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

Sinclair

renewed his appeal for a seat either at Midhurst, or in Scotland.

Failing that, he hinted that the President of the Board of Agriculture

ought to be a Peer. Is it surprising that Pitt fulfilled the suggestion

by giving his influence in favour of Lord Somerville, who displaced

Sinclair at the Board in 1798? Loughborough it was who suggested the

change;[431] but Pitt must have approved it; and thereafter the Board

deteriorated.

 

In truth the thane of Thurso had become a bore. His letters to Pitt teem

with advice on foreign politics and the distillation of whisky, on new

taxes and high farming, on increasing the silver coinage and checking

smuggling, on manning the navy and raising corps of Fencibles. Wisdom

flashing forth in these diverse forms begets distrust. Sinclair the

omniscient correspondent injured Sinclair the agrarian reformer. Young

treated the Prime Minister with more tact. His letters were fewer, and

his help was practical. A pleasing instance of this was his presence at

Holwood in April 1798, when Pitt was draining the hillside near his

house, so as to preserve it from damp and provide water for the farm and

garden below. Young drew up the scheme, went down more than once to

superintend the boring and trenching, and then added these words: "I beg

you will permit me to give such attention merely and solely as a mark of

gratitude for the goodness I have already experienced at your

hands."[432]

 

Sinclair, now member for Petersfield, brought his General Enclosure Bill

before Parliament in 1797. In order to meet the objections of

tithe-owners and lawyers, he divided it into two parts, the former

applying to parishes where all the persons concerned were unanimous, the

latter where this was not the case. Even so the measure met with

opposition from the legal profession; and on 13th May he wrote to Pitt

expressing deep concern at the opposition of the Solicitor-General. In

July he besought Pitt to make the Bill a Cabinet measure in order to

"prevent either legal or ecclesiastical prejudices operating against

it." Nevertheless Pitt remained neutral, and the Bill was lost in the

Lords, mainly owing to the opposition of the Lord Chancellor.[433] In

December Sinclair announced his intention of bringing in a Bill for the

improvement of waste land; but, he added significantly, "I should be

glad previously to know whether it is your intention to support that

measure or not." Pitt gave no sign, and the proposal did not come

forward.

 

Pitt's treatment of one of the most important questions of that time

deserves censure. We may grant that the fussiness of Sinclair told

against his proposals. It is also true that the drafting of a Bill

applicable to every English parish was beset with difficulties, and that

enclosures, while adding greatly to the food supply of the nation, had

for the most part told against the independence of the poorer villagers.

But this was largely due to the expense and chicanery consequent on the

passing of parochial Acts of Parliament; and what objections were there

to facilitating the enclosure of wastes and open fields by parishes

where everyone desired it? In such a case it was the bounden duty of

Parliament to end the law's delays and cheapen the procedure.

 

That Pitt did little or nothing to avert the hostility of bishops and

lawyers in the Upper House convicts him either of apathy or of covert

opposition. He is largely responsible for the continuance of the old

customs, under which a parish faced the expense of procuring a separate

Act of Parliament only under stress of severe dearth; and, as a rule,

the crisis ended long before the cumbrous machinery of the law enabled

the new lands to come under the plough. It is, however, possible that he

hoped to inaugurate a system of enclosures of waste lands by a clause

which appeared in his abortive proposals of the year 1797 for the relief

of the poor. His Bill on that subject comprised not only very generous

plans of relief, but also the grant of cows to the deserving poor, the

erection of Schools of Industry in every parish or group of parishes,

and facilities for reclaiming waste land. His treatment of the question

of poor relief is too extensive a subject to admit of adequate

description here; but I propose to return to it and to notice somewhat

fully the criticisms of Bentham and others.[434] It must suffice to say

that the draft of that measure bespeaks a keen interest in the welfare

of the poor, and indeed errs on the side of generosity. Abbot,

afterwards Lord Colchester, was asked by Pitt to help in drafting the

Poor Bill; and he pronounced it "as bad in the mode as the principles

were good in substance."[435]

 

After the withdrawal of Pitt's Poor Bill, nothing was done to facilitate

enclosures until the accession of Addington to power. His General

Enclosure Act of the year 1801 afforded timely relief in the matter of

food-supply, a fact which shows that the difficulties in the way of such

a measure were far from serious. The passing of that Bill, it is true,

was helped on by the terrible dearth of that year, when the average

price of wheat was close on 116 shillings the quarter. But Pitt was

content to meet the almost equally acute crisis of 1795-6 by temporary

shifts, one of which exasperated the neutral States of the North and

prepared the way for the renewal of the hostile League of the Baltic.

 

FOOTNOTES

 

[420] B.M. Add. MSS., 27808.

 

[421] "H. O.," Geo. III (Domestic), 36.

 

[422] "H. O.," (Departmental), Secs. of State.

 

[423] B.M. Add. MSS., 27808; "Hist. of the Two Acts," 330 _et seq._

 

[424] Pitt MSS., 190; "W. O.," 113.

 

[425] "H. O.," Geo. III (Domestic), 36.

 

[426] "Parl. Hist.," xxxii, 235-42, 687-700, 1156; Tooke, "Hist. of

Prices," i, 185 _et seq._; Porter, "Progress of the Nation," 147, 452.

