Pitt was now to inhabit the Pay Office, and he gave notice to Ann, without any previous quarrel so far as we know, that they would henceforth live apart. In any case, Pitt's accession to office thus enabled him to put a convenient period to what had probably become a fretting and irksome arrangement; but Walpole notes at this time that there is gossip about 'the new Paymaster's mÉnage,' possibly Grattan's tradition of 'This House to Let.' This sort of chit-chat is, however, the inevitable accompaniment of a man in Pitt's position and need not again be dwelt upon. Two of his early patrons also quarrelled with him: the Prince of Wales and Cobham. But Pitt, for the moment at any rate, could afford to do without either. A more delicate question required his attention. There were habitual practices in the Pay Office which brought in immense profits to the Paymaster. It was the custom of that official to take poundage on all subsidies paid to foreign princes, and to use the great balances at his credit for his own purposes of speculation. As to this second method Pitt had no doubts, and rejected the idea. As to the first he seems, on entering upon office, to have consulted Pelham.[179] Pelham replied that Winnington had taken these perquisites, but that he himself when Paymaster had not; Pitt could do as he chose. 'Such a manner of stating it left scarce an option in any but the basest of mankind,' remarks Camelford with characteristic bitterness. Pitt at any rate did not hesitate, and refused to take a farthing beyond his salary, which, in truth, was splendid enough. But the indirect profits of the Paymastership, which earlier in the century had founded the dukedom of Chandos and the palace of Canons, and which later endowed the peerage of Henry Fox and the glories of his exquisite residence at Kensington, besides furnishing great fortunes for his graceless sons to squander at the gaming-table, were, as Dr. Johnson would have said, beyond the dreams of avarice. It was held in that day of loose political morality to be noble, if not unique, for a man with a patrimony of a hundred a year and a legacy of ten thousand pounds to refuse to receive such profits.[180]

Lord Camelford's statement may be taken in the main to be correct without adopting the sour inference which he draws. Pitt may well have asked Pelham as to the practice of the office and Pelham have replied in the sense indicated. If so, it was nearly as creditable to Pelham as to Pitt, for one was scarcely less needy than the other. Pelham was a gambler, and so wanted all the money he could get. He was a politician, and politicians in those days required money for their purposes almost as much as gamblers. Lord Camelford implies that had Pelham not answered as he did, Pitt would have taken the percentages and the balances. This is mere surmise. But, had he done so, he could not have been blamed. These perquisites were regarded as legitimate by the practice and opinion of the day; the balances were matters of public account. They made the Paymaster's office a great prize, a recognised source of immense profits. The fact remains that Pitt, or Pitt and Pelham, thought them improper, and refused to take them.

One signal difference must however be observed. Pelham abstained silently, the abstinence of Pitt was widely known. This notoriety may have been partly due to the fact that the King of Sardinia, having heard of Pitt's refusal to deduct the percentage on the Sardinian subsidy, sent to offer him a large present, which Pitt unhesitatingly declined. But there was another reason, which colours Pitt's whole life, and which may therefore well be noted here. His light was never hid under any sort of bushel, and he did not intend that it should be. He already saw that his power lay with the people, and that it was based not merely on his genius and eloquence, but on a faith in his public spirit and scrupulous integrity. His virtues were his credentials, and it was necessary that they should be conspicuous. Pulteney and St. John had wielded greater Parliamentary power, yet Pulteney and St. John had perished from want of character. Character he saw was the one necessary thing, but character must be known to be appreciated. Pitt was perhaps the first of those statesmen who sedulously imbue the public with a knowledge of their merit. He can scarcely be called an advertiser, but he was the ancestor of advertisers. Other statesmen no doubt had paid their pamphleteers. Pitt paid nobody, but he inspired; he had hangers-on who clung to the skirts of his growing fortune. This is not to imply that he had not a genuine scorn of meanness and corruption and the baser arts of politics. He had to use them through others; he had to ally himself with Newcastle and his gang; he could not govern otherwise. But he was anxious that the public should know that he was something apart from and above these politicians. His was a real but not a retiring purity; a white column rather than a snowdrop. This was all part of his essentially theatrical character, which he had found successful in Parliament, and which gradually absorbed him, with unhappy results.

