The first days of Pitt's power are not altogether pleasant to contemplate. His demeanour was unendurably cold and repellent. He felt perhaps that it was necessary for so young a minister to hold mankind at a distance -- or what had before been called shyness was now called pride.

At any rate, as the kind Wilberforce regretfully notes, he did not make friends. His father had kept two generations in a state of subjection and awe, but Chatham was a consummate actor, and Pitt was not. It is told of Chatham that when he met a bishop, he bowed so low that his nose could be seen between his knees.

So appalling a suavity of demeanour inspired probably even more terror than his intolerable eye. But Pitt's haughtiness was less sardonic ; at any rate, it was of a different kind.

His unfortunate bearing did him no good. A graver charge against him at the moment of elevation is his behaviour to Fox. Fox had been returned for WestMinster. But the High Bailiff, instead of making a return, sent in a statement of the number severally polled, and an intimation that he had granted a scrutiny; a proceeding which could not be constitutional, as it might have excluded Westminster from representation for a whole. parliament, should the scrutiny be prolonged into a measure of obstruction.

Pitt, however, under the influence of Sir Lloyd Kenyon, Master of the Rolls, sustained the action of the High Bailiff, and met with a well merited rebuff. Nor was his action a mere incident of party warfare. He threw into it all his energies, and the passion of a personal cause. Throughout the general election he had concentrated his attention on Westminster; he had been defeated, and now endeavoured to cover his repulse by proceedings which, as they were not adequate to prevent his powerful rival from sitting in the House of Commons, bore the appearance of personal rancour or personal mortification, and the even baser suspicion of an attempt to finally crush that rival's wrecked fortunes.

On this issue Fox put forth now resources and splendours of eloquence. He exceeded himself, by delivering what is often considered as the best of his speeches; and, more remarkable still, so well reported that Lord Holland declared in reading it, he fancied he beard his uncle's voice. But the, Minister's resolution was worthy a better cause. Every omen pointed to disaster; the most sinister parliamentary portents and the marked hostility of public opinion failed to deter him. In the fade of shrinking majorities, of lukewarm friends, and a reluctant King, he persevered.

The result from the first was discouraging, and soon ended in collapse. His majority on the address had been 168. But in the first division on the scrutiny it fell to 97. Within three weeks it sunk to 78, at the very moment when his majority on the India Bill was 211.

In the next session he fared worse, for on the 9th of February 1785 it had dwindled to 39. On the 21st of February it was but nine; while on the 4th of March Pitt found himself defeated by 38 votes; and the High Bailiff was compelled to make an immediate return. Pitt had mistaken the temper of the nation, and the complexion of his party.

Englishmen delight in a fair fight and a fair victory; but nothing is so revolting to them as anything which bears the semblance of ungenerous treatment of a fallen enemy. The feeling of the country was reflected in his followers, who displayed more independence than Pitt had conceived possible. In this particular case, the demonstration against him was manly and justified. It is one of the rare occasions on which his parliamentary tact failed him; perhaps the only instance of personal pettiness to which he ever condescended. If it is not a surprising lapse of judgment and temper in a man of twenty-four, it is amazing when the general tenor of his character and career is considered.

If Pitt sustained humiliation on the scrutiny, it was forgotten in the general lustre of his statesmanship. In the interval between the 19th of December and the 12th of January he had not merely formed his Government, but he had prepared and procured the consent of the East India Company to a new India Bill. It had met, of course, with no mercy in debate, but had only been rejected by a reluctant majority of eight. He now reintroduced substantially the same measure, and obtained a division of 271 to 60 in its favour. It instituted that complex system of government and that Board of Control, which endured till the Act of 1858.

But in comparing it with Fox's notorious Bill, it is fair to make one remark. Fox had proposed to hand over the patronage and power of India to irremovable Commissioners for four years. It was urged against this scheme that by it, Fox, in or out of office, would have through his appointed Commissioners all the patronage of the East; and that for four years, whoever might rule in England, he would rule in India.

The same objection might, however, be urged against any new body of Commissioners appointed under party government; and so far as patronage was concerned, it could hardly have been exercised in a more partisan spirit for four years under Fox's arrangement, than it was under Pitt's for eighteen. Wielded by Dundas in dexterous combination, he so arranged it, no doubt for the mutual benefit of both, that the Eastern Empire of which he was the trustee should be enriched by an unceasing immigration from his own kingdom of Scotland.

