Forever Young: Myth, Reality and William Pitt: R. E. Foster Examines the Career of Pitt the Younger

Foster, R. E., History Review

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A Young Man in a Hurry: 1759-1783

William Pitt is, in some respects, an unlikely political icon. A delicate child, he was described as a man by H. A. Bruce as a 'tall, ungainly, bony figure'. Pitt was a satirist's gift. The best known, James Gillray, also captured the aloofness that many remembered. In an age where personal contacts mattered, Pitt was not clubbable. As William Wilberforce, a rare exception, put it, 'Pitt does not make friends.' He preferred to immerse himself in the details of commerce and finance--matters which Wilberforce dismissed as 'subjects of a low and vulgarising quality'. But only Walpole has served longer as prime minister. How is Pitt's longevity and achievement to be explained?

Part of the answer lies in his parentage. Pitt's mother was sister to George Grenville, Prime Minister in 1763-5. His father, Pitt the Elder, was Prime Minister in 1766-8. The precocity of his second son did not escape the father's notice: legend had it that young Pitt was schooled in oratory by being required to address an imaginary audience at home! After Cambridge, he was offered a pocket borough in 1780. His maiden speech in February 1781 made a memorable impression: 'his manner easy and elegant; his language beautiful and luxuriant', as one eyewitness recorded it; as did his espousing Parliamentary Reform and his criticism of ministers for their conduct of the war in America.

But Pitt's meteoric rise cannot be explained unless we juxtapose his connections and talents alongside political circumstances. In October 1781 British forces surrendered at Yorktown. In March 1782 the beleaguered Lord North resigned as Prime Minister. His opponents coalesced briefly under Rockingham, but their alliance did not survive his death in July. The Earl of Shelburne now assumed the premiership and Pitt became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Shelburne's government in turn resigned in February 1783, victim of an alliance between North and his supposed antagonist, Charles James Fox. Their coalition from March 1783, nominally led by the Duke of Portland, survived some six months. From the outset it faced a deadly antagonist in George III. On 17 December 1783 the King's influence was instrumental in the Lords rejecting Fox's India Bill. George used this as sufficient reason to dismiss the administration. Two days later Pitt was installed as First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister at the age of 24.

Pitt's elevation owed much to the fact that by December 1783 he was one of the few men of obvious talent who had not compromised his principles by allying with others. Nor was he old enough to have been associated with the reverses of the American war. Crucially--for the monarch's role in cabinet making still mattered--he enjoyed the support of the King, if only because he had sided against Fox and North. But this alone was insufficient to guarantee his long term survival. In the Commons, where he was the only member of his cabinet with a seat, he was roughly 60 short of a majority. Though he inevitably lost Commons divisions in the weeks which followed, he nevertheless survived. This owed much to his masterly parliamentary performances in the face of adversity which won over many independent country gentlemen on the back benches and also the political nation at large. That, at least, seems to be the conclusion one should draw from the general election which followed George III's dissolution of parliament in March 1784. But Pitt's resulting majority of about 120 also owed much to the government influence which the King, in agreeing to an early election, put at Pitt's disposal. Those opponents who had scoffed that Pitt's would be a 'mince pie' administration--one that would not survive the Christmas season--were left to eat their words instead.

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The Politics of National Revival: 1783-1789

Pitt's primary governmental objective was to revive the economy--exports fell 12 per cent in value during the 1770s-and thus improve the national finances. This led him to undertake some administrative rationalization, most significantly the creation of a consolidated fund in 1787 to supersede what had been 103 different revenue exchequer accounts. Other offices, judged to be superfluous, were eliminated by the simple expedient of not filling them as they fell vacant: some 440 posts in the revenue services were shed in this way between 1784 and 1793. But too many offices were sinecures in the hands of patrons for Pitt to be able to effect wholesale change. Further, the great majority continued to be remunerated by fees rather than by fixed salaries. That limitations remained was obvious. George Rose, Pitt's Secretary to the Treasury, unashamedly exploited this and several other positions which he held to undertake grandiose additions to his Hampshire country estate. Even George III was moved to jest that 'only a Secretary of State' could afford to maintain it.