But there was another reason why it was necessary that Pitt should advertise his virtue on this occasion. He was a patriot joining the Court party, a member of the Opposition accepting a place, which, with all deductions, had a fixed and ample salary. It was not possible for him, though his friends were already established in office, to join them without some loss of popularity. It was difficult for him to keep his shield untarnished in the royal armoury. The morose Glover states that he brought himself to the level of Lord Bath in public disfavour by his acceptance of office. Pitt himself, at the time of his bitter mortification in 1754, writes to Lord Hardwicke of his 'bearing long a load of obloquy for supporting the King's measures,' without the smallest abatement of the King's hostility, and about the same time describes himself as having parted with that weight in the country which arose from his independent opposition to the measures of the Government. He must indeed have counted the cost. It seemed obvious and in the nature of things that Lytteltons, Grenvilles, and Cobhams should follow the other patriots into office when opportunity offered; they had no doubt barked loudly at ministers, but they belonged to the families which always governed the country, and it was proper, indeed inevitable, that they should take up their predestined positions on the Treasury Bench. But Pitt had stood on a different pedestal. He had been marked out by Walpole for punishment and by the King for exclusion. He had thundered against the King and the King's trusted Ministers, the Walpoles and the Carterets, with a voice that overbore all others, and which apparently could not be silenced. The people seemed at last to have found an incorruptible champion. Then suddenly he was muzzled with a sinecure. Had he insisted on the Secretaryship of War and wrenched it from the reluctant sovereign, the position would have been totally different. But to pass into the sleek silence of the Vice Treasurership, and almost to disappear from sight or hearing for eight years, seemed a moral collapse. It is not one of the least remarkable features of Pitt's career that he should have survived this lucrative obscurity.

It is indeed difficult to understand how so fierce and restless a spirit could have endured the passive existence to which he had restrained himself by the acceptance of office. We seem to hear a growl but a few months after he had become Paymaster. 'In the gloomy scene which, I fear, is opening in public affairs for this disgraced country,' he writes to George Grenville in October 1746; not a cheerful tone for a young minister, but one not unfamiliar among those in subordinate positions. Still he could afford to wait. He probably contented himself with the reflection that King George could not last for ever, and flattered himself with an easy entrance to the councils of King Frederick. He could watch, too, with silent scorn, the miscarriages of his official superiors, confident that high office must come to him, as it were, of its own accord. Still, he had to wait long, and the death of Frederick as well as the longevity of the monarch were little less than disastrous to his calculations. It would have been better, of course, for his historical position had he refrained from taking a subordinate office, which restrained his independence, and deprived him of the peculiar lustre of his lonely power. In these days we ask ourselves what temptation could induce him to accept a post which seemed to offer nothing but salary in exchange for the exceptional splendour of his independent position? How was it worth his while to become Vice-Treasurer of Ireland? It cannot have been for money. He was notoriously indifferent to money (though his nephew casts doubts even on this), and he was better off as to money than he had ever been before, owing to the Marlborough legacy. It may have been that as his political associates had all joined the administration, he thought that his loneliness impaired his power, and he must certainly have felt that it was impossible for him to continue in active and effective opposition to a Government which included his closest friends. That would seem to be the chief and conspicuous reason. But there was another, as one may well suppose, which was not less potent. Office is the natural, legitimate and honourable object of all politicians who feel capable of doing good work as ministers, and even of some who do not. The instances to the contrary are so few as to prove the rule. Wilberforce and Burdett, Ashley (for Ashley, though not literally outside the category of officials, cannot be considered as one), and Cobden are the names that obviously present themselves. But Ashley and Wilberforce had consecrated themselves to a high career of philanthropy which was incompatible with the bond of ministry. Burdett, long a popular idol and an orator of great power, a country gentleman of the best type, and personally agreeable even to those who differed from him, was probably held to be too advanced a demagogue to be even considered for an appointment. Cobden refused office at least twice; yet had he lived he could not have kept out of it. Bright, his illustrious political twin, the Castor to his Pollux, took it and liked it. In the eighteenth century we can think of no one but Pulteney. He, indeed, strictly speaking, is no exception, for as a youth he held a subordinate post. And though in the maturity of his powers he refused the first place when apparently he might have had it, he also solicited it when it was out of his reach.

Althorp too, in the last century, is a singular example. He led the House of Commons for four years as Chancellor of the Exchequer, when his popularity and ascendancy made him the real pivot of the Government. But he hated office with so deadly a hatred that he had the pistols removed from his room lest he should end his official career with them. He really comes in the list of exceptions to the rule that office is the goal of all capable politicians.

But Pitt had nothing in common with these men. He wished to be in office, and he knew that he would be a better minister than any there, even though he may not have felt already the confidence which he afterwards expressed that he alone could save England. How then was he to obtain a foothold in the ministry? The just repugance of the King was, he knew, insurmountable, so long as he remained outside. But if admitted to office he might well hope much from his power of fascination, which was almost famous. The King was not an easy person for any man to charm; but Pitt no doubt felt that if he could once be placed in contact with His Majesty, he might be able to remove the royal prejudice; though in that he seems to have been wrong. He tried his hand on Lady Yarmouth, with whom at a later period he seems to have been on a familiar footing; but it is doubtful if she ever dispelled, though she may have mitigated, the King's hatred of Pitt.

