed, had the rare

gift of voicing tersely and stridently the dumb desires of the masses.

Further, a sojourn in France before and during the early part of the

Revolution enabled him to frame a crushing retort to Burke's

"Reflections."