[1783-1784 A.D.]

not come till the India Bill had provoked a manifestation of popular opinion which might enable the crown to defy a majority of the house of commons. It was a dangerous experiment. The nobleman to whom the king had confided his sorrows in April was ready in December not only to whisper to the peers, but confidently to state, that whoever voted for the India Bill would be considered by the king as his enemy. The effect upon all those who desired to live only in the sunshine of royal favour was instantaneous. "The bishops waver, and the thanes fly from us," writes Fitzpatrick. He adds, "the public is full of alarm and astonishment at the treachery as well as the imprudence of this unconstitutional interference. Nobody guesses what will be the consequence of a conduct that is generally compared to that of Charles I in 1641." The India bills were rejected in the upper house on the 17th of December, by a majority of ninety-five to seventy-six. On the 18th, at midnight, a message was sent by the king to Lord North and Mr. Fox, commanding them to give up their seals of office by their under-secretaries, as a personal interview would be disagreeable to his majesty.

PITT AT THE HELM (1783 A.D.)

On the 19th Pitt was appointed first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. Earl Temple, who had received the seals of secretary of state, was for the immediate dissolution of parliament. Pitt was against this, and Temple resigned on the 22nd, leaving the young prime minister to sustain, almost alone, the most severe conflict for power recorded in the annals of parliament.

In forming his administration Pitt had scarcely a statesman of any reputation to support him, with the exception of Thurlow, as chancellor, and Dundas, who was not of the cabinet. His father's friend, Camden, stood by him in the house of lords, although not originally forming one of the ministry. Pitt had almost wholly to depend upon his own ability and courage to sustain the attack he had to expect from a large majority of the house of commons, headed by Fox, Burke, North, and Sheridan.

On the 12th of January, 1784, Pitt appeared in the house of commons as the head of the government. Violent were the debates on points of form and questions of principle. The minister was beaten upon two divisions, and five adverse motions were carried against him that night. The king wrote to him the next day, "I am ready to take any step that may be proposed to oppose this faction, and to struggle to the last period of my life." It was well that the king had found a minister whose prudence was equal to his courage. Regardless of his defeat, Pitt, on the 14th of January, brought forward his own plan for the government and management of the affairs of the East India Company. His bill was read a first time. In a committee of the whole house on the state of the nation, it was moved that "the continuance of the present ministers in trusts of the highest importance and responsibility is contrary to constitutional principles, and injurious to the interests of his majesty and his people." The resolution was carried by a majority of twenty-one. An adjournment took place for a few days; but still no resignation. On the 23rd of January, Mr. Pitt's India Bill was thrown out; and Mr. Fox reproduced his own bill. The contest between the two parties was carried on, in various shapes, till the 8th of March. Attempts were made to form a union between the leading members of the late government and those of the present; but Pitt steadily refused to resign as the preliminary condition of such a negotiation. At length, on the 8th of March, an elaborate

[1784 A.D.]

remonstrance, in the form of an address to his majesty, which was drawn up by Burke, and moved by Fox, was carried by a majority only of one. The battle was over. The victory remained with Pitt. The Mutiny Bill was passed; the supplies were voted; and on the 24th of March, the king went to the house of lords, to put an end to the session, and to say, "I feel it a duty which I owe to the constitution and the country, to recur as speedily as possible to the sense of my people, by calling a new parliament. On the 25th parliament was dissolved.

During this extraordinary contest, from the 12th of January to the 8th of March, there were fourteen motions, upon which the house divided, carried against Mr. Pitt; besides many others, upon which there was no division. The mode in which the coalition ministry was ejected, through the royal interference with the vote of the house of peers upon the India Bill, was mean and unconstitutional. It has been conjectured that Pitt was probably acquainted with the manoeuvres of Thurlow and Temple. But it has been also said that when Temple resigned, he "carried away with him the scandal which the best friends of the new government could not but lament. The fame of the young prime minister preserved its whiteness. He could declare with perfect truth that, if unconstitutional machinations had been employed, he had been no party to them." Whatever opinion may be formed upon this point, even the political opponents of Pitt agree that in this fiery struggle of two months, he "joined to great boldness, sagacity and discretion. By patience and perseverance he wearied out a foe who was more ardent than measured in his attacks; and while he bore his defeats with calmness, the country, saturate with calumny, began to resent the attempt of the coalition party as the cabal of a domineering aristocracy.

