George II. then, we contend, putting his private life apart, which we must judge by the German standard of those days, was not a bad King under the conditions of his time and of his throne. He was perhaps the best of the Georges; better than George I. or George IV., better as a King than George III., though inferior no doubt in the domestic virtues. All things considered, it is wonderful that he was as good as he was, and he scarcely deserves the thoughtless opprobrium which he has incurred.
Andnow it is necessary to say a word of Continental affairs.
A life of Pitt should concern itself with Pitt alone, or with the persons and events immediately relating to him. But as during this period of his life foreign policy was all in all, and Britain seemed a mere anxious appendage to the Continent, it is necessary to give a succinct sketch of the familiar but complicated sequence of events in Europe which occurred at this time, and which inspired almost all the debates in which Pitt took part.
Walpole, as we have seen, had declared war against Spain in 1739, and the not very glorious course of those operations does not call for record. But the year 1740 marked a new and critical epoch. Death in those few months was busy lopping off the crowned heads of Europe, as if to clear the scene for two great figures. On February 6 died Pope Clement XII. On March 31 died the shrewd but brutal boor Frederick William I., and at the age of twenty-eight his son Frederick II. reigned in his stead. His accession was to unveil a mystery; and where mankind had hitherto seen a fiddling dilettante, contemptuous of his countrymen and craving for all that was French, to reveal the direct ancestor of German unity, the most practical and tenacious of conquerors. OnOctober 20 the Emperor Charles VI., the figure-head for which we had fought in the War of the Succession, and, a week afterwards, Anne the Empress of Russia passed away. Rarely has the sickle of Eternity gathered so pompous a harvest. Between February and November it had garnered the Holy Roman Emperor, the Holy Roman Pontiff, the sovereign of Russia, and the sovereign of Prussia. Of these the death at Vienna was by far the most momentous. For Charles left behind him no son, but a young daughter of twenty-three, about to be a mother, whose succession he had attempted to secure by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1718, ratified and recognised by solemn international instruments. On the morning of his death she was promptly proclaimed sovereign of her father's dominions; but her treasury was empty and her ministers paralysed. Bavaria at once protested. Behind Bavaria stood Frederick armed to the teeth, eager to let slip the dogs of war. Every one saw his preparations; no one could tell at whom they were aimed.
'No fair judge,' Mr. Carlyle[147]tells us, can blame the 'young magnanimous King' for seizing this 'flaming opportunity.' The point is fortunately not one which a biographer of Pitt is called upon to discuss, except to note that hero-worship makes bad history. For our purpose it is sufficient to say that Frederick did avail himself of the new juncture of affairs. Charles had died on October 20; on December 6 the announcement was officially made in Berlin that the King had resolved to march a body of troops into Silesia; on December 13 these had passed the frontier, not as enemies of the Queen of Hungary orSilesia, it was declared, but as protective friends of Silesia and her Majesty's rights there. All this was preceded and accompanied by the strangest diplomacy that the world had seen, but which does not concern this abstract. Thus begins the first period of the Continental war.
Britain, like Prussia, was bound by treaty to maintain the Pragmatic Sanction which assured the Austrian dominions to Maria Theresa. Our statesmen at this moment were engaged in a pastime of more immediate interest and excitement, for they were hunting Walpole to death; the exhaustion of the quarry was evident; the end could not be far off. But even then the nature of the aggression and the appeal of a young and beautiful Queen exercised the usual influence on the chivalrous sympathies of the nation. Maria Theresa could, moreover, appeal to treaty rights. So that Walpole found himself reluctantly forced into a new war while the former was still undecided and incomplete. He agreed to renew the pledges of England to maintain that Pragmatic Sanction which secured the succession to the daughter of Charles VI.; he agreed, moreover, to an immediate subsidy of 300,000l., and to sending a force of 12,000 men. Meanwhile Marshal Schwerin had defeated the Austrians at Molwitz at the very moment that the House of Commons was debating these proposals.
