So far as he was concerned, the holy war against infidelity and democracy effected nothing, and brought us to the very verge of defeat and surrender. It taxed the "mute and unresisting" generations to come, and burdened the country with "six hundred millions of irredeemable debt."* It spread the Revolution to Belgium and Italy, and wasted English gold on weak and faithless allies. It subsidised Austria, who deserted us, with four millions and a half; and Prussia, who cheated us, with £1,200,000. Mutual jealousies proved more powerful than the common cause. Prussia withdrew because Austria was likely to be the gainer, and Spain was alarmed by the growing strength of the British navy. The first coalition melted away; and Pitt, three years after he had formed it, was ready to come to terms with France, to admit her conquests, and to leave her Holland and Belgium as the price of reconciliation. The second coalition ensued, augmented the French power under the Consulate, and closed with the peace of Amiens.† The third had no better result, and terminated with the defeat of the Allies at Austerlitz. Napoleon and the empire triumphed, and disasters befel us everywhere except on the sea and the sands of Egypt. Failure, it is true, is not in itself an argument against a good cause and a conflict carried on under a sense of duty; but failures so signal and numerous as those which Pitt * Goldwin Smith, "Lectures on Pitt," p. 61. A.D. 1805. incurred may well lead us to inquire whether the counterpolicy of Fox, consisting in armed arbitration abroad, mutual concessions and mutual securities, with the redress of grievances nearer home, might not at least have been tried before the nation was committed to war with the French republic. I have endeavoured without prepossession to state plainly the pros and cons of Pitt's war policy, well knowing that it is a subject on which the minds of Englishmen will be divided to the end of time.* There was a period when almost every voice in England was loud in his favour. The eloquence of Fox lost its spell when employed in remonstrating against an antijacobin war. His followers dropped off one by one, and his party in the House of Commons dwindled from a hundred and sixty to fifty. Ten or twelve Peers only adhered to his side; and when Pitt stepped forward reluctantly to head an army of orthodox Conservatives against the hosts of the infidel, he was hailed as a mighty deliverer, and France was expected to quail before him as she had quailed before the genius of his father. But in his war administration his talents were sadly inferior to those of Chatham. Victory is not an heirloom; neither statesmen nor princes can conquer by legitimate descent. The elder Pitt was essentially a war minister; the younger Pitt was a minister of peace. In 1792 he had reduced the army to 18,000 men, and Rose's "Diaries," vol. i. pp. 133-191. his army estimates were only £1,800,000.* The spell of peace was broken against his will. His armaments were completed on a paltry scale, though he was backed by the sympathy and support of nearly the whole nation. Immense sums of money were squandered by him to little effect, and he met the impetuous shock of the French enthusiasts with a handful of men. During eight years his dulcet eloquence on the boards of the House of Commons predicted the speedy ruin of the exhausted Republic, as if rulers without principle, and soldiers without coats or shoes, were to be stopped in their career of triumphant plunder by the necessity of issuing assignats not worth a sou. It was the fear of their pernicious principles extending to England which led him into a system of intimidation at home scarcely warranted by the state of society. Never had the nation been more loyal, and never had a prime minister less reason to apprehend revolution or to punish with severity the peaceable expression of opinion. The Seditious Meeting Bill, the long suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the Alien Bill, and the prosecutions for libel, accompanied with penalties for treason, are defended by Pitt's partisans as needful during a crisis. Yet to every impartial observer they seem to require excuse, especially when we consider that they suppressed the very opinions which Pitt himself had once advocated, and foreclosed the very discussions which he had often *Goldwin Smith on "Pitt," p. 75. been the first to open. It was certainly hard to send aliens out of the country on bare suspicion without any trial, and a government which is permitted so to act is sure to have an army of spies in its pay. To persecute is generally to propagate; and when a conceited spark could not talk a little republicanism in an alehouse without danger of being arrested for treason, when a public meeting could not be called to petition parliament about very rotten boroughs or very heavy excise without the chairman being likely to be indited for sedition,—there is reason to suspect that disaffection spread more freely than it would have done if republicans and reformers had simply been laughed down and argued down by staunch supporters of Church and State. The existing laws of England firmly applied would have sufficed to put down all serious irregularities without the re-issue of old and barbarous edicts. But it was Pitt's misfortune and error to be severe on those from whom little was to be dreaded, and languid in opposing the Jacobins abroad, from whom soldiers and society alike had so much to fear. There is one part, however, of Pitt's administration which deserves the highest encomium, because it proves his love of justice, and his courage in enduring obloquy in a righteous cause. It is curious, indeed, to remark how posterity has praised him most for what in his lifetime brought disappointment and pain, while the measures for which in the days of his popularity he was most loudly extolled are now generally censured or feebly excused. Catholics in particular owe him a debt of gratitude, for he stood forward as the advocate of their rights at a time when their friends were few. He sanctioned the bill passed through the Commons by Wilberforce in 1797 for enabling Roman Catholics to serve in the militia. But the measure was feebly seconded in the Upper House, and was thrown out because Protestant Dissenters also were to be allowed to fight and die for their country.* Neither from the King, the Lords, nor the people could he expect any support in pleading for those whose loyalty was suspected and whose religion was hated and despised. Yet the miseries and wrongs of Ireland touched his heart, and while he sought to unite that country more closely with England, he saw clearly that such a union, to be permanent and satisfactory, must be based on a better distribution of justice in ecclesiastical matters. The Duke of Somerset, Sir William Petty under Cromwell, and William III. had all seen the advantages that would result from the union of the sister isle; but they were unable or unwilling to propose the needful concessions. The Protestant ascendancy was still rampant in Ireland; but it was unchecked by any imperial control; Roman Catholics were excluded from the Irish parliament; and the two parliaments, being independent, formed, in fact, two sovereign powers ready at any moment to diverge on questions of vital importance, * "Life of Wilberforce," vol. ii. pp. 222-3. |