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When he regained his faculties, Pitt, who was moved to the heart by the trouble which he had caused to his aged king, and disturbed by the evils which threatened England under the regency of the Prince of Wales, undertook never to raise the question of the emancipation of the Catholics during the life of George III. He had no seat, however, in the new cabinet, which was obviously incapable, and unequal to the difficult task which it had undertaken, and in their earlier proceedings still influenced by Pitt's action, and following the line of policy which he had traced.
Then came Frederick the Great, who ruled from 1740 to 1786, and those Germans who are fond of claiming Shakespeare for their own will also tell you that the plan drawn up by Frederick for Pitt's seven years' struggle with France that plan so unfortunately imitated afterwards by the Emperor in his correspondence with Queen Victoria during the Boer War was the foundation-stone of British naval supremacy!
The crown of his financial fame was his plan for the redemption of the National Debt introduced in 1786. His plan was based on the comparatively familiar idea of a sinking fund. Up to the time of Pitt's proposal, however, such sinking fund as might exist in a time of peace was always liable to be taken over and made use of by the Government in a time of war.
He did not come for months together to the Hall, where his abominable old father abandoned himself completely to rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's success rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. "It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had not broke, I never would have left her.
A reference to his fellow-Etonian may be found in one of the introductory chapters of that masterpiece, where Fielding, while again advocating the claims of learning, takes occasion to pay this sonorous tribute to Pitt's oratory: "Nor do I believe that all the imagination, fire, and judgment of Pitt, could have produced those orations that have made the senate of England in these our times a rival in eloquence to Greece and Rome, if he had not been so well read in the writings of Demosthenes and Cicero, as to have transferred their whole spirit into his speeches and, with their spirit, their knowledge too."
Pitt's sinking fund was instituted in order to enable England to pay subsidies to the powers allied against the French republic. The Duke of Wellington's house in Hyde Park was built by the nation, which twice voted the sum of £200,000 for the purpose. This, however, is exclusive of the cost of the frescoes, which were also paid for out of the public purse. Mr.
But the wisdom of Pitt found less favour in Parliament than the dense stupidity of Lord Sheffield, who thought that to admit Americans to the carrying trade would undermine the naval power of Great Britain. Pitt's measure was defeated, and the regulation of commerce with America was left to the king in council.
The only comment I shall make on these words is: they were penned more than half a century after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to shower down blessings on the Irish people. Mr. Goldwin Smith's first letter was written on the 23rd of November, 1867, the day of the execution of the Fenians Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien. He says
For the leaders of the movement, themselves nearly all men of the lowest degree, denounced the Irish nobles with almost as much vehemence as the English connection. Yet Pitt's policy, dictated partly by a spirit of conciliation, and still more by feelings of justice, was gradually removing many of the grievances of which the Irish had real reason to complain.
Pitt's comment on this article was so brief as to show that he regarded its justice as well as its importance too obvious to need any elaborate justification.
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