Early Years of Pitt's Administration

Pitt was confronted by a task of herculean proportions, and was able to do but little to improve the political condition of England. How much he would have accomplished, had not the best years of his life been spent in guiding his country through one of her greatest wars, no one can say. It was his misfortune, not his fault, that his name is connected with no great reform measure. His name is associated with the French Revolution and with Napoleon Bonaparte; yet he was by nature a reformer, a lover of peace, a friend of enlightened progress. Many reform measures that he advocated failed to pass in his day; but they are worthy of consideration, in that they are characteristic of the man and anticipated many of the changes that came about during the next century. In the interest of the finances of the kingdom, Pitt checked smuggling, increased the revenue by distributing taxation more evenly, refused to allow favoritism in public loans, and originated a masterly scheme for the redemption of the national debt.

CHARLES JAMES FOX.

From an engraving by Jones after a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

He concluded an advantageous commercial treaty with France, and sought to give Ireland equal commercial privileges with England. He brought in three measures for a reform of parliament, proposing the gradual abolition of petty boroughs and the transfer of these seats to great cities like London; measures which, like the Irish bill, were defeated in parliament. He showed himself in full sympathy with Clarkson and Wilberforce, who were trying to abolish the slave trade; with Whitbread, who wished to improve the condition of the poor ; and with others, who were attempting to establish a system of popular education. But all the efforts he made in these directions were premature and unsuccessful.

Pitt and the Government of India: Warren Hastings

While able to deal with the minutiæ of domestic reform, Pitt had a mind broad enough to grasp also the intricate problems of empire. For twenty years the great question of the government of India had been before the country. As formerly in some of the American colonies, so in India, a trading company was in control. But the great opportunities for wealth and power that India furnished gave the East India Company an influence and a position that no company ever obtained elsewhere. In 1772 a regulating act had been passed by parliament, to check abuses; and Warren Hastings had been sent out as the first governor-general under the act. During Hastings governorship, Fox had brought in a bill for the better government of India, placing the company under the control of the British government; but it failed of passage, owing to the opposition of the king. In 1784 Pitt framed a measure which left commercial matters in the hands of the company, but gave political control to the British government. Under this system India was governed till 1858.

In 1785 Hastings, after thirteen years of efficient service, returned to England, and was immediately confronted with charges of maladministration, cruelty, and corruption in dealing with the native princes of India. That he had used methods unsanctioned in civilized countries, in order to further conquest and control, there is no doubt; but how far civilized standards ought to govern a conqueror in his treatment of a half-civilized people was then, and is now, a matter of dispute. Burke attacked Hastings with all the fire of his eloquence; and Pitt, on the ground that the acts of public servants should be kept under strict scrutiny, sustained the prosecution. In 1787 Hastings was impeached and tried before the House of Lords. The malevolence of Hastings's enemies and the oratory of Burke exaggerated the importance of the trial at the time; while the matchless rhetoric of Macaulay unduly magnified the whole affair in the century that followed. Hastings was eventually acquitted on all the charges brought against him.