Pitt's chief cares and eminent success of this session were, however, connected with finance. He had in a year of peace to bring forward a war budget, having been left with a deficit of six, and a floating debt of at least fourteen millions, besides a debt of two millions to the Bank of England and the usual deficiencies on the Civil List. Moreover, smuggling had grown to such a height that it required immediate and drastic remedies.

The leading features of his financial operations were three. Smuggling was chiefly carried on in tea; it was calculated that the consumption of illicit was double that of duty-paying tea. To meet this, apart from more stringent regulations as regards search, he lowered and varied the tea duty so as to take away the smuggler's probable profit; while he met the deficiency of revenue thus caused by an increase of the window tax. He calculated the population of England to be six millions; four millions of whom, by paying an increased window tax, should bring up the revenue to at least the seven or eight hundred thousand provided by the old tea duty, although they would pay less for their tea, even with the new window tax thrown in, than under the actual tea tax; while the remaining two millions, consuming the cheaper teas and living in houses of less than seven windows, would get their tea duty-free.

The second feature of his financial policy was that, for the loans required to meet the deficit and the floating debt, he accepted the lowest tender by public competition, thus abolishing for ever the corrupt and costly favouritism. which had disgraced previous loans. By this single measure he probably did more to purify Parliament than he could have effected by his Reform Bill.

The third was the variety of tax by which he raised the additional revenue required. Hats, raw silk, horses, linens, calicoes, candles, licenses for dealers in excisable commodities, bricks, tiles, shooting certificates, paper, hackney coaches, gold and silver plate, the export of lead, ale-licenses, race-horses, and postage were all taxed to produce some £ 900,000.

On the night of his budget (June 30, 1784) he moved 133 financial resolutions. Some of his proposals, among them a coal tax, had to be modified or withdrawn, and they are here stated in their ultimate form; but Pitt's conciliatory method of explanation produced scarcely less impression than the capacity which he displayed in unfolding them.

The recess, after this busy and eventful session, he spent between Putney and Brighton, studying, in conjunction with Irish ministers and British merchants, the proper measures to give effect to his Irish policy. This period was marked by two incidents-one of transient, the other of permanent importance. The first was the entry into the Ministry of the cautious Camden; the other was the postponement of the opening of Parliament from the usual date at the beginning of November till the end of January.

The Houses met (January, 1785) under the cloud of European disturbances, evolved by the restless ambition of Joseph the Second in the Netherlands ; a cloud soon dispelled. As regards domestic affairs, Pitt was able to point to the success of his financial measures. The revenue was displaying unwonted buoyancy; it was advancing by leaps and bounds; and the minister was able to promise the early creation of a sinking fund, so soon as he should have been able to dispose of the floating debts which he had inherited from the war. As to the measures for the suppression of smuggling, Fox himself acknowledged their efficacy. Pitt's reputation as a peace financier was established, and was to suffer no abatement.

Less Success

His other measures were less successful. He suffered his final rebuff on the Westminster Scrutiny. For the third and, as it proved, for the last time, he brought forward (April 18, 1785) the question of parliamentary reform.

He proposed to give seventy-two seats to London and the largest counties; these seventy-two seats to be obtained by the voluntary and compensated surrender of their franchise by thirty-six petty boroughs, while permanent provision was made for the future surrender of such boroughs under similar conditions of compensation and transfer. This last enactment would, he conceived, make his measure final, self-adjusting, and complete, and obviate all necessity for any further reform.

He displayed extraordinary zeal and ability on this occasion. He personally canvassed his friends. He summoned Wilberforce from the Riviera. He adjured the Duke of Rutland to influence from Ireland Yorkshiremen of weight in its favour. He declared to this intimate friend that he regarded the success of his plan as essential to the credit, if not the stability, of his administration, as well as to the good government of the country hereafter. Nay, he even implored the neutrality of the hostile King, which was promised with the saturnine comment that "The conduct of some of Mr. Pitt's most intimate friends on the Westminster Scrutiny shows that there are questions men will not by friendship be biassed to adopt." The motion was defeated, whether owing to the reluctance of members or the significant silence of the monarch it is difficult to say.

