CHAPTER XIX PITT AND THE STATESMEN'S CORNER

When William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, was buried in the north transept at Westminster Abbey in the year 1778, Parliament having decreed that "he ought to be brought near to the dust of kings," and not lie in St. Paul's Cathedral, earnestly though the City of London begged for this favour, he drew to that part of the Abbey so many distinguished ministers of the Crown, that it soon received the name of the Statesmen's Corner, in distinction to the Poets' Corner which Chaucer had created. Pitt the elder and Pitt the younger, Fox, Canning, Palmerston, Castlereagh, Grattan, and Gladstone—these are the names which most closely belong to the Statesmen's Corner, and through their lives we can catch glimpses of English political life from the reign of George II. down to our own day.

William Pitt entered Parliament in 1735, and joined the party calling themselves the Patriots, rallying round the Prince of Wales, who was always at enmity with the King and Queen. This party naturally included any one opposed to Walpole, still the all-powerful minister at Court. The Patriots were young men, talented and vigorous, and their first signal victory was obtained when they forced Walpole into declaring war against Spain, that country, they insisted, having systematically hampered, injured, and insulted British traders, in spite of treaties and negotiations. Walpole was before all else a peace minister; but the Patriots, supported by the country, declared that war was necessary if England was to uphold her position and power on the seas, and Pitt, full of energy and eloquence, was one of the most powerful, though one of the youngest, among the Patriots. This war, as Walpole had foreseen, was but the prelude to a general disturbance; England became involved in Continental quarrels, and the Stuart party seized this opportunity of making a final, though unsuccessful attempt to place Prince Charles Edward on the throne. After nine years a treaty of peace was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle, and broadly speaking, the result of the war, so far as this country was concerned, was that we had been successful on the seas, in Canada, and in India, unsuccessful on the Continent. Walpole had resigned, Newcastle was a Prime Minister "who had neither judgment nor ability," and Pitt became more and more the ruling power. The year 1757 saw him virtually Prime Minister, and with his whole might he set himself to arouse a national spirit in England, to make the people see that our real future lay not in the Continent, but in the Colonies. "I can save this country, nobody else can," he said confidently at this time, and it was no vain boast. The years which followed were glorious years. In India, France had joined with a powerful native prince to oust the British traders, and had been utterly defeated at Plassey by the genius of Clive, who had but a handful of troops as against seventy thousand. That victory made the British masters of the whole province of Bengal, and laid the foundations of our Indian Empire. From henceforward the French power in India rapidly declined. In America an equal triumph crowned Pitt's policy. In Wolfe he had found a man able to do in the West what Clive did in the East, and Canada became a British Colony. Wolfe himself fell in the great struggle for Quebec, as did Montcalm, his rival French general, and a monument stands in the north ambulatory of the Abbey to the memory of the gallant young leader, who died in the hour of his victory. "It is necessary to watch for a victory every morning for fear of missing one," was the remark of Walpole's son Horace. And the nation felt that it was Pitt whose policy and whose power had made all these things possible. Parliament was entirely in his hands, he swayed the Commons by his eloquence just as he impressed them by his strength; the King supported him, and the people adored him.

But in 1760 George II. died, and his second son George, who succeeded him (Frederick Prince of Wales having died), did not care for a minister so fearless and independent. Neither was Pitt without enemies. When he saw that his opponents, supported by the King, were determined to make a peace with France of which he could not approve, he resigned, after making a powerful speech though he was very ill at the time. His words concluded thus: "It is because I see in this treaty the seeds of a future war that it meets with my most hearty disapprobation. The peace is insecure, because it restores the enemy to his former greatness; the peace is inadequate, because the places gained are no equivalent for the places surrendered." Before a year was over, all that Pitt foretold had come to pass, and England was again at war with Spain. Bute, who had been virtually Prime Minister since Pitt gave up office, now resigned, leaving in power Grenville, the leader in the House of Commons, and in a very short time Grenville brought forward a measure concerning America, which was so short-sighted and so opposed to the colonial spirit, that it could only have a disastrous ending. Practically all North America was in British hands, and it was divided into thirteen different States, besides Canada. Those States had their own Colonial Assemblies, but the supreme power rested with the British Parliament. In 1765 Grenville brought in the Stamp Act, by which American colonists had to use legal paper stamped in England for all their agreements, and this was carried without the consent of the colonists, as they had no representatives in Parliament, so that besides imposing a tax on them, Parliament had really tampered with one of their most sacred rights as British subjects. The Act was very badly received in America, and relations became so strained that Pitt, to whom any matter affecting the Colonies was very dear, came out of his retirement to protest against the Act, and brought all his splendid fearless eloquence to bear on the subject. "This kingdom has no right to tax the Colonies," he argued, and he went on to declare—