This victory brought into the arena new and eager claimants for some part of the Austrian spoils, now apparently so available. The eminent guarantors of the integrity of Austria were suddenly transformed into hungry schemers for her immediate partition. Spain, Sardinia, and Poland-Saxony all advanced pretensions. But a mightier enemywas preparing to join hands with Frederick and take the field; for it was scarcely to be supposed that the secular enemy of the House of Hapsburg could remain quiescent at such a moment. France saw a unique opportunity for breaking up the Austrian dominions, and reducing the portion reserved to the young Queen to comparative insignificance. In France, as in England, the Minister was peaceful, but the party of war carried the day. Two French armies of 40,000 men each crossed the Rhine in August 1741. One under Marshal Maillebois marched on Hanover. The ruler of that State, who, as sovereign of Great Britain, was the active ally of Maria Theresa, hastily concluded a treaty of neutrality for one year, promising to give no assistance to the young Queen in his Hanoverian capacity, and to refrain from voting for her husband as Emperor. For this treaty George II. was violently attacked by his British subjects, who believed themselves to be fighting for Hanoverian interests, while Hanover itself was thus snugly removed into a haven of peace. The censure was, we think, excessive, if not undeserved. The treaty did indeed accentuate the duality which somewhat unequally divided the person of George. But if that be once conceded, it must be admitted that he was right as Elector to do his very best for Hanover, just as King he was bound to do his very best for England. As Elector, then, he was fully justified in keeping his defenceless State out of the devastation of war, from which it was destined to suffer so terribly sixteen years later from another French army under the Duke of Richelieu, when neutrality was no longer possible.
While Maillebois marched towards Hanover, the other army, under Marshals Belleisle and Broglie, marched throughBavaria and menaced Vienna. Maria Theresa had to fly to Hungary, and appeal in a manner made familiar by description to the chivalry of the Magyars. The Elector of Bavaria, who was the figure-head chosen by the confederates for the imperial throne, and who had his fill of titles in the lack of more substantial fare, was proclaimed Archduke of Austria at Linz, King of Bohemia in Prague, and soon afterwards Emperor in Frankfort. It seemed as if a vast partition was about to take place, and the House of Austria destined to disappear.
But this was the turning-point; in the general blackness there appeared rays of hope for Maria Theresa. Walpole, the peace minister, disappeared, and the control of Foreign Affairs in Great Britain passed to Carteret, who was warm for Austria, and eager to play an active part on the Continent. Moreover, the misfortunes of the Queen roused the enthusiasm of Great Britain. Five millions were voted for the war, half a million as a subsidy to the Queen of Hungary. Sixteen thousand men were sent into Flanders to assist the exertions of the Dutch. Unfortunately there were no exertions to assist, and our troops remained useless. Our fleets were more active. They harried the Spaniards and controlled the Mediterranean. A squadron entered the Bay of Naples and gave the King, afterwards Charles III. of Spain, an hour in which to decide whether he would abandon the confederacy against Austria or see his beautiful city bombarded. The King of Naples yielded, but as King of Spain never forgave the English for this humiliation.
Feb. 12, 1742.
The Austrians, too, found a bold and skilful general in Khevenhüller, who seized Bavaria and occupied Munichon the very day on which its ruler was crowned Emperor. In the succeeding June a peace, which proved afterwards to be but a truce, was concluded at Breslau between Austria and Prussia, through the mediation of Great Britain, and followed by the Treaty of Berlin, to which George II. both as King and Elector, the Empress of Russia, the States General, and the King of Poland as Elector of Saxony were parties. There had been a secret armistice between the two states in the winter of 1741, by which Lower Silesia and Niesse had been ceded to Frederick, but this had soon proved inoperative. A new situation was however produced by the severe battle of Chotusitz, in which the Austrians suffered defeat at the hands of Frederick. Maria Theresa now yielded to the pressure of the English ministry and ceded all Lower and part of Upper Silesia with the county of Glatz to Frederick, who in return abandoned his allies and left the French to themselves, on the plea that they were in secret communication with Vienna. Saxony, under his influence, also withdrew from the war, and the King of Prussia and the Elector of Hanover concluded a defensive alliance, the Elector guaranteeing Silesia and Glatz to the King. Frederick saw that he had been too successful. He was determined to retain Silesia, but he saw with apprehension great French armies overrunning the German Empire. That France should be aggrandised at the expense of Germany was no part of his policy. For Germany as Germany he had no natural affection; but the waters of Germany, however troubled they might be, he proposed to keep for his own fishing.
With the Peace of Breslau, then, the first period ofthe war ends, and the second begins, in which it assumes a new character. It is not Frederick and France fighting against Austria; it is Austria supported by Britain, and to some extent Holland, fighting, with the secret sympathy of Germany, against France and Spain. Elizabeth, too, the daughter of Peter the Great, had mounted the throne of Russia, and assisted her sister sovereign with sympathy and with money. The wholeDec. 1741.aspect of the war was suddenly changed. Austria was now free to turn her whole forces on France, and she did so with terrible effect. The French had to evacuate Bohemia in a retreat so heroic and so appalling that it anticipated the horrors of 1812. Of the 40,000 men with whom he had crossed the Rhine, Belleisle brought back but 8000 into France. The share of Great Britain in the war became substantial and direct. The Elector of Hanover, relieved from apprehension by his treaty with Prussia and the success of Austria, reduced his army by 16,000 men, but the King of England took them into his pay. This measure exasperated his British subjects, whose attention was thus once more called to the jarring interests of the Kingdom and the Electorate combined in George's person. But Ministers carried the day, and in June 1743 the King himself took the field with an Anglo-German army of some 40,000 men under the command of Lord Stair. At Dettingen, not far from Frankfort, in escaping from a position of extreme jeopardy, they encountered and defeated the French. The strangest part of this engagement was that there was then nominally no war between France and Great Britain, and that these operations were only accidental auxiliary conflicts. It was not for nine monthsafterwards that war between the two countries was formally declared.