Such retrenchments as were effected were accompanied by attempts to boost government revenues. There were some new indirect taxes, such as those on horses, windows, and the number of servants. Attempts to increase trade resulted principally in the 1786 Eden Treaty with France, and provided for reciprocal duty cuts. To really improve customs revenues, however, necessitated an assault upon the endemic problem of smuggling: it has been estimated that a fifth of all imports entered the country in this way. Pitt's response included amending the Hovering Act to allow searches of suspect vessels up to 12 miles out of port; whilst legitimate importers were treated with greater sensitivity by the extension of bonded warehouses which required duties to be paid only when and if their goods were sold in Britain. But Pitt's major insight was that lower customs duties would both undercut the profitability of smuggling and generate more trade and thus more revenue. The 1784 Commutation Act paved the way by cutting tea duties from 119 per cent to 25 per cent. By 1789 further cuts followed on wine, spirits and tobacco: by the mid 1790s their respective customs yields had risen by 63, 29 and 39 per cent. By 1792 the total revenues from customs had risen by nearly 2 million [pounds sterling].

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Pitt's economic Holy Grail was to extinguish the National Debt. During the American War this had nearly doubled to an unprecedented 243 million [pounds sterling]. Over a third of government expenditure, 8.5 million [pounds sterling] of 24 million [pounds sterling], went on meeting the interest. By 1785, Pitt was 'half mad with a project which will give our supplies the effect almost of magic in the reduction of debt'. The cause of his excitement was the decision to rejuvenate Walpole's idea of a Sinking Fund, that is to say, to earmark monies accrued from annual revenue surpluses to reduce the debt. By 1792 the debt had fallen to 170 million [pounds sterling].

Pitt's management of the national finances during the 1780s did not constitute a miracle. What happened might better be described as a return to normality than a revival. Economic conditions were relatively propitious, not least because Britain was beginning to enjoy the fruits of her labours as the first industrial nation. But one must allow Pitt credit for being alive to new ideas such as those being propitiated by Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations had appeared in 1776. Continued progress, however, required international peace.

The Politics of War: 1793-1802

Tory mythology holds Pitt to have been a great war leader: at his birthday dinner in May 1803 he was feted as 'the pilot who weathered the storm'. In fact, the early stages of the French Revolution did not excite him, even though he had met both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1783. So sanguine was he that French affairs should not impinge upon Britain that in February 1792 he had predicted that 'from the situation in Europe, we might reasonably expect fifteen years of peace'.

Events quickly disabused him. When, in November 1792, the French government offered assistance to revolutionaries everywhere, Pitt described it as 'an act of hostility to neutral nations'. More concrete a threat was presented the same month by the French victory over the Austrians at Jemappes, which left the latter's Belgian territories--and the Channel coast--at the mercy of the Revolution. On 1 February 1793 the French Republic formally declared war on Britain and her Dutch ally.

The war which followed was a far messier affair than the monolithic image of Pitt as a resolute war leader will allow. Britain had joined a multi-power coalition against the Republic by August 1793, but its parties were more self-interested than united. By 1797 Britain was alone, and facing invasion. That this did not happen owed much to the strategically-correct (if obvious) decision to expand the navy, which totalled 133,000 men by 1801. The Navy also enjoyed some success in its offensive operations, notably Howe's victory on 1 June 1794 which prevented the dispatch of French reinforcements to the West Indies; and Nelson's triumph at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798 which tied down French forces in Egypt. It also facilitated the capture of overseas territories such as St. Lucia and Grenada in 1796.

