Pitt, the disciple of Adam Smith, leader of classes, and also of the court party; "Wealth of Nations," and Pitt, then an undergraduate at Cambridge, whose mental temper was mathematical and financial, became at once a disciple of the new master, whose principles soon became the groundwork of his policy.1 Nothing could have been more natural than the instinct that led the became the manufacturing and trading classes, in the midst of the politithe trading cal confusion by which every interest was clouded, to turn to Pitt as a deliverer. To the support that thus came to him from the most aggressive element in the nation was added the influence of the potential body surrounding the throne, who saw in him the only man who could rescue the king from his peril. By the combined force of these two great currents, the will of the nation was able to break through the corrupt influences that ordinarily dominated the representative system, and the result was that the new government was so enthusisustained astically sustained by the constituent bodies that upwards of a stituencies; hundred and sixty of the coalition that had opposed Pitt lost their seats,2 he coming in at the head of the list from the University of Cambridge, where a few years before he was at the although he bottom of the poll. Thus the prime minister of twenty-five, political life who had entered public life as a Whig, was lifted through the as a Whig, wreck of that party to a height of political authority which no the founder other statesman had been able to reach since the Revolution. of the long tory ascend- As the favorite of the king, the parliament, and the nation, Pitt was able to consolidate the power he had gained, and to retain it unbroken down to 1801, while the Tory ascendency thus established continued in name, at least, almost without interruption, down to the era of the Reform Bill of 1832. by the con entered Pitt was ency. Revival of terial system under the influence The importance of Pitt's ascendency to the history of the the minis- constitution is embodied in the fact that through the combined strength of his personal character and political position he was able to neutralize to a great extent the efforts that George III. had made to destroy the new ministerial system, whose reconstitution was absolutely necessary for the execution of Pitt's political ideas. In a conversation with Lord Melville in 1803 of Pitt; 1 "He had learned from Adam Smith the first principles of political economy, and the commercial treaty with France was the first visible result of the new science.". - Gardiner and Mullinger, Introd. to Eng. Hist., p. 2 Tomline's Life of Pitt, vol. i. p. 469; Stanhope's Life of Pitt, vol. i. p. 204, et seq. 8 Macaulay's vol. iii. p. 334. "William Pitt," Essays, that a real ter was a his will able to he, when out of office, gave expression to those ideas "pointedly and decidedly," in explaining "the absolute necessity there is in the conduct of the affairs of this country that there should be an avowed and real minister, possessing the chief he avowed weight in the council, and the principal place in the confidence first minisof the king. In that respect (he contended) there can be no necessity; rivalry or division of power. That power must rest in the person generally called the first minister, and that minister ought (he thought) to be the person at the head of the finances. If it should unfortunately come to such a radical difference of opinion that no spirit of conciliation or concession can reconcile, the sentiments of the minister must be allowed and under- and that stood to prevail, leaving the other members of administration should to act as they may conceive themselves conscientiously called always prevail; upon to act under such circumstances."1 While such ideas were directly in conflict with the aggressive position the king how the had assumed from his accession, his perfect confidence in the king was integrity and ability of Pitt, coupled with the fact that his reconcile principles were entirely in accordance with his own, made it with his possible for him so far to yield to the superior intelligence of own; his first minister as to approximately establish the constitutional relations between the sovereign and his advisers that had existed in the two preceding reigns. And yet it would be a his submisgrave error to suppose that the surrender upon the part of the partial; king was either sudden or absolute. George III. persevered to the end in having all matters of government, both great and small, submitted to his judgment and approval, while he jealously held on to the distribution of patronage in church and state.2 But if Pitt was thus forced to veil his absolutism as while Pitt prime minister by an outward show of submission to the royal outward will, within the cabinet itself he so asserted his authority as to show of put beyond all question the fact that he was the real chief of to the state. It is said to have been his custom to briefly discuss at he was cabinet meetings with Dundas such matters as they had not with his previously arranged, and then after communicating his decision colleagues; to his colleagues they were told that they might go.3 By thus firmly establishing the paramount influence of the prime min 1 Stanhope's Life of Pitt, vol. iv. May, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 75, 86p. 24. 88. 2 Cf. Parl. Hist., vol. xxiv. p. 294; 3 Fitzmaurice, Life of Lord Shelburne, vol. iii. p. 411. Pitt's ideas sion only made an submission sovereign, autocratic the system ments; with the rise of Pitt influence of the broke down ister over his associates, Pitt was able to break down at last the of independ- bad system of government by means of separate and independent depart- ent departments of state that had existed since the Revolution simply because the ministers had never been forced to accept the supremacy of a common chief.1 The foundations of such a supremacy laid down by Walpole ripened under Pitt into a rule of government which, with perhaps two exceptions, has never been disputed since that time. The statement may the personal therefore be made that, from the moment that Pitt entered into office as first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the sovereign exchequer, the right of the sovereign not only to reign but to rule began again to sink into the background, in order to make place for the supremacy of the prime minister as now understood. Before the reign of George III. drew to a close the