Never did minister of Great Britain appear in so triumphant a position as William Pitt, when he entered the house of commons, on the 18th of May, to meet the new parliament. He had been himself returned at the head of the poll for the University of Cambridge. His friend Wilberforce, the son of a Hull merchant, had contested the county of York against two whig candidates of large fortune and high connections. With the almost unanimous support of the manufacturers of Sheffield, and Halifax, and Bradford, and Leeds, he had beaten the great Yorkshire aristocracy, as the representative of the middle classes. The example presented by this stronghold of independent principles was powerful through the country. Pitt looked upon the benches of opposition, that for two months had echoed with the cheers of those who had denounced him with every virulence of invective, now thinned to a very powerless minority. The coalition had lost a hundred and sixty members. [The members of the opposition who lost their seats were popularly known as Fox's martyrs.]

PITT'S FINANCIAL MEASURES

Pitt commenced his career as a financial minister with more than common boldness. The permanent taxes produced half a million less than the interest of the debt, the civil list, and the charges to which they were appropriated. The annual land-tax and malt-tax fell far short of the naval and military expenditure and that of miscellaneous services. There was a large unfunded debt. The deficit altogether amounted to three millions. The confidence in the national resources was so low that the three per cents were fallen to about 56. Smuggling, especially of tea and spirits, was carried on to an enormous

[1784-1785 A.D.]

extent. The tea vended in the smuggling trade, conducted in the most systematic manner through consignments from foreign ports, was held considerably to exceed the five million and a half pounds annually sold by the East India Company. Pitt took the only effectual way to prevent smuggling. He reduced the duty upon tea from 50 per cent. to 12 per cent.; and he also reduced the duties on foreign spirits. To compensate for the expected deficiency of revenue, he increased the tax upon windows. To meet the large general disproportion between receipt and expenditure, he imposed other taxes, that have been abolished, as injurious to industry, by the sounder economists of later times. These taxes en

abled him to provide for the interest of a new loan, in which a large amount of unfunded debt was absorbed. Taxes upon hats, linens, and calicos, have long been condemned, though the commons of 1784 willingly granted them. Duties upon horses, excise licences, and game certificates, hold their ground. Taxes upon candles, and upon bricks and tiles, were amongst the devices that have had no permanent existence. The tax upon paper, which Mr. Pitt increased, appears to be the last of those restraints upon industry to which purblind legislators have clung, upon the principle that the consumers do not feel the tax-the principle announced by the minister of 1784, when he proposed his additional duty on candles, namely, that as the poorest cottagers only consumed about 10 pounds of candles annually, that class would only contribute fivepence a year to his new impost.

The chancellor of the exchequer carried his proposed taxes without any difficulty. He was equally successful with his India bills. He relieved the East India Company from its financial embarrassments. He associated with its directors in the government of India that body of commissioners, appointed by the crown, which was long known as the board of control.

In the session of 1785 Mr. Pitt brought forward a subject announced in the king's speech, the commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland. The propositions of Mr. Pitt, large and liberal as they were, although encumbered with some provisions opposed to a really free commercial policy, were thoroughly distasteful to the manufacturers of England, and equally opposed to the narrowness of what in Ireland was deemed patriotism. The resolutions of the minister were carried by considerable majorities in the British parliament, but being passed by a very small majority in the Irish parliament, the bill was withdrawn. Whilst this measure was being debated at Westminster, Mr. Pitt a third time brought forward a bill for reform in parliament. His specific plan was to disfranchise thirty-six rotten boroughs, giving compensation to those who regarded them as property; to transfer

[1787 A.D.]

the right of election to counties and to unrepresented large towns; and to extend the franchise in counties to copyholders. The bill was not introduced as a government measure; and it was rejected by a large majority, as its author probably expected it would be.

Pitt, at this time, was almost exclusively occupied with a great financial scheme, from which, with more than ordinary complacency, he sanguinely expected the most wonderful results. He wrote to Wilberforce, "The produce of our revenues is glorious; and I am half mad with a project which will give our supplies the effect almost of magic in the reduction of debt." It was the scheme of the sinking fund. The public income now happily exceeded the expenditure, and it was proposed that the notion of an accumulating fund to be applied to the reduction of the debt, which was partially attempted by Sir Robert Walpole, should be engrafted upon the perpetual financial arrangements; that a million should be annually placed in the hands of commissioners, so as to be beyond the power of a minister to withdraw. It was believed that, accumulating at compound interest, with the addition of such terminable annuities as should fall in, it would gradually extinguish the claims of the public creditor. The plan might have worked well, if the minister had been debarred from contracting any new loans. For years the public had as much confidence in this scheme as its author had. It was boasted that "in eight years, Mr. Pitt's sinking fund, in fact, purchased £13,617,895 of stock at the cost of £10,599,265 of cash "; and it was proclaimed that "this measure, then, is of more importance to Great Britain than the acquisition of the American mines." There was a superstitious belief, long entertained, that the new sinking fund would, "by some mysterious power of propagation belonging to money, put into the pocket of the public creditor great sums not taken out of the pocket of the tax-payer." The delusion was manifest when it was demonstrated that during the war the debt had been actually augmented, to the extent of eleven millions, by the less advantageous terms upon which money was borrowed by the exchequer, compared with the purchases made by the commissioners who managed the sinking fund. A great authority in finance has put the whole philosopy of the matter in the form of an axiom: "No sinking fund can be efficient for the purpose of diminishing the debt, if it be not derived from the excess of the public revenue over the public expenditure."