Even failing the mollification of the King, he felt that by taking office he would have entered the official caste, and he would have placed his foot on one rung of the ladder of greatness. In accepting the Vice-Treasurership he had doubtless been promised the next post that was vacant, and was, as has been seen, given the Paymastership. He was thus reunited to all his political friends, and would form with them a solid proportion of the garrison of Downing Street, a proportion to be reckoned with. It would be strange indeed if in such a position and with such feeble superiors he did not make his way to some position of real business and power.

It must be remembered, too, that the state of affairs as regards office in the eighteenth century was very different from the present. Now, if a man be a bold and popular speaker, both in Parliament and on the platform, but more especially on the platform, he leaps into the Cabinet at once; he disdains anything else; a Vice-Treasurership such as Pitt accepted he would regard as an insult. But in the middle of the eighteenth century there was nothing of this. There was no such thing as platform speaking outside the religious movement. A man made himself prominent and formidable in Parliament, but that was a small part of the necessary qualifications for office. The Sovereign then exercised a control, not indeed absolute, but efficacious and material, on the selection of ministers. The great posts were mainly given to peers; while a peerage is now as regards office in the nature of an impediment, if not a disqualification. In those days an industrious duke, or even one like Grafton who was not industrious, could have almost what he chose. But most of the great potentates preferred to brood over affairs in company with hangers-on who brought them the news, or with their feudal members of parliament. Still they formed a vital element in the governments of that time. Pelham's administration at this very time contained five dukes: he himself was the only commoner in it, and he was a duke's brother. It was necessary to have a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons, but all the other high offices could be held preferably by peers. The two Secretaries of State were both dukes. A brilliant commoner without family connection or great fortune was an efficient gladiator to be employed in the service of these princes, but he was not allowed to rise beyond a fixed line. The peers lived, as it were, in the steward's room, and the commoners in the servants' hall; in some parlour, high above all, sate the King.

Pitt, according to the practice of the twentieth century, would have received at least the highest office outside or, more probably, office within the Cabinet on the fall of Walpole, and he certainly would have been a Secretary of State or the equivalent before 1746. As it was, in that year he had to climb on hands and knees into a subordinate position. It had been difficult for him to get even that far at the cost of a ministerial crisis of capital importance. The veto of the King had certainly been the principal obstacle. But the iron rules of caste forbade any idea of office for Pitt at all commensurate with his importance. He had under the system in force to get in as he could, and into much the same sort of office as his inferior but more influentially connected colleagues, the Grenvilles, the Lytteltons, and the like.

There was another weighty consideration which pointed to prompt acceptance. Pitt had no time to spare. He was no longer in his first youth, he was approaching middle age. When he accepted this subordinate post he was thirty-eight; and thirty-eight, it may be said, when the lives of statesmen were comparatively short, was a more mature period in a career than it would be considered now. At the age when Pitt became Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, North was already Prime Minister. Pitt was now seven years older than Grafton when he became Prime Minister, and fifteen years older than his own son when he first led the House of Commons as Chancellor of the Exchequer; both, of course, under circumstances abnormally propitious. These figures show sufficiently not merely that Pitt's career was, so to speak, in arrear, but that the youthfulness of ministers in those days, under the favouring breezes of birth and connection, affords no standard of comparison for the possibilities of a poor country gentleman with no such advantages. Pitt was, indeed, rather old than young of his age. His sickly youth and his habitual infirmities had aged him beyond his years. But it must be noted in passing that, in spite of the dire impetuosity of his character, all his steps in life, except his entry into Parliament, were tardy and delayed. He was forty-six when he married, and forty-eight when he first entered the Cabinet; he was thirty-eight when he first obtained office. He moved slowly, but not patiently. His glowing nature, thrown back on itself, exacerbated by rebuffs and neglect, all fused into a fierce scorn, the sÆva indignatio of Swift, gathered strength and intensity in its restrained progress, until it developed into a spirit not indeed amiable or attractive, but of indomitable and superhuman force. That was the process which was at work in the shade of subordinate office.

