his cabinet. This meant a reconstruction of the whole ministry, and Pitt stipulated that the changes should be made by the king's desire and on the recommendation of the existing ministry.
The situation had become an impossible one. Nothing was more reasonable than that Pitt, the friend and protector of the existing ministry, should assume the direction of affairs now that the nation appeared to be on the brink of war. But Pitt could not honourably desert those former colleagues, who had resigned with him on the catholic question. Two of these, however, Grenville and Windham, though doubtless men of the highest capacity, had bitterly attacked the existing ministry; and it was not to be expected that that ministry, supported as it still was by overwhelming majorities in both houses of parliament, supported as it had hitherto been by Pitt himself, should consent to admit its opponents to a share of office. It is highly improbable that Grenville and Windham would then have co-operated with Addington and Hawkesbury, and their admission to office would have ruined the cohesion of the cabinet, unless it had been accompanied by the retirement of the leading members of the existing ministry which Pitt's previous attitude, together with the actual balance of parties in parliament, rendered it impossible to demand. How difficult it was to induce Grenville and Windham to enter into any combination future years were to prove. For the present the ministry took not merely the wisest, but the only course open to it. 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. No ministry could have granted such terms except on the supposition that Pitt was indispensable, and Pitt for the present hardly claimed such a position.14
But if Pitt did not consider himself indispensable, his friends did, and both he and others came gradually to adopt their view. The rejection of his terms left him free to adopt the line of policy that he had sketched to Grenville in the previous December. He had not to wait long for an opportunity, but in the opinion of Pitt's friends at least the first provocation came from Addington. Unable to strengthen his ministry by any accession from Pitt and his followers, he had turned to the "old opposition," the whigs who, under the leadership of Fox, had consistently advocated a pacific policy. These had recently supported the ministry against the "new opposition," as the followers of Grenville and Windham were called. But since 1797 Fox and the majority of the "old opposition" had generally absented themselves from parliament, and George Tierney, member for Southwark, had led what was left of their party.15 He now received and accepted the offer of the treasurership of the navy, one of the most important of the offices below cabinet rank. As a speaker Tierney was a valuable addition to the government which was sadly deficient in debating power; he had, however, been particularly bitter in his attacks on Pitt, with whom he had fought a duel in 1798, and had provoked the sarcastic wit of Canning, in whose well-known parody, "The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder" (1798), the original illustration by Gillray depicted the friend of humanity with the features of Tierney and laid the scene in the borough of Southwark.
CHANGES IN ADDINGTON'S MINISTRY.
The appointment, which Pitt himself does not appear to have resented, was announced on June 1, and Tierney took his place on the treasury bench on the 3rd. On the same evening Colonel Patten moved a series of resolutions condemning, in extravagant terms, the conduct of the ministry in the negotiation with France. Pitt seized the opportunity to move the orders of the day. In other words, he proposed that the question should be left undecided. He expressed the opinion that the ministry was not free from blame, but declared himself unable to concur in all the charges against it. He considered further that to drive the existing ministers out of office would only throw the country into confusion, and that it was therefore inadvisable to pursue the question. To this the ministerial speakers replied by demanding a direct censure or a total acquittal, and the consequent division served only to display the weakness of the opposition. The Addington, Fox, and Grenville parties combined to oppose Pitt's motion, which was rejected by 333 votes against 56. Pitt and Fox, and their respective followers then left the house, leaving the ministerial party and the Grenville party to decide the fate of Patten's resolutions, which were negatived by 275 votes against 34. A comparison of the figures of the two divisions, allowing for tellers, gives as the voting strength of Pitt's party 58, of Grenville's 36, of Fox's 22, and of Addington's 277. Of these the Grenville party alone desired to eject the ministers from office, while Fox's party openly professed a preference for Addington over Pitt.
During the remainder of the session Pitt seldom took any part in parliamentary business, and never opposed the ministry on any question of importance. On August 12 parliament was prorogued after a session lasting nearly nine months, and the prime minister embraced the opportunity of making some slight reconstructions in the ministry. Pelham, who was removed from the home office, resigned his place in the cabinet, and was shortly afterwards consoled with the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster, an office which was not yet definitely recognised as political. Charles Philip Yorke, son of the chancellor who died in 1770 and half-brother of the third Earl of Hardwicke, resigned the office of secretary at war and succeeded to the home office on the 17th. It was also considered advisable to strengthen the ministry in the upper house, where Grenville's oratory gave the opposition a decided advantage in debating power, and Hawkesbury was accordingly summoned to the lords on November 16 in his father's barony of Hawkesbury. After this rearrangement the cabinet contained eight peers and three commoners, no illiberal allowance of commoners according to the ideas of the age. The recess was further marked by a violent war of pamphlets between the followers of Addington and Pitt, which began early in September, and which, although no politician of the first order took any direct part in it, did much to embitter the relations of their respective parties.16 Not less irritating were the jeux d'esprit with which Canning continued to assail the ministry in the newspaper press.17 The most famous of these is the couplet: —
Pitt is to Addington
As London is to Paddington.
A more openly abusive poem, entitled "Good Intentions," described the prime minister as "Happy Britain's guardian gander". The following verses refer to the appointment of Addington's brother, John Hiley Addington, to be paymaster-general of the forces, and of his brother-in-law, Charles Bragge, afterwards succeeded by Tierney, to be treasurer of the navy: —
How blest, how firm the statesman stands
(Him no low intrigue can move)
Circled by faithful kindred bands
And propped by fond fraternal love.
When his speeches hobble vilely,
What "Hear him's" burst from Brother Hiley;
When his faltering periods lag,
Hark to the cheers of Brother Bragge.
Each a gentleman at large,
Lodged and fed at public charge,
Paying (with a grace to charm ye)
This the Fleet, and that the Army.18
THE KING'S ILLNESS.
When parliament reassembled on November 22 the opposition was still disunited, and, though Windham severely condemned the inadequacy of the provision made for national defence, he did not venture to divide against the government. But during the Christmas recess a distinct step was made towards the consolidation of the opposition by the reunion of the two sections of the whig party. Grenville had conceived a chimerical project of replacing the existing administration by one which should include all statesmen possessed of real political talent, whatever their differences in the past might have been. True to this policy, he persuaded Fox in January, 1804, to join him in attempting to expel the Addington administration from office
Buckingham,
See vol. x., p. 399.
Pellew,
For a list of Canning's squibs, belonging to this period, see Lewis,
It was not fair to hold Addington entirely responsible for the promotion of his brother, who had been a junior lord of the treasury under Pitt. The taunt came with a particularly bad grace from Canning, who had himself been paymaster-general in the last administration.
