The lives of English statesmen have very rarely, if ever, been enervated by that excessive zeal for education which the great German thinker discerned as a possible danger for his fellow countrymen. Certainly to those who had drunk deep of the learning of Leipzig, Heidelberg, or Göttingen, the transference to a Staats-secretariat at Weimar, Cassel, or even at Berlin, must have been a life of sheer drudgery. Doubtless, the doctrinaire policy of many a Continental State sprang from the persistent attempts of some Pegasus in harness to rise again to the serene heights of his youthful contemplations. In England our youths did not meditate on the science of politics. Both Oxford and Cambridge displayed a maternal care lest the brains of the rising generation should overtax the bodies; and never was the unsullied spring of Helicon ruffled by draughts taken under compulsion. Gibbon’s experience at Magdalen College in 1752–3, of the genial indifference of his first tutor, and the unblushing neglect of his successor, seems to have been quite normal; and it is clear that the curriculum of that wealthy corporation had not the remotest connection with any known form of activity outside its walls.

Pitt’s residence at Cambridge was more fruitful for the future. The dons of Pembroke Hall seem to have taken their duties less lightly than was the rule elsewhere; and Pitt’s lifelong gratitude to Dr. Pretyman may have been partly due to the unusual advancement in learning achieved under his watchful care. But even so, the regular studies had no bearing on the life of a statesman other than that which comes from an intelligent reading of the philosophers and historians of Greece and Rome. Pitt’s choice of lectures on Civil Law was his own. And, after taking his degree in the autumn of 1776, he seems largely to have followed the bent of his mind, which, as we have seen, led him to study the crises in national affairs, and the causes of welfare or decay. It is significant that the young Napoleon Bonaparte approached historical study in the same practical way.

Above all, Pitt haunted the precincts of Westminster, and there learnt to view politics, not as a science, but a strife. For him, therefore, there was little risk of being hampered by an ill-digested mass of theoretical learning as he faced the ever shifting problems of the Commonwealth; still less of undergoing the transition from the breezy uplands of philosophy to the political mill of some petty principality. It is the happy lot of Britain’s sons to come to ever widening spheres of activity; and their minds, never “sicklied o’er” at the outset, should possess the alertness and vigour which Goethe rightly praised as a better equipment than the best elaborated theories and the richest store of precedents. This natural course of development ought to produce not doctrinaires, but statesmen.

The chief misfortunes of Pitt’s early life were his appalling precocity, which the Earl of Chatham in no wise checked, and the sense of responsibility thrust upon him all too soon by the terrible bereavement described above. As the eldest son was then abroad with his regiment, William was at once involved in a network of cares. The finances of the family were in an embarrassed state. Chatham’s habits had been so lavish, and his conduct in official life so honourably scrupulous, that the estate was encumbered with debts. Parliament voted the sum of £20,000 towards their payment; but, if we may judge from one of the later letters of Lady Chatham, embarrassments at times continued to beset her.74 William also inherited property which was to yield little more than an annual income of £250—a sum inadequate to meet the demands of an ambitious youth in an age when money no less than family standing served as the passport to a public career.

Nevertheless, the lack of resources seems to have stimulated energies that were ever braced by difficulty. About five months after the funeral of his father, we find him expressing to Lady Chatham his resolve to take rooms at Lincoln’s Inn. In his view practice at the Bar was invaluable as a training for that wider and grander service to which he had early vowed himself.

In one important particular Pitt’s conduct showed singular foresight. He did not, as might have been expected in days when travelling was slow and expensive, give up his rooms at Pembroke Hall, but for nearly two years he continued usually to reside there, even while keeping his terms at Lincoln’s Inn. Extravagant though this arrangement seemed to be, it was based on prudential motives. In the miserable condition in which public affairs then were, he judged that a dissolution of Parliament could not be long deferred; and the chance of winning a seat at his University seemed to him, though still in his teens, greater than at an ordinary constituency, where the deep pockets of grandees or nabobs must mar his prospect.75

About Cambridge, then, his hopes fondly clustered, seeing that it was “a seat of all others the most desirable, as being free from expense, perfectly independent, and I think in every respect extremely honourable.”76 The words have the ring of manly determination which marks all his public utterances.

