ABSTRACT
William Pitt was 46 years old when he died. He had been directing the nation’s affairs almost to the end and the extent of his rapid decline had not been widely reported. News of his death therefore came as a great shock. Grey and Canning were only two leading politicians, from opposite ends of the Westminster spectrum, who were aghast when they heard. Pitt’s legacy is also measured in his concern for administrative efficiency and executive expertise. He did not mount a frontal assault on the patronage system, which was prone to give unmerited advancement to the inefficient if loyal, but he starved it of oxygen by promoting on merit where possible and by not replacing mere sinecurists. J. Holland Rose’s famous two-volume biography of 1911–12 is a strong representative of the school of ‘Whig history’, both in its tendency to intersperse narrative and analysis with moral judgements and confident statements about ‘the needs of the age’.
