The lines include the Chatham, the Royal Marine, the Brompton, the Hut, and St Mary s barracks ; the garrison hospital and Melville hospital ; the arsenal with its large park of artillery ; the gymnasium, established in 1864 for gymnastic exercise ; the military school for the practical instruction of sappers and engineers, opened in 1812 ; a military institute for the men in garrison; the convict prison ; and, finally, the extensive system of dockyards
which has made the town so famous.Numerous Roman remains, both architectural and domestic, have been discovered at Chatham and Brompton ; but they appear to have belonged to the Roman city of Rochester. Till the reign of Elizabeth the place was a mere insignificant village ; but before 1588 the queen established the first dockyard on the site of what is now called the Ordnance Wharf, and erected Castle Upnor on the opposite bank of the river for its defence. The situa tion was changed in the following reign, and under the Charleses extensive additions were made. The history of the town since the attack of the Dutch in 1667 has been mainly the history of the naval and military establishments. The parliamentary boroagh, which returns one member, includes the towns of Chatham and Brompton, and the villages of Gillingham, Chatham Hill, and New Brompton, and covers an area of 2707 acres. The population of the borough in 1871 numbered 45,792 persons, of whom 24,873 were males and 20,919 females.
CHATHAM, William Pitt, First Earl of (1708-1778), one of the greatest of English statesmen and parliamentary orators, was born at Westminster on the 15th November 1708. He was the younger son of Robert Pitt of Boconnock, in Cornwall, and grandson of Thomas Pitt, governor of Madras, who was known as Diamond Pitt, from the fact of his having sold a diamond of extra ordinary size to the Regent Orleans for 135,000. It was mainly by this fortunate transaction that the governor was enabled to raise his family, which was one of old standing, to a position of wealth and political influence. The latter he acquired by means of the former in the direct open method, then so common, purchasing the burgage tenures of Old Sarum, which was thus destined to become famous as represented by William Pitt a hundred years before it became notorious as the typical " rotten borough " in the debates on the first reform bill.
Of the early life of William Pitt comparatively little is known. He was educated at Eton, and in January 1726 was entered as a gentleman commoner at Trinity College, Oxford. There is evidence that he was an extensively read, if not a minutely accurate classical scholar ; and it is interesting to know that Demosthenes was his favourite author, and that he diligently cultivated the faculty of expression by the practice of translation and re-translation. An hereditary gout, from which he had suffered even during his school-days, compelled him to leave the university without taking his degree, in order to travel abroad. He spent some time in France and Italy ; but the disease proved intractable, and he continued subject to attacks of growing intensity at frequent intervals till the close of his life. In 1727 his father had died, and on his return home it was necessary for him, as the younger son, to choose a profession. Having chosen the army, he obtained through the interest of his friends a cornet s commission in the dragoons. But his military career was destined to be short. His elder brother Thomas having been returned at the general election of 1734 both for Oakhampton and for Old Sarum, and having preferred to sit for the former, the family borough fell to the younger broth ?r by the sort of natural right usually recognized in such cases. Accord ingly, in January 1735, William Pitt entered Parliament as member for Old Sarum. Attaching himself at once to the formidable band of discontented Whigs known as the Patriots, whom Walpole s love of exclusive power had forced into opposition, he became in a very short time one of its most prominent members. His maiden speech was delivered in April 1736, in the debate on the congratulatory address to the king on the marriage of the prince of Wales. The occasion was one of compliment, and there is nothing striking in the speech as reported ; but it served to gain j for him the attention of the house when he presented himself, as he soon afterwards did, in debates of a party character. So obnoxious did he become as a critic of the Government, that Walpole thought fit to punish him by procuring his dismission from the army. Some years later he had occasion vigorously to denounce the system of cashiering officers for political differences, but with charac teristic loftiness of spirit he disdained to make any reference to his own case. The loss of his commission was soon made up to him. The heir to the throne, as has usually been the case in the house of Hanover, if not in reigning families generally, was the patron of the opposition, and the ex-cornet became groom of the bed-chamber to the prince of Wales. In this new position his hostility to the Govern ment did not, as may be supposed, in any degree relax. He had all the natural gifts an orator could desire, a commanding presence, a graceful though somewhat theatrical bearing, an eye of piercing brightness, and a voice of the utmost flexibility. His style, if occasionally somewhat turgid, was elevated and passionate, and it always bore the impress of that intensity of conviction which is the most powerful instrument a speaker can have to sway the convictions of an audience. It was natural, therefore, that in the series of stormy debates, protracted through several years, that ended in the downfall of Walpole, his eloquence should have been one of the strongest of the forces that combined to bring about the final result. Specially effective, according to contemporary testimony, were his speeches against the Hanoverian subsidies, against the Spanish convention in 1 739, and in favour of the motion in 1742 for an investigation into the last ten years of Walpole s administration. It must be borne in mind that the reports of these speeches which have come down to us were made from hearsay, or at best from recollection, and are necessarily therefore most imperfect. The best known specimen of Pitt s eloquence, his reply to the sneers of Horatio Walpole at his youth and declamatory manner, which has found a place in all handbooks of elocution published during the last hundred years, is evidently, in form at least, the work, not of Pitt, but of Dr Johnson, who furnished the report to the GentlemaiCK Magazine. Probably Pitt did say something of the kind attributed to him, though even this is by no means certain in view of Johnson s repentant admission that he had often invented not merely the form but the substance of entire debates.
long continued attacks of the opposition, and was succeeded as prime minister by the earl of Wilmington, though the real power in the new Government was divided between Carteret and the Pelhams. Pitt s conduct on the change of administration was open to grave censure. The relentless vindictiveuess with which he insisted on the prosecution of Walpole, and supported the bill of indemnity to witnesses against the fallen minister, was in itself not magnanimous; but it appears positively unworthy when it is known that a short time before Pitt had offered, on certain conditions, to use all his influence in the other direction. Possibly he was embittered at the time by the fact that, owing to the strong personal dislike of the king, caused chiefly by the contemptuous tone in which he had
spoken of Hanover, he did not by obtaining a place in the