Political Biography and Pitt the Youngeras Chancellor of the Exchequer

PATRICK O'BRIENInstitute of Historical Research, University of London

AbstractBiographies of Pitt are surveyed and placed in historical context in this short article,which seeks to demonstrate that, with the completion of John Ehrman's multi-volumestudy, historical interpretation has both deepened and come full circle. The patternof early biographies was established by contemporary concerns over the ®nancialconsequences of the wars against France, and it was unthinkable not to assess Pitt'sabilities as chancellor of the exchequer. This dimension to his career was subsequentlymarginalized and, at times, trivialized. The reasons for this tendency are analysed and, inconclusion, a new agenda for historical debate is outlined in the light of Ehrman'scontribution to our understanding of Pitt the ®nancier.

John Ehrman's biography of Pitt the Younger guides historiansthrough an astonishing range of secondary and primary sources inorder, as he says, `to see rather more clearly some of the conditions

and problems of government, the setting of Pitt's daily work, the detailof which tended to be neglected in comparison with his parliamentary®gures'. `All historical ®gures', he perceptively reminds political bio-graphers, `need their degree of explanation in such terms', and this is trueespecially of Pitt, `who lived most exclusively for public a�airs'.1 Thearea of public a�airs for which Pitt lived most exclusively of all was thenation's ®nances. He became chancellor of the exchequer in July 1782 atthe tender age of twenty-three, some nine months before he acceptedGeorge III's invitation to form his ®rst administration. Between 1783and his resignation as prime minister in 1801, Pitt combined the o�ces of®rst lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. He held bothpositions again during his second administration from May 1804 to hispremature death in January 1806.2

To the disdain of his aristocratic colleagues and his Whig opponents,Pitt gave more attention to public ®nance than to any other area of

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1 John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt: The Years of Acclaim (1969) [hereafter Ehrman, Pitt, i], p. xii.2 The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790±1820, ed. R. G. Thorne (5 vols., 1986)[hereafter Commons, ed. Thorne], iv. 807.

statecraft. His command of detail and lucid exposition of ®scal and®nancial policy, in an age when most members of parliament couldhardly count or be bothered with matters that Wilberforce referred to asof `a low and vulgarising quality', enabled him to dominate the House ofCommons and secure support from the king.3 To retain that position ofpolitical power and royal trust, Pitt recognized, as North had donebefore him, that `in the conduct of the a�airs of this country there shouldbe an avowed and real minister possessing the chief weight in the counciland the principal place in the con®dence of the king . . . and that ministerought to be the person at the head of the ®nances.'4

Historians have come to appreciate that there was more signi®cance tobeing at the head of the ®nances of eighteenth-century governmentsthan the political fact that the job provided opportunities to secureroyal con®dence and dominance over the Commons.5 Explorations byeconomic, military and diplomatic historians into the rise of theHanoverian state have led to the reinstatement of Britain's ®scal prowessas the sinews of the country's power in the competition with its Europeanrivals for global, commercial and imperial hegemony.6 Ehrman'sattention to Pitt's achievements as chancellor of the exchequer representsa timely break with a tradition of political biography, now more than acentury old, that has misperceived and seriously downplayed Pitt'smanagement of the nation's ®nances.7 Fortunately, Ehrman providesscholars with the evidence required to discourse seriously about theduchess of Devonshire's remark that as a statesman Pitt `was chie¯ybrilliant as a ®nancier'.8 Although that discourse will remain di�cult toconstruct in ways that might satisfy Ehrman's stringent standards for afully contextualized political biography, it is instructive to survey thebibliography of previous attempts to comprehend and to appraise Pitt asthe longest-serving chancellor of the exchequer in the history of thekingdom.9 Pitt occupied that high o�ce over two distinct periods ofBritain's geopolitical history, which included nearly a decade of ®scalrestoration between the wars from 1783 to 1793 and the years from 1793to 1801, when the ®scal and ®nancial strategies deployed to wage waragainst revolutionary France (which carried the realm right through to

3 J. Holland Rose, A Short Life of William Pitt (1923), p. 83.4 Quoted in Ehrman, Pitt, i. 281.5 P. K. O'Brien, `The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660±1815', Economic HistoryReview, 2nd ser., xli (1988), 1±32.6 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688±1783 (1989); AnImperial State at War: Britain from 1689±1815, ed. Lawrence Stone (1994). The French certainlyrecognized Britain's ®scal advantages. See M. A. Bailly, Expose des Finances du Royaume Uni(Paris, 1837).7 Ehrman, Pitt, i. chs. 10±11; idem, The Younger Pitt: The Reluctant Transition (1983), chs. 11, 13;idem, The Younger Pitt: The Consuming Struggle (1996) [hereafter Ehrman, Pitt, iii], chs. 4, 9±10,13, 19.8 Quoted in Commons, ed. Thorne, iv. 822.9 Ehrman, Pitt, i. xi±xii, ii. xii.

