On the meeting of Parliament in January 1751, Lord Egmont raised on the Address the question of the peace with Spain. Pitt in reply delivered a speech of singular interest, for he disarms criticism by frankly avowing the errors of his 'young and sanguine' days, to employ his own epithets. After pointing out that the Spaniards could not be expected to give up the assertion of their right of search any more than we would renounce our claim to the right of free navigation in the American seas, he proceeded: 'I must therefore conclude, Sir, that "no search" is a stipulation which it is ridiculous to insist on, because it is impossible to be obtained. And after having said this I expect to be told that upon a former occasion I concurred heartily in a motion for an address not to admit of any treaty of peace with Spain unless such a stipulation as this should be first obtained as a preliminary thereto. I confess I did, Sir, because I then thought it right, but I was then very young and sanguine. I am now ten years older, and have had time to consider things more coolly. From that consideration I am convinced that we may as well ask for a free and open trade with all the Spanish settlements in America, as ask that none of our ships shall be visited or stopt, though sailing within a bowshot of their shore; and within that distance our ships must often sail in order to have the benefit of what they call the land breeze.' 'I am also convinced that all addresses from this House during the course of a war, for prescribing terms of peace, are in themselves ridiculous; because the turns or chances of war are generally so sudden and often so little expected that it is impossible to foresee or foretell what terms of peace it may be proper to insist on. And as the Crown has the sole power of making peace or war, every such address must certainly be an encroachment upon the King's prerogative, which has always hitherto proved to be unlucky. For these reasons I believe I should never hereafter concur in any such address, unless made so conditional as to leave the Crown at full liberty to agree to such terms of peace as may at the time be thought most proper, which this of "no search" can never be, unless Spain should be brought so low as to give us a carte blanche; and such a low ebb it is not our interest to bring that nation to, nor would the other Powers of Europe suffer it, should we attempt it.'[195]

This is a new milestone. 'Those who endeavour to quote from my former speeches, the outpourings of my hot and fractious youth, are hereby warned off. I have sown my wild oats; henceforward I am to be regarded as a prudent and sagacious statesman.' This was the real purport of this speech, divested of the necessary circumlocutions. A statesman who has been an active politician in his youth usually has to utter some such warning and repentant note in his maturity.

In 1751 we find Pitt delivering another speech which marks a further distance from his unregenerate days. At this time, for reasons which we can now scarcely discern, but which originated with George II., who considered that the peace and safety of his electorate depended on a secure succession to the Empire being vested in the House of Austria, our foreign policy was concentrated on securing the election of Maria Theresa's son, a boy of ten years old, as King of the Romans, and so heir to the Empire. This strange line of action was absurd enough to be congenial to Newcastle, who soon adopted it, called it his darling child, and grudged its paternity to the King.[196] Pelham had reluctantly to follow, only deprecating expenditure as far as possible. For this we slaved and negotiated and subsidised, in the faith that should the Emperor die without a King of the Romans being ready to succeed him, a war must infallibly ensue. This hypothesis was at least doubtful; but, in any case, we expended our energies in vain. Prussia, and France as guarantor of the Treaty of Westphalia, declared the election of a minor to be contrary to the fundamental laws of the Empire, and prevailed. There is the less reason to deplore our failure, as it is not known what we should have gained by success. Austria, which was alone to profit, threw the coldest water on the project. The obvious flaw of the policy appears to have been that the receipt of subsidies so entirely conflicted with the electoral oath as to form an insuperable bar of honour preventing any elector who received them from voting for our candidate. We were in fact to bribe those who could not vote if they accepted our bribe, for an object flagrantly illegal, on behalf of a Power which scouted our assistance. We offered to bribe the Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Saxony. To the Elector of Bavaria we agreed by treaty to pay 40,000l. a year, the sum to be made up by Holland and ourselves. It was this last treaty which Pitt found himself called upon to defend, and his speech was a broad defence of the whole system andFeb. 22, 1751. principle of subsidies. 'Surely,' he cried, 'it is more prudent in us to grant subsidies to foreign princes for keeping up a number of troops for the service of the common cause of Europe, than by keeping up such numerous armies of our own here at home, as might be of the most dangerous consequence to our constitution.'[197] This must have seemed strange doctrine to those who remembered his former harangues. But in this speech he was to exceed himself in superfluous candour. He had said that there was a good prospect of a firm and lasting peace, and then strangely wandered off to the consequent prospect of economy at home, 'perhaps by a different method of collecting the revenue. I am not afraid to mention the word Excise.[198] I was not in the House when the famous Excise scheme was brought upon the carpet. If I had I should probably have been induced by the general but groundless clamour to have joined with those who opposed it. But I have seen so much of the deceit of popular clamours, and the artful surmises upon which they are founded, and I am so fully convinced of the benefits we should reap by preventing all sorts of unfair trade, that if ever any such scheme be again offered whilst I have a seat in this assembly, I believe I shall be as heartily for it as I am for the motion now under our consideration.'[199]

