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1783

THE FALL OF THE COALITION

807

and that it was difficult to respect the House of Commons at a time when large numbers of its members were swayed backwards and forwards by hopes of patronage from one side or the other. The only hope of a better state of things lay in the intervention of the nation itself.

14. Pitt's Struggle with the Coalition.

1783-1784.-George

III., burning to free himself from the Coalition, made Pitt prime minister at the early age of twenty-five. Pitt accepted the position from the king, and

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so far adopted what was now the established Tory doctrine, that ministers were to be named by the king, and not by the House of Commons; but he also reintroduced what had long been forgotten, the principle that the constituencies must be appealed to before any final decision could be taken. For weeks he struggled in the House of Commons, refusing to resign or to dissolve Parliament until he could place his opponents at a disadvantage. Fox, with his usual want of tact, gave him the advantage which he

required, by oppos

Costumes of gentlefolk, about 1784.

ing a dissolution and the consequent appeal to the constituencies, and by insisting that it was Pitt's duty to resign at once, because he was outvoted in the existing House of Commons. Under these circumstances, Pitt was beaten again and again by large majorities. The nation at large had for some time disliked the Coalition as unprincipled, and it now rallied to Pitt in admiration of his undaunted

resolution. Members of the House, who had supported the Coalition merely for the sake of the loaves and fishes, began to suspect that it might be Pitt after all who would have the loaves and fishes to dispense. These men began to change sides, and Pitt's minority grew larger from day to day. At last, on March 8, 1784, the opposition had only a majority of one. On this Parliament was dissolved. The constituencies rallied to Pitt, and 160 of Fox's supporters lost their seats. They were popularly known as Fox's martyrs.

15. Pitt's Budget and India Bill. 1784.-George III., delighted as he was with Pitt's victory, found it impossible to make a tool of him, as he had made a tool of Lord North. Pitt owed his success even more to the nation than to the king, and, with the nation and the House of Commons at his back, he was resolved to have his own way. He soon showed himself to be a first-rate financier, and in his first budget introduced the principle, afterwards largely followed, of reducing customs-duties in order to make smuggling unprofitable. He then passed an India Bill of his own. The Company was to retain all the patronage except the appointment of the governor-general and of one or two high functionaries, so that neither the king nor any other political body would have the disposal of places in India, to serve as an instrument of corruption. As far as the government of India was concerned, it was nominally left in the hands of the directors of the East India Company; but the despatches in which were conveyed the orders to its servants in India were now liable to be amended by a board of control composed of the king's ministers, power being given to this new board to give orders, in cases requiring secrecy, even without the consent of the directors. This dual government, as it was called, lasted till 1858. Whilst Pitt avoided Fox's mistake in the matter of patronage, he deprived the Company of its government without the appearance of doing so. He also strengthened the authority of the governor-general over the governors of Madras and Bombay. Without Burke's animosity against Hastings, he saw that Hastings's system was not one of which he could approve, whilst he had little real knowledge of the difficulties by which Hastings had been embarrassed, and therefore failed to make allowances for them. Hastings discovered that he would not be supported by the new minister, and in February, 1785, he resigned his office and sailed for England.

16. Pitt's Reform Bill. 1785.-For the third time (see pp. 799, 801) Pitt attempted to carry Parliamentary reform. He now proposed to lay by a sum of 1,000,000l. to be employed in buying up

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seventy-two seats, which were practically in private hands. If any of the owners refused to sell, the share of the purchase-money which would have fallen to him was to be laid out at compound interest till it became valuable enough to tempt him to close with the increased offer. The bill was thrown out, and Pitt never again appeared as a parliamentary reformer. There can be no doubt that he was in earnest in desiring parliamentary reform, as it would have strengthened him against the unpopular Whigs. His proposal of buying up seats, which appears so extraordinary in our own day, was doubtless the result of his perception that he could not otherwise pass the bill, and, when once this offer had been rejected, he must have seen that he could not pass any Reform Bill at all. Pitt was not one of those statesmen who bring forward particular measures on which they have set their hearts, and who carry them ultimately by their self-abnegation in refusing to take further part in the government of the country till right has been done. He clung to power, partly for its own sake, but partly also because he believed the Coalition which he resisted to be so unprincipled that his own retention of office was, in itself, a benefit to the country. No statesman of equal eminence ever failed so often to persuade Parliament to adopt his schemes; but this was chiefly because his schemes were usually too much in advance of the public opinion of the time.

17. Failure of Pitt's Scheme for a Commercial Union with Ireland. 1785. A proposal made by Pitt for a commercial union with Ireland failed as completely as his Reform Bill. There was to be complete free-trade between the two countries, and Ireland in return was to grant a fixed revenue for the maintenance of the navy, by which both countries were protected. The Parliament at Dublin assented to the scheme, but in England the manufacturers raised such an outcry that Pitt was forced to change it, restricting freedom of trade in many directions, and making the Irish Parliament dependent, in some respects, on the British for the regulation of commerce. The scheme thus altered was rejected at Dublin as giving Ireland less than complete freedom of trade and infringing on the independence of her Parliament.

18. French Commercial Treaty. 1786.-Pitt was more successful in 1786 with a treaty of commerce with France. The doctrine, that freedom of trade was good for all countries concerned in it, had been promulgated by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations published in 1776. Shelburne was the first minister who adopted his views, but his official career was too short to enable him to give

1786-1795

THE KING'S INSANITY

811

effect to them, and Pitt was, therefore, the first minister to reduce them to practice. Duties were lowered in each country on the productions of the other, and both countries were the better for the change.

19. Trial of Warren Hastings. 1786-1795.—In 1786 Pitt appointed Lord Cornwallis Governor-General of India, and took a wise step in obtaining from Parliament an act empowering him to over-rule his council. Cornwallis was a man of strong common sense, and as he had fewer difficulties to contend with than Hastings had had, he was under no temptation to resort to acts such as those which had disfigured the administration of Hastings. In Parliament, Burke, backed by the whole of the Opposition, called for Hastings's impeachment. Pitt gave way, and in 1788 Hastings's trial began before the Lords in Westminster Hall. Burke and Sheridan, in impassioned harangues, laboured to prove him to

Regulation musket, 1786, popularly known as Brown Bess.

have been a tyrant and a villain. The trial dragged on, and it was not till 1795 that the Lords in accordance with the evidence pronounced sentence of acquittal.

20. The Regency Bill. 1788-1789.—In 1765 George III. had been for a short time mentally deranged. In the autumn of 1788 there was a more violent recurrence of the malady. Dr. Willis, the first physician who treated lunatics with kindness, asserted a recovery to be probable, though it might be delayed for some time. Both Pitt and Fox were agreed that there must be a regency during the king's illness, and that the Prince of Wales must be the regent. Fox, however, argued that the Prince had a right to the post, and therefore ought not to be subjected to any restrictions. unwhig the gentleman for the rest of his life," said Pitt, and argued that it was for Parliament to provide a regent. Pitt carried the day, and a bill was passed through both houses conferring the regency on the prince, but limiting his powers by withholding from him the right of making peers, or of appointing to offices, unless the appointments were revocable by the king if he recovered. By

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