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226 PITT AS CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

its ®nal victory at Waterloo) were in all their essentials formulated underPitt's close and constant supervision.10

Within a year of Pitt's death, Henry Cleland publishedMemoirs of theLife of the Right Honourable William Pitt. John Gi�ord's triple-volume,day-by-day, blow-by-parliamentary-blow account of the Political Lifeof the Right Honourable William Pitt followed two years later. Six yearsafter the end of the war, in 1821, the bishop of Winchester, who asGeorge Pretyman Tomline had acted as Pitt's secretary, published the®rst o�cial biography.11 All three biographers recognized Pitt's intenseinterest in, and the full signi®cance of, ®scal and ®nancial a�airs. Theirnarratives, based upon parliamentary debates reported in newspapersand pamphlets of the day, are properly divided into pre-war and wartimeperiods. Their concerns were ®rst to show how the revenues ¯ourishedand the economy prospered under Pitt's sensible clean-up of the systemin the wake of the War of American Independence (1775±83). They thenmoved on to the years of war against France and argued that the Britisheconomy and the British people proved more than equal to all theburdens placed upon them by government in order to raise the taxes andborrow the money required to preserve the security of the realm anddefeat revolutionary France. Their histories can be located, however, inthe context of wartime debates and their stance is basically similar to thelines taken by defenders of the government (particularly Pitt's secretaryto the treasury, George Rose) during and immediately after the long warswith France.12 Rose and other wartime propagandists for the govern-ment sought to combat radical and Foxite attacks on Pitt's ®scaladministration for its extravagance and waste; for its bias, particularly inthe imposition of taxes and the allocation of contracts for loans; forruining the economy; and, as Tom Paine declaimed, for pushing thewhole ®scal and ®nancial system to the brink of collapse.13 For example,Nicholas Vansittart (who later became chancellor) published a pamphletin 1796 to counter a vicious attack on Pitt by William Morgan, whohad claimed that `Lord North no longer enjoys the distinction of beingthe most extravagant man that has ever a�icted this country,'14 while

10 J. E. D. Binney, British Public Finance and Administration, 1714±92 (Oxford, 1958).11 Henry Cleland, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (1807); John Gi�ord,AHistory of the Political Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (3 vols., 1809); George PretymanTomline, Memoirs of the Life of William Pitt ( 2 vols., 1821). A very useful bibliographic survey isprovided by A. D. Harvey, William Pitt the Younger, 1759±1806: A Bibliography (Bibliographies ofBritish Statesmen, no. 1, 1989).12 George Rose, Brief Examinations into the Increase of the Revenue, Commerce and Navigation ofGreat Britain (successive edns., 1792, 1799, 1806).13 Sources for debates are surveyed in P. K. O'Brien, `Government Revenue, 1793±1815: A Study inFiscal and Financial Policy in the Wars against France', unpublished D.Phil. dissertation (OxfordUniversity, 1967). The classic work is Thomas Paine's Decline and Fall of the English System ofFinance (1796).14 Nicholas Vansittart, An Enquiry into the State of the Finances of Great Britain (1796); WilliamMorgan, Facts Addressed to the Serious Attention of the People of Great Britain (1795). See alsoMorgan, Additional Facts Addressed to the Serious Attention of the People of Great Britain (1796);

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Gentz's Essai sur l'eÂtat actuel de l'administration des ®nances de la GrandeBretagne was widely circulated in Europe in order to convince Britain'sallies that `the English government's expenditure is not excessive, thatis to say, it has not reached the point at which it begins to underminenational prosperity.'15 Memoirs, biographies and essays written during,and in the aftermath of, the wars with France, certainly accord fullweight to Pitt's role as chancellor of the exchequer; but, rooted in con-temporary public and parliamentary preoccupations (taxes, loans andcredit), they lack both historical perspective and a critical stance towardsPitt's management of ®nances during a time of the gravest danger to thesecurity of the realm and its interests overseas.After the rejoicing for victory over Napoleon faded into memory,

