The second essay on the Earl of Chatham (William Pitt)

Introduction

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born in Leicestershire, Oct. 25, 1800. "Of all good gifts which it is in the power of fortune to bestow," says one of his biographers, " none can surpass the being born of wise, honorable, and tender parents." This was Macaulay's happy lot. His father was Zachary Macaulay, remembered for his zealous opposition to the slave trade. His mother was Selina Mills, a lady of Quaker descent. Fortune had not withheld other gifts. Macaulay's father was a wealthy merchant, and thus all the conditions were favorable to the development of the abilities and character that the son had inherited.

Before he was ten years old, as one of his sisters tells us, Macaulay showed a decided bent for literature, and a good deal of juvenile prose and verse attests his precocity. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1818. He was averse to mathematical and scientific studies, but achieved much distinction at the university by his poems and essays, and by his speeches in the debating society. He received his degree in 1822, and four years later was admitted to the bar.

Macaulay's essay on " Milton," then just published, attracted attention throughout the world of letters ; and several public addresses, admirable in form and substance, seemed to prefigure for him a parliamentary career. When, about this time, commercial disaster befell his father, it was plain that Macaulay, upon whom the family support devolved, could not count for maintenance upon his chosen profession of the law. At the instance of powerful friends, he was in 1828 made a commissioner of bankruptcy, and two years afterward he entered the House of Commons as member for Calne, a pocket-borough in the gift of Lord Lansdowne.

Macaulay was an ardent Whig, being, as he would have expressed it, " a strong party man on the right side," and his first parliamentary speech was in favor of the bill for the removal of Jewish disabilities. He supported with great eloquence the reform acts of 1 83 1 and 1832. The next year he was returned a member for Leeds. He warmly advocated the measures for the reform of the Indian Government and the abolition of slavery.

In 1834 he was appointed to a seat in the Supreme Council of India. This place he held till 1838, and the munificent salary attached to it (^10,000) gave him the independence needful for the carrying-out of his great literary work, the " History of England." His "Essays," by which he is best known to the general reader, were many of them of the nature of preliminary historical studies. Before his political preferment, these pieces had served to increase Macaulay's slender income : those written after his return from India were the outcome of choice and greater leisure.

Macaulay reentered Parliament in 1839, — this time as member for Edinburgh, — and became secretary of war in Melbourne's ministry. In 1846 he was paymaster-general, as Chatham had been before him.

The first two volumes of his " History " appeared in 1848, and were followed by two more in 1855. Two years later he was raised to the peerage. He died of heart disease in December, 1859, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, near the statue of Addison.

Macaulay lacked some of the traits we are accustomed to look for in lofty natures. We are told that he was ignorant of the deeper emotions ; that his sensibilities were not delicate ; that he lacked piety of mind, had no sympathy with high speculation, and displayed but little interest even in the practical problems of science and social life. On the other hand, his virtues were many and great. He was an affectionate friend, and blameless, unselfish, and magnanimous in every relation of life. His nature was simple, manly, and straightforward. He hated lies, liars, and all evil ; and one of the reasons he is never dull is that he was deeply in earnest in all he wrote.

Macaulay's powers of memory were very great, and the extent of his reading has perhaps never been exceeded. Like Johnson, Coleridge, and other men of great information, he was an exuberant talker ; and like most men who talk well, he was, it may be, but a poor listener. In one of Mrs. Carlyle's letters, she pays the historian the doubtful compliment of saying, " I used to think my husband the most copious talker, when he liked, that was anywhere to be fallen in with ; but Macaulay beats him hollow — in quantity." Of Coleridge, we are told by De Quincey that his friend used to stipulate for no interruptions to his table-talk as the first condition of his dining out. Coleridge was a talker, not a conversationalist. Macaulay talked as much as Coleridge ever did ; but London society listened gladly to his discourse, brightened at every turn by " images from the poets, shrewd thrusts from the satirists, wise saws from sages, and pleasantries from the humorists." It is a pity we have no record of these b IN TK ODUC TION.

talks, for it is said that Macaulay talked very much as he wrote,

and no one thinks that he wrote too much.

