The Government of Scotland under Henry Dundas and William Pitt

This article considers the methods by which Scotland was governed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, focusing on the relationship between Henry Dundas and William Pitt, thereby placing the so‐called ‘Dundas Despotism’ in the context of abiding problems in Anglo‐Scottish administration. The emergence of Dundas as the pre‐eminent figure in Scottish politics is analysed, with particular emphasis placed on his support for Pitt in the period 1782–5. The undoubted importance of Dundas's mastery of patronage is balanced against other circumstances, such as the threats of radicalism and foreign invasion in the 1790s, which created a favourable climate for the establishment of what some contemporaries dubbed the ‘Dundasian Domination’. Moreover, the alliance of Pitt and Dundas contributed to the emergence of a Whig/Tory divide in Scottish politics. Although this transformation was gradual, an important stage may be discerned in the Scottish dimension to the fall of Addington and the formation of the second Pitt ministry in 1804. In this period, the theoretical danger of a powerful Scots politician leading his supporters in an attack upon an English ministry became reality, an eventuality that had long been foreseen by critics of the system of delegating authority to a ‘Scottish manager’.