several generations of nineteenth-century governments and taxpayersfound themselves left with the burden of servicing the largest nationaldebt in Europe, a debt that had nearly doubled in order to fund twodecades of warfare. Victorian biographies of Pitt became more and morecritical and ahistorical in their evaluation of the policies which he andhis successors (Petty, Perceval, Vansittart and Liverpool) had pursuedin order to pay for the war. In 1861, when Lord Stanhope published hisfour-volume Life based on primary sources, he recognized that `as aminister of ®nance, Mr Pitt has since been assailed by diverse accusa-tions.'16 Indeed, Pitt's reputation had been subjected to a long stream ofradical critiques for his management of ®scal and ®nancial policiesduring the wars with France.17 None of these critics seems more virulentthan Lord Brougham, who in 1839 wrote: `by want of ®rmness he wasthe cause of impolicy and extravagance, the e�ects of which are still feltand will oppress us beyond the life of the youngest man alive. He hasnot left a single measure behind him of which the community whosedestinies he long swayed has any reason to respect his memory.'18 HarrietMartineau found Pitt's ®scal policies `despotic and partial', and as late as

An Appeal to the People of Great Britain on the Present Alarming State of Public Finances (1797);A Comparative View of Public Finances (1801).15 `Les despenses du gouvernement Anglais ne sont pas excessive, c'est a dire qu'elles sont pas atteintle point ou elles commencË ement aÁ attaquer les sources de la prosperite nationale': Friedrich von Gentz,Essai sur l'eÂtat actuel de l'administration des ®nances de la Grande Bretagne (1800), pp. 77±8.16 Earl Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (4 vols., 1861) [hereafter Stanhope,Pitt], iv. 413.17 J. Syme, The Principles of Political Economy Applied to the Financial State of Great Britain (1821)[hereafter Syme, Principles]; Joseph Lowe, The Present State of England (1822) [hereafter Lowe,Present State]; Antonio Pablo Pebrer, Taxation, Revenue, Expenditure, Power, Statistics, and Debt(1833) [hereafter Pebrer, Taxation]; Samuel Wells, The Revenue and Expenditure of the UnitedKingdom (1834) [hereafter Wells, Revenue]; H. James, State of the Nation . . . from 1790 to thePresent Time (1835); T. Doubleday, A Financial, Monetary and Statistical History of England fromthe Revolution to the Present Time (1847) [hereafter Doubleday, Financial History]; William Tayler,The History of Taxation in England, with an Account of the Rise and Progress of the National Debt(1835) [hereafter Tayler, Taxation].18 Henry, Lord Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen who Flourished in the Time of GeorgeIII (2 vols., 1839), i. 197.

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228 PITT AS CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

1867 a regius professor at Oxford observed that `this is the minister ofwhom it was truly said ``Mr Pitt's memory needs no statues. Six hundredmillions of irredeemable debt are the eternal record of his fame.'' '19

Lord Stanhope had no truck with such critiques and entertained nodoubts that Pitt was a very great chancellor of the exchequer. Alas, his`exemplary life', written in the grand Victorian manner, simply eulogizesalmost every single ®scal and ®nancial measure, represented (withoutfurther investigations) as innovations from Pitt which came on to thestatute book during the great man's tenure at the exchequer. Further-more, Stanhope's four volumes accord only limited space to any seriousappraisal of Pitt's management of the public ®nances, presumablybecause he did not `know how further to argue against the man who doesnot think . . . that the most energetic measures at whatever cost wererequisite while we were contending with such a nation as the French'.20

Between Stanhope's Life and the First World War, numerous bio-graphical essays appeared by, among others, Macaulay (who extolledPitt's virtues as a ®nancier from 1784 to 1792 but neglected to analysehow he performed in wartime) and Lord Rosebery, who adopted thetraditional aristocratic and ironic tone towards Pitt's preoccupation withsuch a tedious area of statecraft.21 Major biographies from Walford,Evan Jacob and Whibley brie¯y outline but hardly analyse the subject.22

Butler's portrait in Ten Great and Good Men fails to mention public®nance at all.23 There is perhaps less excuse for Holland Rose, who in1911±12 published a major two-volume study.24 Although the professorof naval and imperial history at Cambridge quoted Dundas to the e�ectthat wars against France became a `contention of purse', he devotes onlyone of his ®fty-one chapters to public ®nance, a chapter that concludeswith an assertion that `Pitt's experiments [from 1784 to 1792] ushered ina new era in British ®nance and therefore in British commerce.'25 At thetime, Lord She�eld considered that the connection probably ran theother way and found it `provoking that the public should be so ridiculousas to give credit to the young gentleman because of a load of taxesproduced from the process of national growth'.26