This was certainly more than British land forces accomplished: the most lasting outcome of the Duke of York's expedition to Flanders in 1793-4 was a nursery rhyme! Little better were Pitt's decisions to aid counter-revolutionary forces in mainland France: at Toulon in 1793, and Brittany in 1795. These initiatives proved to be as ill-timed as they were badly judged, not least in allowing the Revolution to assume the mantle of patriotism against the foreign invader. Thereafter, Pitt fell back on a more traditional British land war policy, that of bank-rolling his allies. Over 9 million [pounds sterling] had been disbursed by 1801. By then the Second Coalition (1799-1801) had come and gone, but the French military machine remained unbroken.

Modern historians have tended, therefore, to echo Churchill's judgement that Pitt was 'an indifferent War Minister'. This is unfair. France could no more be defeated on land than Britain could at sea. At least Pitt resisted the dreamers who argued that Britain should plough its resources into mounting a direct military assault on Paris. As he came to recognise, a compromise peace was the logical corollary, though he was out of office by the time the Peace of Amiens was concluded in May 1802. Pitt praised the outcome as being 'honourable' and 'very advantageous', hut it is doubtful if he would have agreed to hand back most of Britain's newly-acquired overseas possessions without any obvious quid pro quo in terms of European security.

If one has to criticize his conduct, then it must be for his apparent complacency before war started. His 1792 budget included defence cuts such that at the outbreak of war the British army stood at 13,000 men and the navy only 15,000. Thereafter, be improvised as best he could. He was as successful as circumstances allowed, that is to say not spectacularly so. By May 1803 war had broken out again.

The Politics of Repression: 1793-1801

War against Revolutionary France had profound consequences on the domestic scene. One casualty was the National Debt. By 1801 this had mushroomed to 456 million [pounds sterling]. Believing the war would be short, Pitt's short-term answer had been to raise loans, but from 1799 he resorted to the innovative and unpopular income tax, a direct, graduated levy on all incomes above 60 [pounds sterling].

It was Radicals, however, who came to see themselves as the real victims of an oppressive Pitt. Radicalism hailed the French Revolution, and specifically the idea of manhood suffrage, as the medium to a more just society. Tom Paine's Rights of Man, the most famous exposition of the view, sold a staggering 200,000 copies within a year of its publication in 1792. A revivified Society for Constitutional Information took up the call. So, for the first time, did ordinary working men in scores of clubs, of which the London Corresponding Society became the biggest and best known.

But Pitt saw little that was reasonable in a French regime which, by February 1793, he judged guilty of both regicide and war. He denounced 'principles ... which, if not opposed, threaten the most fatal consequences to the tranquillity of this country ... the good order of every European government, and the happiness of the whole of the human race.' A state backlash consequently ensued. In Scotland the republican Thomas Muir was subjected to a virtual show trial; he received 14 years' transportation. April 1794 saw Parliament suspend Habeas Corpus. In the following month 12 Radicals, including the veteran John Horne Tooke, were tried for treason. They were acquitted, but Pitt achieved his aim of deterring much Radical activity, whilst driving its more extreme elements underground. Nor was he done. Using an attack on the King's coach in October 1795 as part pretext, the Seditious Meetings Act required magistrates to sanction any meeting of more than 50 persons, whilst the Treasonable Practices Act extended the definition of treason to include speaking or writing anything unconstitutional. There followed an Act against Administering Unlawful Oaths (1797), two Newspaper Publications Acts (1798-9), and the Combination Laws (1799-1800), which effectively outlawed trade unions.

Was Pitt really bent upon his own version of the Terror? Most of his 'repressive' measures were preventative in character. Thus the Home Office was expanded in 1793 and spies used to infiltrate suspect groups. Subsidies amounting to about 5,000 [pounds sterling] per annum were provided to patriotic newspapers, the Sun and True Briton being launched with ministerial blessing. Tacit endorsement was also afforded to bodies like John Reeves' Association for the Protection of Property against Republicans and Levellers. Pitt also tried to canalise the outpourings of patriotism which followed the outbreak of war. Alongside the county based militia, volunteer corps were permitted after 1794; by the turn of the century the latter boast ed over 400,000 men. Pitt also recognised that Radicalism flourished in times of economic discontent. Though he baulked at legislating on wages and prices, his government did follow a policy of buying up overseas wheat for a while in 1795. The same year he legislated to allow magistrates to distribute poor relief without the recipients having to enter workhouses.

