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"It was rather different going to school in those days!" declared Mrs. Pitt. "The hours were very long, the lessons hard, and the masters strict, and not unwilling to use the rod for the slightest misdemeanor. There have been terrible stories of boys being much hurt, or even killed as a result of this practice.
The friendship between Sir Peter Vigo and his brother M.P., Mr. Rodney, never diminished, and Mr. Rodney became richer every year. He experienced considerable remorse at sitting in opposition to the son of his right honourable friend, the late William Pitt Ferrars, and frequently consulted Sir Peter on his embarrassment and difficulty.
Murray, a little while before, had been elevated to the bench, as Lord Mansfield. There was scarcely an eminent man in the House of Commons who was not made a member of the administration. All the talent of the nation was laid at the feet of Pitt, and he had the supreme direction of the army and of foreign affairs. Then truly commenced the brilliant career of Pitt.
Addington, after vainly endeavouring to induce Pitt to modify his terms, laid them before a cabinet council on April 13; they were immediately rejected, though the cabinet declared itself ready to admit to office Pitt himself and those of his colleagues who had hitherto acted with the Addington ministry. Pitt could hardly have expected any other reply.
The Scotch Estates, therefore, had absolutely regarded the possible separation of the two kingdoms as a contingency which might become not undesirable; and, though it was too ticklish an argument to bring forward, it may very possibly have occurred to Pitt that a similar vote of the Irish Parliament was not impossible.
Lord Cochrane asserted that the real revolutionists of England were the ministers and their followers. "I am persuaded that no man without doors wishes the subversion of the Constitution; but within it, bribery and corruption stand for the Constitution. Mr. Pitt himself confessed that no honest man could hold the situation of minister for any length of time.
Pitt seemed determined at all hazards not to make peace on any terms; but his cunning friend Wilberforce, and his partizans, being alarmed at the continuance of the war, the minister was obliged to please them, and delude the people.
The prominent statesmen they talked of most were Fox, Pitt, Lord John Russell, Palmerston, Peel, Gladstone and Disraeli; and apart from the fault they had to find with the latter as a statesman, they believed him to be unwilling to legislate in their interests, though even they didn't appear to have the ghost of an idea as to how those interests were to be legislatively served.
Into the midst of this state of things, this world of despondency, mediocrity, selfishness, and chicanery, and at the precise crisis when the disasters which attended the opening campaigns of the Seven Years' War and particularly the loss of Minorca seemed to confirm the gloomiest prognostications of the most hopeless pessimists, came William Pitt; and in eighteen months changed the face of the world, not for his generation only, but for ours.
"The truth is, Sir John, your society considers ardor in religion as the fever of a distempered understanding, while in inferior concerns they admire it as the indication of a powerful mind. Is zeal in politics accounted the mark of a vulgar intellect? Did they consider the unquenchable ardor of Pitt, did they regard the lofty enthusiasm of Fox, as evidences of a feeble or a disordered mind?
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