This consideration leads us to what is the best, and probably the true, explanation of this voluntary eclipse: that in taking office he was taking leave of his youth and of his past, and embarking on a new phase of his career. Up to this time he had, like a predatory animal, lived wholly on attack, and had given no thought to consistency, and little to his future. He had only been a rattling politician, determined to make his way, thinking only of the game, and of how to develop and display his powers of oratory. He had been content to adopt Cobham's enemies as his own, and had tried on them the temper of his virgin sword, without much caring who they were or why he attacked them, so long as they were sufficiently prominent to give notoriety to their assailant. His course had been one of brilliant recklessness and of striking eloquence; but at bottom it had been nothing but faction. There have been many such swashbucklers in our history, and there will be many more. But it is rare that, as in Pitt's case, they develop into something supreme. With Pitt these extravagancies had only been the frolics of genius. By burying himself in the sedateness and reticence of office, Pitt sought to break with his dazzling indiscretions, and mature himself for statesmanship. He retired behind a screen in order to change his dress. That, one may infer, was his design; that, certainly, was the effect.

To make an end of this topic, one may ask why Pitt, so fertile of invective himself, was not the subject of execration when he joined the Court. Great men no doubt may commit faults, even crimes, with impunity, for the lustre of their achievements throws a shadow over their errors. In such men it is recognised that all is usually on a colossal scale, deeds and misdeeds alike. As they are capable of gigantic successes, they are also capable of stupendous blunders. This is true of Pitt's whole career, but it does not explain the facility with which he was now able, before he had his famous administration to his credit, to subside into an easy placeman and vindicate the measures which he had previously denounced. A few lampoons were of course launched at so tempting an object, but he was not made a conspicuous butt. Nor does he seem to have lost, or if he did he soon regained, the ear and confidence of the people. He had at all periods rare powers of recovery. But in this case the fact is not difficult to explain. In the first place it must be borne in mind that what he did was the ordinary thing to do. Again, his personal friends, and even those who had intercourse with him, were impressed by his character and believed in his integrity. Then the refusal of the indirect profits counted for much, it gave an air of austere virtue to a proceeding otherwise questionable. Again, there was no particular object to be gained by attacking him. Who indeed was there to attack him? No one thought it worth their while to subsidise Grub Street for the purpose of throwing dirt on a silent Paymaster, and few dared attack him to his face. He had already inspired the House of Commons with that awe of him which subsisted and increased so long as he remained there. To deliver a philippic against Pitt was no joking matter; it required a man with iron nerves who was reckless of retribution. Lee, as we have seen, had attempted one, but, in spite of Horace Walpole's eulogy, he does not seem to have repeated the experiment. Hampden also attacked him, as we shall see, in terms which would have led to a duel had not the Speaker interposed his authority. Fox and Grenville withstood him doggedly in after years. BarrÉ, when an obscure Irish adventurer, tried an attack not altogether without success, but did not care to renew the attempt, and became, in fact, Pitt's devoted follower. But these instances must be considered as singularly rare when it is remembered how tempting a mark was presented by Pitt's career, how frank and direct was the language of Parliament, and how generous the potations which flushed its debates. Murray, Pitt's contemporary and his equal in sheer ability, cowered before him; cowered with loathing, but cowered.[181] Pitt was already surrounded, and as years went on completely encompassed, with an armour and atmosphere of terror which rendered him almost impregnable to personal collisions throughout his career in the House of Commons. Some who had nothing to lose and everything to gain baited him from time to time, but they were always tossed back with damage. Such persistent assailants as he had, and they only appeared in force long afterwards, were mainly anonymous.

Whatever the cause may have been, Pitt, from his accession to office in 1746, remains in obscurity and almost in silence (so far as the records testify, though it is evident that these are extremely imperfect) for eight long years, at the potent period of life which ranges from thirty-eight to forty-six, the age at which Napoleon closed his career, but which was yet two years earlier than the commencement of Pitt's. During this long eclipse of ambition and stormy vigour he gives but few signs of life for the most diligent chronicler to note. But he had no sooner been appointed Paymaster than an incident took place which seemed to point to a sudden dawn of royal favour. The Duke of Cumberland's achievements in Scotland were to be rewarded by a pension of 40,000l. a year, and the King expressed a wish that the motion to this effect should be made by Pitt. It is, however, evident that this was not a mark of royal affection, but rather of a royal desire to utilise the new acquisition to the Government, and in a way so little congenial as to make Pitt feel the collar on his neck. The King may have wished to display his captive in chains. But Cumberland, who did not love Pitt, declined this mark of regard, and Pelham fulfilled the honorary duty.

Cumberland had earned this grant, as well as his name of 'the Butcher,' by his victory at Culloden, and the barbarity with which he had followed up his success. Fortunately for him, it never occurred to a grateful country to draw up a debtor and creditor account as between the nation and the Duke. Had it done so, there would have been no grant; for his defeats, both in number and in importance, represented something much more considerable than this easy and solitary triumph, which would have been amply compensated by Swift's 'frankincense and earthern pots to burn it in' at 4l. 10s., with 'a bull for sacrifice' at 8l. However, mingling vengeance with gratitude, Parliament now plunged itself with zest into the horrors of the trials of some adventurous or bankrupt gentlemen who had followed Charles Edward, so that Pitt, even had he so desired, had no opportunity of breaking silence. No speech of his is recorded, indeed, till 1748.

