was pushing the manufacturer to the
front; and the manufacturer pinned his faith from the first in William
Pitt. All that the trading classes loved in Chatham, his nobleness of
temper, his consciousness of power, his patriotism, his sympathy with a
wider world than the world within the Parliament-house, they saw in his
son. He had little indeed of the poetic and imaginative side of
Chatham's genius, of his quick perception of what was just and what was
possible, his far-reaching conceptions of national policy, his outlook
into the future of the world. Pitt's flowing and sonorous commonplaces
rang hollow beside the broken phrases which still make his father's
eloquence a living thing to Englishmen. On the other hand he possessed
some qualities in which Chatham was utterly wanting. His temper, though
naturally ardent and sensitive, had been schooled in a proud
self-command. His simplicity and good taste freed him from his father's
ostentation and extravagance. Diffuse and commonplace as his speeches
seem to the reader, they were adapted as much by their very qualities of
diffuseness and commonplace as by their lucidity and good sense to the
intelligence of the classes whom Pitt felt to be his real audience. In
his love of peace, his immense industry, his despatch of business, his
skill in debate, his knowledge of finance, he recalled Sir Robert
Walpole; but he had virtues which Walpole never possessed, and he was
free from Walpole's worst defects. He was careless of personal gain. He
was too proud to rule by corruption. His lofty self-esteem left no room
for any jealousy of subordinates. He was generous in his appreciation of
youthful merits; and the "boys" he gathered round him, such as Canning
and Lord Wellesley, rewarded his generosity by a devotion which death
left untouched. With Walpole's cynical inaction Pitt had no sympathy
whatever. His policy from the first was a policy of active reform, and
he faced every one of the problems, financial, constitutional,
religious, from which Walpole had shrunk. Above all, he had none of
Walpole's scorn of his fellowmen. The noblest feature in his mind was
its wide humanity. His love for England was as deep and personal as his
father's love, but of the sympathy with English passion and English
prejudice which had been at once his father's weakness and strength he
had not a trace. When Fox taunted him with forgetting Chatham's jealousy
of France and his faith that she was the natura