Sept. 1743.
Later on in this year George II. took an even more active measure, and through Carteret, as Secretary of State, though behind the back of his other ministers, signed the Treaty of Worms. For many years past it had been the policy of the House of Savoy to put itself up to auction, and by the Treaty of Worms George II. became the successful bidder. The King of Sardinia was to receive some territory from Austria, and 200,000l.a year from Great Britain, while he was to assist the Austrian cause with 45,000 men. Carteret at the same time covenanted to pay Maria Theresa a subsidy of 300,000l.a year 'so long as the war should continue, or the necessity of her affairs should require.' But this the British Ministry refused to recognise, and it became the subject of fierce debate in Parliament.
To meet this combination, Louis XV., on the advice of his Minister but against his own better judgment, signed one of those one-sided and altruistic treaties which characterised French policy at this time, and renewed the family compact of 1733 by a treaty signed at Fontainebleau in October 1743. In this new edition the Bourbons of France and Spain pledged themselves to an indissoluble union. France was to declare war against Great Britain and Sardinia, to help Spain to reconquer Parma and the Milanese for Don Philip, and to compel Great Britain to give up her colony of Georgia. Finally, the two Powers were not to make peace until Gibraltar and, if possible, Minorca were restored to Spain.[148]
But the Austrian successes once more brought Frederickinto the field to redress the balance, which now inclined too much to Austria, as it had inclined too much to France. Austria had acquired Bavaria for the moment, and perhaps would never evacuate it; she might be encouraged to attempt the reconquest of Silesia. Her armies were now in Alsace; where would they stop? The Queen, he knew, was only a degree less tenacious than himself. So he signed a new convention at Frankfort with the Emperor, the King of France, the King of Sweden as Landgrave of Hesse, and the Elector Palatine, and again took up arms against Austria, whichMay 1744.was almost drained of troops. France about the same time formally declared war against Great Britain and Austria, whom she had been fighting, so to speak, incognito, for three years past. On the other hand a quadruple alliance was concluded between Great Britain, Austria, Holland, and Saxony; based as usual on British subsidies, which Parliament ungrudgingly voted, with the eloquent but surprising support of Pitt.
Here begins the third period of the war. Louis XV. and Marshal Saxe at the head of 80,000 men entered the Austrian Netherlands almost without resistance. Frederick soon made himself master of Bohemia and Bavaria, and returned the Electorate to its sovereign, the Emperor Charles VII. In January 1745, worn out with misfortunes and anxieties and dignities, but once more in his capital, that hapless monarch died. Within three months his successor had concluded peace with Austria through the earnest pressure of the British Cabinet on the haughty Queen; the Elector abandoning his claims on the Austrian dominions, and promising his vote for the Empire to Maria Theresa's husband. Peace between Austria and the Kingof Poland, Elector of Saxony, followed in May, when the contracting parties entered into a premature concert for the partition of the Prussian dominions.
Otherwise 1745 was a disastrous year for Austria. The Allies, Austrians, British, and Dutch, under the Duke of Cumberland, sustained a bloody defeat at Fontenoy in May; and Great Britain, occupied with the domestic disturbance caused by the landing of Charles Edward, had to withdraw from active participation in the war. In August a secret convention was concluded at Hanover between the Kings of Prussia and Great Britain, by which the latter Power guaranteed Silesia to the former. This was the beginning of the end. The British Ministry now notified to the unyielding Queen that she must come to terms with her enemy, or expect no more assistance from England or Holland. The Austrian arms met everywhere with reverses. While the young Queen was planning with Saxony a triumphant march on Berlin, Frederick broke into Saxony and occupied Dresden. On this final blow Maria Theresa accepted the mediation of Great Britain and signed, on Christmas Day, 1745, the peace of Dresden which gave Silesia and Glatz to Frederick. So ends the third period of this strange and erratic war; a labyrinth of fugitive conventions and transient alliances, with two strong purposes in the centre.