In the meantime he had been compelled to exchange Old Sarum for the ministerial borough of Seaford, one of the Cinque Ports; for Old Sarum was no longer tenable. The lord of Old Sarum, his brother Thomas, was a liege servant of the Prince of Wales, who was now once more in violent opposition, and who indeed ran two candidates, Lord Middlesex, a member of his household, and Mr. Gage, the sitting member, at Seaford in opposition to the ministerial men, William Pitt and William Hay. This proceeding sufficiently indicates the violence and completeness of the rupture between Pitt and his former master, brought about by acceptance of office. So tense indeed was the contest that Newcastle posted down to Seaford in person, held a levee of the voters whom he wooed with copious solicitation and refreshment, and during the poll sat by the returning officer to overawe the corrupt and limited constituency. He was victorious; Lord Middlesex exchanging seats with Pitt, for after this his defeat he was brought in by Thomas Pitt for Old Sarum. Newcastle's proceedings furnished matter for a petition to the House of Commons. This Pitt treated with contempt and 'turned into a mere jest,'[182] but Potter, son of the Primate, a clever scapegrace, of whom we shall hearNov. 20, 1747. again, spoke vigorously in support of the petition. This, however, had little chance against the argument of a compact parliamentary majority, which rejected it by 247 to 96. But it is strange to find Pitt treating purity of election with ridicule: all the more strange when we remember that seven years afterwards he delivered one of his most famous speeches in awful rebuke of the same levity on the same subject. 'Was the dignity of the House of Commons on so sure foundations that they might venture themselves to shake it by jokes on electoral bribery?' It was thus that the House might dwindle into a little assembly serving only 'to register the arbitrary edicts of one too powerful a subject.' It was the arbitrary interference of the same too powerful subject in a parliamentary election that Pitt was now screening with jesting scorn. But Pitt thought little of consistency, and he might well have forgotten for the moment his earlier performance, when seeing and seizing the opportunity for a speech which placed him on a moral elevation above the House of Commons.

In 1748 we find him intervening comically enough in an affair, suspiciously like a local job, which affected his friends, the Grenvilles, and which proved the bitter and jealous animosity with which they were regarded.

Hitherto the summer assizes for Buckinghamshire had been held at Buckingham, and the winter at Aylesbury; but suddenly the summer assizes had also been transferred to Aylesbury. The reason seems to have been simple enough; for the gaol being at Aylesbury, prisoners had to be transferred thence and back again when the assizes were at Buckingham. Richard Grenville (afterwards Lord Temple), however, for obvious reasons, took up the cudgels for Buckingham, which was the close neighbour and borough of Stowe, and brought in a Bill to enact that the summer assizes should be held at that town. All Bucks rushed into the conflict, and as is generally the case in a local affair, the debate was extraordinarily diverting. Richard Grenville, Sir William Stanhope of Eythrope, the brother of Chesterfield, and afterwards a brother of the famous or infamous Medmenham fraternity, Potter again, who had now become secretary to the Prince of Wales, who was soon to be member for Aylesbury, probably for his services on this occasion, and also a future monk of Medmenham, George Grenville, the solemn figure of Pitt, Robert Nugent (whose daughter married George Grenville's son), Lee of Hartwell, were all visible and ardent in the thick of the battle. Henry Fox, then a friend of Pitt, was the only outside member who intervened, and then with a sort of puzzled surprise at the fury of the combatants. Sir William Stanhope, who led the attack on Buckingham, made a speech which was specially piquant. He began: 'Sir, if I did not think I could prove that this Bill is the arrantest job that ever was brought to Parliament, I should not give the House the trouble of hearing me.' He attributed the Bill to the fact that the County of Bucks had not elected two Grenvilles as their members. 'Here let me condole with that unhappy, rather that blinded, county who neglected to choose two gentlemen of such power and interest that I am persuaded they will have more votes in this House to-day than they would have had at the General Election in the whole county in question if they had done it the honour to offer themselves for representatives.' After this bitter exordium he proceeded: 'It is the power and interest of these gentlemen that I am afraid of, not of their arguments;' with good reason, for though to posterity the claim of Aylesbury with its gaol will seem conclusive, the Bill was triumphantly carried. But Stanhope proceeded with an invective against Cobham's young patriots, so violent as to be checked by the Speaker. It is noteworthy as showing the jealousy and hostility with which their rise and power were regarded in the House, and so merits quotation:—

