Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches Volume Iii Part 6

His difficulties compelled him to resort to various expedients. At one time Addington was persuaded to accept office with a peerage; but he brought no additional strength to the government. Though he went through the form of reconciliation, it was impossible for him to forget the past. While he remained in place he was jealous and punctilious; and he soon retired again. At another time Pitt renewed his efforts to overcome his master's aversion to Fox; and it was rumoured that the King's obstinacy was gradually giving way. But, meanwhile, it was impossible for the minister to conceal from the public eye the decay of his health, and the constant anxiety which gnawed at his heart. His sleep was broken. His food ceased to nourish him. All who pa.s.sed him in the Park, all who had interviews with him in Downing Street, saw misery written in his face. The peculiar look which he wore during the last months of his life was often pathetically described by Wilberforce, who used to call it the Austerlitz look.

Still the vigour of Pitt's intellectual faculties, and the intrepid haughtiness of his spirit, remained unaltered. He had staked everything on a great venture. He had succeeded in forming another mighty coalition against the French ascendency. The united forces of Austria, Russia, and England might, he hoped, oppose an insurmountable barrier to the ambition of the common enemy. But the genius and energy of Napoleon prevailed. While the English troops were preparing to embark for Germany, while the Russian troops were slowly coming up from Poland, he, with rapidity unprecedented in modern war, moved a hundred thousand men from the sh.o.r.es of the Ocean to the Black Forest, and compelled a great Austrian army to surrender at Ulm. To the first faint rumours of this calamity Pitt would give no credit. He was irritated by the alarms of those around him. "Do not believe a word of it," he said: "It is all a fiction." The next day he received a Dutch newspaper containing the capitulation. He knew no Dutch. It was Sunday; and the public offices were shut. He carried the paper to Lord Malmesbury, who had been minister in Holland; and Lord Malmesbury translated it. Pitt tried to bear up; but the shock was too great; and he went away with death in his face.

The news of the battle of Trafalgar arrived four days later, and seemed for a moment to revive him. Forty-eight hours after that most glorious and most mournful of victories had been announced to the country came the Lord Mayor's day; and Pitt dined at Guildhall. His popularity had declined. But on this occasion the mult.i.tude, greatly excited by the recent tidings, welcomed him enthusiastically, took off his horses in Cheapside, and drew his carriage up King Street. When his health was drunk, he returned thanks in two or three of those stately sentences of which he had a boundless command. Several of those who heard him laid up his words in their hearts; for they were the last words that he ever uttered in public: "Let us hope that England, having saved herself by her energy, may save Europe by her example."

This was but a momentary rally. Austerlitz soon completed what Ulm had begun. Early in December Pitt had retired to Bath, in the hope that he might there gather strength for the approaching session. While he was languishing there on his sofa arrived the news that a decisive battle had been fought and lost in Moravia, that the coalition was dissolved, that the Continent was at the feet of France. He sank down under the blow. Ten days later he was so emaciated that his most intimate friends hardly knew him. He came up from Bath by slow journeys, and, on the 11th of January 1806, reached his villa at Putney. Parliament was to meet on the 21st. On the 20th was to be the parliamentary dinner at the house of the First Lord of the Treasury in Downing Street; and the cards were already issued. But the days of the great minister were numbered. The only chance for his life, and that a very slight chance, was that he should resign his office, and pa.s.s some months in profound repose. His colleagues paid him very short visits, and carefully avoided political conversation. But his spirit, long accustomed to dominion, could not, even in that extremity, relinquish hopes which everybody but himself perceived to be vain. On the day on which he was carried into his bedroom at Putney, the Marquess Wellesley, whom he had long loved, whom he had sent to govern India, and whose administration had been eminently able, energetic, and successful, arrived in London after an absence of eight years. The friends saw each other once more. There was an affectionate meeting, and a last parting. That it was a last parting Pitt did not seem to be aware. He fancied himself to be recovering, talked on various subjects cheerfully, and with an unclouded mind, and p.r.o.nounced a warm and discerning eulogium on the Marquess's brother Arthur. "I never," he said, "met with any military man with whom it was so satisfactory to converse." The excitement and exertion of this interview were too much for the sick man. He fainted away; and Lord Wellesley left the house, convinced that the close was fast approaching.

And now members of Parliament were fast coming up to London. The chiefs of the opposition met for the purpose of considering the course to be taken on the first day of the session. It was easy to guess what would be the language of the King's speech, and of the address which would be moved in answer to that speech. An amendment condemning the policy of the government had been prepared, and was to have been proposed in the House of Commons by Lord Henry Petty, a young n.o.bleman who had already won for himself that place in the esteem of his country which, after the lapse of more than half a century, he still retains. He was unwilling, however, to come forward as the accuser of one who was incapable of defending himself. Lord Grenville, who had been informed of Pitt's state by Lord Wellesley, and had been deeply affected by it, earnestly recommended forbearance; and Fox, with characteristic generosity and good nature, gave his voice against attacking his now helpless rival.