It is scarcely possible to conceive a more deliberate and scornful repudiation of responsibility for any previous opinions that he may have maintained than is expressed in this passage. He goes out of his way to tender an unnecessary support to the detested Excise scheme, which at the same time he declares that he should certainly have opposed had he been in the House when it was introduced. The middle-aged Pitt seemed never to tire of trampling savagely on the young Pitt, even wantonly, as on this occasion. There is, indeed, more justice than is usual in Horace Walpole's taunts when he says of Pitt, 'Where he chiefly shone was in exposing his own conduct; having waded through the most notorious apostasy in politics, he treated it with an impudent confidence that made all reflections upon him poor and spiritless when worded by any other men.' This is one way of putting it. A preferable and, in our judgment, a truer way is that Pitt deliberately chose this method of public atonement for past recklessness, and as an avowal that he had learned and ripened by experience. He recanted at large, so as to obliterate every vestige of his heedless and censorious youth. It is better for the country and for themselves that statesmen should thus do penance than that they should continue to offer sacrifices of what they see to be right to the somewhat egotistical pagod of their personal consistency. Honourable consistency is necessary to retain the confidence of the country; but there is also a dishonourable consistency in concealing and suppressing conscientious changes of judgment.

Though, as we have seen, his defence of the principle of subsidies seemed unbounded, it was more limited in practice, and Pitt fixed his limit at the Bavarian contribution. In 1752 Pelham had to move a subsidy to the Elector of Saxony, King of Poland. This had been negotiated by Newcastle, but was so strongly disapproved by Pelham that he even threatened to second the opposition to it. However, he was persuaded by the argument most urgent and sometimes most fatal to prime ministers, that the apparent unity of the Government must at any cost be maintained, to withdraw his opposition and move the vote. Old Horatio Walpole, though he voted with Pelham, spoke warmly against him, and Pitt supported Walpole's argument, though privately and not in speech. He felt, it may be presumed, that it was not for him to be more of a Pelhamite than Pelham himself.

With Pelham, however, he had felt constrained to be at open variance in the previous year, about the time of the Bavarian subsidy. The Minister had moved a reduction of our seamen from 10,000 to 8000. Pitt declared a preference for 10,000; and Potter, whom we have seen in the Buckingham and Aylesbury affair, a clever, worthless fellow, who had now become an ally of Pitt, opposed the reduction. Pelham seemed to acquiesce, but Lord Hartington, an enthusiastic Pelhamite, who was hereafter to be for a while Prime Minister under Pitt, forced a division, in order to show Pitt that the Whigs would not support him against Pelham. Pitt's immediate following on this occasion seems to have consisted only of Lyttelton, the three Grenvilles, Conway, and eight others. There was, it is to be observed, nothing factious in this; the opinion of Pitt was natural, and not distasteful to Pelham. Moreover, on the report Pitt made a conciliatory speech, marking in the strongest manner his regret at differing with Pelham, declaring that it was his fear of Jacobitism alone which made him prefer the larger number, and expressing his concern at seeing our body of trained seamen, whom he called our standing army, reduced. He and his little following, or rather cousinhood, vied with each other in loyal eulogies of the Prime Minister.