And to shew you, Sir, how sensible they are of the frivolousness of the latter, I could recapitulate such instances of intriguing for votes, as no man would believe who does not know those gentlemen. Conscious of the badness of their cause, they have employed every bad art to support it, and have retained so much of their former patriotism, as consisted in blackening their adversaries and acquiring auxiliaries. They have propagated such tales, that men have overlooked the improbabilities, while they wondered at the foolishness of them; and they have solicited the attendance of their friends, and of their friends' friends, with as much importunity as if their power itself was tottering, not the wanton exercise of it opposed: the only aid they have failed to call in was reason, the natural but baffled enemy of their family: a family, Sir, possessed of every honour they formerly decried, fallen from every honour they formerly acquired: a family, Sir, who coloured over ambition with patriotism, disguised emptiness by noise, and disgraced every virtue by wearing them only for mercenary purposes: a family, Sir, who from being the most clamorous incendiaries against power and places, are possessed of more employments than the most comprehensive place-bill that ever was brought into parliament would include; and who, to every indignity offered to their royal master, have added that greatest of all, intrusion of themselves into his presence and councils; and who shew him what he has still farther to expect, by their scandalous ingratitude to his son; a family, Sir, raised from obscurity by the petulance of the times, drawn up higher by the insolence of their bribing kinsman, and supported by the timidity of two ministers, who, to secure their own persons from abuse have sacrificed their own party to this all-grasping family, the elder ones of which riot in the spoils of their treachery and places, and the younger....

At this point he was, not prematurely, called to order. Stanhope brought up Pitt, portentous but unconvincing, with perhaps a unique expression, for he addressed the Speaker as 'dear Sir.' 'They (the Grenvilles) desire the assizes may be sometimes held at Buckingham; the point he (Stanhope) espouses is that they should be always held at Aylesbury. Which, dear Sir, looks most like a monopoly?' Then he proceeds to defend the Grenvilles.

After so happy a beginning, he falls into a torrent of violent abuse on a whole family, founded on no reason in the world, but because that family is distinguished by the just rewards of their services to their king and country; and, in the heat of his resentment, he throws out things that are as unpardonably seditious as they are palpably absurd. He takes it for granted that men force themselves into a presence and into councils to which they have the honour to be called, and into which our Constitution renders it impossible for any to intrude. In the same breath he makes entering into a father's service an act of ingratitude to a son; and, without so much as pretending to assign either facts or reasons, he bestows the most low and infamous epithets upon characters that all other men mention with esteem. In a word, he forgot himself to such a degree that he pointed out men of birth and fortune, and in high stations, as if they were the most abandoned and profligate creatures in the universe, without parts, without morals, without shame, and who, if his description had in it the least tittle of truth, instead of being Members of Parliament, or admitted to the Privy Council, were fit only to be members of a society once famous by the name of the Hell-fire Club.[183]

It is not worth while to follow this local squabble further, except to notice the singular atmosphere of jobbery with which it was surrounded. By a job, it was alleged, Lord Chief Justice Baldwin, having purchased the manor of Aylesbury in the reign of Henry VIII., had transferred the assizes from Buckingham to Aylesbury. By another job a judge who was a native of Buckingham had managed that the summer assizes should be always held at Buckingham while he lived. 'The arrantest job,' cried Stanhope. 'One of the worst sort of jobs,' echoed Potter, who divided jobs into two species, one laudable and the other infamous, declaring this to be one of the latter kind. Lee also called it a private job of the most infamous kind. Articulate Buckinghamshire was indeed unanimous against the Bill. But the Grenvilles were now powerful with all the insolence of power, and the Government smiled silently on their enterprise; though Nugent said they could only have done so from weariness of political serenity, and the wish to invite catastrophe. So the Bill was carried, and the job, whatever its exact denomination may have been, lasted for nearly a century.[184] But the debate, as will be seen, is significant because it shows the resentment which had long been growing, but which was now openly displayed against Cobham's aggressive and ambitious group.

