ABSTRACT
On William Pitt’s return from abroad at the beginning of 1734 England was on the eve of a general election. Throughout Pitt’s life elections were conducted on they same lines as in 1734, the only change being that after 1760 the King took Newcastle’s place as chief organizer of victory. Pitt has left it on record in one of the characteristically frank admissions of his later speeches that, though he afterwards came to see the merit of Walpole’s excise scheme, had he been in Parliament at the time, ‘he would probably have been induced by the general and groundless clamour to have joined with those that opposed it.’ An unexpected opening for a speech occurred to Pitt on April 29, 1736, towards the end of his second session. For many years his patron, the Prince of Wales, had been restive under the parsimonious tutelage imposed upon him by his father and mother.