"I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.... The Commons of America have ever been in possession of their constitutional right of giving and granting their own money. They would have been slaves if they had not enjoyed it.... A gentleman asks, 'When were the Colonies emancipated?' I desire to know when were they made slaves? ... I stand up for this kingdom. I maintain that our legislative power over the Colonies is sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of government and legislation. But taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power. Taxes are a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone. When therefore in this House we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own. But in an American tax what do we do? We, your Majesty's Commons for Great Britain, give and grant to your Majesty—what? Our own property? No; we give and grant to your Majesty the property of your Majesty's Commons of America. It is an absurdity in terms. I beg leave to move that the Stamp Act be repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately; that the reason for the repeal be assigned because it was founded on an erroneous principle. At the same time let the sovereign authority of this country over the Colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, that we exercise every power except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent."

Pitt still held his sway over the House of Commons, and the Act was repealed. A few months later he was again Prime Minister, but now no longer as William Pitt, the great Commoner. He had accepted a title, to the disappointment of many of his followers, who had revered him in the past for his entire independence; and after he sat in the Lords as Earl of Chatham, his influence never made itself felt in the same way. Besides, his health continually broke down, bravely though he struggled against it, and he was often laid aside for many months at a time. During one of these periods, another irritating Act was passed, taxing all the tea, glass, and paper imported into America, and as this occurred just when the sore feelings over the Stamp Act had been allayed, it was particularly unfortunate. The Colonists looked on it as an act of revenge for their victory and determined to resist it, while the King was unfortunately surrounded by a party, of which Lord North was the chief, who urged him, whatever the cost might be, to force America into submission. Lord North becoming Prime Minister was the signal for an outbreak of public feeling in America; riots occurred, and some tea-laden ships in Boston harbour were boarded, the tea being all thrown into the water. Again Chatham raised his voice on the side of consideration, of common sense, and of conciliation.

"My Lords," he said, after he had used one telling argument after another to prove how useless and irritating had been the action of the Government, driving these loyal sons of the old country into actions which were the result of despair, and which in cooler moments they would heartily regret, "I am an old man, and I plead for a gentle mode of governing America, for the day is not far distant when America may vie with these kingdoms, not only in arms, but in arts also.... If we take a transient view of those motives which induced the ancestors of our fellow-subjects in America to leave their native country to encounter the innumerable difficulties of the unexplored regions of the western world, our astonishment at the present conduct of their descendants will naturally subside. There was no corner of the world into which men of their free and enterprising spirit would not fly with alacrity rather than submit to the slavish and tyrannical principles which prevailed at that period in their native country. And shall we wonder, my Lords, if the descendants of such illustrious characters spurn with contempt the hand of unconstitutional power, that would snatch from them the dearly-bought privilege they now contend for? My Lords, proceed like a kind and affectionate parent over a child whom he tenderly loves. Instead of these harsh and severe proceedings, pass an amnesty on their youthful errors; clasp them once more in fond, affectionate arms, and I venture to affirm you will find them children worthy of their sire."

But his powerful pleading fell on deaf ears. All in vain did he urge that though the Government might be revenged on America, no Government could conquer it. In 1775 war, terrible as a civil war, broke out between the old country and the new. The Congress raised an army, and set at the head of it George Washington. "The man first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen," solemnly declared that from henceforth the United Colonies would be free and independent States, and carried on the campaign with the utmost success, assisted by France. Dismayed at last and astonished, Lord North and his ministers began to talk of conciliation. But it was too late. Two British forces, each of about four thousand men, had been forced to surrender to the American troops. No longer was it possible for England to make terms.