But the capital measure of the session of 1785 concerned Ireland. Pitt's Irish policy was at this time repeatedly defined by himself. it was large and statesmanlike. He accepted as irrevocable the settlement of 1782, which gave Ireland parliamentary independence; and he sought to unite the two countries on the sure basis of commercial intercourse and common interest. Were this accomplished, it would, he believed, remove all possible danger and inconvenience from the duality of legislatures. Nor was it a work that admitted of delay; it had to be done while the new institutions in Ireland and their under- growth of tendencies were still plastic, before gristle had hardened into bone.

His aim was to follow up this, the most urgent with two other measures; one a reform of the Irish Parliament, the other the conversion of the volunteers into a militia. But all hung together, all fell together.

His commercial scheme was embodied in eleven resolutions, concerted in the vacation, and passed by the Irish Parliament just before Pitt presented them to the House of Commons. Their object was to allow the importation, without increase of duty, of all produce from other countries, through Ireland into Great Britain and through Great Britain into Ireland; to reduce the duties on the produce and manufactures of both countries to the scale of that country where the duties were lowest; and to provide a contribution from Ireland to the imperial navy 'by enacting that, whenever the gross hereditary revenue of Ireland (which then stood at £ 652,000) should rise above £ 656,000, the surplus was to be applied to that object; only in a saving clause, introduced in Ireland, this last provision was not to take effect in time of peace, unless there was a just balance between income and expenditure.

Their general scope, however, was tersely embodied in the first resolution: " That Ireland should be admitted to a permanent and irrevocable participation of the commercial advantages of this country, when the Parliament of Ireland shall secure an aid out of the surplus of the hereditary revenue of that kingdom towards defraying the expense of protecting the general commerce of the Empire in time of peace."

Pitt's exposition of his policy was worthy of the subject. He denounced in the strongest terms the past treatment of Ireland by England. Until these last very few years, he said, the system had been that of debarring Ireland from the use and enjoyment of her own resources; of making that kingdom completely subservient to the interests and opulence of this country; without suffering her to share in the bounties of nature, in the industry of her citizens, or to contribute to the general interests and strength of the Empire.

This system had counteracted the kindness of Providence and suspended the enterprise of man. It had been a policy of keeping the smaller country completely subservient and subordinate to the greater; to make the one, as it were, an instrument of advantage; and to force all her efforts to operate in favour, and conduct merely to the interest, of the other.

But this "system of cruel and abominable restraint" had been exploded, and he aimed at a better, a more natural, and a more equitable relation -- a participation and community of benefits and a system of equality and fairness which, without tending to aggrandise the one or to depress the other, should seek the aggregate interests of the Empire.

On this general basis he moved his resolutions; he had anxiously searched for the "best means of uniting the two Countries by the firmest and most indissoluble bonds"; and this was the result.

As to the equivalent to be received from Ireland in exchange for the commercial advantages conceded to her, it was to be in exact proportion to the benefit she derived from them. From the nature of the Irish hereditary revenue, it would be an ingenious measure of the success of the proposal and the advantage that Ireland would reap from it; while, on the other hand, it would be, by the same process of self-adjustment, scrupulously fair towards England. For it consisted of certain customs-duties, imposed on almost every species of goods imported; an excise duty upon some articles of the me general consumption; and a house tax levied on the number of mouths in each.

It was obvious, therefore, that this revenue would necessarily increase, as soon as the arrangement began to take effect, and in exact proportion to that effect: every article of which it was composed being so closely connected with commerce, wealth, and population. So much for the solace of Ireland. And for the satisfaction of England he pointed out that, if it should be given to England, it was because little had been gained in Ireland; so that, whether much or little should be gained from it, England would have no call to be dissatisfied; if much should be got, she would be a gainer; if little, it would be a proof that little of the commerce of England had found its way to Ireland, in that there would not be room for jealousy.

The policy and the speech were alike ingenious fruitful, and statesmanlike; but in England the opposition of apprehensive interests was sustained and bitter. Two months were spent by the House of Commons in the examination and discussion of commercial representatives, headed and guided by Wedgewood. As a result, Pitt found that he could not carry his original propositions.

