William Pitt the Younger: A Biography. William Hague

North’s Ministers and sitting on the front bench of the opposition side of the House was Charles James Fox. Fox, thirty-two years old the next day and son of the politician Henry Fox, who had become Lord Holland, was considered the most eloquent debater in Parliament. Brilliant, generous, impulsive, emotional and hugely persuasive, he was an unceasing opponent of North and the war. The King hated and mistrusted him, and the feeling was mutual. Fox was inconsistent, unpredictable, a chronic gambler and a relentless womaniser, but his friends adored him and his hold over his followers was powerful. His colourful private life – he would shortly commence an affair with Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire – would undoubtedly damage his political prospects. One critical MP noted that it was not possible to ‘trace in any one action of his life anything that had not for its object his own gratification’.¹¹ He and his brother were said to have lost £32,000 in a single night of gambling, and when he was not betting at Brooks’s he was doing so at the races. Horace Walpole, son of the longest-serving Prime Minister Robert Walpole, and writer of extensive but biased political memoirs, recalled him as ‘the hero in Parliament, at the gaming table, at Newmarket. Last week he passed four-and-twenty hours without interruption at all three, or on the road from one to the other; and ill the whole time.’¹² In a life which from this point on would be increasingly intertwined with that of Pitt, Fox would stand out as his opposite in almost every personal respect: a rounded figure who enjoyed social gatherings, cultivated a party following, revelled in all the pleasures of the senses and in no way regarded political success as the sole object of his life. He would become Pitt’s arch-rival, and would eventually consider that he had only one thing in common with him: ‘The only thing like good about him is his inattention to money.’¹³ But for the moment he would attempt to draw Pitt into his circle, and he would do so as a dominant figure in the opposition, enjoying the devoted support of a wide circle of friends who considered that, in the words of Gibbon, ‘perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity or falsehood’.¹⁴

      Fox was the spokesman and inspiration of the Rockingham Whigs. Near him would have been Edmund Burke, secretary to Lord Rockingham, another figure of immense eloquence and persecutor of the King’s Ministers. Self-righteous and impassioned, he was driven on by his belief that the power and habits of George III were destroying the balance of the settlement of 1688. Around and behind Fox and Burke sat much the largest opposition grouping, comprising seventy to eighty Members.

      Elsewhere on the opposition benches were the leaders of another but much smaller opposition faction, less than ten in number: John Dunning, who the previous year had successfully proposed the motion calling for a reduction in the powers of the Crown, and Colonel Barré, famed for accompanying General Wolfe in the storming of the cliffs at Quebec. The leaders of their grouping were the Earl of Shelburne and Lord Camden, who, like Rockingham, sat in the House of Lords. This grouping were the heirs of Chatham – Shelburne and Camden having served in his last government – and they were now joined in the new Parliament by Lord Mahon, John Pratt and, inevitably, William Pitt. As a new MP Pitt therefore looked to the Earl of Shelburne as his nominal leader. Shelburne was, after all, one of the few people who had encouraged Pitt in his bid for election at Cambridge the previous year. Intellectually brilliant, well informed about the full range of political and economic issues, and an enthusiastic exponent of the mix of economic liberalism and administrative improvements which Pitt would strongly support, Shelburne was nevertheless handicapped by what others saw as deficiencies of character. He could not resist displaying his brilliance and allowing others to see that he was manipulating them: ‘He flattered people in order to gain them, and he let it appear by his actions that his smooth words were sheer hypocrisy.’¹⁵ For the moment, however, he headed the small group of Chathamite loyalists.

      These factions in Parliament manoeuvred for position and waited on events, but the politician who still mattered the most in the kingdom was George III himself. The King was a man of simple and straightforward views. The constitution must be upheld, which meant the rights of the Crown must be asserted. His coronation oath was inviolate. No politician should be trusted. No colonies could be surrendered in case others, including Ireland, rebelled. A good life required a regular diet, a huge amount of exercise, and marital fidelity. The Royal Family should set an example. His son, the Prince of Wales, was incapable of setting an example and had become a total disgrace. Disappointed by Bute, who had failed him, by George Grenville, who had lectured him, and by Chatham, who had let him down, George III had at last found in Lord North a politician with the pleasing combination of political staying power and a propensity to be bullied by his monarch. There was no question but that the policies carried out by North and his colleagues were the King’s policies, and that detailed decisions about political and military appointments and the approach to the war had been made by the King himself. When the opposition in Parliament attacked the policies of North, they were in fact attacking the actions of the King; the assaults of Burke on Crown appointments and the Civil List were another proxy for doing so.

      The King was desperately worried that the war would end in defeat, and even spoke privately of abdicating rather than bearing the humiliation of himself and his kingdom. Not least among his concerns was that defeat in the war would mean the fall of North. The only other group of leaders in Parliament with widespread support were the Rockingham Whigs, to whom he could be forced to turn. That could mean being forced to accept Ministers he disliked intensely, and measures he would hate to see carried out in his name. Such Ministers would impose peace with America, abolish much of his patronage, and insist on having as junior Ministers some of his strongest opponents whom they would wish to reward. In contemplating these questions, George III was having to face up to some of the problems left unresolved by the ‘perfect’ constitutional arrangements resulting from 1688. The King had the right to choose a government, and the Commons the right to hold that government to account and even overturn it, requiring the King to nominate another. But what happened if a majority of the Commons decided to force a particular government upon the King? Rockingham and Fox intended to do so. George III would hate it. There was no answer written down in the settlement of 1688. The King still controlled many appointments and sinecures throughout the country, including Army appointments. What happened if the Commons insisted on taking all of those powers of appointment for itself? The King normally retained the right to choose particular Ministers and to continue some from one government to the next, even when the leading Minister changed. What happened if a new leading Minister came to him with a list of Ministers already decided and a majority of the House of Commons behind him?

      George III was a wily political operator, and was determined not to show the weakness of his grandfather George II. The Duke of Newcastle had once forced George II into a corner in 1746 by presenting the collective resignation of all senior Ministers; when George III heard that he might try the same thing in 1762 he had fired him before he could open his mouth.

      As 1781 opened, these political and constitutional questions hung in the balance. The war had gone a little better over the previous year, and the election had been satisfactorily concluded. The opposition seemed to have run out of steam and now, according to one of its members, was ‘if not dead at least asleep’.¹⁶ This was the political scene as William Pitt considered how to make his maiden speech.

      A maiden speech in the House of Commons, then as now, was usually a rather humble affair. A Member would prepare for it for days, or even weeks, and would then rise nervously to advance a not too controversial proposition and accompany it with many thanks and pleasantries. Pitt’s maiden speech, delivered on 26 February 1781, was the exact opposite: delivered apparently on the spur of the moment and certainly without a note, radiating confidence despite taking place in a packed House debating a crucial motion, advancing a strong argument against the policies of the government and the Crown, and incidentally demolishing a key point of the previous speaker’s argument. The effect was to make him a major figure in the House of Commons from the very beginning of his career in it.

      The occasion of Pitt’s speech was a major debate on Edmund Burke’s renewed attempt to introduce economical reform. Uncertain of the government’s majority. North had not prevented Burke from reintroducing his proposed legislation, but with the government’s confidence growing by late February Ministers determined upon voting the Bill down at its second reading on 26 February. In the fierce debate which ensued, Lord Nugent