But the auxiliary combatants remained at strife, just as the seconds in a duel have sometimes fought after their principals had settled their own differences. And so we now enter on its fourth period, that in which the British, Austrians, and Dutch (with the assistance of the Piedmontese in Italy) contended against France and Spain.The part of this war which chiefly concerns Great Britain was fought in Flanders. And in all these transactions it must be noted that a main difficulty of the British Ministry, both from the practical and from the parliamentary point of view, lay in the problem of moving the Dutch. The Hollanders had everything to apprehend from the triumph of the French arms, but their phlegmatic temper, and still more the impracticable nature of their constitution, offered great obstacles to their co-operation. Anglers may see an analogy between these British negotiations with the Dutch and the tardy and tantalising sport of sniggling for eels. At the beginning of 1746, matters seemed to have come to a climax. The French were harrying Flanders, and were threatening to invade Holland. The Dutch Government were now stirred into proposing active measures, and the raising of a large army, to be under the command of the Prince of Waldeck; but they declined to declare war against France. The British agreed to a joint force of 100,000 men, comprising 40,000 to be furnished by the States-General, 30,000 by Austria, some Hanoverians and Saxons to be paid by England and Holland, and 6000 Hessians to be provided by England after Charles Edward had been finally defeated. The Dutch regarded the British offers as inadequate; for it is a cardinal principle of all Continental wars in which Great Britain is concerned that her purse is to be open to her allies, and that she is to find the funds.
'The Dutch we know are good allies,So are they all with subsidies.'[149]
'The Dutch we know are good allies,So are they all with subsidies.'[149]
They were, moreover, not indisposed to negotiate withthe French. These, meanwhile, under the leadership of Marshal Saxe, were occupying the Low Countries almost without interruption or resistance. In February they entered Brussels; in May, Antwerp. Mons, Charleroi, and Namur successively fell into their hands, and they ended the campaign by defeating the allies at Roucoux, and remaining practically in possession of the Austrian Netherlands. But there was a glimpse of peace, in that some negotiations, abortive though they were destined to be, were opened at Breda.
In 1747 the Duke of Cumberland again assumed the command with the usual disastrous result. The Dutch contingent, also as usual, was very inadequate: commercial nations are perhaps apt to treat international engagements in too commercial a spirit. But the irruption into Dutch Flanders of twenty thousand Frenchmen roused a spirit of a different kind. The Dutch rose like one man, overturned their rulers, and once more entrusted the Stadtholderate to the House of Orange. This was a national gain. But the luckless Cumberland again sustained a bloody defeat at Lauffeld. The battle, however, had one indirect but happy consequence. Our best General, Ligonier, was captured, and, being of French birth, was favourably received by Louis XV., who threw out hints of peace and placed him in communication with Marshal Saxe. The Marshal admitted that the war, and he himself as concerned in it, were profoundly unpopular in France, that peace might be obtained on easy terms, and suggested that Cumberland and he should be the negotiators.
Pelham was naturally eager for a pacification, George II. less so, and what the King wished Newcastle was anxious towish. But a congress to adjust a treaty met at Aix-la-Chapelle in March 1748, and in April the preliminaries of a treaty were signed by the British and French and Dutch plenipotentiaries.
Maria Theresa held aloof. To her it seemed that the first and only duty of the British, and, indeed, of all other nations, was to fight and work and pay that she might regain Silesia, just as her father had held that the first, last, and only duty of Europe was to establish him in Spain. This peace would ratify the acquisition of Silesia by Frederick, and though she herself had ceded it, she could not bring herself to declare the cession definite. England, however, could no longer agree to the general interest being overridden by the obstinacy of the Empress-Queen; there had been bloodshed and suffering enough on her account. However just a cause may be, there are limits to human endurance, more especially when the cause to be upheld has no substantial importance for the defending nation. The definitive treaty was signed on October 18.1748.Two days later, Spain, the original belligerent, acceded to it. There were, a philosopher may note, no stipulations regarding the commercial regulations which had been the original cause of our war with Spain. On the 23rd it was accepted by the Austrian Government.
This is a narrative, as condensed as possible, of the foreign affairs which entered into our parliamentary debates. That part of the war which took place in Italy has been excluded. It was a mere contest of petty rapine in which strange princes parcelled out Italy; which can scarcely be said to have concerned Great Britain, and Pitt not at all. Nor has it left the least visible trace in history.