This called up Hampden, an intrepid buffoon, but the great-grandson of the patriot, and 'twenty-fourth hereditary lord of Great Hampden,' who attacked Pitt and his group with rancour. Here, again, we seem to discern traces of Buckinghamshire politics and jealousies. Temple and his belongings had, as we have seen, many enemies in their own county, and Hampden was one of them. Perhaps the Aylesbury affair still rankled. Pitt was visibly angered. Though Pelham warmly defended him, he was not appeased, and the affair would have ended in a duel had not the Speaker's authority intervened. In the succeeding year, it may be noted, the number of 10,000 was restored.

Though these hostilities were averted, the debate produced further friction between the brethren who controlled the Ministry. Newcastle was profusely grateful to Pitt for the line he had taken. He wrote to one of his vassals (January 30, 1750-1): 'As you can be no stranger (if you have attended the late debate) to the able and affectionate manner in which Mr. Pitt has taken upon himself to defend me, and the measures which have been solely carried on by me, when both have been openly attacked with violence, and when no other person opened his lips, in defence of either, but Mr. Pitt, I think myself bound in honour and gratitude to show my sense of it in the best way I am able. I must therefore desire that neither you nor any of my friends would give into any clamour or row that may be made against him from any of the party on account of his differing as to the number of seamen. For after the kind part he has acted to me, and (as far as I am allowed to be part of it) the meritorious one to the administration, I cannot think any man my friend who shall join in any such clamour, and who does not do all in his power to discourage it. I desire you would read this letter to' (here follow the names of seven forgotten men whom we may presume to have been his closest followers).[200] Pitt's attitude had alarmed Pelham, and this letter from the Duke, so formidable from parliamentary influence, made him sensible of imminent danger. He saw that he must either be reconciled to his brother or face that alarming coalition of Pitt and Newcastle which was afterwards effected with so much success. Once more there was a crisis, and Pelham's son-in-law Lincoln was called in as mediator. A treaty of peace of three articles was solemnly drawn up between the brothers, and apparent harmony restored. The King, however, broke out anew with emphatic anger against Pitt and the Grenvilles.

This was probably due to the rumour that Pitt and his connections were negotiating with the Prince of Wales. This is not improbable. We know indeed that Lyttelton was arranging through his brother-in-law Dr. Ayscough for a coalition between the forces of Stowe and those of Leicester House. The King was old, and ambitious politicians would not wish to be ill with his heir, if that could be avoided. But all such foresight was wasted, for Frederick was never to reign, and within two months of the vote on the seamen he was dead. Up to the last he was intriguing and securing adherents. On February 28 he was engaging Oswald, an able debater in the House of Commons, to his cause; on March 20 he died. Next morning his party was convoked by Egmont to consider the future. Many came, probably from curiosity, but dispersed without any conclusion. 'My Lord Drax,' writes Henry Fox in pleasant allusion to the promises of the Prince, 'my Lord Colebrook, Earl Dodington, and prime minister Egmont are distracted; but nobody more so than Lord Cobham, who cum suis has been making great court and with some effect all this winter. Do not name this from me. I fear they will not be dealt with as I would deal with them.'[201] In truth the purpose and bond of the party, the sole reason for its existence, had disappeared. Henceforth the courtiers who found no favour with the King kept their eyes on the Princess of Wales and her eldest son, a shy, sensitive boy, who was afterwards to be George III. Soon they began to perceive in this obscure court a handsome, supercilious Scotsman, who enjoyed the favour of the Princess and the veneration of her son, who was now a lord of the Prince's bedchamber, but was hereafter to head one ministry and become the bugbear of many others, John Earl of Bute.

The Heir Apparent was only thirteen, and a Regency Bill was required. This is only pertinent to our narrative in that it produced a fierce parliamentary duel between Pitt and Fox, the point at issue between them being the Duke of Cumberland, whom the King wished, but the Ministry did not dare, to nominate Regent. Indeed, one of the principal expressions of popular grief for the loss of the Prince of Wales had taken the form of regret that the death had not been that of the Duke. 'Oh! that it was but his brother! Oh! that it was but the Butcher!' Unfortunately, the speeches of neither Pitt nor Fox in this session have come down to us. All that we know is that Pelham declared that Pitt's was the finest speech that ever he heard. Pitt had strongly maintained that the Regency must be closely restricted, the vital contention of his son thirty-seven years later, and hinted that Cumberland, if unrestrained in his capacity as head of the Council of Regency, might be tempted to usurp the Crown. Hence the wrath of Fox, the close friend of the royal Duke; hence, too, the antipathy of Cumberland to Pitt, which was to cause complications thereafter.