At home there was consternation, irresolution, and a sense of deep resentment against the Government which had so blundered. Chatham was a dying man, but he yet had something to say. Weakness, irresolution, or fear were unknown words to him, even though now he admitted—

"I tremble for this country; I am almost led to despair that we shall ever be able to extricate ourselves."

On the 7th of April 1778 he lifted up his voice for the last time, this time against an ignominious surrender, which the discomfited Government, terrified by the action of France, were all too ready to accept. Conscious himself of his fast-ebbing strength, Chatham, the Imperialist minister of the eighteenth century, summoned all his old fire and eloquence to his aid, and spoke with intense feeling, rejoicing, he said, "that the grave had not yet closed on him, pressed down as he was by the hand of infirmity."

Panic-stricken, the Government were inclined to offer absolute independence to all the Colonies. Chatham vigorously opposed the idea.

"His Majesty," he declared, "succeeded to an empire as great in extent as its reputation was unsullied. Shall we tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions? Shall this great kingdom, that has survived whole and entire the Danish degradations, the Scottish invasion, the Norman Conquest, that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, now fall prostrate before the house of Bourbon? Shall a people that seventeen years ago was the terror of the world, now stoop so low as to tell its ancient and insatiate enemy, 'Take all we have: only give us peace.' In God's name, if it be absolutely necessary to declare for peace or war, and the former cannot be preserved with honour, why is not the latter commenced without hesitation? My Lords, any state is better than despair. Let us at least make an effort; and if we must fall, let us fall like men!"

With this brave appeal Chatham sat down exhausted. A few moments later he was carried fainting out of the House, which at once adjourned. And within a month, he who has been described as "the first Englishman of his time," had passed from the troubled arena of politics.
WILLIAM PITT FIRST EARL OF CHATHAM.
WILLIAM PITT FIRST EARL OF CHATHAM.

His monument in the Abbey shows him to us as he must often have looked when, wearing his Parliamentary robes, he addressed the House in that clear, sweet voice of his, which he could use with such wonderful effect, and the sculptor has well caught the expression of his fearless strength. Near him stand Prudence and Fortitude; below is Britannia, Mistress of the Seas; and the inscription tells how, under his administration, Great Britain was exalted to a height of prosperity and glory, unknown in any former age.

His second son, William, was born in 1759, the year that was perhaps the most successful in his father's life, and as he was too delicate to go to school, the older man personally supervised the early education of this his favourite child. When quite small, Chatham began to give him lessons in public speaking, making him stand on a platform to recite poetry or speeches, and later on teaching him to argue their points. With such a teacher and such a ready pupil, it is not surprising to hear of excellent progress made.

Little Willy Pitt, as he was called, soon showed in which direction his inclinations lay. "I am glad I am not the eldest son," he remarked, when he was seven, "as I want to speak in the House of Commons like papa."

He was only nineteen when his father died, but it was he who had helped the old statesman to his place in the House of Lords on the last day of his life, he who assisted to carry him out, and he who stood as chief mourner at that impressive funeral in the Abbey, his elder brother being abroad. The thought of any life but a political and a public one, never entered his mind, and two years later he became a member of Parliament. The first step up the ladder was taken. Already a trained speaker, his gifts were at once recognised by the House. Members of both parties generously praised him, and prophesied that his would be a great career. "I doubt not," said honest William Wilberforce, "but that I shall one day see him the first man in the country." His likeness to his father was remarkable. "Language, gesture, and manner were all the same," wrote his delighted tutor. "All the old members recognised him instantly, and most of the young ones said this was the very man they had so often heard described."

But it was not on his father's merits that William Pitt sprang into immediate fame; his own personality was his passport.

Thirteen years before, another young man had entered Parliament, Charles James Fox, the brilliant, excitement-loving son of Lord Holland. After Eton and Oxford he had been sent abroad to complete his education, but so great were his follies and extravagances, that his father had to firmly summon him home. This mandate, we are told, "he obeyed with great reluctance," and he seems to have gone back with an extensive wardrobe of clothes in the latest and most costly fashions, leaving behind him enormous debts in every town he had visited.