principles were firmly settled, (1) that the prime minister was the personal choice of the king, and as such the depository of his constitutional confidence; (2) that the trust thus assumed was to be discharged with the aid of colleagues selected by the first minister 2 himself, subject of course to the sovereign's approval. began to wane; two great principles settled before the end of the reign of George III. Pitt as legislator cier ; 7. Apart from the inestimable service rendered by Pitt in and finan- removing the obstruction that forced for a time the new system of government by cabinets into eclipse, he was the author of two far-reaching schemes of legislation which have become. permanent parts of the constitution. As the responsible head of the national finances he was immediately called upon to proincreased vide for increased taxation, made necessary by the expenses of made neces- the War of American Independence, that added a hundred and twenty-one millions to the permanent debt. The rapid increase of wealth and prosperity during the eight years of peace with which his administration opened made that task a comparatively easy one; and the result was that, at the end of the taxation sary by American war; debt in increase nental traordinary first met by indirect year 1792, the total debt of the nation was not more than national £237,400,000; and the public credit, which when he entered 1792; office was at the lowest ebb, had become so strong that the English funds were looked upon as the safest of all investments. Such was the prosperous condition of things when the declaration of war from France in February, 1793, drew vast England into the great continental struggle which cost her resulting £831,000,000, of which sum about £622,000,000 were added from contito the permanent debt. As the war progressed, enormous wars; loans were contracted, while the current expenses of government were met by credits on the Bank of England, which was finally ordered by the privy council in 1797 to suspend cash payments. Down to that time the extraordinary demand thus the exmade necessary had been raised by indirect taxes on consump- demand tion, and sometimes on production, but not by direct taxes on property. Driven at last by necessity to resort to that method taxes; of taxation, Pitt in his budget of November, 1797, introduced his scheme for the "Triple assessment for 1798,"1 which he then by prefaced with a splendid appeal to the patriotism of the nation. Triple This triple assessment, which trebled all the assessed taxes assessment for 1798;" imposed on individuals, with the limitation that it should not exceed a tenth of the taxpayer's income, was not only unpopular, but disappointing in its practical results; 2 and for such reasons it was permitted to expire at the end of the year. As superseded a substitute Pitt then suggested "that a general tax should be by a temimposed upon all the leading branches of income," estimated income tax, by him to amount at that time, after liberal deductions, to £102,000,000. His famous income tax, first levied in 1798, consisted of the imposition of a tax of 10 per cent. upon all incomes arising from annual rent and profits. Though levied which as a war tax which was to cease at the declaration of peace, it was immediately pledged to a loan, and thus after being repealed and reimposed, it has become like the land tax a permanent element in the national revenue. direct, porary became permanent. While Pitt was thus straining every nerve of the financial Pitt and Ireland; system in order to raise the vast quotas contributed by Eng 1 Passed January 12, 1798, 38 Geo. III. c. 16. 2 Pitt said that the measure was destroyed by "shameful evasion or rather scandalous fraud." — Speeches, 3 Upon the whole subject, see land for the maintenance of the war upon the continent, he was called upon to deal with a complex problem nearer home for which no English statesman has yet been able to find a satisfactory solution. Although at the accession of George III. Ireland, with her separate parliament, army, and magistracy, preserved all the outward seeming of national life, in her relations with the English government and people she was nothing more in fact than a conquered province. By one of her depend- "Poynings' Acts,"1 existing since the reign of Henry VII., the tion under Irish parliament was deprived of all initiative in legislation; it Poynings' could only answer "aye" or "no" to such bills, including even ent condi Act; tion of Irish catholics and country governed a money bills, as were submitted to it by the English privy council. And even in the deliberations of that impotent assembly the mass of the Irish people had no voice. The Irish catholics, that numbered five to every Irish protestant, were not only excluded from membership in parliament, but also from the right of voting for the representatives who composed it, as well as from all offices civil, military, and municipal, disqualification likewise extended to about one half of the protestant protestant population. The presbyterian dissenters, who dissenters; formed the bulk of the Ulster settlements, were as severely proscribed as their catholic brethren. The result was that the entire administration of the country was vested in such protestants as belonged to the established church, numbering all together about a twelfth of the population of the island. The Irish house of lords was composed of protestant bishops tion of the and peers of the same faith, while the house of commons, that Irish parliament; assumed to represent the country, was made up of members returned either by rotten boroughs, or close corporations under the control of the great protestant landowners, into whose hands had been concentrated the bulk of the soil through the vast confiscations that had followed successive revolts. And in order to make the supremacy of the ruling race still more subject to the suprem- secure, the English parliament passed an act in the reign of English; George I. affirming its right "to bind the people and kingdom by about a twelfth of the population; composi how far acy of the 1 10 Hen. VII. c. 4 (Irish). 2 Grattan's Life, vol. i. p. 57. 8 The whole matter is well summed up by Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iv. pp. 262-266. See also Tor rens, Hist. of Cabinets, vol. i. pp. 206 222. 46 Geo. I. c. 5, affirming 10 Hen. VII. c. 22. "The legislature of Ireland was that of a British dependency.”. May, Const. Hist., vol. iii. pp. 305, 306. |