We do not again hear Pitt's voice till 1749, when he vindicated the proposal of the Government to pay to Glasgow ten thousand pounds to reimburse the city in some degree for what the occupation of the Jacobites had cost it. This of course was an official speech and of no permanent interest.[185] He had to prove that the case of Glasgow stood by itself, and that there was no analogy between this and those of other towns which made the same claim. Two of his points are incidentally worthy of remark. The first is that it was the whole tenor of Glasgow's conduct since the Reformation which had drawn upon it the resentment of the Jacobites; the second, that if this payment were not made, and made promptly, Glasgow must be ruined. He told, too, a story which merits preservation. When there were rumours in 1688 of the coming of William III. with 30,000 men, an adherent of James II. made light of the matter; when it was said that the prince was coming with 20,000 he began to be alarmed; but when he heard that the expeditionary force numbered only 14,000 he cried, 'We are undone: an army of 30,000 men could not conquer England. But no man would come here with only 14,000 unless he were sure of finding a great many traitors among ourselves.'[186]

In 1750 there is a faint echo of Pitt's voice in a discussion on the annual Mutiny Bill, at least the only echo in the recorded debates, for we learn from two letters of Pitt's to George Grenville that there had been other long and troublesome discussions in which he had had officially to bear much of the burden.[187] Colonel Townshend brought forward the case of non-commissioned officers who had been broke or reduced to the ranks without any cause assigned. Some of these, he said, were waiting at the bar as he spoke. He proposed a clause for preventing this abuse, and forbidding these punishments except under sentence of a court-martial. Pitt took the line, truly enough, that if soldiers were on every occasion to bring their complaints against their officers to the House for redress there would be an end to all discipline; and proceeded in the tone of a Paymaster-General to declare that the business of the House was to consider the requisite number of the forces and to grant money for their payment, but that the conduct of the army or complaints against one another were solely within the province of the King or those commissioned by His Majesty.[188] This need not detain us. About the same time, Lord Egmont, who now represented the Prince of Wales in the House of Commons, an able man not without incredible absurdities, brought forward a mischievous motion with regard to Dunkirk. The question which he raised was whether the French had demolished the fortifications erected during the late war, as by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle they were bound to do; but he diverged into a general attack upon the provisions of that Treaty. Pelham answered him in a speech of remarkable candour. Lord Strange followed and brought up Pitt. He defended the peace, which indeed was not difficult, in a speech eminently discreet, ministerial, and conciliatory. No one could discover in it any germ of the policy he was destined afterwards to pursue with such triumphant success. But he cast an interesting light on the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. 'If there be any secret in the late affairs of Europe,' he said, 'it is in the question how it was possible for our ministers to obtain so good a peace as they did. For I must confess that when the French laid siege to Maestricht in the beginning of 1748, I had such a gloomy prospect of affairs that I thought it next to impossible to preserve our friends the Dutch from the imminent ruin they were then threatened with, or to maintain the present Emperor upon the imperial throne.'[189] Though he had thus already spoken, he wound up the debate for the Ministry, and did so with equal discretion.

This was in February 1750. He seems to have spoken no more that session, but in August Pelham wrote to his brother: 'I think him the most able and useful man we have among us, truly honourable and strictly honest. He is as firm a friend to us as we can wish for, and a more useful oneAug. 3-14, 1750. does not exist.'[190] Such an eulogy, offered in confidence by a Prime Minister, a reticent, unemotional man, seems to us a great mark and epoch in Pitt's career. Not 'the most brilliant,' not 'the most eloquent,' not 'the most intrepid,' as we should have expected, but 'the most useful, able, and strictly honest.'

Pitt had earned this praise by exertions which were not visible to the outer world. It often happens that there is a member of Government whose merits do not appeal to the public, who is no orator, who passes no measures, whose conversation does not attract, and whose position in an administration is a puzzle to the outer world. And yet perhaps his colleagues regard him as invaluable. He is probably the peacemaker, the man who walks about dropping oil into the machinery, and preventing injurious friction. This had recently been Pitt's position. He had been diligently and unobtrusively trying to keep the Government together. This was not so easy as it would seem; for though the brothers Pelham had arranged it to their will when they ejected Carteret, the morbid and intolerable jealousies of Newcastle prevented any ease. Did other subjects of intrigue and irritation fail he would quarrel with his brother, for when all else was serene it would secretly chafe him that his junior should be in the first place and he only in the second. Henry himself, it may be noted, seems to have been both blameless and placable on these occasions, but naturally bored. The elder brother would begin whimpering and whining to Hardwicke, his prop and confidant. Hardwicke would soothe him as a sick baby is soothed, eventually his tears would be dried, and he would begin burrowing and intriguing in some other direction.