 

[427] "Dropmore P.," iii, 87, 243, 526-30; "Report of the American Hist.

Assoc." (1903), ii, 67-9, 354, 375, 440 _et seq._, 552-8; E. Channing,

"United States," 148-50; Cunningham, 512, 694.

 

[428] "Mems. of Sir John Sinclair," i, ch. iv; ii, ch. i.

 

[429] "Mems. of Sir John Sinclair," ii, 60-4, 104; Sinclair,

"Address ... on the Cultivation of Waste Lands (1795)"; "Observations

on ... a Bill for facilitating the Division of Commons." He first urged

this on Pitt on 10th January 1795 (Pitt MSS., 175).

 

[430] Pitt MSS., 178.

 

[431] "Corresp. of Sir John Sinclair," i, 124.

 

[432] Pitt MSS., 193. Sinclair raised two corps of Fencibles. The list

of his works, pamphlets, etc., fills thirty-two pages at the end of his

Memoirs.

 

[433] "Mems. of Sir John Sinclair," ii, 106-9.

 

[434] "Pitt and Napoleon Miscellanies."

 

[435] "Lord Colchester's Diary," i, 82.

 

CHAPTER XIV (THE YEARS OF STRAIN (1796-7))

    Torn as we are by faction, without an army, without money,

    trusting entirely to a navy whom we may not be able to pay, and

    on whose loyalty, even if we can, no firm reliance is to be

    placed, how are we to get out of this cursed war without a

    Revolution?--CORNWALLIS TO ROSS, _15th December 1797_.

 

 

The year 1797, which opened with events portending the overthrow of

Austria and the financial collapse of England, brought a passing gleam

of sunshine into the gray life of Pitt. For some time he had been a

frequent visitor at Eden Farm, Beckenham, the seat of Lord Auckland. It

was on the way to Holwood, and the cheerful society of that large family

afforded a relief from cares of state not to be found in his bachelor

household. His circle of friends, never large, had somewhat diminished

with the wear and tear of politics. His affection for Wilberforce,

perhaps, had not quite regained its former fervour. As for the vinous

society of Dundas, a valuable colleague but a far from ideal companion,

Pitt must in his better moments have held it cheap. He rarely saw his

mother, far away in Somerset; and probably his relations to his brother

had cooled since he removed him from the Admiralty. In truth, despite

his loving disposition, Pitt was a lonely man.

 

The voice of rumour, in his case always unfair, charged him with utter

indifference to feminine charms. His niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who

later on had opportunities of observing him closely, vehemently denied

the charge, declaring that he was much impressed by beauty in women, and

noted the least defect, whether of feature, demeanour, or dress. She

declared that, on one occasion, while commending her preparations for

the ball-room, he suggested the looping up of one particular fold. At

once she recognized the voice of the expert and hailed the experiment

as an artistic triumph. Hester's recollections, it is true, belong to

the lonely years spent in the Lebanon, when she indulged in ecstatic or

spiteful outbursts; and we therefore question her statement that Pitt

was once so enamoured of a certain Miss W----, who became Mrs. B----s of

Devonshire, as to drink wine out of her shoe. But Hester's remarks are

detailed enough to refute the reports of his unnatural insensibility,

which elicited coarse jests from opponents; and we may fully trust that

severe critic of all Pitt's friends, when, recalling a special visit to

Beckenham Church, she pronounced the Honourable Eleanor Eden gloriously

beautiful.[436]

 

    [Illustration: THE HON. ELEANOR EDEN. (From a miniature)]

 

To this bright vivacious girl of twenty years Pitt's affections went

forth in the winter of 1796-7;[437] and she reciprocated them. Every one

agrees that Eleanor combined beauty with good sense, sprightliness with

tact. Having had varied experiences during Auckland's missions to Paris,

Madrid, and The Hague, she had matured far beyond her years. In mental

endowments she would have been a fit companion even to Pitt; and she

possessed a rich store of the social graces in which he was somewhat

deficient. In fact, here was his weak point as a political leader. He

and his colleagues had no _salon_ which could vie with those of the Whig

grandees. The accession of Portland had been a social boon; but Pitt and

his intimate followers exerted little influence on London Society. He

and Grenville were too stiff. Neither Dundas nor Wilberforce moved in

the highest circles. Portland, Spencer, and Windham held somewhat aloof,

and Leeds, Sydney, and others had been alienated. Accordingly, the news

that Pitt was paying marked attentions to Auckland's eldest daughter

caused a flutter of excitement. Her charm and tact warranted the belief

that in the near future the Prime Minister would dominate the social

sphere hardly less than the political.

 

Among his friends who knew how warm a heart beat under that cold

exterior, the news inspired the hope that here was the talisman which

would reveal the hidden treasures of his nature. The stiff form would

now unbend; the political leader would figure as a genial host; the

martinet would become a man. Assuredly their estimate was correct.

Pitt's nature needed more glow, wider sympathies, a freer expression. A

happy marriage would in any case have widened his outlook and matured

his character. But a union with Eleanor Eden would have supplied to him

the amenities of life. We picture her exerting upon him an influence not

unlike that which Wordsworth believed that his sister had exerted upon

his being:

 

      thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,

    Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,

    And