The following letter of his to Mr. John (afterwards Lord) Townshend, then one of the members for the University, marks the first official announcement of his intentions:

At the same time he informed his uncle, Earl Temple, of his resolve, and received the following reply. The italicizing of the Christian name speaks for itself:

Despite this response, Pitt resolved to persevere, and that too, though the political horizon had darkened owing to the declaration of war by Spain. At first he avowed his deep concern at this event; but the note of hopefulness, which is never long absent from his letters, soon begins to reassert itself in the expression of a belief that this new danger may “be productive of some good effects at home, and that there may still be spirit and resources in the country sufficient to preserve at least the remnant of a great empire.” This forecast was justified. The struggle became one for national existence, waged against our hereditary rivals, the monarchs of the House of Bourbon; and the searchings of heart of England’s sons, at warring against their own kith and kin, were in large measure stilled. The thrilling incidents that accompanied the three years’ siege of Gibraltar by the Spaniards, our successes in India, and the naval triumphs of the closing years of the war showed the hardening of the nation’s fibre under the strain of adversity and danger.

After residing at Burton Pynsent for some weeks in the autumn in order to reassure Lady Chatham while the invasion-scare was at its height, Pitt returned to Cambridge at the close of the year, and settled down at Lincoln’s Inn in the early weeks of 1780. Thanks to the kindness of his uncle, Earl Temple, he had been able to procure a lease of rooms on the north side of the attic of staircase number 4 of Stone Buildings (those nearest to Holborn). The sum of £1,100, which in November 1778 he had pronounced “frightful,” had been advanced on the property which Pitt was to inherit when he came of age.

Concerning Pitt’s life at Lincoln’s Inn we know next to nothing. The lack of official records of the Inns of Court, except unilluminating entries of dates, thwarts all efforts at reconstructing the early life of many famous men; and the denseness of the gloom which surrounds our institutions, academic and legal, is apt to provoke the investigator to unpatriotic reflections. Is there any French statesman of modern times about whose early career the records of the institutions with which he was associated are so scanty and uninteresting as are those of Cambridge and Lincoln’s Inn concerning the life of the brilliant son of Chatham?

As it is, the investigator at Lincoln’s Inn can discover little more than that Pitt was called to the Bar on 12th June 1780, and that on the next day a lease was taken out for his rooms for three “lives,” namely, John, Earl of Chatham, aged 23, William Pitt, aged 21, and James Charles Pitt, aged 18. The rent was £9 9s. 10d. per annum.79

The great preoccupation of Pitt, apart from the ever-pressing topic of national danger, was the movement for Economic Reform. Originating at York in December 1779, it gathered volume until the petitioners in that county alone numbered more than 8,000 freeholders. East Anglia responded to the call of Yorkshire; and Pitt hoped to see London rally to the cause of purity and political freedom. If ever there was a chance of sweeping away the network of sinecures whereby the King kept his hold on the House of Commons, it was now, when the growth of debt and taxation rendered economy in non-essentials the most urgent of public duties.

In February 1780 Burke introduced his proposals for Economic Reform in a speech of great ability. He sought, firstly, to abolish the special jurisdictions in Wales and Cheshire and in the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which formed petty and extravagant and corrupt governments. The great orator, like a forensic retiarius, sought to enfold his great enemy, Corruption, within the cloak of humour which he thus deftly threw in front. Affecting the desire to free the royal prerogative from irritating and absurd local restrictions, he proceeded thus: “Cross a brook, and you lose the King of England, but you have some comfort in coming again under His Majesty, though shorn of his beams, and no more than Prince of Wales. Go to the north and you find him dwindled to a Duke of Lancaster. Turn to the west of that north, and he hops upon you in the humble character of the Earl of Chester.” Equally difficult and important was Burke’s attempt to reduce the Civil List and lessen the number of sinecures attached to the King’s household. He sought to abolish the offices of Master of the Household, Treasurer, Comptroller, Cofferer, Treasurer of the Chamber, the whole Board of Green-Cloth, the Wardrobe and Jewel Offices, the Board of Works, and the Keepers of stag-hounds, buck-hounds, fox-hounds, and harriers, and other well-paid sinecures. With playful irony he described the clatter of white-sticks and yellow-sticks about the head of a reformer who would touch those offices, or sought to exclude the King’s turnspit from Parliament. As regarded the Civil List, he proposed to fix its amount immutably, to transfer to the general fund accounts which had ceased properly to belong to the King’s private purse, and to regulate the whole on business-like principles. He also urged the suppression of useless offices in the general administration, especially the newly created Secretaryship for the Colonies and the Board of Trade, the latter of which then formed a desirable sinecure for eight members of Parliament.80 Most important of all, perhaps, was the proposal, brought in by Sir Philip Clerk, to exclude from Parliament contractors—a class which had been proved to have battened on the funds, and to have urged the continuance of the war.

