Fortunately the younger Pitt’s parliamentary speeches are more extensively recorded than those of his father. The reporting of parliamentary proceedings was forbidden earlier in the eighteenth century, but in 1771 this rule had been shown to be unenforceable after the City of London magistrates proposed only nominal fines on several writers who had been in the Public Gallery and written accounts in the newspapers. By the time of Pitt’s entry to Parliament the reporting of speeches was therefore in effect allowed, but no provision was made for the reporters, who had to compete with everyone else to get into the Gallery and then strain to hear above the noise. Unless the account was supported by a text issued by the speaker, something only furnished by Pitt three times in twenty-five years, the reports were often unreliable, incomplete, or biased. Nevertheless we know most of the content of Pitt’s speeches, including the two interventions he made in debates before the House rose for the 1781 summer recess. His speeches of 31 May and 12 June followed up the success of his maiden speech and confirmed, albeit in a thinner House, the impression he had already made. On the first occasion, the debate was about a government Bill to appoint Commissioners of Public Accounts. Fox and Pitt rose to speak simultaneously when Lord North sat down, and Fox, who at this stage was going to any lengths to draw Pitt into his circle of friends, gave way for Pitt to speak. Once again he made a forceful argument, telling the Commons that it alone had the right to hold the strings of the national purse, and ‘to delegate this right … is a violation of what gives them their chief consequence in the legislature, and what, above all other privileges, they cannot surrender or delegate without a violent breach of the constitution’. And once again he showed a mastery of detail, as Horace Walpole recounted: ‘the Young William Pitt has again displayed paternal oratory. The other day, on the commission of accounts, he answered Lord North, and tore him limb from limb. If Charles Fox could feel, one should think such a rival, with an unspotted character, would rouse him. What if a Pitt and Fox should again be rivals …’25 William Wilberforce thought the same, as he wrote to a friend in Hull: ‘The papers will have informed you how Mr. William Pitt, second son of the late Lord Chatham, has distinguished himself. He comes out as his father did, a ready made orator, and I doubt not but I shall one day or other see him the first man in the country. His famous speech, however, delivered the other night did not convince me, and I stayed in with the old fat fellow [Lord North].’
Pitt’s other speech of the summer does genuinely seem to have been unpremeditated. Fox had moved a motion for the conclusion of immediate peace with the Americans, and in the ensuing debate two Members claimed that Chatham had really been in sympathy with the war. Pitt was provoked to intervene with a speech of his own, and Wraxall recorded what happened:
Pitt attempted to justify and explain that line of opinion attributed to his noble relation … he denied that his father had ever approved of the war commenced with America which, on the contrary, he had condemned, reprobated, and opposed in every stage. After thus throwing a shield over the memory of his illustrious parent, and rescuing him from the imputation of having countenanced or supported coercive measures for the subjugation of the colonies beyond the Atlantic, he then diverged with equal vehemence and majesty of expression to the topic immediately before the assembly. Referring to the epithet of holy which Lord Westcote had given to the contest, he declared that he considered it as unnatural, accursed, and unjust, its traces marked with persecution and devastation, depravity and turpitude constituting its essence, while its effects would be destructive in the extreme. The English language seemed inadequate fully to express his feelings of indignation and abhorrence, while stigmatising the authors of so ruinous a system. As a specimen of parliamentary eloquence, it unquestionably excelled his two preceding speeches, leaving on his audience a deep impression, or rather conviction, that he must eventually, and probably at no remote distance of time, occupy a high situation in the councils of the Crown, as well as in the universal estimation of his countrymen.
Dundas, who rose as soon as Pitt sat down, seemed to be thoroughly penetrated with that truth, and by a sort of a political second sight appeared to anticipate the period when this new candidate for office would occupy the place on the Treasury bench then filled by his noble friend in the blue ribband [Lord North].26
Dundas indeed, while as usual that night defending both his colleagues and the war, was coming to have great respect for the eloquent young figure on the opposition benches. He wound up the debate without creating any animosity between himself and Pitt, and went out of his way to compliment him on ‘so happy an union of first-rate abilities, high integrity, bold and honest independence of conduct, and the most persuasive eloquence’.27 The foundations of a formidable alliance were being laid.
At the end of the debate the government won the vote by 172 to ninety-nine. It was indicative of how the political atmosphere had improved for the North administration as the year had gone on. Government optimism about the war was high, with Lord George Germain writing on 7 March: ‘So very contemptible is the rebel force now in all parts, and so vast is our superiority everywhere, that no resistance on their part is to be apprehended that can materially obstruct the progress of the King’s arms in the speedy suppression of the rebellion.’28 North was back in control of the Commons, with his majorities increasing through the spring and summer as the independents went home and the opposition was able to rely only on its most partisan supporters.
Pitt’s attacks had not brought down the government – far from it – but they had impressively launched his own career. As well as enjoying himself in the Commons at this time, his social life was busy and fun. He became a member of Brooks’s Club in February 1781 after being proposed by an eager Charles James Fox, but he kept his distance and characteristically preferred the company of a small circle of intimate friends. He became a member of Goostree’s, a small club on Pall Mall which in 1780 was effectively taken over by Pitt and some of his friends. The old friends from Cambridge were there, Pratt, Bankes, Euston and Edward Eliot, along with Pitt’s elder brother and his cousin William Grenville. But there were also new friends: Richard Pepper Arden, who would later serve in Pitt’s governments; Robert Smith, whom he would send to the Lords as the first Lord Carrington; Thomas Steele; and William Wilberforce, the wealthy son of a banker who owned an estate in Yorkshire and had just spent a small fortune ensuring his own election for Hull. Wilberforce adored Pitt’s company:
He was the wittiest man I ever knew, and what was quite peculiar to himself, had at all times his wit under entire control. Others appeared struck by the unwonted association of brilliant images; but every possible combination of ideas seemed present to his mind, and he could at once produce whatever he desired. I was one of those who met to spend an evening in memory of Shakespeare at the Boar’s Head, East Cheap. Many professed wits were present, but Pitt was the most amusing of the party, and the readiest and most apt in the required allusions.29
At Goostree’s the young friends drank and discussed politics, in effect moving the familiar dining atmosphere of Cambridge into Pall Mall. This was already Pitt’s favourite way of spending an evening, and it would remain so throughout his life, but, as ever, he had a clear sense of what he must not get drawn into. Gambling was highly fashionable, and Wilberforce was wealthy enough to indulge in it with gusto. Pitt lacked wealth, but not self-discipline. Wilberforce noted: ‘We played a good deal at Goostree’s, and I well remember the intense earnestness which Pitt displayed when joining in those games of chance. He perceived their increasing fascination, and soon after suddenly abandoned them forever.’
When Parliament rose for the summer Pitt returned to his legal practice on the Western Circuit to earn a little money. At the end of August he wrote to William Meeke: ‘I have this circuit amassed the immense sum of thirty guineas without the least expense either of sense or knowledge … I shall return to town with the fullest intention of devoting myself to Westminster Hall and getting as much money as I can, notwithstanding such avocations as the House of Commons, and (which is a much more dangerous one) Goostree’s itself.