PITT, WILLIAm, Earl of Chatham, the second son of P.obert Pitt, Esq. of Boconnock, in the county of Corn wall, was born on the 15th of November, 1708. The fa mily was originally of Blandford in Dorsetshire ; Christo pher Pitt, the translator of Vida and Virgil, and Thomas Pitt, governor of Madras in the reign of Queen Anne, were both of this place. The latter was Chatham's grand father ; and likewise remarkable as having purchased, during his residence in the east, the jewel known by the name of the Pitt diamond, which weighed 127 carats, and -was afterwards sold by him to the King of France for 135,000/., having originally cost 20,400/. It may also be of mention, that, by the wife of this gentleman, Chatham was descended from the Regent Murray, natural son of James V. of Scotland.
Of Chatham's youth and early habits little is recorded, except that he studied at Eton as a foundation scholar, was removed to Trinity College, Oxford, in 1726, and left the University without taking any degree. His profi ciency in the attainments usually acquired there may, however, be inferred from the circumstance, that some Latin verses of his were judged fit to appear in the col lection printed by that learned body on the death of George 1. ; and still more certainly, from the predilec tion for classical pursuits which he displayed in after life, and the decidedly classical tincture which pervades all his compositions. Demosthenes is said to have been so great a favourite with him, that he repeatedly translated certain of his orations into English.
The immediate cause of his removal from Oxford was a hereditary gout, which had already attacked him at Eton in his sixteenth year. He sought to expel the disorder by travelling; he made the tour of France, and visited Italy, but without realizing his purpose ; his gout still adhered to him, it preyed upon his constitution throughout life, and never left him till it. gained the mastery. To an ordinary mind this malady would have proved a severe misfortune ; Pitt found means to convert it into almost an advantage. Excluded by it from the gaieties and dissipations of com mon life, he applied himself the more earnestly to the ac quisition of knowledge ; he read, and wrote, and studied, endeavouring by every method in his power to cultivate those faculties, which were one day to become the orna ment of his age and nation.
In the mean time, however, his immediate prospects were by no means magnificent. He had lost his father in 1727 ; a scanty fortune and a sickly frame made him anxi ous for some fixed appointment, and he was glad to ac cept a commission of cornet in the Blues, which some of his friends had interest enough to procure for him. But his inclinations pointed to a different scene. The leisure which his duties left him was still sedulously consecrated to the improvement of his mind; and he longed to em ploy in public life those talents he had been so careful to perfect. In 1735, this opportunity was granted him ; he was that year returned member for Old Sarum, to serve in the ninth parliament of Great Britain. The appearance he made there was such as to justify all his hopes, and to awak en hopes still more glorious. His eloquence soon became the pride of his friends and the terror of all that opposed him. A fine voice and figure prepossessed the hearers in his favour ; and the sentiments and opinions which he uttered bespoke a great and noble mind. There was in
him a stern inexpiable contempt for meanness, in what ever shape; a fervid enthusiasm for the cause of freedom, for the honour of his country, and for all good and worthy things ; the whole tempered and matured by a strong commanding intellect, the force and justness of which might have seemed scarcely compatible with so much youthful ardour. His acquired advantages gave full scope to those gifts of nature. The style he employed was chaste, regular, and argumentative, yet both splendid and impas sioned ; and the energetic graces of his delivery gave new power to what he spoke. When warmed with his subject, when pouring forth his own glowing feelings and emphatic convictions, in language as glowing and emphatic, the at titude of conscious strength which he assumed, his lofty looks, his indignant glance, would dismay the stoutest and most subtle of his opponents ; and the veterans of parlia ment have stood abashed in the presence of a youth. Sir Robert Walpole, in his pride of place, with all the dex terity of ministerial management which a life had been spent in acquiring, was awed before this champion of sim ple virtue. Detected in his sophistries, stigmatized for his corruptions, baffled in his attempts at retaliation or de fence, this intriguing statesman came at length to dread, • 0 as the signal of defeat, the very sound of his adversary's voice. " Let us before all things," said he, " try to muz zle this terrible cornet of horse." But the enterprize was ineffectual, the cornet was not to be " muzzled ;" and if Sir Robert stall believed in his favourite maxim, that every man has his price, It must have mortified him to discover that the price of Pitt was not within the compass of his gift. Unable to gain over, he took the imperfect satisfaction of alienating still farther. Pitt was deprived ol his commission in the army ; and this stroke of official severity, while it confirmed him in his op position, rendered hint still dearer to the public, whose rights he was asserting. It strengthened him also in the favour of Frederick Prince of Wales, the centre at that period of all who aimed at a change of men and mea sures. Pitt was appointed groom of the bed-chamber to the prince, in the year 1737. He continued, in the suc cessive sessions of parliament, to support the same liberal principles which he had at first adopted ; the increase of i years increasing his experience in the principles of policy and government, without seeming to abate the ardour of his zeal. He distinguished himself by his animated hos tility to the Spanish convention, in 1738* ; and generally by his aversion to every measure that appeared likely to injure the rights of the subject, or the lasting interests of the country. His speeches contributed not a little to the downfall of Sir Robert Walpole. One of his most bril liant displays is preserved in the reported debate on a motion for an inquiry into the last ten years of that states man's administration. The motion, though carried in the House of Commons, was defeated of its object by a minis terial manceuvre ; but it sealed the ruin of the Walpole party, and yet affords a striking indication of the powers of this young, and ardent, and enlightened politican.