Pitt the Younger

William Pitt the Younger,
by Thomas Gainsborough
Burrell Collection, Glasgow
Public domain

The 'schoolboy prime minister'

William Pitt was born in 1759, the fourth child and second son of William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham. His early talents clearly destined him for political life. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. His father died in 1778, encumbered with debts, leaving his younger son with lifelong money problems. In January 1781 he entered Parliament for Sir James Lowther’s pocket borough of Appleby, where he attached himself to the followers of the Earl of Shelburne. In July 1782, at the age of 23, he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Earl of Shelburne’s short-lived government, but he resigned in March 1783 on the formation of the Fox-North coalition. In December 1783, the king dismissed the coalition and Pitt became prime minister. There was much mockery of the 'schoolboy prime minister' and many observers believed that his administration could not last. 

However, in the general election of the following year, he was returned with a majority of 120, having gained about seventy seats. He was thus that rare eighteenth-century creature – a prime minister returned to power in a landslide election victory. 

Political principles

Pitt was always to insist that he was not a party man and his description of himself as an ‘independent Whig’ was simply an assertion of his support for the principles of the Glorious Revolution. It was only retrospectively that he was seen as a Tory.

Free trade: Influenced by the ideas of Adam Smith, he signed a modest free-trade treaty with France in 1786. Until destroyed by war, the treaty allowed French wines to enter Britain at preferential rates while the French market was open to British manufactured goods in a general tariff reduction. Through the Nootka Sound dispute with Spain in 1789–90, he secured British whaling interests in the Pacific Ocean and opportunities also for trade with Asia.


Finance: As Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Pitt showed a great mastery of detail and administrative expertise. Having inherited a country that had spent huge sums on the unsuccessful war with America, he made it a priority to restore the nation’s finances. By the device of a sinking fund, he set aside annual sums from government stock to pay off debts, funded mainly by taxes on luxuries and customary forms of assessment such as the excise. These taxes allowed him to collect the £1 million a year needed to cover the annual surplus of expenditure over ordinary revenue. 

He was a formidable and self-confident debater. From 1784 to 1788 he was in easy command of Parliament, but this did not mean that he got his own way all the time - a shown by his failure in 1785 to achieve a very modest measure of parliamentary reform. 

Pitt and the Whigs

He was helped by the weaknesses of the Opposition, led by Charles James Fox, an equally skilled debater but a more unreliable character. Though Pitt had the support of George III, the Prince of Wales was Fox’s eager partisan and therefore his enemy. The Regency Crisis, the period of the king's temporary madness, was a potential moment of danger for Pitt, but it was averted when the king recovered.

Charles James Fox, by Reynolds
Public domain.

The years of acclaim

The early years of his premiership have been described by Pitt’s biographer John Ehrman as the ‘Years of Acclaim’. The overwhelming picture was one of cool competence. He was respected as a Prime Minister, though he was only loved by his own closest circle. 

From the instant that Pitt entered the doorway... he advanced up the floor with a quick and firm step, his head erect and thrown back, looking neither to the right nor to the left, nor favouring with a nod or a glance any of the individuals seated on either side, among whom many who possessed five thousand pounds a year would have been gratified even by so slight a mark of attention. Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, vol. 3, p. 217.

After eight years, he was at the height of his powers. His budget speech of February 1792 reviewed with satisfaction a period of successful management, stable finances, and buoyancy and growth in British trade.This, he argued,  justified an immediate cut in taxation of about £0.25 million. He could not have been more wrong!

The French Revolution and the coming of war

The French Revolution, beginning in 1789, opened up an ideological debate in Britain. Fox was an enthusiastic supporter, but Pitt stood aloof. He believed it was an internal French matter and that as long as the French were squabbling among themselves, Britain was safe. Hence the budget cuts of February 1792, when he told the Commons that 

unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation in Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than we may at the present moment.

But in April of that year France declared war on Austria and Prussia. In July a Prussian army crossed into France. In August Louis XVI was deposed. In response, Pitt withdrew the British ambassador from France, but was still determined not to interfere.

On 6 November the French defeated the Austrians at Jemappes and proclaimed free navigation of the River Scheldt, the river linking Antwerp with the coast. They  proceeded to over-run the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), and on 14 November General Dumouriez captured Brussels. Pitt now believed that fundamental British interests were at stake - the restricted navigation of the Scheldt had been guaranteed by the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1788. The Foreign Secretary, Pitt's cousin, Lord Grenville  informed the French ambassador Chauvelin that Britain 

will never see with indifference that France shall make herself directly or indirectly sovereign of the Low Countries or the general arbitress of the rights and liberties of Europe. 

On 21 January 1793 Louis XVI was executed. On 24 January the French ambassador was expelled. On 1 February 1793 the French Convention declared war on Britain, forestalling the inevitable British declaration. The war was to last for twenty-two years.

Conclusion

1. Pitt had come to power at a time of political crisis. He governed competently, winning respect rather than love, and leaving his political opponents floundering.
2. His great aim had been to restore the nation’s finances and he was well on the way to achieving this.
3. He was then reluctantly drawn into a war with France. This would be a difficult war to win, and he was also faced with the problem of home-grown insurgency.