On the opening of the session on the 23rd of January, 1787, the king announced that he had concluded a treaty of navigation and commerce with the king of France. The negotiation was completed at Versailles, on the 26th of September, 1786. The provisions of this treaty were of the most liberal character. There was to be the most perfect freedom of intercourse allowed between the subjects and inhabitants of the respective dominions of the two sovereigns. The duties to be paid on French commodities in England were thus rated: Wines, no higher duties than on those of Portugal; brandy, seven shillings per gallon; vinegar, less than half the previous duty; olive-oil, the lowest duty paid by the most favoured nation. The following duties were to be levied reciprocally on both kingdoms: hardwares and cutlery, cabinet wares, furniture, turnery, not higher than 10 per cent. ad valorem; cotton and woollen manufactures, except mixed with silk, 12 per cent.; gauzes, 10 per cent.; linens, same as linens from Holland; saddlery, 15 per cent.; millinery, 12 per cent.; plate glass and glass ware, porcelain and earthenware, 12 per cent.

That the commercial treaty was not a failure as regarded the products of Great Britain is evident from the fact that the annual average export

[1788 A.D.]

of British manufactures to France in the six years ending with 1774 was £87,164; in the six years ending with 1792 it was £717,807.

To Mr. Pitt belongs the honour, in this, the fourth year of his administration, of simplifying the complicated system of indirect taxation, by consolidating the several duties of customs, excise, and stamps. The duties required to be paid upon one article were sometimes to be hunted through twenty or thirty acts of parliament, each charging some additional duty, or making a special appropriation of the proceeds of a particular tax. The complication may be judged from the fact that three thousand resolutions were required to carry a measure of consolidation into effect. When Pitt had introduced his measure, Burke characterised the speech of the minister as one of extraordinary clearness and perspicuity, and said that it behooved those who felt it their duty frequently to oppose the measures of the government, to rise up manfully, and, doing justice to the right honourable gentleman's merit, to return him thanks on behalf of themselves and the country, for having in so masterly a manner brought forward a plan which gave ease and accommodation to all engaged in commerce, and advantage and increase to the revenue. "Thus," says Lord John Russell, "in the course of little more than three years from Mr. Pitt's acceptance of office as first lord of the treasury, great financial and commercial reforms had been effected The nation, overcoming its difficulties, and rising buoyant from its depression, began rapidly to increase its wealth, to revive its spirit, and renew its strength. Such was the work of Mr. Pitt, now no longer the minister of the court, but of the nation. The cry of secret influence, and the imputation of his being an organ of an unseen power, was heard less and less as the resources of his powerful understanding developed their energies and ripened their fruits." e

THE ILLNESS OF THE KING (1788 A.D.)

Toward the close of the year 1788 an event occurred of considerable importance in the legislative history of the country. The health of the king had been lately in a precarious state, and his disorder finally terminated in mental derangement. When the fact had been ascertained, Mr. Pitt (December 10th) moved for a committee to inspect the journals for precedents. Mr. Fox insisted that the heir-apparent had an indisputable claim to the exercise of the executive authority. This Mr. Pitt denied, declaring such an assertion to be little less than treason to the constitution: "Kings and princes," he said, "derived their power from the people; and to the people alone, by means of their representatives, did it belong to decide in cases for which the constitution had made no specific provision." The prince, he maintained, had no more right in this case than any other subject, though it might be expedient to offer him the regency. In the house of lords, the same view of the constitution was taken by Lord Camden.

Mr. Fox, finding that the principles he had advanced were generally disapproved of, then sought only to procure for the prince the full, unrestricted enjoyment of the royal prerogative; but Mr. Pitt had his reasons for imposing limitations.

The usual position of the house of Brunswick, in fact, continued; the heirapparent was in opposition to the king, and on the usual account-money. The prince of Wales, who was of a remarkably dissipated and extravagant temper, had been allowed £50,000 a year, a sum sufficient, it might be supposed, for a single man even in his exalted station; but as the king himself,