CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE INTRODUCTORY 1 EARLY LIFE CHAPTER II CHAPTER III THE RISING ORATOR .24 CHAPTER IV THE ASPIRANT FOR OFFICE ...... 44 CHAPTER V IN SUBORDINATE OFFICE 57 CHAPTER VI FIRST MINISTRY 75 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAGE FALL FROM POWER 119 CHAPTER VIII IN OPPOSITION.... . 143 CHAPTER IX THE CHATHAM MINISTRY 169 CHAPTER X DEFENCE OF IRELAND AND INDIA . 191 CHAPTER XI DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTION 206 CHAPTER XII DEFENCE OF AMERICA .... 225 APPENDIX ,238 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Posterity, this is an impartial picture. I am neither dazzled by the blaze of the times in which Ihave lived, nor, if there are spots in the sun, do I deny that I see them. It is a man Iam describing, and one, whose greatness will bear to have his blemishesfairly delivered to you notfrom a love ofcensure in me, but oftruth and because it is history Iam writing, not romance. SUCH was the judgment passed on Chatham by a hostile contemporary, whose Memoirs were withheld from the public eye for nearly a century after their compilation. In these words Horace Walpole sums up his incisive character of the terrible cornet of horse whom Sir Robert Walpole attempted to muzzle, of the aspiring orator who contributed so much to the fall of Sir Robert, of the imperious statesman who finally succeeded to more than the power of Walpole at his zenith, reversed his policy, and entirely recast the international position world. of Great Britain in the In eight centuries our country has known but four great creative statesmen men who, to use the words of a well-known historian, have been founders or creators of a new order of things. William the Conqueror made all England an organic nation. Edward the First conceived the union of all Britain. Cromwell made the United Kingdom and founded our Sea Power. Chatham made the Colonial System and was the founder of the Empire. For good and for evil, through heroism and through spoliation, with all its vast and far-reachingconsequences, industrial, economic, social, and moral the foundation of the Empire was the work of Chatham. He changed the course of Englands history nay, the course of modern history. For a century and a half the development of our country has grown upon the imperial lines of Chathams ideals and succeeding statesmen have based the keynote of their policy on enlarging the range of these ideals, in warding off the dangers they involved, in curbing or in stimulating the excesses they bred. Frederick of Prussia said of Chatham, England has long been in labour, and has suffered much to produce Mr. Pitt but at last she has brought forth a man. By France, the rise and fall of Chatham was watched as equivalent to the loss or the gain of a decisive campaign. His hyperbolic self-will, his almost grotesque arrogance, seemed excused by the deference of all with whom he acted, and the timidity of all whom he confronted. Contemporary memoirs ring with anecdotes of his personal ascendency and the terror he inspired at home and abroad. When Chatham said to a colleague, I know that I can save this country, and that no one else can, it was not regarded as arrogance and presumption, but was treated as simple truth, which no doubt it was. Walpoles famous character of Chatham, from which a sentence heads this chapter, runs thus The admirers of Mr. Pitt extol the reverberation he gives to our councils, the despondence he banished, the spirit he infused, the conquests he made, the security he affixed to our trade and plantations, the humiliations of France, the glory of Britain carried under his minis- trations to a pitch at which it never had arrived and all this is exactly true... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.