By far the most numerous constituencies were the 203 cities and boroughs which elected 405 Members between them. These were heavily weighted to the south-west of the country and to seaports, and were still based on the wealth and prominence of towns in mediaeval times. The entitlement to vote in these constituencies varied hugely, sometimes being relatively wide as in the counties (the City of Westminster itself being an example), sometimes limited to the few dozen members of the corporation of the town, and sometimes limited to the owners of certain properties or ‘burgages’. It was thus variously possible to control a borough by instructing the voters, by bribing the corporation, or simply by owning sufficient burgages. Landowners would commonly instruct their tenants how to vote, and since the voting itself was openly recorded this rarely left the voters with much of a choice. In other circumstances voters could sell themselves to the highest bidder. As Thomas Pitt wrote in 1740: ‘There are few [Cornish] boroughs where the common sort of people do not think they have as much right to sell themselves and their votes, as they have to sell their corn and their cattle.’9 The provision of meals and alcohol was a standard part of such bribery; alcohol could be useful in other ways too, as George Selwyn, MP for Gloucester, complained in 1761. ‘Two of my voters were murdered yesterday by an experiment which we call shopping, that is, locking them up and keeping them dead drunk to the day of election. Mr. Snell’s agents forced two single Selwyns into a post chaise, where, being suffocated with the brandy that was given them and a very fat man that had the custody of them, they were taken out stone dead.’10
Over half of the boroughs could be purchased in one way or another, an average price in the late eighteenth century being around £3,000 to £4,000. They would be bought by the major political families, who might control half a dozen such seats; or by ‘Nabobs’ returning with money from India and seeking to use their wealth to purchase influence; or, amazingly by the standards of later centuries, by the Treasury itself, which would often use several tens of thousands of pounds of the King’s money, and some of the taxpayer’s, to procure the election of government candidates in a general election.
Pitt set his face against contesting most of these constituencies. He could not afford the expense of fighting one of the truly open boroughs, nor was he well enough known in any of them to have a chance of success. He did not want to be instructed how to vote in Parliament by a patron who had purchased his election, and he was not a supporter of the government. He received tentative offers from his cousins of the old family borough of Old Sarum, which Thomas Pitt had pawned to the Treasury in 1761 as he fled bankruptcy, and of Buckingham, which was in the pocket of Earl Temple. Not only were these offers vague, but he told his mother he was worried that taking them up could not ‘be done on a liberal, Independent Footing’.11 For Pitt was even now pursuing the ideal of being different from other politicians. He already combined a radiant intellectual self-confidence with his deep sense of being Chatham’s son, and Chatham had cultivated at the high points of his career the notion of detachment and independence from party and patronage (although he had been happy to represent the pocket boroughs of the Duke of Newcastle for many years). Pitt, who was carried along by the demands for economical and parliamentary reform as the answer to the corruption and waste so evident under Lord North, aspired to succeed in politics through ‘character’ rather than through ‘influence’. Steeped in the classical texts which praised the ‘virtue’ of outstanding figures, he could be forgiven for envisaging his own heroic role as an answer to the corruption of the times and a reinforcement of the traditions of his father. He already knew enough not to be naïve about political methods, and would be happy to let ‘influence’ be used on his behalf, but throughout his entire career he would seek to maintain the independence and incorruptibility of his own character, and at all costs the appearance of it.
Thus it was idealism as well as familiarity which led him to seek election for Cambridge University. ‘It is a seat of all others’, he wrote to his mother in July 1779, ‘the most desirable, as being free from expense, perfectly independent, and I think in every respect extremely honourable … You will perhaps think the idea hastily taken up, when I tell you that six Candidates have declared already; but I assure you that I shall not flatter myself with any vain hopes.’12
It is not clear who had encouraged Pitt to have such hopes, for vain they appeared to be for a twenty-year-old up against the long-established candidates of the main political groupings. Writing for support to opposition figures, he received a rather dusty reply from the Marquis of Rockingham: ‘I am so circumstanced from the knowledge I have of several persons who may be candidates, and who indeed are expected to be so, that it makes it impossible for me in this instance to show the attention to your wishes which your own as well as the great merits of your family entitle you to.’13 He also received a rather patronising putdown from the normally helpful Earl Temple: ‘As to your prospect of success, I cannot form any opinion … How far it may be advisable for you before you have more ripened in your profession to launch out into the great ocean of politicks … is a matter of great doubt … The memory of your father & the great character you have attained speak forcibly in your favour; but a dead minister, the most respectable that ever existed, weighs very light in the scale against any living one.’14
Pitt the young idealist was not put off by this lofty discouragement, and commenced his canvassing.* He busied himself writing to acquaintances around the university, ‘I rely on the support of my own College and my musical friends, both which characters, I hope prejudice you in my favour.’15 But in the event there was to be no election in 1779. In early 1780 Pitt was still sitting in the Gallery of the Commons watching the debates of the same Parliament, the North administration still battling on. His letters exulted in seeing the government defeated several times: ‘What the consequence will be, cannot be guessed, but I have no ideas of Ministry being able to stand.’16 He watched excitedly as Edmund Burke – ‘I had no Idea till now of his Excellence’17 – brought in his sweeping proposals for economical reform, seeking to abolish the special royal jurisdictions in Wales, Cheshire, Lancaster and Cornwall, to reduce the Civil List through which money was provided to the King, and to abolish the offices of Master of the Household, Treasurer, Comptroller, Cofferer, the Board of the Green-Cloth, the Wardrobe Office, the Jewel Office, the Keepers of Stag Hounds, Buck Hounds, Fox Hounds, and many other Crown offices. A Bill was introduced to exclude government contractors from being Members of Parliament, along with the presentation of damning evidence of their greed and inefficiency. At last major reform seemed in the offing.
Yet Pitt also watched as one by one Burke’s proposals were watered down and then abandoned, and as the much-vaunted Contractors Bill was crushed in the House of Lords. He watched Lord North take on the chin the famous motion condemning the influence of the Crown, and then render it meaningless by defeating a motion asking the King not to dissolve Parliament until the influence of the Crown at elections had been diminished. Pitt learnt the lesson, one he would not forget as he led a government facing a hostile House of Commons only four years later, that even a government assailed on all sides can tough it out for a time if it sticks together and has the solid support of the King. And he soon learnt a second lesson: a government working with the King could spring a nasty surprise.
Parliament rose in mid-August after a long and exhausting session. No sooner had opposition politicians relaxed into their summer watering holes than, on 1 September, George III agreed to North’s request that Parliament be dissolved and an immediate general election announced. With the opposition surprised and disorganised, opinion backing the government against the recent Gordon Riots, and the Treasury’s money doing its work in marginal cases, the North administration was confident of broadly maintaining its majority. By now Pitt had secured the support of the Earl of Shelburne, who led a small band of parliamentarians still loyal to the memory of Chatham. He wrote an effusive letter of thanks, saying he was ‘truly sensible of this fresh instance of that friendly assistance which our family has eminently experienced from your Lordship’.18 When the election was called, Pitt rushed to Cambridge, but his contest was hopeless. On 16 September it was announced