His fame rests on his " Lays of Ancient Rome," his " History," and his " Essays." It is with the last that we are here concerned. Though the titles of the " Essays " suggest biography, most of them are in fact detached chapters of history. The Second Essay on Chatham — the text of the following pages — discloses in every paragraph Macaulay's marvelous mastery of historic detail. Here and there are stately and melodious passages ; yet the very minuteness of the account, with its array of dates, names, and titles, sensibly jolts and impedes the progress of the piece.

Examples of Macaulay's more fluent manner are afforded by his essay on " Sir William Temple " and by his " Milton." It is customary to speak of his early style as florid ; and Macaulay himself declared in later life that his " Milton " was " overloaded with gaudy and ungraceful ornament." But just as the first form in which one would cast a thought is often the best, so it will frequently happen that the earliest work of a great artist has characteristic excellences that the refinement of maturity cannot replace. It was not without reason that the essay on " Milton " drew all eyes upon the writer of it.

Macaulay's style is the most original thing about him. By it he was able to give to written language a good share of the glow and rush of spoken oratory. Critics have pointed to his wealth of epithet, the rhythm of his periods, and the masterly unity of each of his pieces. Yet beyond the reach of analysis there remains a something that is Macaulay's that cannot be defined. " You will ask science in vain to tell you," says Saintsbury, " why some dozen or sixteen of the simplest words in language arranged by one man in one fashion make a permanent addition to the delight of the world, while other words differently arranged by another do not."

The most eminent of later English historians, Freeman, says of Macaulay's writing : " He is a model of style, ■ — of style not merely as a kind of luxury, but of style in its practical aspect. ... I learned from him that if I wished to be understood by others, or indeed by myself, I must avoid, not always long sentences, — for long sentences may often be perfectly clear, — but involved, complicated, parenthetical sentences. I learned that I must avoid sentences crowded with relatives and participles, — sentences in which things are not so much directly stated as implied in some dark and puzzling fashion. I learned, also, never to be afraid of using the same word or name over and over again, if by that means anything could be added to clearness or force. Macaulay never goes on, like some writers, talking about ' the former ' and 'the latter,' 'he, she, it, they,' through clause after clause, while his reader has to look back to see which of several persons it is that is so darkly referred to. No doubt a pronoun, like any other word, may often be repeated with advantage, if it is perfectly clear who is meant by the noun; and with Macaulay's pronouns it is always perfectly clear who is meant by them. . . . The care which Macaulay took to write, before all things, good and clear English, may be followed by writers who make no attempt to imitate his style, and who may be led by nature to some quite different style of their own. In every language and in every kind of writing, purity of speech, and clearness of expression, must be the first virtues of all."

William Pitt was born at Westminster in 1708. He died at the age of seventy, having been for twenty years the greatest

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figure in English public life. To distinguish him from his illustrious son and namesake, he is commonly referred to by his title. When, in 1766, he became first Earl of Chatham, he divested himself, as Macaulay points out in a following page, of that far higher title of " the Great Commoner," which an admiring nation had conferred upon him.

The life of this great man is of interest to lovers of liberty and law everywhere. To us Americans, who live under the Constitution of 1787, whatever relates to the career of the English statesman who " rejoiced that America had resisted " must have an interest deeper still. The accompanying Second Essay of Macaulay outlines the political life of Chatham after the year 1760. Only the salient features of his earlier career can here be indicated.

Pitt was educated at Oxford, where he was distinguished rather for his extensive reading and information than for any special attainments. His university studies were cut short by a severe attack of gout. This disease had tortured him even in boyhood ; he was never wholly free from it ; and it was the cause of his death in 1778.