Pitt and his family connections, whose allegiance to the Ministry had been under suspicion, and who had been in negotiation with the Prince's party, were rallied into apparent fidelity to the Ministry by the Prince's death, without, however, severing their renewed connection with Leicester House. But it was acquiescence rather than loyalty. Between the two ministerial orators in the House of Commons, Fox and Pitt, there had been cordial friendship. But it is evident that this had ceased. Fox, as we have seen, would have dealt with Pitt and the Grenvilles as traitors, and one would infer that it was the negotiation with the Prince of Wales which had angered him. The fact that Fox had sided with Pelham, and Pitt with Newcastle, had probably tended to division. Pitt, indeed, afterwards accused Pelham, poor soul, with having fostered their variance. Then there had been the affair of the Regency. There had, too, just previously to the Prince's death, been a sharp altercation between them in a small debate raised by the petition for compensation of an ill-used gentleman in Minorca. This Pelham had refused; while Pitt upheld the claim with his wonted energy, but with unusual absurdity. He would support the petition of a man so oppressed and of so ancient a family to the last drop of his blood. Fox ridiculed this extravagance, and Pitt was nettled. This is only notable as a symptom of prevailing temper.

But the facts of their personalities speak for themselves. They were rivals in Parliament, neither of them very scrupulous, both fierce in debate. What need of further explanation? Fox, moreover, viewed Pitt's overtures to Leicester House with distrust, not merely from the point of view of a minister, but from that of the Duke of Cumberland, to whom he was devoted, and who detested the Prince of Wales and his crew. So that on the Regency Bill it was the wrath between the two factions which broke into open war. It was in the main the devotion of Fox to Cumberland which originally divided and then estranged him from Pitt. They were afterwards to reunite for a time by the mutual attraction of brains opposed to imbecility.

This is perhaps the best opportunity to consider the character of this Henry Fox, who was now Pitt's rival. Strangely enough there is no real biography of this remarkable man, a vigorous and interesting figure, who has been to some extent obscured by his more popular and famous son.

It would almost be enough to say that Fox was everything that Pitt was not. He had not that wayward but divine fire which we call genius, and which inspired Pitt; but he had the saving quality of common sense which was wanting to his rival. He laid no claim to the oratory of Pitt; he was, we are told hesitating and inelegant, not indeed a good speaker; but he was plain and forcible, with a good business-like wear and tear style, which is in Parliament not less valuable than oratory; on occasions indeed he spoke with a vehemence and closeness of reasoning which almost anticipated the supreme faculty of his son. More than all, he thoroughly understood the House of Commons. He had the cordial manner, the veneer at least of good fellowship, the frankness savouring of cynicism, which make for an eminently serviceable sort of parliamentary popularity. In one respect, as a letter writer, he was greatly Pitt's superior. While Pitt was prancing fantastic minuets before his correspondents, Fox, without wasting a word, went straight to the point; and his letters are pregnant, graphic, and forcible. There are perhaps none better in the English language than those in which he describes the debates of December 1755. He was, what Pitt was not, a genial companion, fond of the bottle and the chase; he had, indeed, been a gambler and a debauchee. He was, what Pitt was not, a man of the world, and was closely allied with the choicest blood of the aristocracy by a marriage with a daughter of the Duke of Richmond. Pitt was a county gentleman, who had indeed married Temple's sister, but had thus entered a more limited and less exalted connection. They both had courage, but Fox minded the rebuffs of debate much less than Pitt. He was passionate, but with a passion less sublime than Pitt's. Pitt could sometimes feign passion; Fox could sometimes repress it. In later life, when it had been long smouldering, it was ungovernable. But at this time it only displayed itself in a not ungenerous resentment. In the race for success it would perhaps have been safer to back Fox than Pitt.