On the 12th of May (1785) he introduced a score of remodelled resolutions. But the amendment added to secure English, hopelessly alienated Irish support. All the new, as compared with the original, articles were restrictive of Irish trade; but the fourth resolution attempted a restraint on the Irish Parliament. It enacted that all laws, which had been or should be passe, with reference to navigation in the imperial legislature should also apply to Ireland by laws to be passed by the Irish Parliament.

Opportunity for Fox

Fox saw his opportunity. He could not now defeat the propositions in England; but he could secure their rejection in Ireland. With extraordinary power and ability, he thundered against the surrender of legislative independence that the minister was demanding from Ireland. Where ministers, he declared, had not betrayed their imbecility they had been insidious; where they had not been insidious, they had been treacherous. It would have been more manly and more honourable to have plainly told the Irish, "that however desirous and happy we should be to serve you, yet, in justice to our own country, we find we cannot grant what we offered. Without being the ruin of many here, we cannot serve an equal number of you. Without exposing our own country and its manufactures and manufacturers to ruin, or without your yielding up the independency of your Parliament, we cannot grant the participation offered to you."

And he bade farewell to the resolutions with the impassioned exclamation, "I will not barter English commerce for Irish slavery; that is not the price I would pay, nor is this the thing I would purchase." In that pithy sentence with consummate dexterity he combined the objections of both the English and the Irish. The note he struck readily resounded in Ireland. Grattan denounced the English propositions in a speech which the Viceroy described as incredibly eloquent, seditious, and inflammatory. Orde, the Chief Secretary, did not venture to proceed with them, and Pitt abandoned them for ever.

So passed away another of the rare and irrevocable opportunities of uniting the two countries. It is impossible to blame the Irish, jealous of any reflection on their new legislative independence, and who had seen the resolutions -- which they had passed suspiciously transmuted in this direction. Nothing, again, can be more admirable than the energy, the foresight, and the disregard of popular clamour displayed by the young minister.

There is also some excuse for the opposition of Fox, because Fox openly professed that he had never been able to understand political economy. But when we consider the object and the price.; that the price was free trade and the object commercial and, in all probability, complete union with Ireland; that there was, in fact, no price to pay, but only a double boon, to use Pitt's happy quotation, "twice blessed; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes," it is difficult to avoid the impression that there has been throughout the past history of England and Ireland a malignant fate counteracting every auspicious chance, and blighting each opportunity of beneficence as it arises.

At any rate, Pitt, though he at first preserved the confident language of persistence, abandoned henceforward this wise and kindly Irish policy. He felt that the jealousy and prejudice which had driven Burke from Bristol had abated little of their rigour; and that Irish national sentiment, rooted deeply in the past, regarded with classical apprehension the very gifts of the English. His impressions were excusable, and even natural, in view of the circumstances of the time. But all parties may well regret that Pitt did not display on this occasion something of the same pertinacity that he did with regard to his later Irish projects.

In 1786 he included Ireland in his commercial treaty with France, and Ireland made no objection. This, however, did not encourage him to resume his larger scheme. From this time forward, he appears to have turned his attention from Ireland, or at any rate to have looked more to that legislative union for which his most intimate friends, such as Rutland and Wilberforce, openly expressed their anxiety, and to which another juncture was soon to point.

But the abandonment of the Irish commercial propositions suggests a curious question. Why were they relinquished, and why were so many of the principal Government measures abandoned or defeated?

We have seen that in May 1784 the Opposition lay crushed and almost obliterated at Pitt's feet. Since then, he had sustained defeat on the Westminster Scrutiny, on Parliamentary Reform, and had first to remodel and then to withdraw his Irish resolutions; he had also been compelled to take back his coal tax. In 1786 he was defeated on the government scheme of fortifications. In 1788, on the East India Declaratory Bill, he was again run hard, and thought to be in actual jeopardy.

Why was this powerful minister exposed to these rebuffs, in a Parliament elected so entirely for his personal support? The reason is partly special, and partly general.

"It is a very loose Parliament," notes Eden, than whom there was no more acute observer, "and Government has not a decisive hold of it upon any particular question."