In 1735 young Pitt entered Parliament for the famous rotten> borough of Old Sarum. He inherited this seat, as he may have inherited the gout, from his grandfather, Thomas Pitt, who was at one time governor of Madras, and who, out of the wealth this post brought him, had purchased the tenure of the borough.

In Parliament Pitt allied himself at once with the Whig opposition. Among his most effective speeches were several against the Hanoverian subsidies, — the substance of which he afterward recanted, — and those in which, in 1742, he urged the investigation of Walpole's administration. Only the general tenor of these speeches is known. The familiar and famous oration in which he pleaded guilty to " the atrocious crime of being a young man," — a supposed sneer of Walpole's, — was never delivered by Pitt. It was, like other celebrated speeches, written by Samuel Johnson in his " Parliamentary Reports " for the " Gentleman's Magazine."

In 1 746 Pitt was appointed paymaster-general of the forces, under the administration of the Pelhams. The rich perquisites of this place consisted of interest on public moneys while in hand, and of a commission on all foreign subsidies. These perquisites had been pocketed without question by all previous paymastersgeneral. Pitt, though poor, — he was a younger son, — refused to draw a shilling from his office beyond the salary legally attaching to it. This refusal was well calculated to call forth, in that age of venal statesmen, the popular confidence which at once followed upon it.

In 1754 Pitt married Lady Hester Grenville, the sister of George Grenville and of the first Earl Temple. Macaulay frequently refers to the political bearings of this alliance. In 1757 the famous coalition ministry of Pitt and Newcastle was formed, with Pitt as secretary of state for foreign affairs. This cabinet held together for four years ; and it was during Pitt's administration that England achieved her greatest successes in India, Europe, and America. The following essay takes up at this point the subject of his later career.

Pitt was a man of penetrating intelligence, resolute courage, promptitude, self-command, and firmness of purpose. In his administration of foreign affairs he was an enthusiastic patriot, having the sole purpose of promoting the welfare and influence of England. To this end all the energies of his nature were constantly directed. Nothing restrained his arrogance in dealing

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with foreign nations, and in many ways he was deserving of the epithet of " dictator " applied to him by Dr. Johnson.

It has been said that the theme afforded by Chatham's public life was especially congenial to Macaulay. The historian's own nature was firm and courageous ; and courage and firmness were virtues that, when exhibited in the lives of other men, as in Chatham and Clive, kindled in him a special fervor. Yet Macaulay could call Chatham " vain and resentful," " an actor in the closet, at council, and in Parliament." And it is probable that the estimate of Pitt that is to be found in the two essays is the finest example of balanced judgments that Macaulay has left us.

He began the first of these sketches by saying, "All who employ themselves in illustrating the lives of others are peculiarly exposed to the disease of admiration." These words of judicious caution have not sufficed to deter later historians from indiscriminating eulogy of Lord Chatham. His real achievements were very great, and by these his title to greatness was long ago fixed.

THE EARL OF CHATHAM.

MORE than ten years ago we commenced a sketch of the political life of the great Lord Chatham. 2 We then stopped at the death of George II., with the intention of speedily resuming our task. Circumstances, which it would be tedious to explain, long prevented us from carrying this intention into effect. Nor can we regret the delay, for the materials which were within our reach in 1834 were scanty and unsatisfactory when compared with those which we at present possess. 3 Even now, though we have had access to some valuable sources of information which have not yet been opened to the public, we cannot but feel that the history of the first ten years of the reign of George III. is but imperfectly known to us ; nevertheless we are inclined to think that we are in a condition to lay before our readers a narrative neither uninstructive nor uninteresting. We therefore return with pleasure to our long-interrupted labor.

We left Pitt in the zenith of prosperity and glory, the idol of England, the terror of France, the admiration of the whole civilized world. 4 The wind, from whatever quarter it blew, carried to

1 From the Edinburgh Review, October, 1844. This is the last essay that Macaulay wrote for that periodical.

2 Edinburgh Review, January, 1834.

3 This essay was in theory a " review" of Pitt's Correspondence, and of the Letters of Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, then recently republished.