But Fox had one incurable flaw which was wholly wanting in Pitt: his aims were base and material. He was content for long years to be Paymaster, amassing a huge fortune from all the emoluments, legitimate and semi-legitimate, of that lucrative office, when a noble ambition would not have stooped to so gross an obscurity. And besides money he had another weakness. He longed to be a lord. In the moment of his rival's triumph and his own fall we find him writing to Lady Yarmouth soliciting a peerage in almost abject terms.[202] That was refused, and it was only after long years of unabashed solicitation that he obtained his object. At last a peerage was accorded to his wife, as if to mark the reluctance felt to giving it to himself. Then his chance came. Bute had to find a bold and unscrupulous agent to carry the Peace through the House, and Fox was his man. Not merely had Fox to earn his peerage but to wreak some vengeances.[203] He accepted the task readily, and had as his first reward the joy of removing Newcastle from the lieutenancy of three counties. And then, as if animated by a hatred of the whole human race, he expelled from their posts all, from the highest to the humblest, whom he suspected of opposition. It was a reign of terror, and by terror he accomplished the work he had been hired to do. Then he claimed his reward. He had earned and he received his peerage. But he had also earned and received a detestation, rarely accorded in England to a statesman, which lasted for the rest of his life, and which finds vent in the bitter lampoon which Gray, the gentlest of scholars, was moved to write.

Later again, in his opulent seclusion, Fox was fired with a new ambition to become an earl.[204] He feared no extremity, no humiliation, to obtain his cherished object. But he failed. He was no longer worth buying; he could not, indeed, be employed. So in bitterness of spirit he passed away, cheered only by his delightful devotion to his wife and children, and by the goodwill of a few staunch friends.

There is something profoundly melancholy in Fox's degeneracy. Its commencement is clearly marked. In 1756 he was an easy companion, a good friend, kindly and beloved; he was honoured and admired; he was the second man in the House of Commons, willing and able to dare all. But when he was discarded, and had subsided into the Paymastership, he seems to have suffered a gradual deterioration. His objects became sordid; he lost the finer elements of his character; his ambition sank into something composed of vindictiveness and greed; his generous wine became corked and bitter. But at the time we are writing of, he was still amiable, still courageous, still warm with some instinct of honour, patriotism, and high emulation, still an able and masculine figure. It is perhaps unfair to anticipate a decline which is outside our limits. But the change is so remarkable, throwing, as it were, a back light on some of the puzzling aspects of Fox's earlier career, that it cannot well be unnoticed.

More ominous of Pitt's attitude to the Ministry than any small incidents of debate was Pitt's silence. For three successive sessions of Parliament, in 1752, 1753, and in that which closed in April 1754, he practically held his peace. Nothing could be more sinister, nothing could mark more emphatically his discontent. Sickness, it appears, accounted in part for this abstinence from the arena. 'After a year of sullen illness,' as Horace Walpole describes it, he intervened in 1753; and this was followed by another twelve months of silence and of illness not less sullen. The intervention of 1753 was not very happy. By an Act passed in June 1753, foreign Jews had been rendered capable of naturalisation. The Bill had passed into law without serious opposition, but soon aroused great popular clamour. Grub Street, as usual, was called into requisition.

'But Lord! how surprised when they heard of the news
That we were to be servants to circumcised Jews,
To be negroes and slaves instead of True Blues,
Which nobody can deny.'

Newcastle was charged with having been bribed.

'That money you know is a principal thing,
It will pay a Duke's mortgage or interest bring.'[205]

On the meeting of Parliament in November of the same year Newcastle at once moved to repeal it. It had only been, he said in his silly jargon, a 'point of political policy,' and as it had aroused agitation in the public it had better be repealed. Foote recalled this slipshod phrase in his comical portrait of the Duke. 'The honour,' says Matthew Mug, 'I this day solicit will be to me the most honourable honour that can be conferred.' Pitt supported the repeal in a speech on which his admirersNov. 27, 1753. would not desire to dwell. He was still in favour of the Act, but should vote for its repeal, because the people wished it, having been misled by the 'old High Church persecuting spirit' into believing that religion was concerned in the matter, which was not the fact, therefore an explanatory preamble was necessary. 'In the present case we ought to treat the people as a prudent father would treat his child; if a peevish, perverse boy should insist on something that was not quite right but of such a nature as, when granted, could not be attended with any very bad consequence, an indulgent father would comply with the humour of his child, but at the same time he would let him know that he did so merely out of complaisance, and not because he approved of what the child insisted on.'[206] Whether this would or would not be the wisest course of parental discipline it is not necessary to discuss, but it was in the spirit of the practice that prevailed in the Fox family rather than in that of the Pitts. The repeal was passed with the preamble of admonition.

