William Pitt and National Revival

In the course of the session of 1782, when the American War was dragging to its disastrous close and a change of Ministers was imminent, one of the youngest members of the House of Commons declared that he would accept no subordinate office in a new administration. At the close of 1783, during a crisis of singular intensity, he became Chief Minister of the Crown, and thenceforth, with one short interval, controlled the destinies of Great Britain through twenty-two years marked by grave complications, both political and financial, social and diplomatic, ending in wars of unexampled magnitude. Early in the year 1806 he died of exhaustion, at the age of forty-seven. In these bald statements we may sum up the outstanding events of the life of William Pitt the Younger, which it is my aim to describe somewhat in detail.

Before reviewing his antecedents and the course of his early life, I propose to give some account of English affairs in the years when he entered on his career, so that we may picture him in his surroundings, realize the nature of the difficulties that beset him, and, as it were, feel our way along some of the myriad filaments which connect an individual with the collective activities of his age.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, died in 1778. His second son, named after him, began his political career at the close of the year 1780, when he was elected Member of Parliament for Appleby. The decade which then began marks a turning point in British history. Then for the first time the old self-contained life was shaken to its depths by forces of unsuspected power. Democracy, Athene-like, sprang to maturity in the New World, and threatened the stability of thrones in the Old World. For while this militant creed won its first triumphs over the soldiery of George III, it began also to colour the thoughts and wing the aspirations of the masses, especially in France, so that, even if the troops of Washington had been vanquished, the rising tide of thought would none the less have swept away the outworn barriers of class. The march of armies may be stayed; that of thought never.

The speculations enshrined in the “Social Contract” of Rousseau and the teachings of the Encyclopaedists contained much that was crude, or even false. Nevertheless, they gave an impulse such as no age ever had known, and none perhaps ever will know again. The course of the American War of Independence and the foundation of a State based on distinctly democratic principles proved that the new doctrines might lead to very practical results. The young giant now stood rooted in mother-earth.