Lord Holland, who flattered himself that he had studied the world and human nature with great attention and success, decided that a seat in the House of Commons would best steady this irrepressible young man, and provide him with occupation and ambition, so, though he was only nineteen, and therefore legally not entitled to become a member, he was duly elected, the Speaker, by wilful or accidental oversight, offering no opposition. He too from the first delighted the House as a speaker, for he was fresh, forcible, and graceful, with a great personal charm of manner and an entire absence of conceit, and no one gave a more cordial welcome to Pitt than he did, little dreaming in how short a time this young man would be his lifelong and his successful rival. Rockingham, who had succeeded North as Prime Minister, died suddenly in 1782, and from every point of view Fox appeared to be the man who ought to have succeeded him. But the King cordially disliked Fox, and sent instead for Lord Shelburne. Fox, ever impetuous and hasty, refused to serve under him, and Shelburne turned to Pitt, who thus at the age of twenty-three became Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. A year later Lord Shelburne resigned, and the Premiership was offered to Pitt, an honour greater perhaps than any honour ever offered to a young man of twenty-four. He declined it; the Duke of Portland accepted it; and Fox became leader in the House of Commons, with what seemed to be a strong coalition Government at the back of him. For the moment the Whigs were all-powerful, and against them stood Pitt, who refused to be a member of any coalition, with a handful of men who had belonged to the old Chatham party. No one hated the present arrangement more than the King, and before long he saw an opportunity of crushing it. Fox, chiefly by his own magnetic influence, had carried a bill concerning India through the Commons, but the Lords, influenced by the King, threw it out, whereupon he dismissed the Government, and persuaded Pitt to accept the office of Prime Minister. Never before had such a state of things prevailed. The Premier was a youth of twenty-four, with a majority of two to one against him in the House of Commons! Whatever he brought forward was defeated. Fox used all his eloquence against him, and over and over again he was put in an impossible position. Pitt, Lord Rosebery has told us, was never young. Certainly, at this crisis, his patience, his caution, his firmness, and his cool judgment would have done credit to a statesman of half a century's experience. He did not make a mistake, and gradually he won the country to his side. Before many months were over, Parliament was dissolved; an election had taken place; and Pitt came back into power with a large majority. For seventeen years he remained in office. Nothing could have been greater than the contrast between him and his strenuous opponent Fox, who was the most impulsive, genial, and lovable of men; extravagant in every direction, in his likes, his hates, and his sympathies; easily stirred and able to pour forth a torrent of passionate eloquence; living always in the excitement and impulses of the moment, with never a thought for the morrow. Pitt, on the contrary, was cool and thoughtful. He stood, as it were, aloof from all the world, though on the rare occasions when he unbent, he was full of charm. "Smiles were not natural to him," said a contemporary. "He is," said Wilberforce, who unfeignedly admired him, even though he could not always follow him, "one of the most public-spirited and upright men I ever knew." And he was called upon to guide the ship of State through troubled waters. It was his task to raise the money in payment of the American war bill, for a debt of about twenty millions stared him in the face. Then he had to face more than the usual amount of difficulty with Ireland, where the celebrated Dublin Parliament which Henry Grattan, its brilliant leader, had forced Fox to agree to, proved itself so unable to cope with the task undertaken, that riots and disturbances broke out in every quarter. Pitt believed that only one solution was possible, namely, that instead of a separate Parliament at Dublin, the Irish members with the Scotch should sit at Westminster, and in the year 1799 he brought in the Act of union, which was carried during the next session, in spite of a strong speech against it by Grattan, who was dragged from his sick-room for the occasion. Pitt had also to contend with a restless wave which swept over England, the result of the French Revolution. But though the young minister was always ready for reform, he would have nothing to do with violent changes or with revolution, neither was he afraid to bring in such measures as seemed likely to repress the revolutionary spirits in England. The French leaders, not content with having executed their king and queen, and having waged war on Austria, when that country moved to rescue the luckless Austrian princess, now Queen Marie Antoinette, went to the further length of declaring that every country not agreeing with the doctrines of the Revolution was to be regarded as an enemy, and was to be forced into war. For some while Pitt managed to hold the English people from plunging into the conflict. He was altogether a peace minister. But public opinion was too strong for him; the old hatred of France was there, and the events of the last few years had fanned it into life. Pitt had to bow to the will of the nation, though it was the French who finally declared war in 1793 by an attack on Holland, after which England could no longer stand aloof, though Fox, in his hot-headed way, declared that in his opinion we had no right to demand the withdrawal of French troops from the Netherlands. From that time until the day of victory at Waterloo in 1815, the fight between England and France continued with more or less intensity.