This reluctant, ironical support was all that Pitt gave his colleagues. It cannot indeed be doubted that throughout these three lean years of silence he was hostile to the Ministry. Promises had probably been made on his first accession to office which he thought had been ill-kept. He had been told, no doubt, that every effort would be made to make him more acceptable to the King, and he might well doubt if there had been much strenuous effort in that direction. And indeed a topic so sure to excite the royal spleen was not likely to be raised except under the pressure of absolute necessity. At any rate there had been no result. 'The Pitts and Lytteltons are grown very mutinous on the Newcastle's not choosing Pitt for his colleague,' writes Horace Walpole six weeks after the Prince's death. For Bedford was known to be doomed by Newcastle, and his Secretaryship of State would soon be vacant. There were many aspirants for the succession, but no whisper of Pitt. Cobham, who had been his main supporter, was dead;[207] no one could speak with so much authority on his behalf; and even had Cobham survived he would probably have been silent.

Soon after the letter from Walpole which we have quoted (June 1751) Bedford had resigned. He had been succeeded by Holdernesse. At the same time Granville, the object of Pitt's inveterate philippics, was admitted to the Cabinet as President of the Council. These events may well have inflamed Pitt's resentment, which had, we cannot doubt, been long smouldering. The great obstacle to his advancement was the King, who, as he knew, had always detested him. It was with the greatest difficulty that the Pelhams could persuade the Sovereign not altogether to ignore him at the Levees. Could he indeed trust the brothers? He appreciated no doubt Pelham's qualities at the Treasury, in council, and in the House of Commons. It seems impossible to believe that Pitt ever can have trusted Newcastle; though he addresses the Duke in his letters with an affected flummery of devotion. Almon, who is not a trustworthy authority, but who is supported in this instance by a probability which we may well deem irresistible, says that in at least one interview in the year 1752 he treated Newcastle with such scorn that Newcastle had he dared would have dismissed him from office.[208] Pitt had openly scoffed at the King of the Romans policy, Newcastle's cherished plan, and told the Duke that he was engaging in subsidies without knowing the amount, and in alliances without knowing the terms. Why, indeed, should Pitt trust Newcastle, whom no one had ever trusted, and whom Pitt must have measured and known to the very marrow of his bones?

We may take it as certain then that Pitt viewed the Duke with contemptuous penetration, and tolerated his grimaces and professions only till such time as he could put them to the test. Meanwhile there was a free trade in blandishments between them. Newcastle would send venison from Holland, and carp and fruit, and Pitt would abound in gratitude.[209] He still thought well to profess friendship, but, we may be sure, a wary friendship, for the veteran in the florid and artificial style of the day; on the very day of Pelham's death he wrote from Bath to assure him of 'unalterable attachment;'[210] and he condescended to solicit a parliamentary seat from him.

But words cost little, and Pitt did not disdain profusion in them any more than in what cost more. In a letter to Lyttelton written immediately after Pelham's death, when he recommended an attitude of armed and hostile vigilance towards the new powers, he says: 'Professions of personal regard cannot be made too strongly,' and this line of conduct explains his professions to Newcastle. For how could he fail under existing circumstances to be suspicious? Had Newcastle lifted a finger to procure him the succession to Bedford? Yet no one could compete in Parliamentary authority with Pitt; and, though Murray's claims to oratorical pre-eminence might vie with his, Murray's aspirations were confined to the law. At this time, Chesterfield, the best living judge of such matters, was writing to his son, and expressing therefore his real convictions: 'Mr. Pitt and Mr. Murray are beyond comparison ... the best orators. They alone can inflame or quiet the House; they alone are so attended to, in that numerous and noisy assembly, that you might hear a pin fall while either was speaking.'[211] It is true that Chesterfield depreciates Pitt's matter. But the fact remains that he mentions Pitt as one of the two supreme masters of the House of Commons, the other, indeed, not having much heart in politics. The ignoring, the slighting of this great power, could not be forgiven by so aspiring a nature as Pitt's. He brooded and watched.