23 January: Boreham on William Pitt

A Noble Son of a Noble Sire
January 23 stands intimately associated with one of the most resounding names in our imperial story. On January 23, 1781, William Pitt first took his seat in Parliament and on January 23, 1806, exactly a quarter of a century later, he died. Inheriting a name that was mentioned almost with awe, in every corner of the world, the younger Pitt not only maintained the splendour of his father’s renown but, before he himself passed away at the early age of 46, added lustre to the inspiring tradition. At the time of William Pitt's birth the whole world was ringing with his father's fame. It was, as one historian says, a time of bonfires and illuminations. Every wind brought news of glorious victories by land and sea, but behind the daring exploits and magnificent triumphs of generals and admirals everybody recognised the genius of the master mind by which they were appointed, instructed and inspired.

The elder Pitt was 51 when his famous son was born. Proud as he was, as proud as he had a right to be, of his own illustrious record and of his towering authority, nothing gave him greater delight than the conviction, which he early formed, that his namesake would serve his country as brilliantly and as effectively as he himself had done. The young Pitt was, of all the family, his father's darling. Nothing pleased the old statesman more than a remark that the boy made to his mother in his seventh year, the year in which the father was created Earl of Chatham. "I am very glad," the child observed, "that I am the second son and not the eldest, for I want to speak in the House of Commons as papa has always done!" He was nicknamed the Philosopher, and, by every sentence that fell from his lips, vindicated his right to the title. The only real art anxiety he occasioned his parents was based on his extreme frailty and frequent sicknesses; but his health stood the strain of a first-class education, a strenuous career and the triumphant, if premature, completion of his life work.

Youth At The Helm In Days Of Storm
Pitt was 19 when his father died. He entered the House of Commons three years later. It was a time of unprecedented tumult and crisis. Great Britain was at war with half of Europe. Clear as noonday Pitt saw the course which the nation ought to pursue, yet, with amazing modesty and restraint, he spoke only twice during his first session of Parliament. On each occasion, however, he spoke with compelling persuasiveness and terrific effect. At 23 he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a year later he became Prime Minister. Young as he was, men felt he was made to mount the whirlwind and to ride the storm. Amid the throes of world-wide war and sanguinary revolution, he held serenely on his way, the master of every situation, clear-sighted, dauntless and magnetic, he imparted confidence to a people sorely tempted to despair. He made men feel that his youthful eyes were fastened, not upon the black thunderclouds in which the Present was enshrouded, but on a sunlit future that their eyes failed to see. And, slowly but surely, he led a troubled nation along the stony and sacrificial road that led first to victory and then to peace.

To make confusion worse confounded, Pitt was confronted, in the early stages of his public career, by a painful rift between the people and the throne. When the youthful leader first assumed office he had to deal with a hostile Parliament containing elderly men of high standing and great eloquence, that was at daggers drawn with the King. At one period of this ugly conflict the feeling was so intense that George the Third threatened to leave the country, and there were not wanting distinguished subjects who bluntly retorted that the sooner he went the better. By a coolness of head and a tactfulness of approach that have seldom been equalled in the annals of statesmanship, Pitt gradually healed the breach, restored to the throne its ascendancy and, in the process, won the admiration and the confidence of the people.

Binding Up The Wounds Of The Centuries
By the same healing magic of his skilful hand, Pitt applied a potent balm to the lacerated and exasperated susceptabilities of the peoples who then looked angrily at each other across the Atlantic. With wise foresight he laid the foundation of that friendship between the British and American peoples that today means so much to the future of civilisation and, in pursuance of the same sound policy, he gave to Canada a constitution that secured for the new colonists immunity from those injustices that had goaded the older ones to rebellion. Then, confronting a still wider-fissure among the ranks of the people, he entered into a compact with Wilberforce to initiate a struggle for the emancipation of the slaves, and he gave the movement such an impetus that Wilberforce lived to witness its consummation.

Lord Rosebery finely says of Pitt that he ruled during the convulsion of the birth throes of the greatest period in history and was not unworthy of an age so portentous. "He is a figure of majestic loneliness and courage. There may have been men abler and greater than he, though it is not easy to cite them; but in all history there is no more patriotic spirit, none more intrepid, none more pure." In the Guildhall, unless now destroyed, the magnificent monuments to father and to son face each other. At Westminster Abbey the two statesmen lie almost side by side. Each has left a name, splendid and stainless, of which the entire Empire is proud, and whenever January 23 comes round, we instinctively recall the splendour of that heritage.

F W Boreham

Image: William Pitt