Two global wars in the twentieth century engendered interest in howthe Hanoverian regime managed to fund an entire sequence of costly

19 Harriet Martineau, An Introduction to the History of the Peace (1851), p. xi; Goldwin Smith,Three English Statesmen (1867), pp. 175±9.20 Stanhope, Pitt, iv. 415.21 Lord Macaulay, `William Pitt', in Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edn., 1910±11) [hereafterMacaulay, `Pitt']; Lord Rosebery, Pitt: A Biography (1st edn., 1891) [references in this article arefrom the 1923 edition, hereafter Rosebery, Pitt], p. 96.22 Edward Walford, William Pitt: A Biography (1890) [hereafter Walford, Pitt]; T. Evan Jacob,The Life of William Pitt (1890); Charles Whibley, Pitt (Edinburgh, 1906).23 H. M. Butler, Ten Great and Good Men: Lectures (1909).24 J. Holland Rose, William Pitt and the National Revival (1912) [hereafter Holland Rose, NationalRevival]; idem, William Pitt and the Great War (1911±12) [hereafter Holland Rose, Great War].25 Holland Rose, National Revival, p. 265; Great War, p. 184.26 Quoted in Ehrman, Pitt, i. 276.

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con¯icts against France and its allies between 1688 and 1815.27 Evenafter that discernible shift in modern perceptions about the signi®canceof state ®nance, full-scale political biographies in the 1970s from Jarrettand Reilly devoted only eighteen pages between them to Pitt's roleas chancellor.28 In the course of a doctoral diatribe dating from 1943,S. M. Hardy asserts again and again that Pitt managed the ®nancialsystem with almost total incompetence and that anything he did wellderived from ideas suggested by the subject of his biography, the youngand clever William Huskisson.29 Biographers of Pitt's cabinet colleaguesand contemporaries in parliament, Addington, Grenville and Palmer-ston, along with the Oxford histories of Hanoverian England, ignore®scal and ®nancial policy almost entirely.30 Until recently, liberaleconomic historians either tended to avoid dealing with such a deplor-able thing as a mercantilist state headed by politicians like Pitt, or simplybemoaned its pro¯igate and wasteful expenditure on warfare.31 OnlyHarold Wilson's A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers (1977) appears tocomprehend the nature of the political and administrative constraintsunder which Pitt laboured.Although most biographers seem never to be at a loss for derogatory

or eulogistic comments on Pitt's talents as a ®nancier, apart frommemoirs constructed during and in the wake of the long and expensivewars of 1775±83 and 1793±1815 the biographical articles and books onPitt published before Ehrman tend to accord very low priority toanalysing Pitt's performance as a chancellor of the exchequer. Perhapsthe majority of their authors lacked either the skills (or, more probably,the inclination) to comprehend the o�ce in the round, or the patience tomaster the details required to assess Pitt's overall direction of taxationpolicies, the management of the national debt and the supply of moneyand credit? Perhaps, like his gentlemanly colleagues in parliament at thetime, they found Pitt's preoccupation with money (even public money)rather vulgar? Yet the de®ciencies of understanding that can be tracedin their writing and scholarship are highly visible simply because all

27 Mrs H. A. L. Fisher, Then and Now: Economic Problems after the War a Hundred Years Ago(1925); F. W. Hirst and J. E. Allen, British War Budgets (1926) [hereafter Hirst and Allen, BritishWar Budgets].28 Derek Jarrett, Pitt the Younger (1974); Robin Reilly, Pitt the Younger, 1759±1806 (1978)[hereafter Reilly, Pitt].29 S. M. Hardy, `Will Huskinson [sic]: Imperial Statesman and Economist, 1770±1830', unpublishedPhD dissertation (London University, 1943), pp. 6, 57, 63, 66, 77, 97; J. W. Derry, William Pitt(1962), p. 111.30 Peter Jupp, Lord Grenville, 1759±1834 (Oxford, 1985); B. Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer:Compiled from the Papers of the Second Viscount Palmerston, 1739±1802 (1957); Basil Williams, TheWhig Supremacy, 1714±1760 (2nd edn., Oxford, 1962); J. Steven Watson, The Reign of George III,1760±1815 (Oxford, 1960); H. K. Olphin, George Tierney (1934); Philip Ziegler, Addington: A Lifeof Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth (1965).31 T. S. Ashton, An Economic History of England: The Eighteenth Century (1955); W. H. B. Court,A Concise Economic History of Britain since 1750 (Cambridge, 1954); John Lawrence Hammondand Barbara Hammond, The Rise of Modern Industry (9th edn., 1966).

