William Pitt the Younger: A Biography

William Hague points out in the afterword to this book that Margaret Thatcher likened him to Pitt the Younger when he famously took the stage at the Conservative Party Conference aged 16 many years ago. He certainly has a sympathy for his subject but not a slavish one ; he sees weaknesses as well as strengths. It needs to be said that this is a hard-worked book, and Hague's conscientious research is everywhere apparent. He usually avoids the danger of an invisible wood hidden by multitudes of trees - perhaps not quite, or not always - but there is still a lot of information in the book, and it's a long book. Hague also faces a difficulty in the nature of his subject. If you take the politician away from Pitt, there is not much left. Disraeli, Gladstone and Churchill, to name only three, were interesting characters in themselves, never mind their achievements ; Pitt was an unmarried, totally dedicated politician with an enigmatic nature, little in the way of hobbies and few friends. He drank very heavily and no doubt enjoyed the experience, but even that stemmed from medical advice and not what might be thought an interesting recklessness of character. However, the events through which he lived - the American War, attempts at parliamentary reform, the 'madness' of the King (actually probably acute intermittent porphyria), the anti-slavery movement with his friend Wilberforce, the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars - are all important and some are momentous. Hague tells the tale of all these things and his subject's involvement in them pretty well. He writes clearly and articulately and has quite a good sense of structure in his narrative - he is, for example, good at cliff-hangers at section and chapter endings. There are a few entertaining anecdotes (not many). What he fails to do for me is convey the astonishing power of Pitt as a parliamentary orator. Often he writes of a devastating speech, or one which thrilled the Commons with its clarity, logic and intellectual brilliance, but he doesn't really make that come to life in the quotations he chooses, which (admittedly out of context) seem to me wordy and even a little pompous sometimes. But fair's fair - I enjoyed the book, it is a good work of scholarship, it does cast a great deal of light on the subject and his time, and it is rather touching that it has been written by a modern politician who, whatever the similarities, has yet to come within shouting distance of Pitt's achievement in his time - as I am sure Hague would have the realism and humility to acknowledge.

Great introductory piece on a great man! (0/0 people found this helpful)

I thought this book a wonderful introduction to the life and administration of William Pitt the Younger. Mr Hague manages to, in a relatively short book (compared to Ehrman's) to outline and analyse Pitt's true uniqueness and irregularty as a man. Few men become PM at 24 and even fewer worked the excessive hours Pitt. Pitt's oratory was legendary and his clashes with Fox were too. Hague looks at these two characters in relation to the times with the end of America and the radicalism of Paine & co. Pitt's reactionary nature after the French revolution is analysed well as his economic policy of the 1780's which has become famous for it's originality and audacity. Hagues book isn't in the same league as Jenkins and Ehrman but is a splendid first attempt!

A rounded portrait of a great statesman (1/1 people found this helpful)

William Hague has a pleasant, straightforward and limpid style in which he can convey not only complex political situations, but a warmth of feeling towards his subject and a sensitive and empathic interpretation of behaviour and background.

He begins with Pitt's extremely precocious childhood. He was tutored at home, in large part by his father (whose loving nature may also be something of a revelation to readers). From earliest childhood young Pitt breathed in politics. Hague speculates that he learnt not only from his father's successes (his oratory, his foreign policy), but also from his failures (going to the Lords in 1766, or leaving the post of First Lord of the Treasury to someone else).

There are exciting accounts of several key episodes in his life: his rise to becoming Prime Minister at the age of 24; the Regency Crisis of 1788/9; his resignation over his disagreement with George III over Catholic Emancipation in 1801 (beautifully analyzed), and his promise, after the King's recovery from his recurring malady, never to raise the matter again; the drifting apart between Pitt and his old friend and nominee Addington during the latter's interregnum.

No minister except Walpole has for so long and so completely dominated the House of Commons. Pitt was universally acclaimed as a great orator, though only a very few passages quoted in this book - foremost among them his speech in 1792 advocating the abolition of the slave trade - make for stirring reading these days. Part of the appeal of his speeches is said to have been the cogency of their logical structure and his mastery of detail, which is not so easily conveyed in a book. He was a brilliant manager of the nation's finances - but his own were often in a ruinous state. He could not be bothered to pay much attention to them, and refused to take sinecure offices (except, at the King's insistence, the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports) or a large donation offered by the merchants of the City of London. He was hugely in debt at the time of his resignation in 1801, but he refused all offers of help, from the King, from Parliament, from his successor Addington in the form of sinecure offices, or from the City. Only through help from a handful of his closest friends was the pressure of debt slightly eased.

For Pitt rightly prided himself on his personal probity. He would accept nothing that might be construed as putting him under an obligation; but, though he was personally bored with appeals for his patronage, he did not scruple to allow his lieutenants to manage patronage and bribery on a massive scale, especially at critical moments of his rule. (Hague mentions only in passing his massive inflation of the peerage.)

His finances and his speeches made him a great war leader, but he was less so in the actual conduct of the wars. He underestimated France in the early days and overestimated Britain's military (as distinct from naval) resources. He made miscalculations of the kind that Chatham probably would not have made (though Chatham, of course, had faced a far less dynamic France). He twice (1796, 1797) sought for peace with France because of the immense drain on Britain's financial resources, but, encouraged by a string of French setbacks in 1798 and 1799, turned down the peace overtures Napoleon made immediately after seizing power in France in 1799. In this latter refusal he was strongly backed by his cousin, the hawkish foreign minister William Grenville.