On this occasion the trouble arose over Bedford. Bedford had become Joint Secretary of State with Newcastle on the resignation of Chesterfield. Sandwich, a clever scapegrace, and Bedford's henchman, had been Newcastle's candidate for the office, while Henry Fox had been strongly supported by Pitt and others. Before offering it to Sandwich, it was thought well to make an honorary tender of the post to Bedford, in the belief that he would refuse it. Bedford, as sometimes happens on such occasions, had promptly accepted it; for six months as he said, but, as also happens, for as long as he could keep it, which was more than three years. The appointment was thus distasteful in its origin to Newcastle and became more irksome with experience. Bedford as a minister was indolent, and as a man was obstinate and unamiable to a singular degree. But it was not these drawbacks which attracted the malevolent attention of Newcastle. Bedford, no doubt, was difficult to work with, and Newcastle soon wished to be rid of him. But it was when Bedford became well with the Court, with the King and with Princess Amelia, for whom Newcastle had once affected to feel something more tender than friendship, with the Duke of Cumberland and Lady Yarmouth, that Newcastle's hatred passed the bounds of moderation and almost of sanity. Pelham, who knew the parliamentary power of Bedford and who was anxious not to alienate it, was reluctant to take up his brother's dispute; so Newcastle promptly quarrelled with him. Pitt intervened. Had he been blindly ambitious, he would have welcomed a schism which might have produced a much greater position for himself. But he saw that a quarrel between the brethren would break up the Ministry; and that such a destruction would involve grave consequences, difficult to calculate, and possibly the resuscitation of Carteret in the first place. Moreover, though on the whole he sided with Newcastle, as Fox sided with Pelham, he could not but be aware of the priceless merits of Pelham as a party manager, as one who allayed animosities, and as one who kept the peace. Pelham, in writing to Newcastle, affects to diminish the value of Pitt's intervention, as he wishes to attribute the renewal of harmony to 'natural affection.' But an impartial judgment comes to a different conclusion. Natural affection had not prevented discord, and was insufficient to produce reconciliation. It is at all times an indifferent political cement. But the exertions of an independent colleague such as Pitt could not be overestimated. There exists a long and earnest letter of July 13, 1750, from Pitt to Newcastle, too long and too tedious to quote, but which is both tactful and energetic, though in his worst style of winding verbosity. 'I don't hazard much,' he wrote, 'in venturing to prophesy that two brothers who love one another, and two ministers essentially necessary to each other, will never suffer themselves to be divided further than the nearest friends by difference of opinion or even little ruffles of temper may occasionally be. Give me leave,' he continues, 'to suggest a doubt. May not frequent reproaches upon one subject gall and irritate a mind not conscious, intentionally at least, of giving cause?' and so forth.[191] He concludes all this with warm eulogies on Newcastle's conduct of foreign affairs, and soothes and flatters the fretful duke with something like sympathetic regard. He or 'natural affection' is successful, for, a week afterwards, he writes a brief note on another subject, which ends thus: 'I am glad to note that the understanding between you and Mr. Pelham, for which I had fears, is re-established.'[192] It is pleasant thus to catch a glimpse of Pitt as a loyal colleague, strenuously patching up differences; not less pleasant to see him pushing the claims of his rival, Fox, to be Secretary of State. This is a new human, and attractive aspect.

The termination of the Bedford transaction is worth noticing for more reasons than one. The King, though he was at least indifferent to Bedford, declined to remove him at the instance of Newcastle, and was probably pleased to have the opportunity of thwarting the tiresome minister who had been the inseparable bane and necessity of his life. Pelham would not intervene directly for other reasons. A characteristic and tortuous method was therefore adopted. The King cared nothing for Sandwich, who was necessary to Bedford. So the brothers suggested the removal of Sandwich, to which the King promptly acceded, and Bedford, as they had foreseen, instantly resigned.

Two points are notable with regard to the vacancy thus caused. The Prime Minister announced that the nomination of Bedford's successor must be left to the sole nomination of the King, with which he would not interfere in any way, but insisted that he must be a peer.[193] The main reason for this strange limitation seems to have been that there were fierce but dormant rivalries in the House of Commons, and that an appointment of one of the aspirants would call uncontrollable passions into activity. Both Secretaries of State must therefore be peers, a principle which seems strange to a later generation. The King, therefore, nominated Lord Holdernesse, of whom the Prime Minister merely observes, 'I cannot possibly see him in the light of Secretary of State.'[194] Holdernesse however is appointed, and reappears more than once in this accidental character.

But Pelham, though he tried to take this affair easily, was near the end of his patience. He was worn out by the perpetual exigencies and caprice of his brother and colleague, for Newcastle was in truth his partner in the Premiership, as well as by the explosive rivalries of Pitt and Fox, which any spark might ignite. Chained to an intolerable nincompoop, with two such subordinates ready to fly at each other's throats or his, and conscious of failing health, he began to long for liberty and repose. At the end of March 1751 died the second Earl of Orford, and thus vacated the rich sinecure office of Auditor of the Exchequer, worth at least eight thousand a year. Pelham, it is said, intimated his wish to retire from active business with this noble provision, but the King would not let him go.