Can Pitt really, therefore, be said to have over-reacted? There were some 200 treason trials in the 1790s, more than the norm. There were also executions, such as the six which followed the Despard plot in 1802-3. It would certainly be true to say that Radicals in the 1790s ran more risk of suffering physical violence from the state and its patriotic supporters than they exhibited a willingness to inflict. By comparison, however, one should remember that tens of thousands of ordinary French people perished in the Great Terror of 1793-4. Pitt was surely right to take the potential threat seriously, even if he over-estimated its strength. There was a hard core of extreme Radicals, principally in Ireland; there was contact between them and an enemy state which was planning invasion; there were mutinies in the navy in 1797; and economic conditions for the general population were hard, particularly in 1795, 1797-8, and 1801-2. Had these factors coincided, the mix would undeniably have been explosive.

The Politics of Decline: c. 1794-1806

Whilst it was hardly intended, one consequence of external and domestic events in the early 1790s was to strengthen Pitt's political position. In 1788-9 this was briefly precarious, owing to George III's temporary insanity. The general presumption was that a regency would herald a Fox administration. But the king recovered, Pitt sustained his majority at the 1790 election, and Fox's popularity waned as the French Revolution waxed violent. The latter issue so divided his supporters that a number of them, headed by Portland, crossed the floor to join Pitt in July 1794.

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From the mid 1790s, however, Pitt's political road was a tortuous one. This was largely the result of the ongoing but inconclusive struggle with France and, as he put it in 1800, 'that of the scarcity with which it is necessarily combined, and for the evils and growing dangers of which I see no adequate remedy'. His physical and mental health too was cause for concern, weakened by strain, gout and alcohol. But it was 'the unlucky Subject of Ireland' that eventually afforded relief. Sectarian and nationalist discontent had mounted there ever since it had been granted a separate parliament in 1782. In 1798 outright rebellion had been brutally suppressed. Pitt became convinced that Britain's security was best safeguarded by ending the constitutional experiment. The Act of Union, which came into effect on 1 January 1801, abolished the Dublin parliament and provided for the election of 100 MPs to Westminster. But his further conclusion, that the pacification of Ireland required allowing Catholics the right to sit there, was vetoed by George III. On 3 February 1801 Pitt submitted his resignation.

From 1801 until war resumed in May 1803 Pitt was politically withdrawn. He re-entered the limelight when he became persuaded that his successor, Addington, was insufficiently preparing the nation's defences. Pitt replaced him in May 1804, but not with the broad based administration which he had hoped for. A Third Coalition was nevertheless constructed in 1805, and victory at Trafalgar in October suggested to Pitt's friends that his return to office had provided the necessary talisman. At the Lord Mayor's Guildhall banquet in November, in his most memorable public utterance Pitt denied it: 'I return you my thanks for the honour you have done me; but Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England saved herself by her exertions and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.' It was the falsest of dawns. Napoleon's crushing victory over the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz in December eviscerated the Third Coalition. Within two months Pitt was dead, his former ailments probably combining with a peptic ulceration of the stomach.

Legacies and Reputation

It is easy to criticise Pitt. Some issues he espoused, such as the abolition of the slave trade, did not succeed in his lifetime. His refusal to resign after such reverses suggests, as his enemies charged, a love of office. When Pitt died Britain's prospects were arguably bleaker than at any time since 1783. The nation faced daunting economic and financial problems, discontent in Ireland, a rampant French Empire abroad, and a king of doubtful sanity at home. Pitt's final words, 'Oh, my country! How I leave my country!' were hardly born of delirium.

