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Home Domestic Affairs, 1760-1815 1760-1815; Part 10 |
1760-1815; Part 10Pitt, in his relations with his colleagues and the members of his party, seems to have been cold and reserved; a good deal of marble, they complained, entered into his composition, and it required much effort on the part of an interviewer to produce even a momentary thaw. Yet few ministers have managed the House of Commons with greater skill than the younger Pitt, and his pre-eminence in that assembly was unquestioned. As an orator, though he lacked the inspiration of his father, he was extraordinarily facile; he had, a contemporary said, almost an unnatural dexterity in the combination of words, and his great rival, Fox, confessed that although he himself was never at a loss for words, Pitt always had at command the best words possible.It has been urged against Pitt that he was jealous of able men, and preferred to be the one man of genius in a cabinet of commonplace men; indeed, his second ministry was composed of such feeble elements that the wits said it consisted merely of u William and Pitt". Nor had his administration been free from mistakes. He was not a perfect minister; but then, in Lord Rosebery's opinion, such monsters do not exist. Pitt, however, if not perfect, must be reckoned amongst the greatest of prime ministers. Honest and incorruptible himself, he, like his father, did much to raise the standard of morality in public life. Above all, it was his indomitable courage and self-confidence that enabled Great Britain to weather the storm that was caused by the French Revolution and by Napoleon. To the French Pitt was always the arch-enemy who had to be subdued, the real centre of opposition to their designs. That the French Assembly should in 1793 have solemnly declared Pitt to be "the enemy of the human race" is the greatest compliment they could have paid him. " England has saved herself", he said in his last speech, "by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example." That she had done the one and was to accomplish the other was perhaps as much due to William Pitt, with all his shortcomings in the conduct of the war, as it was to Nelson or to Wellington. To the ministries that followed Pitt's second administration only brief allusion must be made. To Pitt's ministry succeeded, in 1806, a ministry of "all the talents" on the Whig side, including Fox and Sheridan, the orator and playwright; whilst some Tories, such as Addington, were included in it; and Lord Grenville, George Grenville's youngest son, became prime minister (The Grenville family played a distinguished part during the reign of George III. George Grenville (d. 1770) was prime minister, 1763-5; his sister was the wife of the great Earl of Chatham (d. 1778) and the mother of the younger Pitt (d. 1806); and one of his sons was. the Lord Grenville who now became prime minister). Fox tried negotiations with. Napoleon, and was soon obliged to confess that his belief in Napoleon's sincerity was not justified; shortly afterwards he died (1806). The ministers succeeded, to their everlasting credit, in passing an Act abolishing the slave trade, and then resigned in consequence of George III's opposition to Catholic emancipation. To this ministry followed two Tory ministries - the first under the Duke of Portland, in 1807; the second under Spencer Perceval, in 1809. Finally, in 1812, Lord Liverpool, another Tory, became prime minister, and kept his position for the next fifteen years. But up till 1815 the real interest in our history lies in the struggle with Napoleon, which has been narrated elsewhere, and which the ministers, despite great difficulties, carried on with dogged persistency. Whilst that war was going on, reforms at home were impossible. Various other aspects of the period from 1714 - 1815 we have no space to survey. In art, Hogarth was the chief painter before 1760, and the second half of the eighteenth century is famous for the names of Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney. In literature, Pope was the conspicuous figure till his death in 1745. During the first half of George III's reign Samuel Johnson - made immortal by Boswell's Life - Gibbon, the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Goldsmith, Burke, and the poet Burns are perhaps the best known. The early poems of Wordsworth and Scott were written during the French Revolution, and those of Byron during the Napoleonic wars, whilst the first novels of Jane Austen and Scott appeared, the one in 1811, and the other in 1814. |
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