And the final issue was due in no small degree to Pitt, who, though he hated the war, had during his long ministry of peace freely spent millions of pounds on the British navy, recognising that so long as England was mistress of the seas she was safe. From the moment, too, that war was declared, he threw himself heart and soul into every measure for carrying it through successfully; never for a moment did he show a weak front, or fail to be the leader in every sense of the word. When Napoleon, elated by his series of triumphs on the Continent, prepared to invade England, it was Pitt who gave an impetus to the volunteer movement by himself raising a force of 3000 men, and placing himself at their head. "His spirit will lead him to be foremost in the battle, and I am uneasy at it," said Wilberforce; "yet it is his proper post, and I can say nothing against it." In an incredibly short time a volunteer force of 300,000 was enrolled, "their good sense and firmness supplying their want of experience." But though his spirit was as strong as ever, his delicate frame was giving way under the high pressure at which he had lived. True to his promise to Wilberforce, he had pushed forward the Abolition of Slavery Bill, and he did not relax an effort as regards his war policy, though on the Continent Napoleon was still all victorious. Wellesley, a young soldier, had just come back from India with a good reputation, and Pitt, then a dying man, sent for him. He knew that what England wanted now was a great soldier to lead her armies; her navy was safe under such commanders as St. Vincent, Collingwood, and Nelson. For hours he talked to Wellesley, only ceasing when he fainted from exhaustion. "The greatest minister that has ever ruled England," was the verdict of the soldier statesman. Then came the news of the victory at Trafalgar, saddened only by the death of the heroic Nelson. But Pitt was drifting far away from all these things. His mind wandered as his life flickered out; only just at the end there was a rally. "Oh my country!" he cried; "how I leave my country!" That was his last thought and his last speech.

When the usual proposal was brought forward that he should be buried at Westminster at the expense of Parliament, and that a monument should be erected, Fox characteristically felt bound to oppose it. "He could not honestly," he said, "call a man an excellent statesman who had consistently supported so bad a system." But when it was further suggested that Parliament should pay the debts he had left and provide for his nearest relations, no one agreed so cordially or so readily as Fox. Wrong-headed he often was; wrong-hearted never.

Into the same grave as his father William Pitt was laid in the presence of all the distinguished people of the day, his pall-bearers being six men each of whom had been, or was to be, a Prime Minister of England. "The figure of the first William Pitt," wrote Wilberforce, "seemed to be looking down with consternation into the grave of his favourite son, the last perpetuator of the name he had ennobled. It was an affecting ceremony."

Pitt was still a young man, only forty-seven, yet into those years he had crowded a glorious life, and it was with truth that the herald proclaimed over his grave, "He lived not for himself, but for his country."

Eight months later, Fox, who did not live to enjoy the power his rival's death had placed within his reach, was buried close to him in the Abbey. During his short spell of office, he had carried Wilberforce's Slave Bill, and had frequently said he could retire happily when once that bill was made safe. He disdainfully refused a Peerage. "I will not close my politics in that foolish way," was his remark. Near together too, though not in the Statesmen's Corner, are the monuments of these two whose lives were throughout so interwoven. Pitt towers in lonely state over the west door, standing there as if he were about to pour forth his magnificent eloquence on the statues below and charm them back into life for one brief moment. Fox lies surrounded by weeping figures, one of whom represents the negro whose cause he had so powerfully championed. And so the great Mother Church gathers them both to herself, claiming each as a noble son of England.

