ABSTRACT
William Pitt was Paymaster of the Forces for over nine years, eight of which were the most peaceful in his stormy life. Pelham’s bland sway allayed the discontents which Walpole and Carteret’s forcible personalities had aroused, and at few periods in our history were politics so dull or so harmonious. Pitt, himself in the Government but outside the Cabinet, had no temptation to oppose, no counterbalancing responsibility to absorb his energies. During the six years following the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle Pelham’s conciliatory methods of government, the harmony he restored to the nation, and his wise measures of reform in finance and administration met with Pitt’s approval and gave him little scope for active exertion in his subordinate department. Pelham’s chief service to the nation was his reorganization of its finances. England was then poor, compared not only with her present condition but with other nations of the time.