Had Burke’s proposals stood in need of further vindication, it would have been supplied by the mysterious fate which befell them. Members of Parliament with scarcely an exception loudly commended the measure, and the eloquence and power with which Burke introduced it to the House. About the same time Lord Shelburne brought forward in the Upper House damning proofs of the greed of contractors and of the gross carelessness with which accounts were kept at the Admiralty and War Office.81 The defence of ministers was strong only in personalities. Argument there was none; and it seemed that the whole festering sudd of corruption must be swept away by the flood of popular indignation.

From three of Pitt’s letters, those of 9th and 26th February and 14th March 1780, we can imagine the high hopes of the young reformer as he listened to the scathing attack on Ministers by Lord Shelburne, and the comprehensive indictment framed by Burke. In the second letter he notes with joy the drop of the ministerial majority to two; and in the small hours of 14th March he was privileged to witness the stormy scene which occurred when Burke by a majority of eight carried his motion for abolishing the Board of Trade. And yet the sudd did not move. Despite the success of reformers in the House, and the growing excitement among their associations in the country, the clogging influences of the past prevailed. Members who praised Burke for his lofty and statesmanlike aims, voted in committee against the details of his scheme. Little by little it disappeared; and, in face of the greed, cowardice, or apathy of Parliament, Burke soon declared his indifference as to the fate of the few remaining clauses of his measure. The bill for the exclusion of contractors from Parliament passed the Commons, but was thrown out by the Lords.

Another surprise was in store for the House and the country. On 6th April Mr. Dunning brought forward a motion that “the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be lessened.” The motion was made suddenly and on the day when numerous petitions were laid on the table, signed by thousands of persons, on behalf of shorter parliaments and a larger addition to the representatives of counties who, as a rule, showed some independence. The proposal produced a great sensation. Ministers seemed to be “stunned.” Pitt’s relative, Thomas Pitt of Boccanoc, ably supported this daring motion. The Speaker himself left the chair and spoke in support of it, and the resolution, after a trifling change of form, was passed by a majority of eighteen. But again the forces of obscurantism triumphed. Apparently Dunning owed his success solely to the fear of the imminence of a general election, and as that fear lessened, so also did the numbers of the popular party in the House. North slowly but surely regained his hold on the waverers, and succeeded in defeating a motion begging the King not to dissolve or prorogue Parliament until steps had been taken to diminish the influence of the Crown at elections (24th April).

For the present Pitt stifled his disappointment at this fiasco by attendance at the opera and masquerades, so we may judge from his letters; but he probably hardened his resolve to effect the Reform of Parliament itself, which, as was now clear to all but Burke, must precede any attempt to cleanse the Augean stables of the Court and the Administration. That gifted thinker but somewhat erratic politician, whose character will concern us later, had gone so far as to defend the state of the representation and to urge reformers to concentrate their efforts on the task of freeing Parliament from the corrupt influences that were warping its character. To this belief he still clung, in spite of the recent damning proof that a Parliament of place-hunters and borough-mongers had refused to root out the canker of corruption, even at a time of great national danger. Pitt, for his part, looked for safety to that course of action which Chatham had so often taken; he turned away from Parliament and fixed his hopes in the nation. Even the oratory of Burke failed to satisfy him. He found in his great speech of 11th February not only “real beauties,” but “ridiculous affectations.” He added, however, in his letter of 14th March: “I have heard two less studied harangues from him since in reply that please me much more than this does now that it is upon paper.” This criticism, coming from the son of Chatham, is a little surprising; but it may be considered symptomatic. As will appear later, there was something in Burke’s temperament which jarred on the young statesman.