Pitt soon made the same observation. "Do not imagine," he writes this year, "because we have had two triumphant divisions, that we have everything before us. We have an indefatigable enemy, sharpened by disappointment, watching and improving every opportunity. It has required infinite patience, management, and exertion to meet the clamour out of doors, and to prevent it infecting our supporters in the House. Our majority, though a large one, is composed of men who think, or at least act, so much for themselves, that we are hardly sure from day to day what impression they may receive."

It is probable that, in view of Pitt's youth, his plans were not at first received with the confidence to which they were entitled, nor does it ever seem to have occurred to his supporters that any number of defeats of this nature could bring about his resignation. There can be no doubt that he bitterly felt these miscarriages; but it is also clear that no thought of resignation crossed his mind. This in itself would show how different was the condition of the House of Commons of those days from the House of Commons of these.

But the difference lay much deeper. The composition of a parliamentary majority at that time was that of a feudal or a Highland army. It was an aggregate of the followings of a few great chiefs, of whom the King himself was the principal. A powerful leader would make a sign and his followers disappear; one bugle call would be followed by another, until one day the whole array would have melted away, and the general be a lonely fugitive.

What Clauronald or Lochiel had been in a military, Lord Lonsdale or the Duke of Norfolk were in a political campaign. And of those who were not at the beck of great mongers, fewer then than now feared the loss of their seat as the consequence of their parliamentary vote. Some sate for family boroughs; some who had paid four or five thousand pounds for their seat, knew that for the same price they could always secure another.

Public opinion, in so far as it existed, was a subtle and indirect influence. The cohesive force of a party lay, not in the power of the people, but in the patronage of the minister. And so we shall find in those days many more instances of a sort of personal independence in the House of Commons than now, and a minister much more frequently at the mercy of Parliament, of the personal pique of some baffled noble, of a Duke of Greenwich alienated by a Lord Oldborough's unsealed letter, of a Temple resentful of withhold dignities.

In recent times a government, clearly designated by the result of a general election, can generally remain in office for the duration of a Parliament; as the pressure of the majority, instant and weighty, not merely supports but guides. But, in the last half of the last century, a minister obtained comparatively little assistance from public opinion, while he had to struggle with the secret currents of royal and jobbing intrigue.

A curious illustration of parliamentary government at this time is to be found in an analysis of the House of Commons dated May 1, 1788, which has been recently discovered among the papers of one of Pitt's private secretaries. In it the "party of the Crown" is estimated at 185 members. "This party includes all those who would probably support His Majesty's Government under any minister not peculiarly unpopular."

"The independent or unconnected members of the House" (a party which seems to have corresponded very much with the Squadrone of the old Scottish Parliament) are calculated at 108; Fox's party at 138; and that of Pitt at 52. Even this unflattering computation is further discounted by the remark that of this party, were there a new Parliament and Mr. P. no longer to continue minister, not above twenty would be returned." No document has thrown more light than this on the political system of this period.

In these days, too, a minister would expect some help from his colleagues. But Pitt could depend on no one but Dundas. Timidity at first made able men hold aloof. Afterwards, when Pitt had secured his mastery at the polls and in debate, it may, perhaps, be charged against him that he determined, during eight or nine years, that he should be sole and supreme minister, and that none should be admitted who would threaten that predominance.

The ordinary vacancies in his Government were filled by men like Jenkinson "Jenky," the subterranean agent of the King, who divided his studies between courts and commerce, and well understood both; or Pitt's brother, Chatham, whose indolence swamped the superiority of his talents and the popularity of his manners. Grenville and Wellesley were not exceptions; for Wellesley only held a lordship of the Treasury, and no more than Grenville, Pitt's first cousin, in any degree menaced the minister's monopoly of parliamentary power. It was not till the stress of the French Revolution was upon him, that be summoned to his aid all the men of capacity that he could collect.

Pitt found some consolation for his Irish defeat, which he at first regarded as but temporary, in the purchase of Hollwood: an agreeable imprudence, which marked the beginning of his pecuniary embarrassments. There he planted and planned with all the enthusiasm which had marked his father's operations at Hayes and Burton Pynsent. But the Hollwood of Pitt has long disappeared.

The house he built has been demolished, and the woods he planted can no more be traced. There remains, however, an ancient, memorable oak; stretched under which, Wilberforce and he resolved on that campaign for the abolition of the Slave Trade, which gave honour to the one and immortality to the other.

Chapter V: Warren Hastings and the Regency