Hague brings out the importance of Grenville throughout Pitt's career. A staunch ally until Pitt's resignation, he became so impatient with Pitt's early forbearance with regard to Addington that he joined Fox in opposition - which George III could not forgive. So when Pitt returned to office in 1804, he could not give a post to Grenville, who then practically became a Foxite Whig. As a result, Pitt no longer had the mastery of the Commons or even of the Cabinet that he had had before, and it added to the strain in those years of Ulm and Austerlitz. By that time Pitt was a shadow of his former self, increasingly exhausted and in dreadful health.

It is on the human side that Hague excels, and there is not always scope for that in the story. Much of Pitt's work in government - finance, trade, administrative reform, the shuffling of seats around the cabinet table - gives little scope to more than the thoroughly workmanlike treatment it receives here. Even the account of the wars with France are no more than that. For me, the best parts of the book deal with Pitt's character. He has generally been considered cold; but he had many close friends in whose company he was witty and amusing. A fine chapter discusses this contrast and shows Pitt, when Prime Minister, as relaxed and warm with family and real friends. There is a long and moving letter he wrote to Wilberforce when the latter announced his religious conversion in 1785. There is an astonishing scene a couple of years before his death when at one moment he was larking around with his intimates whom he allowed to blacken his face with burnt cork, and a moment later, quickly cleaned up, stiffly received political visitors. Between Pitt and his mother there was great warmth and affection. In his letters to her he always made light of difficulties or his poor health, not just because he was by nature optimistic, but because he wanted to spare her worries.

It is astonishing that Hague should have researched and written this book of 592 pages inside two years. The masterly ten-page summing up at the end is not only balanced in its judgments, but tells us a good deal about Hague himself. It is clear that he not only admires Pitt, but feels a great affection for him; and he will make many readers feel the same.

An interesting biography (2/3 people found this helpful)

Pitt the Younger by William Hauge is an interesting book dealing with one of the heroes of British politics. It describes the life of a man who devoted his short life to running the country in one of its hours of need. Although it perhaps lacks the analysis you find in some biographies it is all in all a very good book which is easy to read and will increase most reader's knowledge of this quite remarkable man.

Hague on Pitt (7/8 people found this helpful)

It is easy to see why William Hague reveres the memory of William Pitt the Younger and perhaps seems something of himself in him. Both were recognised as prococious talent early in their political careers, both were possessed of quick wit and intelligence, both dedicated their lives to politics at an early age. Hague hung Pitt's portrait in the Shadow Cabinet, hoping perhaps that some of his hero's skill in winning and maintaining power would rub off on him and his colleagues. When Hague was asked to write his memoirs after resigning as Tory leader in 2001, he dismissed the idea as ridiculous for a 40 year old, and chose instead to write about the prime minister regarded as the father of the Conservative Party.

Hague tells the story of the younger Pitt's short but astonishing life with great skill and lucidity, supplying parallels and contrasts with the modern political age. It is a fascinating account, not only of the life of Pitt, but also of British politics in general in the late eighteenth century. The circumstances in which Pitt became Prime Minister were extraordinary at the time, and would of course be completely impossible now. At this juncture considerable power still remained in the hands of the sovereign, and after the deadweight first two Georges, King George III had an almost Stuart-like determination to fully exercise the powers vested in him. He chose a moment to dismiss a government he did not like, that of Lord North and Charles James Fox, and to install the 24 year old William Pitt.

The story of how this youth managed to hold together a government against an indignant opposition, who still controlled the Commons, for long enough to win over a working majority is fascinating in its own right. Pitt, working with the King, managed gradually to consolidate the new government until the moment was right to dissolve Parliament and use the considerable powers available to incumbent prime ministers to ensure a clear majority in the subsequent House of Commons. He remained in office, with a short break, until his untimely death at 46.

Among the strengths that made Pitt such a political success were his remarkable oratory powers in the Commons, his shrewd use of the powers of patronage available to him and his innovative approaches to solving the nation's financial woes in the wake of the military catastrophe of the American War. It would be incorrect to say he was incorruptable - more accurately he had no regard for his personal financial situation, and died with huge debts. But he was quite comfortable with offering honours or financial incentives to those whom he knew would be motivated by them.

A criticism of Hague's work might be that too little time is spent on conclusions. The reader is left wondering why William Pitt the Younger should be regarded as a "great" prime minister. He was a brilliant speaker and his shrewdness in defending his position from his opponents was legendary. Statistically his position in British history is unassailable, having come to office at such a young age, and served as prime minister for a little short of nineteen years. But these things do not on their own make a great prime minister. Critics can point to his record of internal repression during the long war with revolutionary France and to his failure to legislate on any of the three great liberal causes which he professed to support - Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, and the abolition of the slave trade. The fact that the last of these was already accepted in principle by most of the British ruling class, and passed quickly into law after his death makes his tardiness hard to forgive.

The last great criticism of Pitt is his failure to read the military strength of France in 1793 and his consequential willingless to take Britain back to war with her old enemy. Pitt was convinced that France was bankrupt and would not be able to stand for long against a united European coalition. All his good work in paying back the national debt in the 1780s was undone, and if it was not for the newly created wealth of the industrial revolution, Britain would have bled itself to death bribing Austria and Prussia to remain in the field. As it was he was able to bridge the gap with his most enduring innovation - income tax.

Whatever the reader's conclusion about the William Pitt the Younger, Hague has written an excellent first book. One hopes that he will publish more.

William Pitt the Younger: A Biography

William Hague

Reader Reviews:

not a great biography, but a very creditable one (0/0 people found this helpful)

Great introductory piece on a great man! (0/0 people found this helpful)

A rounded portrait of a great statesman (1/1 people found this helpful)

An interesting biography (2/3 people found this helpful)

Hague on Pitt (7/8 people found this helpful)

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