The greater war which we have summarised is a sufficient tangle. Leslie Stephen calls it 'that complicated series of wars which lasted some ten years, and passes all power of the ordinary human intellect to understand or remember. For what particular reason Englishmen were fighting at Dettingen, or Fontenoy, or Lauffeld is a question which a man can only answer when he has been specially crammed for examination, and his knowledge has not begun to ooze out.'[150]This is the exact truth, as the ill-fated chronicler who gropes about among the treaties and conventions is fain to confess. But apart from its complications this war is not in itself very memorable or exalted, though it has left an indelible result in the great Prussian monarchy. It was not beautiful or glorious. The guarantors of Austria at the first sign of her weakness had hurried, most of them, to divide her spoils, at the same time betraying each other from time to time without scruple, as their immediate interests required. Frederick had a business-like candour which almost disarms criticism. Macaulay in a famous passage has pointed out that innocent peasants perished in thousands all over the world that he might obtain and retain an Austrian province. And Maria Theresa, with all her maternal charm, is not wholly admirable. It was natural that she should fight for her rights, and induce all she could to fight for her; natural, perhaps, that she should be content that all Europe should bleed so that she might retain her territory. But we cannot forget that she who was ready that myriads should perish, not of Austrians or Magyars alone, but of all the nations that she could enlistin her cause, to maintain the sanctity of her rights to Silesia, was later on an accomplice in the partition of Poland; a reluctant accomplice, it is fair to add, as she herself was awake to the inconsistency of her position.
Among all these stately figures and famous slaughters we see the central fact of the period, the shameless and naked cynicism of the eighteenth century, which, turning its back for ever on the wars of faith and conviction, looked only to contests of prey. And so it continued till the great Revolution cleared the air, and, followed up by the poignant discipline of Napoleon, made way for the wars of nationality.
Nomore of Pitt's speeches are recorded during the session, which, with the enviable ease of those days, having opened on November 16, 1742, closed on April 21, 1743. In the interval before the ensuing session an event occurred, not in itself memorable, but notable for the contest that followed. In July 1743 occurred the long-expected death of Wilmington, the nominal head of the Government. In itself this departure would not have caused a ripple on the surface of politics, but it opened a critical succession. Pulteney, now Earl of Bath, at once laid claim to it; and his pretensions were warmly supported by Carteret, who was the minister in attendance on the King in Germany. Henry Pelham, supported by his brother Newcastle, also applied for the vacant post. As between these two groups it seemed certain that Bath, through Carteret, who was on the ground, would have the preference. Pelham, indeed, at the instance of Walpole, had, before the King left England, applied to his Majesty for the reversion of the moribund Minister's place, and had, if Coxe may be trusted, received a definite promise. It seems difficult to credit this, for George was a man of his word, yet the Pelham brothers were unfeignedly astonished when the reversion was given them; so that had Pelham indeed received such a pledge,he must have expected that the King would break it. Six weeks of dire suspense followed the death of Wilmington; an interval which was probably caused by the anxiety of the Sovereign to consult Walpole, while he intimated to Pelham that his decision would be conveyed to the Ministry by Carteret. This seemed a deathblow to the chances of Pelham, though the King's aversion to Bath was notorious. But a letter at length arrived from Carteret, in which he announced, with unaffected regret but with a generous promise of support, that the prize had fallen to Pelham. The brothers were elated, if such an expression can ever be applied to the timid and cautious Pelham. Newcastle was transported by the 'agreeable but most surprising news;' so much so, as to acknowledge that Carteret's letter was 'manly.'
Walpole, in writing his congratulations, looked warily to the future. 'Recruits,' he advised, should now be sought 'from the Cobham squadron.... Pitt is thought able and formidable, try him or show him.... Whig it with all opponents that will parley, but 'ware Tory.' Newcastle, on reading this letter to his brother, wrote back: 'I am afraid, one part of it, viz. the taking in of the Cobham party and the Whigs in opposition, without a mixture of Tories, is absolutely impracticable; and, therefore, the only question is whether, in order to get the Cobham party, etc., you will bring in three or four Tories, at least, with them, for, without that, they will not come, and this is what I have the greatest difficulty to bring myself to.' Orford's advice was not followed, and Pelham's appointments were few and narrow. Two of Lord Bath's followers, a friend of the Prince of Wales, and a friend of his own, the only surviving nameof the four, Henry Fox, were gratified, and that was all. And even this limited arrangement was not completed before Parliament met.
Dec. 1, 1743.