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230 PITT AS CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

political biographers start from the assumption that the presence of theirsubject at the head of such an important o�ce of state made a realdi�erence. Alas, the genre that they have selected for writing a life andtimes leads them to exaggerate the signi®cance of individual statesmenand prompts them to concentrate on political processes where familybackground, networks, personality, human foibles and rhetoric matteredmost. Furthermore, the underlying structure or `poetic' of biography(together with its familiar tropes of irony or eulogy) pressures authors toneglect areas of political and administrative activity (such as public®nance) that cannot be easily conveyed in the readable and accessiblestyle expected from this literary form.32

Nevertheless, Pitt's handling of the nation's ®nances from 1784 to1806 (and in spiritu parentis through to 1815) remains, in terms ofoutcomes, of the very highest importance for domestic security and thedevelopment of the economy.33 Fortunately, this, the very core of Pitt'sworking life as a statesman, has received rather more by way of recogni-tion and cogent analysis from political economists, who have writtenboth positive and negative appraisals of Pitt's taxation policies and hismanagement of the national debt. Unfortunately, rather too much ofwhat could otherwise have been empirical research and analysis hasbecome con¯ated with disputes about the conduct of the war and evenmore confused with arguments about the wisdom and necessity ofengaging in armed con¯ict with revolutionary France. Conservatives likeChalmers and Stanhope believed that all the loans and taxes raised tosupport the strategic and diplomatic policies pursued by Britain between1793 and 1815 could be nothing less than public money well spent, whileradicals, both at the time and since, continued to believe that far cheaperpolitical and diplomatic options must have been on o�er.34 For theformer, every decision taken by Pitt as chancellor of the exchequer wasdepicted as necessary and e�ective. Pitt's fame and success as chancellorresides for them in having provided the funds required by the army, thenavy, and Britain's allies to defeat the French.35 For radicals, Pitt'swartime tenure at the exchequer exempli®es nothing more than extrava-gance, incompetent management of the public debt and the moneysupply, and badly designed taxes.36 Furthermore, and starting from the

32 Ulick O'Connor, Biographers and the Art of Biography (Dublin, 1991).33 P. K. O'Brien, `Political Preconditions for the Industrial Revolution', The Industrial Revolutionand British Society, ed. P. K. O'Brien and R. Quinault (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 124±55.34 With the exception of George Tierney, the opposition concentrated on foreign, diplomatic andstrategic policies and failed to address problems connected with how best to fund the war againstrevolutionary France.35 G. Chalmers, Comparative Views of the State of Great Britain and Ireland as it was before the Warand as it is since the Peace (1817); Lowe, Present State; Segismundo Moret y Prendergast, TheFinancial Policy of William Pitt, trans. R. Cabrera (1888); John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc, Historyof England . . . to the Accession of King George the Fifth (1915).36 Pebrer, Taxation; Wells, Revenue; Doubleday; Financial History; Sir George C. Lewis, Essays onthe Administration of Great Britain from 1783 to 1830 (1864).

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Hanoverian legacy of debt, as the century went on even commentaries onthe years 1783±92 when, to quote Macaulay, `the minister was univers-ally extolled as the greatest of ®nanciers', also became much morecritical.37 Fiscal successes tended to be presented as owing more to therebound of the economy from the American war than to any of themeasures he instigated as a young chancellor.38