4 With Pitt as secretary of state for foreign affairs, the French power in Canada and in India had been broken; and when George II. died, in 1760, England was the first maritime and colonial power in the world.

England tidings of battles won, fortresses taken, provinces added to the empire. At home factions had sunk into a lethargy, such as had never been known since the great religious schism of the sixteenth century l had roused the public mind from repose.

In order that the events which we have to relate may be clearly understood, it may be desirable that we should advert to the causes which had for a time suspended the animation of both the great English parties.

If, rejecting all that is merely accidental, we look at the essential characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, we may consider each of them as the representative of a great principle, essential to the welfare of nations. One is in an especial manner the guardian of liberty ; and the other, of order. One is the moving power, and the other the steadying power of the state. One is the sail, without which society would make no progress ; the other, the ballast, without which there would be small safety in a tempest. But, during the forty-six years which followed the accession of the House of Hanover, 2 these distinctive peculiarities seemed to be effaced. The Whig conceived that he could not better serve the cause of civil and religious freedom than by strenuously supporting the Protestant dynasty : the Tory conceived that he could not better prove his hatred of revolutions than by attacking a government to which a revolution had given birth. 3 Both came by degrees to attach more importance to the means than to the end ; both were thrown into unnatural situations ; and both, like animals transported to an uncongenial climate, languished and degenerated. The Tory, removed from the

i The abolition of the papal power in England, and the establishment of the Anglican Church.

2 By the Act of Settlement of 1701, the succession to the English crown was secured, next after Anne, to Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, and her Protestant descendants. Accordingly, upon the death of Queen Anne in 1 7 14, George Lewis of Brunswick, the Elector of Hanover, became George I. of England. The reigning family are his descendants.

3 The revolution of 1688, when Parliament adopted the famous Bill of Rights, curtailing the powers of the Crown.

sunshine of the court, was as a camel in the snows of Lapland : the Whig, basking in the rays of royal favor, was as a reindeer in the sands of Arabia.

Dante tells us 1 that he saw, in Malebolge, a strange encounter between a human form and a serpent. The enemies, after cruel wounds inflicted, stood for a time glaring on each other. A great cloud surrounded them, and then a wonderful metamorphosis began. Each creature was transfigured into the likeness of its antagonist. The serpent's tail divided itself into two legs : the man's legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The body of the serpent put forth arms : the arms of the man shrank into his body. At length the serpent stood up a man, and spake : the man sank down a serpent, and glided, hissing, away. Something like this was the transformation which, during the reign of George I., 2 befell the two English parties. Each gradually took the shape and color of its foe, till at length the Tory rose up erect the zealot of freedom, and the Whig crawled and licked the dust at the feet of power.

It is true, that when these degenerate politicians discussed questions merely speculative, and, above all, when they discussed questions relating to the conduct of their own grandfathers, they still seemed to differ as their grandfathers had differed. The Whig, who during three Parliaments had never given one vote against the court, and who was ready to sell his soul for the comptroller's staff or for the Great Wardrobe, still professed to draw his political doctrines from Locke and Milton ; still worshiped the memory of Pym and Hampden ; and would still, on the 30th of January, take his glass, first to the man in the mask, and then to the man who would do it without a mask. 3 The Tory, on the

2 George I. reigned from 1714 to 1727; George II., from 1727 to 1760.

3 Pym and Hampden in Parliament, and Milton with the pen, were the most influential upholders of the Commonwealth (1649-59). Akin to their free and inquisitive minds was the spirit of Locke, but his politics and political writings belonged to a somewhat later period. Charles I. was beheaded Jan. 30, 1649, the headsman being masked, as was then the custom.

other hand, while he reviled die mild and temperate Walpole as a deadly enemy of liberty, could see nothing to reprobate in the iron tyranny of Strafford and Laud. 1 But, whatever judgment the Whig or the Tory of that age might pronounce on transactions long past, there can be no doubt, that, as respected the practical questions then pending, the Tory was a reformer, and indeed an intemperate and indiscreet reformer, while the Whig was conservative even to bigotry. 2 We have ourselves seen similar effects produced in a neighboring country by similar causes. Who would have believed, fifteen years ago, 3 that M. Guizot and M. Villemain would have to defend property and social order against the attacks of such enemies as M. Genoude and M. de La Roche Jaquelin?

Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned demagogues: the successors of the old Roundheads had turned courtiers. Yet was it long before their mutual animosity began to abate, for it is the nature of parties to retain their original enmities far more firmly than their original principles. During many years, a generation of Whigs, whom Sidney would have spurned as slaves, continued to wage deadly war with a generation of Tories whom Jeffreys would have hanged for republicans. 4

Through the whole reign of George I., and through nearly half of the reign of George II., a Tory was regarded as an enemy of the reigning house, and was excluded from all the favors of the Crown. Though most of the country gentlemen were Tories,

1 Strafford and Laud were aggressive supporters of royal prerogative as against the Parliament, and both suffered death for treason to the Commonwealth. Sir Robert Walpole was (Whig) prime-minister from 1 721 to 1742.

2 This passage used to be cited to correct the once common prejudice against Macaulay, that he was to the last a narrow and bitter Whig.

3 That is, before the revolution of 1830.

4 Algernon Sidney had applauded the execution of Charles I. Jeffreys, the " infamous judge," was a creature of Charles II. This powerful illustration of Macaulay's derives much of its force from the fact that it was Jeffreys who in 1683 pronounced upon Sidney sentence of death, the outcome of a mock-trial for treasonable conspiracy against the King.

none but Whigs were created peers and baronets." Though most of the clergy were Tories, none but Whigs were appointed deans and bishops. In every county, opulent and well-descended Tory squires complained that their names were left out of the commission of the peace, 1 while men of small estate and mean birth, who were for toleration and excise, septennial parliaments and standing armies, presided at quarter sessions, and became deputy-lieutenants.

By degrees some approaches were made towards a reconciliation. While Walpole was at the head of affairs, enmity to his power induced a large and powerful body of Whigs, headed by the heir-apparent 2 of the throne, to make an alliance with the Tories, and a truce even with the Jacobites. 3 After Sir Robert's fall, 4 the ban which lay on the Tory party was taken off. The chief places in the administration continued to be filled by Whigs, and, indeed, could scarcely have been filled otherwise ; for the Tory nobility and gentry, though strong in numbers and in property, had among them scarcely a single man distinguished by talents, either for business or for debate. A few of them, however, were admitted to subordinate offices ; and this indulgence produced a softening effect on the temper of the whole body. The first levee of George II. after Walpole's resignation was a remarkable spectacle. Mingled with the constant supporters of the House of Brunswick, 5 with the Russells, the Cavendishes, and the Pelhams, appeared a crowd of faces utterly unknown to the pages and gentleman ushers, lords of rural manors, whose ale and foxhounds were renowned in the neighborhood of the Mendip hills, or round the Wrekin, 6 but who had never crossed the

1 A commission under the great seal constituting one or more persons justices of the peace.

2 Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III.

