William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger became prime minister at twenty-four and held the office for nearly nineteen years across two terms. Born in 1759, the second son of the Earl of Chatham who had won the Seven Years' War, he was a sickly and precocious child taught largely at home, went to Cambridge at fourteen, and entered the Commons at twenty-one. George III appointed him in December 1783 after the Fox-North coalition collapsed. He commanded no majority, was mocked as a schoolboy administration expected to last weeks, and lost division after division through the winter — then won the 1784 election decisively. His first decade was administrative. He cut the enormous debt left by the American war with a sinking fund, slashed tariffs to kill smuggling, reformed the customs and the East India Company's governance, and introduced the first income tax in 1799 to pay for the war. He attempted parliamentary reform and abolition of the slave trade and failed at both, though he spoke for abolition consistently. The French Revolution redefined him. He went to war in 1793 and stayed at it, financing coalition after coalition that Napoleon destroyed, and suspending habeas corpus and restricting assembly at home. He carried the Act of Union with Ireland in 1800 on an understanding that Catholic emancipation would follow, and resigned in 1801 when George III refused it. He returned in 1804, heard of Austerlitz, and died in January 1806 at forty-six, exhausted and heavily in debt. Parliament voted to pay his debts. Abolition passed the year after he died.
- Lived: 1759 CE – 1806 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: prime_minister, statesman
