, and studied by Pitt during his career as an undergraduate at
Cambridge. From that time he owned Adam Smith for his master; and he had
hardly become Minister before he took the principles of the "Wealth of
Nations" as the groundwork of his policy.

[Sidenote: Pitt and Parliamentary reform.]

It was thus that the ten earlier years of Pitt's rule marked a new point
of departure in English statesmanship. He was the first English Minister
who really grasped the part which industry was to play in promoting the
welfare of the world. He was not only a peace Minister and a financier,
as Walpole had been, but a statesman who saw that the best security for
peace lay in the freedom and widening of commercial intercourse between
nations; that public economy not only lessened the general burdens but
left additional capital in the hands of industry; and that finance might
be turned from a mere means of raising revenue into a powerful engine of
political and social improvement. That little was done by Pitt himself
to carry these principles into effect was partly owing to the mass of
ignorance and prejudice with which he had to contend, and still more to
the sudden break of his plans through the French Revolution. His power
rested above all on the trading classes, and these were still persuaded
that wealth meant gold and silver, and that commerce was best furthered
by jealous monopolies. It was only by patience and dexterity that the
mob of merchants and country squires who backed him in the House of
Commons could be brought to acquiesce in the changes he proposed. How
small his power was when it struggled with the prejudices around him was
seen in the failure of the first great measure he brought forward. The
question of parliamentary reform which had been mooted during the
American war had been coming steadily to the front. Chatham had
advocated an increase of county members, who were then the most
independent part of the Lower House. The Duke of Richmond talked of
universal suffrage, equal electoral districts, and annual Parliaments.
Wilkes anticipated the Reform Bill of a later time by proposing to
disfranchise the rotten boroughs, and to give members in their stead to
the counties and to the more populous and wealthy towns. William Pitt
had made the question his own by bringing forward a motion for reform on
his first entry into the House, and one of his earliest measures as
Minister was to bring in a bill in 1785 which, while pr