"Sunt lacrymae rerum," he said, "et mentem mortalia tangunt." On the first day, therefore, there was no debate. It was rumoured that evening that Pitt was better. But on the following morning his physicians p.r.o.nounced that there were no hopes. The commanding faculties of which he had been too proud were beginning to fail. His old tutor and friend, the Bishop of Lincoln, informed him of his danger, and gave such religious advice and consolation as a confused and obscured mind could receive. Stories were told of devout sentiments fervently uttered by the dying man. But these stories found no credit with anybody who knew him.

Wilberforce p.r.o.nounced it impossible that they could be true. "Pitt," he added, "was a man who always said less than he thought on such topics."

It was a.s.serted in many after-dinner speeches, Grub Street elegies, and academic prize poems and prize declamations, that the great minister died exclaiming, "Oh my country!" This is a fable; but it is true that the last words which he uttered, while he knew what he said, were broken exclamations about the alarming state of public affairs. He ceased to breathe on the morning of the 23rd of January, 1806, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day on which he first took his seat in Parliament. He was in his forty-seventh year, and had been, during near nineteen years, First Lord of the Treasury, and undisputed chief of the administration.

Since parliamentary government was established in England, no English statesman has held supreme power so long. Walpole, it is true, was First Lord of the Treasury during more than twenty years: but it was not till Walpole had been some time First Lord of the Treasury that he could be properly called Prime Minister.

It was moved in the House of Commons that Pitt should be honoured with a public funeral and a monument. The motion was opposed by Fox in a speech which deserves to be studied as a model of good taste and good feeling.

The task was the most invidious that ever an orator undertook: but it was performed with a humanity and delicacy which were warmly acknowledged by the mourning friends of him who was gone. The motion was carried by 288 votes to 89.

The 22d of February was fixed for the funeral. The corpse having lain in state during two days in the Painted Chamber, was borne with great pomp to the northern transept of the Abbey. A splendid train of princes, n.o.bles, bishops, and privy councillors followed. The grave of Pitt had been made near to the spot where his great father lay, near also to the spot where his great rival was soon to lie. The sadness of the a.s.sistants was beyond that of ordinary mourners. For he whom they were committing to the dust had died of sorrows and anxieties of which none of the survivors could be altogether without a share. Wilberforce, who carried the banner before the hea.r.s.e, described the awful ceremony with deep feeling. As the coffin descended into the earth, he said, the eagle face of Chatham from above seemed to look down with consternation into the dark house which was receiving all that remained of so much power and glory.

All parties in the House of Commons readily concurred in voting forty thousand pounds to satisfy the demands of Pitt's creditors. Some of his admirers seemed to consider the magnitude of his embarra.s.sments as a circ.u.mstance highly honourable to him; but men of sense will probably be of a different opinion. It is far better, no doubt, that a great minister should carry his contempt of money to excess than that he should contaminate his hands with unlawful gain. But it is neither right nor becoming in a man to whom the public has given an income more than sufficient for his comfort and dignity to bequeath to that public a great debt, the effect of mere negligence and profusion. As first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Pitt never had less than six thousand a year, besides an excellent house. In 1792 he was forced by his royal master's friendly importunity to accept for life the office of Warden of the Cinque Ports, with near four thousand a year more. He had neither wife nor child; he had no needy relations: he had no expensive tastes: he had no long election bills. Had he given but a quarter of an hour a week to the regulation of his household, he would have kept his expenditure within bounds. Or, if he could not spare even a quarter of an hour a week for that purpose, he had numerous friends, excellent men of business, who would have been proud to act as his stewards. One of those friends, the chief of a great commercial house in the city, made an attempt to put the establishment in Downing Street to rights; but in vain. He found that the waste of the servants' hall was almost fabulous. The quant.i.ty of butcher's meat charged in the bills was nine hundredweight a week. The consumption of poultry, of fish, and of tea was in proportion. The character of Pitt would have stood higher if with the disinterestedness of Pericles and of De Witt, he had united their dignified frugality.

The memory of Pitt has been a.s.sailed, times innumerable, often justly, often unjustly; but it has suffered much less from his a.s.sailants than from his eulogists. For, during many years, his name was the rallying cry of a cla.s.s of men with whom, at one of those terrible conjunctures which confound all ordinary distinctions, he was accidentally and temporarily connected, but to whom, on almost all great questions of principle, he was diametrically opposed. The haters of parliamentary reform called themselves Pitt.i.tes, not choosing to remember that Pitt made three motions for parliamentary reform, and that, though he thought that such a reform could not safely be made while the pa.s.sions excited by the French revolution were raging, he never uttered a word indicating that he should not be prepared at a more convenient season to bring the question forward a fourth time. The toast of Protestant ascendency was drunk on Pitt's birthday by a set of Pitt.i.tes who could not but be aware that Pitt had resigned his office because he could not carry Catholic emanc.i.p.ation. The defenders of the Test Act called themselves Pitt.i.tes, though they could not be ignorant that Pitt had laid before George the Third unanswerable reasons for abolishing the Test Act. The enemies of free trade called themselves Pitt.i.tes, though Pitt was far more deeply imbued with the doctrines of Adam Smith than either Fox or Grey. The very negro-drivers invoked the name of Pitt, whose eloquence was never more conspicuously displayed than when he spoke of the wrongs of the negro. This mythical Pitt, who resembles the genuine Pitt as little as Charlemagne of Ariosto resembles the Charlemagne of Eginhard, has had his day. History will vindicate the real man from calumny disguised under the semblance of adulation, and will exhibit him as what he was, a minister of great talents, honest intentions, and liberal opinions, pre-eminently qualified, intellectually and morally, for the part of a parliamentary leader, and capable of administering with prudence and moderation the government of a prosperous and tranquil country, but unequal to surprising and terrible emergencies, and liable, in such emergencies, to err grievously, both on the side of weakness and on the side of violence.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, INSCRIPTIONS, ETC.

