William Pitt the Younger – Biography of William Pitt the Younger

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William pitt He was born in Hayes, Kent (England), on May 28, 1759, into a family of politicians and statesmen belonging to the nobility. At Cambridge University he acquired classical and legal training. There he began to work actively in politics and, in 1781, he was elected to the House of Commons as an independent in the “Wigh” party, although, due to the deep fracture created by Charles James Fox, much of his political career the developed with the “Tories”.

During the course of his parliamentary activity, he stood out for his firm opposition to George III’s war against the subvlevated American colonies. The facts proved him right, because the United Kingdom renounced all its settlements abroad, which had already federated as the United States of America. His public speaking skills and political intuition increasingly placed him among the most prominent figures on the British political scene.

In the years 1782-1783 Pitt He entered the government as Minister of Finance and, shortly after, at only 24 years old, the King called him to be part of the new government. It was at this stage that he was nicknamed “the Young“, to distinguish him from the namesake of his father who had held the same position and who was therefore called William Pitt” the Elder. “He remained in office from 1783 to 1801.

In the elections of 1784 he obtained a great victory for the party of the “Tories” and initiated an energetic economic policy thanks to which, after the abyss created by the war in the United States, he managed to update the state budget, and created the conditions that favored the industrial revolution; It also strengthened the presence of the Crown in the Company of the Indies.

Initially cautious in the relations of France, after the invasion of Belgium and the death sentence of Louis XVI in 1793, he initiated a determined policy to confront expansionism and liberal ideas, taking as his battle flag the ideas of the conservative philosopher Edmund Burke of Irish origin. Burke implemented, with his “Reflections on the French Revolution”, a work of systematic demolition of that event and of the cultural movement that had been achieved.

Meanwhile, the Irish nationalists, in tune with the emotional wave of the French and American revolutions, rebelled against the British monarchy demanding the independence of the island. To counteract this phenomenon, William pitt obtained, in 1800, the dissolution of the Irish Parliament which was incorporated into the British, giving life to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. But the question of the emancipation of the Catholics, held by him to reduce the tensions of Ireland, put him at odds with George III, who – while Napoleon took power in France – put him aside forcing him to resign (1801).

Pitt returned to power in 1804, with the resumption of hostilities with France, after the unsuccessful “Peace of Amiens” of 1802. He took back the reins of the British economy, gave life to the Third Coalition against Napoleon, and created the conditions for the Horatio Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in 1805. But his work against Napoleon remained unfinished, due to his poor health that accompanied him since childhood: William pitt He died in London at the age of forty-seven on January 23, 1806.

Faced with the success of foreign policy, of which he was the creator of all the anti-French alliances and coalitions born in those years, Pitt implemented strong conservative thinking in the UK, with all the limitations on freedom of expression; The harsh repression of the Irish uprising earned it the nickname “the enemy of humanityBut history, from the British point of view, partially absolved him by acknowledging that his rigor in national politics was a necessary condition for keeping Napoleonic France at bay.