William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

The Right Honourable William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (15 November 1708–11 May 1778) was a British Whig statesman who achieved his greatest fame as war minister during the French and Indian War and who was later Prime Minister of Great Britain. He is often known as William Pitt the Elder to distinguish him from his son William Pitt the Younger who served as Prime Minister from 1783-1801 and from 1804 to his death in 1806.

Politics in the Commons

His maiden speech was delivered in April 1736, in the debate on the congratulatory address to the king on the marriage of the Prince of Wales. The occasion was one of compliment, and there is nothing striking in the speech as reported; but it served to gain for him the attention of the house when he presented himself, as he soon afterwards did, in debates of a party character. So obnoxious did he become as a critic of the government, that Walpole thought fit to punish him by procuring his dismissal from the army.

Related Topics:
April - 1736 - The king - Prince of Wales

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Some years later he had occasion vigorously to denounce the system of cashiering officers for political differences, but with characteristic loftiness of spirit he disdained to make any reference to his own case. The loss of his commission was soon made up to him. The heir to the throne, as was usually the case in the House of Hanover, if not in reigning families generally, was the patron of the opposition, and the ex-cornet became groom of the bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales.

Related Topics:
House of Hanover - Opposition - Groom of the bed-chamber

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In this new position his hostility to the government did not, as may be supposed, in any degree relax. He had all the natural gifts an orator could desire - a commanding presence, a graceful though somewhat theatrical bearing, an eye of piercing brightness, and a voice of the utmost flexibility. His style, if occasionally somewhat turgid, was elevated and passionate, and it always bore the impress of that intensity of conviction which is the most powerful instrument a speaker can have to sway the convictions of an audience. It was natural, therefore, that in the series of stormy debates, protracted through several years, that ended in the downfall of Walpole, his eloquence should have been one of the strongest of the forces that combined to bring about the final result.

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Specially effective, according to contemporary testimony, were his speeches against the Hanoverian subsidies, against the Spanish convention in 1739, and in favour of the motion in 1742 for an investigation into the last ten years of Walpole's administration. It must be borne in mind that the reports of these speeches which have come down to us were made from hearsay, or at best from recollection, and are necessarily therefore most imperfect.

Related Topics:
Spanish convention in 1739 - 1742

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The best-known specimen of Pitt's eloquence, his reply to the sneers of Horatio Walpole at his youth and declamatory manner, which has found a place in so many handbooks of elocution, is evidently, in form at least, the work, not of Pitt, but of Dr Johnson, who furnished the report to the Gentleman's Magazine. Probably Pitt did say something of the kind attributed to him, though even this is by no means certain in view of Johnson's repentant admission that he had often invented not merely the form, but the substance of entire debates.

Related Topics:
Horatio Walpole - Dr Johnson - Gentleman's Magazine

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In 1742 Walpole was at last forced to succumb to the long-continued attacks of opposition, and was succeeded as Prime Minister by the Earl of Wilmington, though the real power in the new government was divided between Carteret and the Pelham brothers (Henry and Thomas, Duke of Newcastle). Pitt's conduct on the change of administration was open to grave censure. The relentless vindictiveness with which he insisted on the prosecution of Walpole, and supported the bill of indemnity to witnesses against the fallen minister, was in itself not magnanimous; but it appears positively unworthy when it is known that a short time before Pitt had offered, on certain conditions, to use all his influence in the other direction. Possibly he was embittered at the time by the fact that, owing to the strong personal dislike of the king, caused chiefly by the contemptuous tone in which he had spoken of Hanover, he did not by obtaining a place in the new ministry reap the fruits of the victory to which he had so largely contributed.

Related Topics:
1742 - Prime Minister - Earl of Wilmington - Carteret - Henry - Thomas, Duke of Newcastle - Bill of indemnity - Ministry

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The so-called "broad-bottom" administration formed by the Pelhams in 1744, after the dismissal of Carteret, though it included several of those with whom he had been accustomed to act, did not at first include Pitt himself even in a subordinate office. Before the obstacle to his admission was overcome, he had received a remarkable accession to his private fortune.

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The eccentric duchess of Marlborough, dying in 1744, at the age of ninety, left him a legacy of £10,000 as an "acknowledgment of the noble defence he had made for the support of the laws of England and to prevent the ruin of his country." As her hatred was known to be at least as strong as her love, the legacy was probably as much a mark of her detestation of Walpole as of her admiration of Pitt. It may be mentioned here, though it does not come in chronological order, that Pitt was a second time the object of a form of acknowledgment of public virtue which few statesmen have had the fortune to receive even once. About twenty years after the Marlborough legacy, Sir William Pynsent, a Somerset baronet to whom he was personally quite unknown, left him his entire estate, worth about three thousand a year, in testimony of approval of his political career.

Related Topics:
Duchess of Marlborough - 1744 - William Pynsent - Somerset - Baronet

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