The opening of the new session was anticipated with keen interest, as the Ministry was known to be rent with divisions, and hatred of the Hanoverians had immeasurably swollen in consequence of rumours of the favour that the King had shown to his electoral subjects. He had been surrounded by Hanoverian Guards to the exclusion of the English Guards; he had worn at Dettingen a yellow sash, which it appears was a Hanoverian symbol of authority; the Hanoverians had refused to obey the orders of Lord Stair, and so forth. We can easily imagine the buzz of angry legend and comment; for national antipathies have no difficulty in obtaining substantial affidavits in their support. Of this wild but not unreasonable intemperance Pitt, it is scarcely necessary to say, was the mouthpiece. In the debate on the Address he spoke with his accustomed violence. He called Carteret 'an execrable or sole minister, who had renounced the British nation, and seemed to have drunk of the potion described in poetic fictions which made men forget their country.'[151]So far as this tirade concerned Carteret's authority, nothing could be more absurd or wide of the truth. He could indeed scarcely have chosen a more unfortunate epithet than 'sole.' So far from being a sole minister, Carteret, as we have seen, had just received a crushing defeat in the elevation of Henry Pelham to the first place in the Ministry, and the rejection of his own candidate; though he had strained all his influence in the cause.
Nor had this 'sole minister' any parliamentary following; his only strength lay with the King, where it had just been found signally inadequate. The supreme minister in the last resort, and behind the scenes, was, in truth, Walpole. It was his decision and his alone that had turned the scale against Carteret and Pulteney. Carteret was congenial to the King, for he worked with his Sovereign in matters of foreign policy; and, as we have seen, he could talk politics to the Sovereign in the King's own language. But, while the King tried to carry out his own views in Continental affairs, in domestic politics he looked to Walpole alone. Still, invective must necessarily have an object, and, by aiming at the King's confidential Foreign Minister, Pitt was able to wound the King as well. It is hinted by Yorke, the parliamentary chronicler, that Pitt's acrimony was dictated by jealousy of Carteret's influence with the Prince of Wales.[152]As to this there is no proof, and conjecture is idle. Carteret and Frederick had indeed been long connected, but this would scarcely impel one of the Prince's court to attack one of the Prince's friends. Moreover, were this the motive, Pitt's attacks would have been of a different and milder character, enough to damage Carteret, but not enough to embroil Pitt with the Prince, who was not merely his master, but the head of his political connection. It is clear that Pitt's sole object was to destroy Carteret as minister, not for the ignominious purpose of subverting him in a court camarilla, but to show his own power by demolishing the conspicuous man, the vizier of the King who proscribed himself. The mere fact that Carteretrepresented the King's Continental policy, and that Pitt had apparently determined, in the jargon of that day, to storm the Closet, seems sufficient reason for Pitt's bitterness. He denounced Carteret as he denounced Hanover, as darling accessories of a monarch whom he was determined to harass in every way until his attacks should produce compliance or surrender. But it was the fate of Pitt to have to recant his abuse of Carteret, as solemnly and as publicly as he recanted his abuse of Walpole. 'His abilities,' said Pitt in 1770 of Carteret, 'did honour to this House and to this nation. In the upper departments of Government he had not his equal. And I feel a pride in declaring that to his patronage, to his friendship, and instruction, I owe whatever I am.'[153]It was a generous, almost an extravagant statement. But it shows how little importance should be attached to the early philippics of Pitt, as of other aspiring and brilliant young men. Invectives are one of the least subtle and most piquant forms of advertisement, but they do not facilitate the task of biographers.
The Sovereign he attacked openly and unsparingly. It was proposed, in the Address to the Throne, to congratulate the King on his escape from the dangers of the battle of Dettingen. This Pitt deprecated. 'Suppose, Sir,' he asked, 'it should appear that His Majesty was exposed to few or no dangers abroad, but those to which he is daily liable at home, such as the overturning of his coach or the stumbling of his horse, would not the address proposed, instead of being a compliment, be an affront and insult to the Sovereign?' No affront or insult could at any rate be more stinging or more unfounded than his wanton insinuation. George II.had the courage of his race, and had displayed it at Dettingen. At first his runaway horse had almost carried him into the French lines, so he dismounted and fought on foot for the rest of the day; not leaving the field until he had created a number of knights banneret; the last British king to take the field, and the last bannerets to be so created.[154]
It was vile then to disparage the King's courage, but political life in those days had no scruple and little shame. The sneers at Hanover with which this speech was sprinkled were better founded and deserved. But a serious and reasonable argument, not yet obsolete, pervaded Pitt's violent rhetoric on this occasion. It was that though the balance of power concerned all states, it concerned our island state least and last of all. Moreover, he attacked our recent policy on other grounds. On our attitude to Austria, then fighting for its integrity under Maria Theresa, he heaped scorn from another point of view. We had promised her abundant assistance when she was fighting Prussia alone; when France intervened we shrank back and left her in the lurch. That, he declared, was not our only discredit. When Prussia attacked the Queen of Hungary, and Spain, Poland, and Bavaria laid claim to her father's succession, we should have known that the preservation of the whole was impossible, and advised her to yield the part claimed by Frederick. But the words from the Throne and the speeches of the courtiers had persuaded the Austrian Government that Great Britain was determined to support her. So great was the determination, that even Hanover added near one-third to her army at her own cost, the first extraordinary expense, it was believed, that Hanover hadborne for her purposes since her fortunate conjunction with England! But then the French intervened. Hanover was in danger, and so we promptly retired. We gave some money, indeed, but that was because our ministers contrived to make a job of every parliamentary grant. The Queen, seeing that she was deserted, came to terms with Frederick, but much worse terms than he had originally offered. Then was the time for us to have insisted on her making peace with France and the phantom Emperor. But we had advised her against this, for no conceivable reason except apparently that we wished to go on paying the 16,000 Hanoverians whom we were employing. As regards the battle of Dettingen, he declared that we had no idea of fighting, but that the French had caught us in a trap. The ardour of our troops was restrained by the cowardice of the Hanoverians; we ran away in the night, leaving our dead and wounded behind us. Never would he consent to call the battle a victory, it was only a fortunate escape.