Henry Grattan, the Irishman, is buried close to Fox, his friend and hero. He had often told his followers that he wished to lie in a quiet churchyard of his loved Ireland, but they had other ideas. "Well then," he said resignedly, "Westminster Abbey!" His funeral had a very distinctive touch, for it was attended by hundreds of Irish children from various charitable institutions, all of whom wore dresses of bright green.

Next to the imposing monument of Chatham is a statue to Lord Palmerston, that most English of statesmen. He went into political life more from a sense of duty than from any particular liking for it, or from any feelings of ambition. But into every office that he held he carried with him a sturdy independence, a dogged tenacity of purpose, a fund of common sense, and a very clear idea of what he meant to attain. Add to this that he was the essence of good-nature, the most genial of friends, simple and straight, manly and cheery, and we have some idea of the man whom the nation insisted on having for Prime Minister, when he was over seventy years of age, at a critical moment when it was felt that only a strong, fearless, popular statesman could guide the ship out of the storm.

And then, in contrast to the kindly, contented Palmerston, comes the tomb of Lord Castlereagh, a statesman as much out of touch with the people as "Pam" was their hero. He was Secretary of State for War in those days when the struggle with France was beginning, and because at first things went badly he was made the scapegoat. It was he who planned that combination of forces which at last broke down the French resistance, but that was not realised till long afterwards; in those early days his policy was not successful, so it was unpopular. He stood aloof from all men; he was cold, indifferent, wanting in tact, with no gifts as a speaker, and yet, looking back now on his work, it is easy to see how well he faced a period of unexampled difficulty. Nevertheless, he was invariably misunderstood, and therefore unjustly disliked, so that at last his mind gave way under the storm of hatred and abuse levelled against him, and, in a dark moment, he put an end to his life. Even at his funeral in the Abbey, the crowds could not forget their dislike of him, and shouted exultantly as the coffin was carried inside the doors. But the Abbey gave him a welcome and a resting-place.

On the opposite side stand the statues of the three Cannings: George Canning, the statesman; his youngest son, Lord Canning, first Viceroy of India; and their cousin, Lord Stratford de Radcliffe, "the wise old man of the East," who was our ambassador at Constantinople during those years which led up to the Crimean War, and whose influence, supported by the Government at home and France, made it possible for Turkey to hold Russia at bay. The verse on the statue:

    "Thou third great Canning, stand among our best
    And noblest, now thy long day's work hath ceased;
    Here silent, in our Minster of the West,
    Who wert the voice of England in the East,"

is the work of Tennyson, who has only written one other epitaph in the Abbey. Close together are the monuments of Sir Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Peel was the Minister who, in the face of violent opposition, caused the tax on imported corn to be repealed, thereby making bread cheaper; and Disraeli, who first won his reputation by the persistent manner in which he fought this policy of Peel's, doggedly forged his way to the front against much prejudice, until he, though not an Englishman by race, held the proud position of being the loved and trusted Prime Minister of Queen Victoria. The statue of Beaconsfield—for by his own desire he was buried next to his wife in the country churchyard at Hughenden—casts its shadow over the grave of William Ewart Gladstone, whose family only consented to his being laid there on the condition that Mrs. Gladstone should eventually rest beside him, even as Lady Palmerston lay by her husband's side. The coffin which contained this old statesman, who was better loved and better hated perhaps than any public man of our generation, was placed for some time in Westminster Hall, and nearly a quarter of a million people passed through to pay their last token of respect. The time has not yet come when his place in English history as a statesman can be fairly judged, but friend and foe alike can bear tribute to his brilliant intellect; his talents as a financier; his excellent learning; his wonderful personality; his rich eloquence; his generous sympathies; his stainless private life; and to those other qualities which his political opponent Lord Salisbury so finely described as making him "a great Christian." "God bless you, and this place, and the land you love," had been his last public utterance, and in the spirit of that message we leave him, who in life stirred up such sharp dissensions, sleeping peacefully in the Abbey.