And now members of Parliament were fast coming up to London.The chiefs of the opposition met for the purpose of considering the course to be taken on the first day of the session.It was easy to guess what would be the language of the King's speech, and of the address which would be moved in answer to that speech.An amendment condemning the policy of the government had been prepared, and was to have been proposed in the House of Commons by Lord Henry Petty, a young nobleman who had already won for himself that place in the esteem of his country which, after the lapse of more than half a century, he still retains.He was unwilling, however, to come forward as the accuser of one who was incapable of defending himself.Lord Grenville, who had been informed of Pitt's state by Lord Wellesley, and had been deeply affected by it, earnestly recommended forbearance; and Fox, with characteristic generosity and good nature, gave his voice against attacking his now helpless rival."Sunt lacrymae rerum," he said, "et mentem mortalia tangunt." On the first day, therefore, there was no debate.It was rumoured that evening that Pitt was better.But on the following morning his physicians pronounced that there were no hopes.The commanding faculties of which he had been too proud were beginning to fail.His old tutor and friend, the Bishop of Lincoln, informed him of his danger, and gave such religious advice and consolation as a confused and obscured mind could receive.Stories were told of devout sentiments fervently uttered by the dying man.But these stories found no credit with anybody who knew him.Wilberforce pronounced it impossible that they could be true."Pitt," he added, "was a man who always said less than he thought on such topics." It was asserted in many after-dinner speeches, Grub Street elegies, and academic prize poems and prize declamations, that the great minister died exclaiming, "Oh my country!" This is a fable; but it is true that the last words which he uttered, while he knew what he said, were broken exclamations about the alarming state of public affairs.He ceased to breathe on the morning of the 23rd of January, 1806, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day on which he first took his seat in Parliament.He was in his forty-seventh year, and had been, during near nineteen years, First Lord of the Treasury, and undisputed chief of the administration.Since parliamentary government was established in England, no English statesman has held supreme power so long.Walpole, it is true, was First Lord of the Treasury during more than twenty years: but it was not till Walpole had been some time First Lord of the Treasury that he could be properly called Prime Minister.
It was moved in the House of Commons that Pitt should be honoured with a public funeral and a monument.The motion was opposed by Fox in a speech which deserves to be studied as a model of good taste and good feeling.The task was the most invidious that ever an orator undertook: but it was performed with a humanity and delicacy which were warmly acknowledged by the mourning friends of him who was gone.The motion was carried by 288 votes to 89.
The 22d of February was fixed for the funeral.The corpse having lain in state during two days in the Painted Chamber, was borne with great pomp to the northern transept of the Abbey.Asplendid train of princes, nobles, bishops, and privy councillors followed.The grave of Pitt had been made near to the spot where his great father lay, near also to the spot where his great rival was soon to lie.The sadness of the assistants was beyond that of ordinary mourners.For he whom they were committing to the dust had died of sorrows and anxieties of which none of the survivors could be altogether without a share.Wilberforce, who carried the banner before the hearse, described the awful ceremony with deep feeling.As the coffin descended into the earth, he said, the eagle face of Chatham from above seemed to look down with consternation into the dark house which was receiving all that remained of so much power and glory.
All parties in the House of Commons readily concurred in voting forty thousand pounds to satisfy the demands of Pitt's creditors.
Some of his admirers seemed to consider the magnitude of his embarrassments as a circumstance highly honourable to him; but men of sense will probably be of a different opinion.It is far better, no doubt, that a great minister should carry his contempt of money to excess than that he should contaminate his hands with unlawful gain.But it is neither right nor becoming in a man to whom the public has given an income more than sufficient for his comfort and dignity to bequeath to that public a great debt, the effect of mere negligence and profusion.As first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Pitt never had less than six thousand a year, besides an excellent house.In 1792 he was forced by his royal master's friendly importunity to accept for life the office of Warden of the Cinque Ports, with near four thousand a year more.He had neither wife nor child; he had no needy relations: he had no expensive tastes: he had no long election bills.Had he given but a quarter of an hour a week to the regulation of his household, he would have kept his expenditure within bounds.Or, if he could not spare even a quarter of an hour a week for that purpose, he had numerous friends, excellent men of business, who would have been proud to act as his stewards.One of those friends, the chief of a great commercial house in the city, made an attempt to put the establishment in Downing Street to rights; but in vain.He found that the waste of the servants' hall was almost fabulous.The quantity of butcher's meat charged in the bills was nine hundredweight a week.The consumption of poultry, of fish, and of tea was in proportion.The character of Pitt would have stood higher if with the disinterestedness of Pericles and of De Witt, he had united their dignified frugality.
The memory of Pitt has been assailed, times innumerable, often justly, often unjustly; but it has suffered much less from his assailants than from his eulogists.For, during many years, his name was the rallying cry of a class of men with whom, at one of those terrible conjunctures which confound all ordinary distinctions, he was accidentally and temporarily connected, but to whom, on almost all great questions of principle, he was diametrically opposed.The haters of parliamentary reform called themselves Pittites, not choosing to remember that Pitt made three motions for parliamentary reform, and that, though he thought that such a reform could not safely be made while the passions excited by the French revolution were raging, he never uttered a word indicating that he should not be prepared at a more convenient season to bring the question forward a fourth time.The toast of Protestant ascendency was drunk on Pitt's birthday by a set of Pittites who could not but be aware that Pitt had resigned his office because he could not carry Catholic emancipation.The defenders of the Test Act called themselves Pittites, though they could not be ignorant that Pitt had laid before George the Third unanswerable reasons for abolishing the Test Act.The enemies of free trade called themselves Pittites, though Pitt was far more deeply imbued with the doctrines of Adam Smith than either Fox or Grey.The very negro-drivers invoked the name of Pitt, whose eloquence was never more conspicuously displayed than when he spoke of the wrongs of the negro.This mythical Pitt, who resembles the genuine Pitt as little as Charlemagne of Ariosto resembles the Charlemagne of Eginhard, has had his day.History will vindicate the real man from calumny disguised under the semblance of adulation, and will exhibit him as what he was, a minister of great talents, honest intentions, and liberal opinions, pre-eminently qualified, intellectually and morally, for the part of a parliamentary leader, and capable of administering with prudence and moderation the government of a prosperous and tranquil country, but unequal to surprising and terrible emergencies, and liable, in such emergencies, to err grievously, both on the side of weakness and on the side of violence....
