BOOKS.

LIFE OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM PITT.*

FIRST NOTICE.

THE new volumes of Lord Stanhope's Life of Pitt have exactly the merits and exactly the defects of the former ones. They are so good that we wonder tuey are not better, and so bad we wonder they are not worse. The narrative is always clear, and the facts are always true. the reflections are always sensible, and often show a first-hand ac- quaintance with political life and an habitual coversancy with aristo- cratic society. The style is the style of a scholar ; and these are great excellences. But, on the other hand, there is no system in the narrative, and no perspective. Each fragment of Pitt's life is told by itself, and when one bit is complete another quite different succeeds. Very soon the narrative dodges (there is really no other fit word) back to the first little fragment, which the reader by that time has half forgotten. Lord Stanhope has no more conception of mass in composition than a baby knows of a budget. He has not learned the great secret that every narrative which is to be remem- bered must have a distinct intention, must start front some principle which the reader knows, and arrive at some conclusion which he ap- preciates. Mere patchwork, even the most meritorious, slides out of the memory. The best anecdotes, and the neatest bits of narrative, are useless and fugitive, unless they are strung upon an important idea. Lord Stanhope says much of Pitt, and muchwhich is very good, but he will tell most people nothing.

The most curious political part of these volumes is necessarily the most curious part of Mr. Pitt's later political life—his relation with Mr. Addington. Perhaps it may aid some readers of Lord Stanhope if we say, in a paragraph or two, what that relation was. The story is unintelligible enough unless the true clue be given.

In February, 1801, Mr. Pitt seemed to be at the zenith of power. His majority was immense, his parliamentary influence unexampled, the opposition to him nothing: Mr. Fox had favoured the French revolution, which was odious in England, and opposed the French war, which was popular in England. Like all opponents of a hearty war lie was discarded as a favourer of the enemy, and his opposition was rather a help to Pitt than a hindrance. It enabled him to identify himself with the national patriotism. George III. had troubled many administrations, but he had never dared to trouble Mr. Pitt. The feeling of the mercantile classes for the minister amounted to worship. The country gentlemen were overawed. In the midst of warlike disasters and unprecedented loans, while the burden of the war was such as England had never borne, and such she scarcely conceived she would bear, when our cash payments were suspended, when our very seamen were in mutiny, Mr. Pitt had inspired a confidence such as no English minister had ever inspired in times of calm and prosperity. For seventeen years he had been not only prime minister, but sole minister. A generation had come to full manhood which had not a political thought before he became First Lord of the Treasury. He seemed in the zenith of life. Oa a sudden lie resigned.

The stocks fell five per cent. The public consternation was extreme, and even among professed politicians there was much puzzle and much division of opinion. Mr. Wilberforce said that Mr. Pitt had acted with purity and patriotism, Mr. Dundas, who had to go out too, said, "No historian will believe the real motives of our resignation to be such; they will look for some which sound more rational." Lord Auckland, an old intriguer, hinted in the House of Lords that mystery was the product of artifice, and that the public were deceived and misled.

According to common report, Mr. Pitt felt that peace must be made with France, and that he did, not like to be the person to make it, and this was a very natural notion. For many years Mr. Pitt had been, not a war minister, but the war minister. He had identified himself with the French war, but it hardly seemed natural to detach him from it. But we know more than contemporaries knew. We know that peace had for years been Mr. Pitt's hope and object..

• We of the Ri0Sh1 Ilonovrabk Wtilfam Pitt, By Earl Stanhope. Vols. I.II. and IV.

He had drifted into a great war; he had conducted it with great magnanimity, but he did not like a great war. He knew that he could not destroy the new world in France; he knew that the finances of England were oppressed and overburdened. There was an ele- ment of Mr. Gladstone in him. He loved peace and trade, a new tariff and a low taxation as Mr. Gladstone loves them. So far from not wishing to be the minister to make a peace, he would gladly have made it. Only a year or two before, he had compelled his Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville, to make concessions and waive affronts at which the Foreign Secretary's heart revolted. Mr. Carlyle describes him as "lean and implacable," but the mental characteristic is an error. Above all men, he had the lamb's heart in the lion's skin.

The truth is, that Mr. Pitt made a blunder, and that certain in- triguers took advantage of it. He had just concluded the Union with Ireland, and though no direct pledge had been given to the Roman Catholics as the pnce of their support, yet indefinite hopes had been excited and vague assurances held out to them. But these partial compacts could not be performed without the King's consent, and the King would not consent. A vague story goes that Lord Lough- borough, the Chancellor, fancied he could turn Mr. Pitt out, and be Prime Minister in his room, exactly as Lord Thurlow had thought some years before. But the exact intentions of Lord Loughborough are not proved. We only know his conduct. He suggested to George the Third that the proposed concessions were contrary to his coronation oath, and the narrow tenacious mind of the King at once closed on the idea. He disliked the concessions, and disapproved of them before; he now had a moral reason for refusing them. A poisonous particle had penetrated into his mind, and the aperture of his intelligence was too small to let it out again. He would not consent.

