Two Parliaments Escape Reform 227
practice of depositing the funds in the Bank of England, and put himself on a
salary. I cannot resist the observation that the salary fixed upon was £4,000, five
times more than Alexander Hamilton received as Secretary of the Treasury in
- Burke explained that, while cutting out sinecures, he meant to have the re-
ally important offices of state handsomely paid, so as to attract the right kind of
men, and keep up the necessary “representation.”^11
Actually, the Economical Reform of 1782 saved less than £50,000 a year.^12 In an
annual budget of £12,500,000 this was imperceptible to the taxpayer. Nor, as it
turned out, was it enough to emancipate Parliament from the King. The King
could win any election; his problem was to find someone able and willing to head
up his government. George III, buffeted and discomfited, obliged finally to part
with North, and even to bring in the Whigs, was not really beaten. He survived
quite well the “near revolution” of 1780, and even Rockingham’s three months in
office. He found the man he needed in young William Pitt.
Entering Parliament at the age of twenty- two, enjoying high office with Shel-
burne the following year, and himself Prime Minister the year after that, Pitt dis-
solved Parliament in 1784. Older and more edifying histories declare that he
sensed an aroused country in his favor, and swept into power as the nation’s candi-
date against an embarrassed monarch. The truth is that Pitt was the King’s man,
and that, before his dissolution of Parliament, he had the expert advice of John
Robinson, the King’s manager, who, after exhaustive calculations, assured him that
the crown controlled enough boroughs to give him a victory.^13
Pitt did not basically agree with George III. Pitt had his principles, which were
usually good ones, but he also respected the principles of the royal master. He held
office for almost two decades by respecting the King’s wishes when he could not
change them. Here again, as in the days of the Stamp Act, there was a remote and
ludicrous English analogy to the enlightened despotism of the Continent, which
the Whiggish traditions of English history have perhaps concealed. With Pitt in
office the aristocracy was kept at a distance. As Lady Holland, the great Whig
hostess, was to remark in the days of the French Revolution, Pitt really had no
more regard for the aristocracy than any member of the London Corresponding
Society. And Pitt did accomplish a good deal of fiscal and administrative recon-
struction by making himself useful to the crown. But, as with reforming ministers
in other countries, there were important sacrifices that he had to make. In England
as elsewhere, in the 1780’s, the aristocracy was not dislodged.
The young Pitt, among his other qualities, was a serious believer in the need for
parliamentary reform. He carried over, in his younger days, some of the popular
ideas of Shelburne and his father. He himself introduced three reform bills. They
came at the same time as the reform bill in Ireland, and the two kingdoms can be
considered together.
11 Quotations in this paragraph are from Burke’s speech on economical reform.
12 J. Sinclair, History of the Public Revenue of the British Empire (London, 1803), II, 85.
13 W. T. Laprade, Parliamentary Papers of John Robinson 1774–1784 (London, 1922) in Camden
Society Third Series, vol. 33. That Pitt took and retained office as the King’s man, and not by a popular,
parliamentary, or liberal triumph over George III, is the thesis of D. G. Barnes, George III and William
Pitt, 1783–1806 (London, 1939). It is shared by Pares, Butterfield, Feiling, and other British writers.