Were we to continue fighting? he asked. We ourselves had nothing to gain by it, though Hanover, no doubt, would continue to receive four or five hundred thousand pounds a year from us if we did. But we should consider, even the Hanoverians should consider, that we could not carry on a long war as in the reign of Queen Anne. We were not far from a national bankruptcy, and should soon have to disband our army. What, then, if the Pretender should land at the head of a French force?
This outline is given to show the singular but forcible mixture of shrewd argument, wayward extravagance, and bitter scoffs, which at this time constituted Pitt's parliamentary armament.
He followed this speech up by another on December 6, of which little remains; but his vehemence brought him into collision with the Speaker. He urged contemptuously that if we must have German troops we should rather hire those of Cologne and Saxony than those of Hanover. The King was surrounded by German officers, and by one English Minister without an English heart. The little finger of one man, he declared, had lain heavier upon the nation than an administration which had continued twenty years. Murray, however, the Solicitor-General, afterwards Lord Mansfield, delivered a consummate speech against the motion, which carried so much conviction that Pitt with some of the other Cobhamites struck out the words relating to the exhausted and impoverished state of the kingdom. But the amended motion was rejected by a majority of seventy-seven.
And now there occurred a significant fissure in the Opposition. Pitt and Lyttelton were inclined to support the maintenance of the British force in Flanders. But Cobham, the chief of the little party, was uncompromising: he resigned his commission 'as captain of the troop of horse grenadiers' and his seat in the Cabinet. A formula had to be framed to unite the two sections, and so George Grenville brought forward a motion praying his Majesty 'in consideration of the exhausted and impoverished state of the Kingdom not to proceed in this war without the concurrence of the Dutch.' Pitt concurred in this motion, and promised that if it were rejected he would join in opposing the continued employment of the British as well as the Hanoverian troops in Flanders.
This revision by a little group is not without significance;as the Opposition, we are told, at the beginning of the session, entrusted the direction of the party to a committee of six, consisting of Dodington, Pitt, Sir John Cotton, Sir Watkin Wynn, Waller, and Lyttelton. The putting of political leadership into commission has never been successful in Parliament, and the device seems finally to have broken down when it was last attempted, by the Protectionist party, after the fall of Peel. Nor does it appear to have been more happy on this occasion. Pitt and Lyttelton, who, in spite of their engagement, still desired to support the continued employment of the British troops in the Low Countries, at a general meeting of the Opposition found themselves alone, and so agreed to give a silent vote with their associates.
It is probable that this incident produced alienation as it certainly wrought friction between Pitt and Cobham. In the ensuing year we find Cobham describing Pitt as a young man of fine parts, but narrow, ignorant of the world, and dogmatical.[155]Two years afterwards Cobham went further, and described him as a wrong-headed fellow, whom he had had no regard for.[156]So we may well conjecture that from this time there was but little confidence between Pitt and the patron of the cousinhood; a great emancipation, though not wholly a gain for Pitt.
Jan. 19, 1744.