According to modem theories, Mr. Pitt's course was clear. He ought to have resigned ; he ought to have formed a constitutional opposition; he ought to have compelled the King to yield. But no suck course was possible for him. Georgd the Third was an inferior man, habitually and constantly pitted against superior men, and habitually having the better of them. He had the advantage of being a common-place Englishman : what he thought most ordinary people would think ; and he made a cunning use of that advantage. He never opposed an able and far-sighted minister, except when that minister was too able and far-sighted for the multitude. Mr. Pitt was so in 1801. He had yielded to an insidious temptation with which the old constitution of England had tempted him. He had ventured to be before his age. No such temptation is occasioned by our present polity. The Reform Act, and the growth of middle-class opinion, of which that, act was in part the effect, and in part the cause, have established over public men a civilized servitude. They look to public opinion as their guide; they do not act on their own thoughts : it might in many cases be said they do not believe their own thoughts : they act on the thoughts of the multitude; they acquiesce in the public judgment; they listen for the thoughts of others. But our old polity placed at the disposal of a minister a political power—a compact voting majority, which, as it seemed, was applicable to any topic, and which would carry any measure. If Mr. 'Pitt, with the force of Govern- ment and the privilege of power, had proposed in Parliament to emancipate the Roman Catholics, probably they would have been emancipated. The acquired momentum of the great minister would have sufficed for the great question.

But the power which our old constitution seemed to give was not a real power. It depended on the prestige of place and the use of patronage. Now that place was the gift of the King, and that patron- age was a disposal of the King's offices. If the King chose to inter- vene, he might intervene; be might transfer that guiding power— that modifying influence—into other hands and other minds. IA in- deed, the nation were resolved, the King was as impotent as now. Then, as now, public opinion, when aroused, when eager, when re- solved, must rule. But if a far-sighted minister ventured to suggest a great idea, which the nation did not know, which it did not appre- ciate, which it did not realize, the Kiug's veto was effective. He

might say, "you shall not carry this by my help : you cannot carry it by means of the nation. The nation does not think of it or require it.

You shall not use my name, my influence, my places, to aid a scheme which is odious to in feelings, and which is contrary to my judg- ment." George the Third did say this in 1801. He told Mr. Pitt, "you shall not be my minister, to effect Catholic emancipation."

What was Mr. Pitt to do ? He should either have yielded and acquiesced, or resigned and opposed. He should have done the latter if he thought he was weak, and the former if he thought he was strong. He combined the two simple alternatives into a third com- pound. He resigned, without opposing. He left office without in- tending to propose Catholic emancipation in opposition.

Serious and sitnple-minded men of business might well be perplexed at such a course. But it suited Mr. Pitt's character; he was too proud to yield, and too practical to act. He knew the nation would

not carry Catholic emancipation for him, since its best opinion was as yet unformed upon it, and its coarse prejudices and ready antipathies were opposed to it. He had too sound a political instinct to impair a. great object by a premature attempt. But he could. not bear to yield to the King. For seventeen years he had ruled : he could not again endure being ruled.

Resignation, too, had a charm for him, which for most statesmen it had not. Lord Thurlow used to lay down as a moral precept—" D—ma your eyes never resign, for the Lord Almighty only knows when yo4t will come in?" But Mr. Pitt coulki hardly appreciate that commandment. He had always been in office, and he could hardly fancy himself out of office. He had been accustomed to regard the

House of Commons as what our lawyers term a "serrient tenement." He had ruled it for much more than a third of his life with the combined strength of office and of genius. He had predominated as no member predominated before, and none have been able to pre- domivate since. He united the tradition of place to the predomi- nance of mind. He could hardly be expected to dissociate that union for himself and in his own mind. He did not know how much of his power he owed to the one, and how much lie owed to the other. He relied on his genius ; he could hardly imagine Mr. Pitt without office, or office without Mr. Pitt. He fancied that by himself he could rule England as he had ruled it with the influence of place, and with the power of Downing-street. Vague dreams of leisure, and literature too, haunted the imagination of one who had always been busy, who had always been powerful, who had neither known the slow pain of vacuity, nor the keen pang of wistful ambition. But if Mr. Pitt went out, a leader must be found, and he was not easy to find. The opposition was able, but the opposition forbidden. The leaders were hated by the King, and were supported by the nation. The ministerial ranks were open to choice, but the minis- terial ranks were vacant. Mr. Pitt had been his own administration ; the noble lords at the heads of department and in the Cabinet; but most of them were dignified vacua, and only one of them could dream of being Prime Minister. He had a man of business, Mr. Dundas, and Mr. Canning, a literary protege' to aid him in the Commons. But neither a Scotch lawyer nor an Irish boy could aspire to be first Minister. Lord Loughborough did aspire, but the King- considered him "the greatest rogue in England," and the nation did. not think of him.

The -final selection was odd. It was the Speaker of the House of Commons. Mr. Addington was the son of Lord Chatham's medical attendant, and in the notion of that age, a sort of follower and re- tainer of Mr. Pitt. Mr. Pitt considered the Speakership a fair post for a grave young friend. He first gave it to his cousin, Mr. Grenville; he next gave it to his humble friend, Mr. Addirgtou. Sir George Lewis observes that Speakers of the House of Commons invariably succeed ; and Mr Addington was not likely to fail where success was plain and easy. He was a man of moderate sense, good industry, and considerable self-importance. But the qualities which fit a man to be a Speaker differ as much from those which fit a man to be Prime Minister as the merits of a chaperon from the charms of a belle. The Speaker must not speak; the Minister must not be silent. A grave old lady, however estimable, will not attract youth— a pompous old gentleman, trained to silence, cannot compete with practised'orators—a mediocre man trained to the form of business is no match for men trained to essential business. Yet such was the man selected to be the first successor of Pitt, and to be the new anta- gonist of Fox.

How the choice ended we will next week endeavour to explain.