EPITAPH ON HENRY MARTYN. (1812.)

Here Martyn lies. In Manhood's early bloom The Christian Hero finds a Pagan tomb.

Religion, sorrowing o'er her favourite son, Points to the glorious trophies that he won.

Eternal trophies! not with carnage red, Not stained with tears by hapless captives shed, But trophies of the Cross! for that dear name, Through every form of danger, death, and shame, Onward he journeyed to a happier sh.o.r.e, Where danger, death, and shame a.s.sault no more.

LINES TO THE MEMORY OF PITT. (1813.)

Oh Britain! dear Isle, when the annals of story Shall tell of the deeds that thy children have done, When the strains of each poet shall sing of their glory, And the triumphs their skill and their valour have won.

When the olive and palm in thy chaplet are blended, When thy arts, and thy fame, and thy commerce increase, When thy arms through the uttermost coasts are extended, And thy war is triumphant, and happy thy peace;

When the ocean, whose waves like a rampart flow round thee, Conveying thy mandates to every sh.o.r.e, And the empire of nature no longer can bound thee, And the world be the scene of thy conquests no more:

Remember the man who in sorrow and danger, When thy glory was set, and thy spirit was low, When thy hopes were o'erturned by the arms of the stranger, And thy banners displayed in the halls of the foe,

Stood forth in the tempest of doubt and disaster, Unaided, and single, the danger to brave.

a.s.serted thy claims, and the rights of his master, Preserved thee to conquer, and saved thee to save.

A RADICAL WAR SONG. (1820.)

Awake, arise, the hour is come, For rows and revolutions; There's no receipt like pike and drum For crazy const.i.tutions.

Close, close the shop! Break, break the loom, Desert your hearths and furrows, And throng in arms to seal the doom Of England's rotten boroughs.

We'll stretch that tort'ring Castlereagh On his own Dublin rack, sir; We'll drown the King in Eau de vie, The Laureate in his sack, sir, Old Eldon and his sordid hag In molten gold we'll smother, And stifle in his own green bag The Doctor and his brother.

In chains we'll hang in fair Guildhall The City's famed recorder, And next on proud St Stephen's fall, Though Wynne should squeak to order.

In vain our tyrants then shall try To 'scape our martial law, sir; In vain the trembling Speaker cry That "Strangers must withdraw," sir.

Copley to hang offends no text; A rat is not a man, sir: With schedules, and with tax bills next We'll bury pious Van, sir.

The slaves who loved the income Tax, We'll crush by scores, like mites, sir, And him, the wretch who freed the blacks, And more enslaved the whites, sir.

The peer shall dangle from his gate, The bishop from his steeple, Till all recanting, own, the State Means nothing but the People.

We'll fix the church's revenues On Apostolic basis, One coat, one scrip, one pair of shoes Shall pay their strange grimaces.

We'll strap the bar's deluding train In their own darling halter, And with his big church bible brain The parson at the altar.

Hail glorious hour, when fair Reform Shall bless our longing nation, And Hunt receive commands to form A new administration.

Carlisle shall sit enthroned, where sat Our Cranmer and our Secker; And Watson show his snow-white hat In England's rich Exchequer.

The breast of Thistlewood shall wear Our Wellesley's star and sash, man: And many a mausoleum fair Shall rise to honest Cashman.

Then, then beneath the nine-tailed cat Shall they who used it writhe, sir; And curates lean, and rectors fat, Shall dig the ground they t.i.the, sir.

Down with your Bayleys, and your Bests, Your Giffords, and your Gurneys: We'll clear the island of the pests, Which mortals name attorneys.

Down with your sheriffs, and your mayors, Your registrars, and proctors, We'll live without the lawyer's cares, And die without the doctor's.

No discontented fair shall pout To see her spouse so stupid; We'll tread the torch of Hymen out, And live content with Cupid.

Then, when the high-born and the great Are humbled to our level, On all the wealth of Church and State, Like aldermen, we'll revel.

We'll live when hushed the battle's din, In smoking and in cards, sir, In drinking unexcised gin, And wooing fair Poissardes, sir.

THE BATTLE OF MONCONTOUR. (1824.)