3 - Politics and War

Summary

TAKING OFFICE AS Master of the Mint had marked Hawkesbury for advancement, but opportunities seemed limited as Pitt's government looked increasingly threadbare. Pitt and Dundas had held power for more than fifteen years. Divisions within the cabinet had taken their toll. The prospect of victory receded as domestic strains grew. A clash with George III over Catholic Emancipation shattered political alignments that had held since the mid-1780s. Pitt's resignation brought Hawkesbury to the Foreign Office in a new government formed by Henry Addington. Two decades of fairly intelligible politics gave way to a renewed factionalism where no one group could form a stable ministry. Leaders instead bid for support from rivals with whom they had ostentatiously disagreed. The change brought to mind Gibbon's observation on Pitt taking office in 1783 with “patriots whom I left ministers, ministers whom I left boys, the whole map of the country so totally altered that I sometimes imagine I have been ten years absent from England.” It complicated politics by weakening successive governments while opposition cohesion also declined. Violent parliamentary debates, broken careers, and settling of scores among rivals marked a period when a brief peace gave way to renewed struggle with Hawkesbury at the center of events.

Ministers had stumbled in their pursuit of an effective path to victory. The king remarked perceptively at an early stage that “the misfortune of our situation is that we have too many objects to attend to, and our force consequently must be too small at each place.” A poor war leader, Pitt eventually admitted distrusting his own ideas on military subjects and he relied heavily upon the judgment of cabinet colleagues who differed. Dundas had long warned that public opinion strongly distrusted Continental wars or directing the country's strength into any channel besides naval operations. Past conflicts which ended with colonial gains bartered for French concessions in Europe supported his view. But overseas victories had little impact in Europe and the Caribbean became a graveyard for British soldiers. The Duchess of Gordon quipped that before the war's end George III would be in possession of every island in the world save Great Britain and Ireland.