William Pitt The Younger Quotes

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

No man, ever indulged more freely or happily in that playful facetiousness which gratifies all without wounding any.

I know of no evil that ever existed, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the tearing of seventy or eighty thousand persons every year from their own land.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement on human rights. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

On January 21, 1793, more grisly events forced a reappraisal of the notion that the French Revolution was a romantic Gallic variant of the American Revolution. Louis XVI—who had aided the American Revolution and whose birthday had long been celebrated by American patriots—was guillotined for plotting against the Revolution. The death of Louis Capet—he had lost his royal title—was drenched in gore: schoolboys cheered, threw their hats aloft, and licked the king’s blood, while one executioner did a thriving business selling snippets of royal hair and clothing. The king’s decapitated head was wedged between his lifeless legs, then stowed in a basket. The remains were buried in an unvarnished box. England reeled from the news, William Pitt the Younger branding it “the foulest and most atrocious act the world has ever seen.” On February 1, France declared war against England, Holland, and Spain, and soon the whole continent was engulfed in fighting, ushering in more than twenty years of combat.

In 1784, the new prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, reduced the tea tax from 119 percent to 12.5 percent. Cheap tea was then available to the masses, though elitists decried tea's ill effects on "persons of an inferior rank." Women neglected "the affairs of their families" for afternoon tea sipping.