3 From the Latin Jacobus ("James"); the adherents of James II. after his abdication, or of his descendants.

6 Hills in Somersetshire and Shropshire, both of which counties are remote from the capital.

threshold of the palace since the days when Oxford, with the white staff in his hand, stood behind Queen Anne. 1

During the eighteen years which followed this day, both factions were gradually sinking deeper and deeper into repose. The apathy of the public mind is partly to be ascribed to the unjust violence with which the administration of Walpole had been assailed. In the body politic, as in the natural body, morbid languor generally succeeds morbid excitement. The people had been maddened by sophistry, by calumny, by rhetoric, by stimulants applied to the national pride. In the fullness of bread, they had raved as if famine had been in the land. While enjoying such a measure of civil and religious freedom as, till then, no great society had ever known, they had cried out for a Timoleon or a Brutus 2 to stab their oppressor to the heart. They were in this frame of mind when the change of administration took place ; and they soon found that there was to be no change whatever in the system of government. The natural consequences followed. To frantic zeal succeeded sullen indifference. The cant of patriotism had not merely ceased to charm the public ear, but had become as nauseous as the cant of Puritanism after the downfall of the Rump. 3 The hot fit was over ; the cold fit had begun : and it was long before seditious arts, or even real grievances, could bring back the fiery paroxysm which had run its course and reached its termination.

Two attempts were made to disturb this tranquillity : the banished heir of the House of Stuart 4 headed a rebellion ; the discontented heir of the House of Brunswick headed an opposition. Both the rebellion and the opposition came to nothing. The

1 That is, since the accession of the House of Hanover. The white staff is the lord high treasurer's badge of office.

2 Zealots in the cause of liberty who conspired against and assisted in the assassination of their civil rulers, — Timoleon of his elder brother Timophanes, and Brutus of his friend CEesar.

5 That is, the so-called Rump Parliament of the Commonwealth. 4 Charles Edward Stuart, grandson of James II.

ENGLISH CLASSICS FOR SCHOOLS

THE SECOND ESSAY

ON

(WILLIAM PITT)

BY

LORD MACAULAY

NEW YORK • : ■ CINCINNATI • : • CHICAGO

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 1892

Copyrighted, 1892, by American Book Company.

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axatlUam (fvison

■ftew JJovr, m. S. n.

INTRODUCTION.

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born in Leicestershire, Oct. 25, 1800. "Of all good gifts which it is in the power of fortune to bestow," says one of his biographers, " none can surpass the being born of wise, honorable, and tender parents." This was Macaulay's happy lot. His father was Zachary Macaulay, remembered for his zealous opposition to the slave trade. His mother was Selina Mills, a lady of Quaker descent. Fortune had not withheld other gifts. Macaulay's father was a wealthy merchant, and thus all the conditions were favorable to the development of the abilities and character that the son had inherited.

Before he was ten years old, as one of his sisters tells us, Macaulay showed a decided bent for literature, and a good deal of juvenile prose and verse attests his precocity. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 18 18. He was averse to mathematical and scientific studies, but achieved much distinction at the university by his poems and essays, and by his speeches in the debating society. He received his degree in 1822, and four years later was admitted to the bar.

Macaulay's essay on " Milton," then just published, attracted attention throughout the world of letters ; and several public addresses, admirable in form and substance, seemed to prefigure for him a parliamentary career. When, about this time, commercial disaster befell his father, it was plain that Macaulay, upon whom the family support devolved, could not count for maintenance upon his chosen profession of the law. At the instance of powerful friends, he was in 1828 made a commissioner of bankruptcy, and two years afterward he entered the House of Commons as member for Calne, a pocket-borough in the gift of Lord Lansdowne.

Macaulay was an ardent Whig, being, as he would have expressed it, " a strong party man on the right side," and his first parliamentary speech was in favor of the bill for the removal of Jewish disabilities. He supported with great eloquence the reform acts of 1 83 1 and 1832. The next year he was returned a member for Leeds. He warmly advocated the measures for the reform of the Indian Government and the abolition of slavery.

In 1834 he was appointed to a seat in the Supreme Council of India. This place he held till 1838, and the munificent salary attached to it (^10,000) gave him the independence needful for the carrying-out of his great literary work, the " History of England." His "Essays," by which he is best known to the general reader, were many of them of the nature of preliminary historical studies. Before his political preferment, these pieces had served to increase Macaulay's slender income : those written after his return from India were the outcome of choice and greater leisure.