While disagreeing with Burke and the more academic wing of the reformers, Pitt did not consort with the men on the extreme left who now raised a great clamour through the country. He seems to have had no dealings at this time with the Reform or “Œconomic” Associations; and events now occurred which helped for a time to distract his attention from politics. While he was expecting to be called to the Bar, London fell a prey to the Lord George Gordon rioters (2nd to 9th June).

What must have been the disgust of the young patrician as he gazed at the scenes of rapine and drunkenness which went on under the name of Protestantism! The pretence of bigotry was soon flung aside, and then, when the thin crust of civilization was removed, men saw appalled the depths of villany that usually are hidden. For days the passions of the mob raged unchecked by timorous magistrates and ministers. The King alone was undismayed, and finally insisted on the use of vigorous measures. Thanks to his staunchness, the wheels of government began to move once more. Then the orgy quickly died down; but it left men with a dread of the newly-revealed Caliban, and a heightened respect for the one man whose firmness had ensured the vindication of law and order. How much the popular cause then suffered can never be known. When, in the course of the French Revolution, the Parisian mob carried the King and Queen from Versailles to Paris and completed its triumph at the harvest time of 1792, Englishmen viewed those events in the lurid light thrown by the flames of the Lord George Gordon riots; and it is probable that Pitt himself was no stranger to this feeling.

The cause of Parliamentary Reform in England also suffered untold harm. Why talk about manhood suffrage, vote by ballot and annual Parliaments, as the Westminster Committee had talked, when all around were proofs of the savagery of the many-headed monster? The Duke of Richmond, who then, along with Fox, advocated a programme of reform which was to furnish the Chartists with their “six points,” confessed in a letter to Shelburne that the riots “will tend to discredit any attempts of the people to do themselves justice on any future occasion when the cause may warrant it”;82 and though Charles James Fox retained his faith in the cause, yet he and all other democrats thenceforth found it a hopeless task to roll the stone up to the point to which the enthusiasm of the people carried it in the spring of 1780. After midsummer of that year the various committees and associations preached to deaf ears. The King had won.

To return to Pitt’s fortunes, we may note that Lincoln’s Inn had been in no immediate danger from the rioters, though surrounded with flames on all sides. In order to be ready for the worst, the benchers took arms and formed a corps, in which Pitt had his first experience of volunteering. The records of the Inn, however, show that it was also defended by 800 men of the Northumberland Militia, the sum of £364 12s. 0d. being paid for provisions to them for the ten days during which they were in garrison.83

The desire of the resident members of the Inn worthily to entertain the officers of that corps led to the appointment of a committee for that purpose, which included Pitt, Pepper Arden (afterwards Lord Alvanley), Mitford (afterwards Lord Redesdale), Bland Burges, and three others. The last named, in his reminiscences, tells how, when his turn came, he invited Gibbon and Lord Carmarthen to meet four officers and other company at dinner. The historian, as is well known, was a most entertaining talker, flitting easily from one topic to another, and lighting up all with sallies of wit which the listeners were expected to receive with deferential applause and unquestioning mirth. Judge then of his astonishment, when, after one of his best foreign anecdotes, which touched on “the fashionable levities of political doctrine then prevalent,” a deep but clear voice was heard from the far end of the table calmly but civilly impugning the correctness of the story and the propriety of its political connexion. The applause ceased at once, and Gibbon turned his gaze petulantly on the slim youth who had dared to challenge his unquestioned supremacy, and sat there quietly eating grapes. As the interruption had been hailed with too much approval to be ignored or dismissed with a frown, he endeavoured to crush the youth by heavy artillery. A spirited fire came in return, and a sharp duel of wits began, which the company followed with the keenest interest. Finally the skill and vigour of the attack drove the historian from one position after another and left him defenceless; whereupon he left the room in high dudgeon. In vain did Bland Burges seek in the anteroom to calm his feelings and persuade him to return. “By no means,” replied Gibbon; “that young gentleman is, I have no doubt, extremely ingenious and agreeable, but I must acknowledge that his style of conversation is not exactly what I am accustomed to, so you must positively excuse me.” Meanwhile Pitt continued to hold forth on the topic in dispute, “which he discussed with such ability, strength of argument, and eloquence, that his hearers were filled with profound admiration.”84

Such was the first recorded triumph of Pitt. Would that we knew more than the bare outlines of the discussion! But an unkind fate has vouchsafed here, as at so many points, enough of information to whet the appetite for more, enough to give us the merest glimpse of those surprising powers which easily discomfited Gibbon at his prime.