On the vote of 393,773l.to maintain the 16,000 Hanoverians during the coming year, there was no need for the restraint of silence, so Pitt railed with his customary bitterness against Carteret, who was the Hanover-troop minister, a flagitious taskmaster, with a party only composed of the 16,000 Hanoverians; and he ended his denunciationby wishing that Carteret were in the House, for then he would say ten times more. His speech was passionate and rhetorical, incomparably good of its kind. But the Government prevailed in the division by 271 to 226. This majority of forty-five was larger than had been anticipated, and was due to the incessant exertions of Walpole. He sustained the flagging spirits of the Ministry, who were on the point of abandoning the proposal. Newcastle, indeed, had blenched before the storm, and openly took part against the Hanoverians. But Walpole restored the fortune of the field. He stemmed the gathering retreat, put heart into the waverers, and used his personal credit with his old friends. Never in his own administration had he laboured any point with more zeal. 'The whole world,' writes his son Horace, 'nay, the Prince himself, allows that if Lord Orford had not come to town, the Hanover troops had been lost. They were, in effect, given up by all but Carteret.'[157]
So far as the House of Commons was concerned, this ended the hostilities against the Hanoverian troops, though the House of Lords continued the controversy with a debate in which Chesterfield, who outdid Pitt in violence, delivered a speech which was greatly admired. But a subsidy of 200,000l.had to be voted to the King of Sardinia under the treaty of Worms. This treaty, negotiated by the King and Carteret in Germany independently of the Home Government, was little relished by that Government, and offered a tempting target to the warriors of theJan. 1744.Opposition. On a first motion for papers, Pitt was again prominent, though little of his speech survives. Alluding, however, to a secretconvention attached to the treaty, which Carteret had signed but which Ministers had refused to ratify, he declared, 'I only wanted the sight of a convention, tacked to the treaty which that audacious hand had signed, to furnish matter for immediate impeachment.' On the actual vote the Government had only a majority of 62. Subsequent unreported debates furnished Pitt with opportunities of denouncing the Pelham brethren as subservient tools of Carteret. But the Government waxed stronger in proportion to the heat of opposition. On a vote of censure they had a majority of 114. Through these discussions Pitt passes like a phantom, foremost by all consent in debate, but without leaving any footprint of speech behind.
From these broils Parliament was now distracted by startling intelligence. By message to the House on February 15 (1744) the King apprised his faithful lieges that a French fleet was prowling in the Channel, and that the young Stuart Prince, Charles Edward, had arrived in France to join it. One of our vessels had met this squadron of seventeen men-of-war and four frigates so long ago as January 27, 'half seas over' between Brest and the Land's End, prowling apparently northwards. There was something of a panic: men remembered how the Dutch in 1667 had sailed up the Thames, and apprehended a repetition of that disgrace. The Jacobites began to raise their head, but stocks did not fall. The King's message announced that the 'eldest son of the Pretender to his Crown is arrived in France; and that preparations are making there to invade this kingdom in concert with disaffected persons here.' A loyal address was at once prepared, to which the Opposition moved an addition, promising an inquiry into the state ofthe Navy. The amendment was, of course, supported by Pitt, and, of course, defeated. But Pitt, as stout an anti-Jacobite as his grandfather, promised his adhesion to the address whether the amendment voted or not; and a few days later, on the presentation of papers, he supported the Government so warmly as to receive the public thanks of Pelham. But for once the interest was not in the Commons but the Lords. Newcastle had laid the papers before the House, and with his usual blundering ineptitude had allowed the House to pass to private business. Then Orford rose, and broke his long silence. With dignity and emotion he confessed that he had vowed to refrain from speech in that House, but that abstinence now would be a crime. He had heard the King's message, and had observed with amazement that that House was to be so wanting in respect as to leave it unanswered. Was our language so barren as to be unable to find words to the King at such a crisis; 'a time of distraction and confusion, a time when the greatest power in Europe is setting up a Pretender to his throne?'
'I have indeed particular reason to express my astonishment and my uneasiness on this occasion; I feel my breast fired with the warmest gratitude to a gracious and royal master whom I have so long served; my heart overflows with zeal for his honour, and ardour for the lasting security of his illustrious house. But, my lords, the danger is common, and an invasion equally involves all our happiness, all our hopes, and all our fortunes.'
In these passionate words the wary and unemotional Orford allowed his apprehension to overflow. He saw the work of his life, the keeping out of the Stuarts, compromisedand endangered by the unpopularity of the throne, and the blunders of jobbing mediocrity. He perceived the danger which he had so long warded off now instant and imminent. The House was deeply moved. Newcastle with obvious mortification acknowledged his lapse, and the Chancellor hurriedly drafted an address. Even the Prince of Wales, whose hatred of Walpole was perhaps the deepest feeling of which his shallow nature was capable, was so stirred, that he rose and shook hands with the veteran Minister. Nay, as we are told by a chronicler blissfully unconscious of bathos, 'he revoked the prohibition which prevented the family of Lord Orford from attending his levee.' It was a dramatic occasion, worthy of being the last public appearance of Orford. The hard-bitten old statesman who had been baited for near a quarter of a century, and had always given his opponents as good as he had got, disappeared from the stage with a burst of passionate patriotism.