Nearly two centuries of often confused and partial debate amonghistorians, biographers and political economists has at least isolated themajor strategic questions that need to be addressed in order to formulatea contextualized, scholarly and balanced judgement about Pitt's tenureat the exchequer. First, did all the acclaim Pitt received as the `great®nancier' between 1784 and 1792 depend more on a fortuitous upswingin the British and global economies than on any of the measures that he(and his advisers) devised and piloted through the Commons? Anychancellor looks good when the economy booms. Furthermore, thepoint about advisers adds a materially relevant aspect to the questionbecause Pitt's biographers from Stanhope onwards became more awareof the distinction between the formulation of original ideas and theirpassage into law at the hands of ministers.39 Robertson's argument thatwith the possible exception of the reintroduction of the sinking fund in1788, other reforms to the ®scal and ®nancial system before the warrepresent little more than the kind of sensible administrative measuresthat any politician occupying that o�ce at the time would have intro-duced now seems di�cult to contest.40 Second, on what basis couldhistorians agree or disagree with Gladstone's verdict that Pitt made afundamental strategic error in not introducing an income tax at thebeginning of the con¯ict with France in 1793 ± a step that might, soGladstone and a long line of critics have since argued, have restrained theaccumulation of the national debt?41 Third, Pitt's management of thedebt attracted a body of adverse comment at the time. The critique haspersisted in historical discourse and seems di�cult to evade. Forexample, did the chancellor handle the complex negotiations to ¯oatloans on the London capital market e�ciently, i.e. in ways that limited

37 Macaulay, `Pitt', 672.38 W. Hunt, `William Pitt', Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir SidneyLee (22 vols., Oxford, repr. 1973) [hereafter Hunt, `William Pitt'], xv. 1253±72; Reilly, Pitt, pp. 114±16; Hoh-Cheung Mui and Lorna Mui, `William Pitt and the Enforcement of the Commutation Act,1784±88', English Historical Review, lxxvi (1961), 447±65.39 Walford, Pitt; Holland Rose, National Revival; Reilly, Pitt.40 C. G. Robertson, `The Younger Pitt', Quarterly Review (1912), 307±29.41 Gladstone's comments are in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., cxxxii (1854), 1414±19;his strictures were repeated by W. E. H. Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century(1887), v. 57. J. R. McCulloch, `An Essay on Reducing Interest on the National Debt', EdinburghReview (1816); Hunt, `William Pitt'; Andreas M. Andreades, History of the Bank of England, trans.Christabel Meredith (1909) [hereafter Andreades, Bank of England], pp. 11, 14, 79, 182±4; S. Buxton,Finance and Politics: A Historical Study, 1789±1885 (2 vols., 1888) [hereafter Buxton, Finance andPolitics], i. 6±7; Hirst and Allen, British War Budgets, pp. 2±4; Rosebery, Pitt, p. 153.

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232 PITT AS CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

the costs of government borrowing for taxpayers?42 Was it expedient andeconomical, moreover, to persist with the operations for the sinking fundin wartime?43 Fourth, could the suspension of the gold standard havebeen avoided by more prudent and percipient attention to the complexrelationship between the exchequer, the Bank of England and the capitalmarket?44 Finally, were the taxes imposed to fund expenditure on thearmed services and to service the debt selected in ways that can berepresented as equitable and as designed to keep the economy on coursein the di�cult circumstances of a protracted and costly war?45

At long last a tradition of historical writing has been crowned by thepublication of a political biography that appreciates the signi®cance ofpublic ®nance and poses strategic and carefully speci®ed questions aboutthis famous chancellor's management of taxation, the debt and themoney supply. Ehrman has placed historians in his debt by marshallingthe evidence required to arrive at fully informed and balanced judge-ments about Pitt's di�cult but on the whole successful tenure as chan-cellor of the exchequer. His contextualized political biography representsan unusual triumph of substance over form.46

42 Buxton, Finance and Politics, i. 7±8; William Newmarch, On the Loans Raised by Mr Pitt duringthe First French War, 1793±1801 (1855); Tayler, Taxation, pp. 49±50; Doubleday, Financial History,pp. 134±6; Rosebery, Pitt, pp. 151±2.43 Hunt, `William Pitt', p. 1257; Hirst and Allen, British War Budgets, p. 2; Wells, Revenue, pp. 47,49; Syme, Principles, pp. 74±5; Doubleday, Financial History, p. 177.44 Andreades, Bank of England, pp. 189±91, 196±7, 210±11; Lord Holland, Memoirs of the WhigParty during My Time (2 vols., 1852±4), i. 83±5.45 H. Wilkinson, An Equitable and E�cient System of Taxation (1820); J. Craig, Remarks on SomeFundamental Doctrines in Political Economy (1821); T. Vaux, Relative Taxation (1823).46 P. K. O'Brien, `Is Political Biography a Good Thing?', Contemporary British History, x (1996),60±6; Creative People at Work, Twelve Cognitive Studies, ed. Doris B. Wallace and Howard E.Gruber (Oxford, 1989); Robert W. Weisburg, Creativity, Beyond the Myth of Genius (New York,1993).

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