Pitt’s speech was clear, logical and consistent with his known views. The government, he said, should have come forward itself with reductions in the Civil List, rather than the opposition have to bring the matter up:
They ought to have consulted the glory of their Royal Master, and have seated him in the hearts of his people, by abating from magnificence what was due to necessity. Instead of waiting for the slow request of a burdened people, they should have courted popularity by a voluntary surrender of useless revenue … It would be no diminution of true grandeur to yield to the respectful petitions of the people … magnificence and grandeur were not consistent with entrenchment and economy, but, on the contrary, in a time of necessity and of common exertion, solid grandeur was dependent on the reduction of expense.
The House was riveted. Pitt then pointed out that Lord Nugent had said he would have been happy to support the Bill if the reduction in Crown expenditure it called for was to be given to the ‘public service’ instead, in which case he would have become one of its warmest advocates. Nugent had told the House there was no such provision in the Bill, and therefore he opposed it. He was now to be briskly swatted in a manner that became entirely familiar to Members of Parliament over the next twenty-five years. Pitt said that the only merit he could claim in a competition with the noble Lord was that his eyes were somewhat younger than his. He could therefore read the clause in the Bill which demonstrated the exact opposite of what Lord Nugent had suggested. Pitt read out the whole of the relevant clause, and went on to read out another which had caused Nugent’s confusion. Having fitted this unanswerable point into his general argument, he then argued that the Bill should be supported because it would reduce the influence of the Crown. He attacked the idea that the £200,000 that would be saved was too insignificant a sum to bother with. ‘This was surely the most singular and unaccountable species of reasoning that was ever attempted in any assembly. The calamities of the crisis were too great to be benefited by economy! Our expenses were so enormous, that it was ridiculous to attend to little matters of account! We have spent so many millions, that thousands are beneath our consideration! We were obliged to spend so much, that it was foolish to think of saving any!’ Finally, he said that ‘it ought to be remembered, that the Civil List revenue was granted by Parliament to His Majesty for other purposes than those of personal gratification. It was granted to support the power and the interests of the Empire, to maintain its grandeur, to pay the judges and the foreign ministers, to maintain justice and to support respect; to pay the great offices that were necessary to the lustre of the Crown; and it was proportioned to the dignity and the opulence of the people.’ He said he considered the Bill essential to the being and the independence of his country, and he would give it the most determined support.
Pitt’s speech did not win the debate. Sufficient of the independents and country gentlemen rallied to Lord North to allow him to defeat Burke’s Bill by 233 votes to 190. But there is no doubt that the speech catapulted Pitt into the front rank of parliamentary orators. It was the evidence that, although still only twenty-one years old, he had entered the Commons fully formed as a politician and debater, able to marshal an argument and engage in a debate on equal terms with Members two and three times his age. It was the first exposure of other politicians to the speaking style which had resulted from the years of rehearsing and reciting with Chatham and Pretyman: structured, logical and controlled. In recent years Fox had been idolised as the greatest of parliamentary orators, with Pitt himself later referring to him wielding ‘the wand of the magician’,18 but Pitt’s style was in complete contrast to that of Fox. Fox’s style was to embrace his hearers with emotions, his speeches charging back and forth repeatedly but returning again and again to the point on which he hoped to stir his hearers to action. Pitt’s style was to encircle his listeners with logic, building up his argument piece by piece in a structure always clear in his mind, and forsaking emotion for the objective of leaving his audience with no intellectual option but to agree with his final unifying conclusion. One observer recalled: ‘Mr. Fox had a captivating earnestness of tone and manner; Mr. Pitt was more dignified than earnest … It was an observation of the reporters in the gallery that it required great exertion to follow Mr. Fox while he was speaking, none to remember what he had said; that it was easy and delightful to follow Mr. Pitt, not so easy to recollect what had delighted them.’19
Pitt’s compelling power of argument was one reason his maiden speech made such an impression. Perhaps a still greater reason was his manner, confidence and voice. The great parliamentary diarist Sir Nathaniel Wraxall commented:
Sanguine as might be the opinions entertained of his ability, he far exceeded them; seeming to obtain at his outset that object which other candidates for public fame or favour slowly and laboriously effect by length of time and regular gradation … It was in reply to Lord Nugent that Pitt first broke silence from under the gallery on the Opposition side of the House. The same composure, self possession, and imposing dignity of manner which afterwards so eminently characterised him when seated on the Treasury Bench distinguished him in this first essay of his powers, though he then wanted three months to have completed his twenty second year. The same nervous, correct, and polished diction, free from any inaccuracy of language or embarrassment of deportment, which, as First Minister, he subsequently displayed, were equally manifested by him on this occasion. Formed for a popular assembly, he seemed made to guide its deliberations from the first moment that he addressed the Members composing it.
Pitt’s speech, he said, ‘impressed more from the judgement, the diction, and the solemnity that pervaded and characterised it, than from the brilliancy or superiority of the matter … He seemed to possess himself as much as though he had pronounced the speech in his own closet; but there was no display of studied or classic images in any part of it; nothing gaudy, superfluous, or unnecessary.’20
Ministers and opposition leaders were unanimous and generous in their praise. Lord North declared it ‘the best first speech he ever heard’.21 Burke exclaimed that Pitt ‘was not merely a chip off the old “block”, but the old block itself’.22 Above all, Charles James Fox appeared to be ecstatic at the emergence of such an eloquent figure on the opposition side of the House. Horace Walpole reported:
Mr. Pitt’s first speech, brilliant and wonderful as it was, was scarcely more remarkable than the warmth and generosity with which Mr. Fox greeted the appearance and extolled the performance of his future rival. Incapable of jealousy, and delighted at the sudden display of talents nearly equal to his own, he hurried up to the young Member to compliment and encourage him. As he was doing so, an old Member of the House (I think a General Grant) passed by them and said, ‘Aye, Mr. Fox, you are praising young Pitt for his speech. You may well do so; for, excepting yourself, there’s no man in the House can make such another; and, old as I am, I expect and hope to hear you both battling it within these walls as I have done your fathers before you.’ Mr. Fox, disconcerted at the awkward turn of the compliment, was silent and looked foolish; but young Pitt, with great delicacy, readiness, and felicity of expression, answered, ‘I have no doubt. General, you would like to attain the age of Methusaleh [sic].’23
Pitt knew that his maiden speech had been a success, and when he wrote to his mother the next day his pleasure in it was only just under the control of his usual modesty:
I know you will have learnt that I heard my own Voice yesterday; and the Account you have had would be in all