or more
strictly constitutional than the minister's domestic policy. Not a
single act indicating an arbitrary temper or a jealousy of the people
could be imputed to him. He had never applied to Parliament for any
extraordinary powers. He had never used with harshness the ordinary
powers entrusted by the constitution to the executive government. Not a
single state prosecution which would even now be called oppressive had
been instituted by him. Indeed, the only oppressive state prosecution
instituted during the first eight years of his administration was that
of Stockdale, which is to be attributed not to the government, but to
the chiefs of the opposition. In office Pitt had redeemed the pledges
which he had, at his entrance into public life, given to the supporters
of parliamentary reform. He had, in 1785, brought forward a judicious
plan for the improvement of the representative system, and had prevailed
on the King, not only to refrain from talking against that plan, but to
recommend it to the Houses in a speech from the throne. (The speech with
which the King opened the session of 1785, concluded with an assurance
that His Majesty would heartily concur in every measure which could tend
to secure the true principles of the constitution. These words were
at the time understood to refer to Pitt's Reform Bill.) This attempt
failed; but there can be little doubt that, if the French Revolution
had not produced a violent reaction of public feeling, Pitt would have
performed, with little difficulty and no danger, that great work which,
at a later period, Lord Grey could accomplish only by means which for
a time loosened the very foundations of the commonwealth. When the
atrocities of the slave trade were first brought under the consideration
of Parliament, no abolitionist was more zealous than Pitt. When sickness
prevented Wilberforce from appearing in public, his place was most
efficiently supplied by his friend the minister. A humane bill, which
mitigated the horrors of the middle passage, was, in 1788, carried by
the eloquence and determined spirit of Pitt, in spite of the opposition
of some of his own colleagues; and it ought always to be remembered
to his honour that, in order to carry that bill, he kept the Houses
sitting, in spite of many murmurs, long after the business of the
government had been done, and the Appropriation Act passed. In 1791 he
cordially concurred with Fox in maintaining the sound constitutional
d