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The Duchess in her will said she gave the money to Pitt as “an acknowledgment of the noble defense he had made for the support of the laws of England.” But the belief is that it was her hatred for Walpole that prompted her admiration for Pitt. And her detestation of Walpole was not so much political as sentimental–a woman’s love-affairs being much more to her than patriotism–but the Duchess being a woman deceived herself as to reasons. Our acts are right, but our reasons seldom are. I leave this Marlborough matter with those who are interested in the psychology of the heart–merely calling attention to the fact that although the Duchess was ninety when she passed out, the warm experiences of her early womanhood were very vivid in her memory. If you wish to know when love dies out of a woman’s brain, you will have to ask some one who is older than was the Duchess of Marlborough.

When George the Second died, and his grandson George the Third came into power, Pitt resigned his office in the Cabinet and abandoned politics.

At last he found time to get married. He was then forty-six years of age.

Men retire from active life, but seldom remain upon the shelf–either life or death takes them down. In five years’ time we find the King offering Pitt anything in sight, and Mr. Pitt, the Great Commoner, became Viscount Pitt, Earl of Chatham.

By this move Pitt lost in popularity more than he had gained in dignity–there was a complete revulsion of feeling toward him by the people, and he never again attained the influence and power he had once known.

Burke once referred to a certain proposed bill as “insignificant, irrelevant, pompous, creeping, explanatory and ambiguous–done in the true Chathamic style.”

But the disdain of Burke was really complimentary–it took a worthy foe to draw his fire. Chatham’s faults were mostly on the surface, and were more a matter of manner than of head or heart. America has cause to treasure the memory of Chatham. He opposed the Stamp Act with all the vigor of his tremendous intellect, and in the last speech of his life he prophesied that the Americans would never submit to taxation without representation, and that all the power of England was not great enough to subdue men who were fighting for their country. Yet his appeal to George the Third and his minions was like bombarding a fog. But all he said proved true.

On the occasion of this last great speech Chatham was attended by his favorite son William, then nineteen years old. Proud as was this father of his son, he did not guess that in four short years this boy would, through his brilliancy, cast his own splendid efforts into the shadow; and that Burke, the querulous, would give the son a measure of approbation he never vouchsafed to the father.

William Pitt, the Younger, is known as the “Great Pitt,” to distinguish him from his father, who in his day was known as the greatest man in England.

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William Pitt, the second son of the Earl of Chatham, was born of poor but honest parents, in the year Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. That was the year that gave us Robert Burns–between whom and Pitt, in some respects, averages were held good. The same year was born William Wilberforce, philanthropist and emancipator, father of Canon Wilberforce.

At this time the fortunes of William Pitt the Elder were at full flood. England was in a fever of exultation–drunk with success. Just where the thought got abroad that the average Englishman is moderate in success and in defeat not cast down, I do not know. But this I have seen: all London mad, howling, exultant, savage drunk, because of the report that the Redcoats had subjugated this colony or that. To subdue, crush, slay and defeat, has caused shrieking shouts of joy in London since London began–unless the slain were Englishmen.