Yet there were outpourings of grief. This was partly in recognition of his elevated character. Wilberforce said that, 'for willingness to give a fair hearing to all that could be urged against his own opinions, and to listen to the suggestions of men he knew to be inferior to his own; for personal purity, disinterestedness, integrity, and love of his country, I have never known his equal.' Pitt's posthumous appeal, however, was based on more. In death he became a set of ideals. In the generation after his death, his defence of church and state against revolution was claimed as his true legacy, and appropriated by the Tory party. Its leaders, Portland, Perceval and Liverpool, all claimed to be his heirs. Another, Wellington, in an unusually overt political act for him, consented to join the Hampshire Pitt Club, one of many that flourished.

Pitt's legacy, however, was disputed. What old Tories chose to remember was a caricature of the 1790s Pitt. Palmerston vented his frustration in 1822 at 'the stupid old Tory party, who bawl out the memory and praises of Pitt while they are opposing all the measures and principles which he held most important.' For him and Canning there was an earlier, reforming Pitt. The Pitt who spoke in May 1783 for Parliamentary Reform that would 'renew and invigorate the spirit of the Constitution without deviating materially from its present form', would not have been out of place on the Whig front bench in 1831. Similarly, the elder Sir Robert Peel, impressed by Pitt's financial and commercial policies, claimed that he had dedicated his son and namesake to pick up the great man's torch as early as his christening in 1788! Some have therefore claimed to see Pittite traditions in both Peelite Conservatism and, through that, to Gladstonian Liberalism: the young Gladstone even compiled a detailed timeline of Pitt's life in 1838.

Such claims are dubious. Pitt, though he once described himself as an independent Whig, eschewed party labels. His political world was not one in which collective cabinet responsibility or strong party discipline were salient features. Parliamentary majorities required genuinely winning the support of independent backbenchers, though the latter was more likely if the measure being promoted enjoyed the support of the crown. It was generally conceded that his composite talents-his oratory, intellect, capacity for hard work, and mastery of detail--allowed him to succeed more often, and for longer, as prime minister, than anybody else could have. The regard in which he has been held by those who filled the office after him, including Churchill and Wilson in the twentieth century, consequently might allow us to claim for Pitt the title of the Prime Ministers' prime minister.

Further Reading

Ian Christie, Wars and Revolutions: Britain 1760-1815 (Edward Arnold, 1982); Michael Duffy, The Younger Pitt (Pearson, 2000); John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt (Constable, 3 volumes 1969-1996); Eric J. Evans, Pitt the Younger (Routledge, 1999); William Hague, Pitt the Younger (Harper Collins, 2004); Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England 1783-1846 (Clarendon Press, 2006) Michael J.Turner, Pitt the Younger: A Life (Hambledon, 2003).

Issues to Debate

* To what extent can it be argued that Pitt was a reformer?

* Were Pitt's achievements greater in peace than in war?

* What was Pitt's political legacy?

Dr R. E. Foster is Head of History at Hampshire Collegiate School in Romsey.

Timeline

1759    28 May    Born at Haves Place
                  in Kent

1773              Enters Cambridge
                  University

1780              Elected MP for
                  Appleby in Westmor
                  land (Cambridge Uni
                  versity from 1784)

1782    July      Appointed Chancellor
                  of the Exchequer in
                  Shelburne's adminis
                  tration (till April 1783)

1783    19 Dec    Appointed Prime
                  Minister and Chancel
                  for of the Exchequer
1785              Buys Holwood in Kent

1793    1 Feb     France declares war

1795    18 Dec    Passing of the Two Acts'

1801    14 Mar    Surrenders seals of
                  office to George III

1803    May       Hostilities with
                  France recommence

1804    10 May    Resumes office as
                  Prime Minister

1806    23 Jan    Dies at Putney Heath
                  aged 46

        22 Feb    Buried in Westminster
                  Abbey

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Forever Young: Myth, Reality and William Pitt: R. E. Foster Examines the Career of Pitt the Younger. Contributors: Foster, R. E. - Author. Journal title: History Review. Issue: 63 Publication date: March 2009. Page number: 34+. © 1999 History Today Ltd. COPYRIGHT 2009 Gale Group.

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