We know little about the extent of Pitt’s legal attainments or his skill as a pleader. His practice was to last but a short time. Three days after the end of the riots he was called to the Bar and afterwards went on the Western Circuit, of which he was a member. As to the impression aroused by his pleading, I have found very few particulars except the statement in an almost contemporary biography that his first case, which must have been in London, was one concerning an East India trade dispute, and that he attracted the notice of Lord Mansfield on the Bench. He is said to have acted as junior counsel in several cases at Dorchester and Exeter, and to have commanded attention by the force of his reasoning rather than attracted it by playing upon the emotions. His style, in short, was clear and argumentative rather than “attractive and passionate.”85 From Exeter he was recalled in haste by news which was of far higher interest to him than the quarrels of Wessex squires and traders. The King had dissolved Parliament and had fixed 31st October for the date of assembly of its successor.

This action was what might have been expected from the most astute of electioneering agents. Disgust at the excesses of the Gordon rioters was still the dominant motive in the political world, and at such a time men looked askance at Reform. Further, in order to ensure the success of what he termed “my cause,” George III condescended to the arts of the canvasser, entering the shop of a draper at Windsor, and saying in his quick peremptory way—“The queen wants a gown, wants a gown. No Keppel. No Keppel.” Windsor rejected Keppel; Burke failed to keep his seat at Bristol; and Pitt made no impression whatever on the Toryism of the University of Cambridge. In any case his election was highly improbable. Dons and country clergymen are not wont to favour the claims of a young and unknown candidate; but the trend of thought at that time made his defeat certain.

He bore it with his usual serenity. “Mansfield and Townshend have run away with the prize,” so he wrote on 16th September, “but my struggle has not been dishonourable.” He now once more betook himself to legal affairs at Lincoln’s Inn, but his thoughts still centred in Westminster. Despite the stagnation which marked our public life after the victory of the King and Lord North at the general election, the fate of the commonwealth drew Pitt to St. Stephen’s for the earlier half of every day. His regular attendance at the House was perhaps instrumental in furthering his dearest hopes. The Duke of Rutland had been on cordial terms with Pitt at Cambridge; and he now mentioned the talents of his friend to Sir James Lowther. That magnate of Cumberland, who could secure the return of eleven candidates, welcomed the suggestion that Pitt should enter Parliament for one of his seats, and, with a generosity none too common among owners of “pocket boroughs,” offered him a seat at Appleby unconditionally, save that he (Pitt) was to resign his seat if his political views should in the future become opposed to those of his patron.86

To this condition even the proud son of Chatham could not demur; and, though the connection with what was practically a pocket borough could not be quite palatable to a reformer, yet he doubtless remembered that his father first entered Parliament as member for Old Sarum.

While we smile at the vagaries of the old system, which enabled “the great commoner” to begin his public career as representative of an untenanted mound, and his son as member for a town which he did not even visit, let us remember that occasionally it opened a door easily for a man of genius. Gladstone, in his Tory years, eulogized the system on these grounds;87 and it is certainly remarkable that, besides the two Pitts, many other famous men used these stepping-stones. Burke, through most of his public life, was member for a pocket borough, Wendover or Malton; and Canning entered Parliament as member for a scarcely discoverable village, Newtown, in the Isle of Wight. Fox and Peel also entered Parliament by similar means. However quaintly the old order of things misrepresented the British people, it did now and then help to bring brilliant men to the front with a speed that is no longer possible. But it is noteworthy that young men of spirit took care to be soon quit of pocket boroughs.88

Appleby having duly registered the decree of Sir James Lowther at the close of 1780, Pitt took his seat in the House of Commons on 23rd January 1781. From that time to the very same day in the year 1806 when he breathed his last, he was to expend his life in strenuous efforts throughout a quarter of a century which comprised such events as the close of the American War, the new grouping of the Powers of Europe, the French Revolution, and the rise of Napoleon.