Election of Pope Ganganelli.--Quarrel between the French and
Russian Ambassadors.--Agitation in the Country after the
Rising of Parliament.--Lord Chatham Appears at the King’s
Levee.--Supposed Motive of his Reappearance.--State of the
Country.--Horne’s Libel on Onslow.--Popular Excitement.--Aspersions
on Lord Holland.--Petition from Westminster to Dissolve the
Parliament.--Dr. Musgrave’s Pretended Discovery.--Russian
Project to Attack Constantinople by Sea.--Conquest of
Corsica.--Petition against the Parliament.--Indolence of the Duke
of Grafton.--Disturbance at the Execution of two Rioters.--Affairs
of Ireland.--Prosecution of Vaughan.--Remonstrance of Junius to the
King.--Story of the Duke of Gloucester and Maria Walpole.
1769.
I must now turn to foreign affairs, or events connected with them.
In the conclave, the Jesuitic party, alarmed at the demand made by the
Bourbon Crowns of suppression of the Jesuits, had fixed on Cardinal
Chigi for Pope--but miscarried. The French and Spanish Ambassadors told
that faction, that had they elected him, they alone would have enjoyed
him; insinuating that he would not have been acknowledged by the allied
Crowns. Cardinal Bernis was dispatched to Rome, with orders to put a
negative on any candidate but Cardinal Ganganelli; and succeeding, was
named Ambassador to the new pontiff.[225] He was a Roman monk of the
lowest extraction, and had exercised all the affected virtues of his
order with a perseverance worthy of the ambition of Sixtus Quintus. But
though his success was adequate, the times demanded talents of another
complexion; and though Ganganelli’s address was as well suited to
retrieve the affairs of the Church as some of his ablest predecessors
had been to build up its greatness, yet no abilities could reconcile
the blackest and most revengeful set of men to their own destruction;
and though Ganganelli endeavoured by temporising and delays, to ward
off the blow that would deprive the papal Throne of its most trusty
satellites, yet the two Crowns at last forced from him the fatal Bull
that abolished the order and exposed the Pope to the vengeance of the
Jesuits, who became his assassins, when, in spite of himself, he had
been obliged to discard them as his champions.[226]
The ball at Court on the King’s birth-night was disturbed by a quarrel
for place between the Russian and French Ambassadors. France yields the
precedence to nobody but to the Emperor of Germany; and the Comte du
Châtelet, their Minister here, had received positive orders not to give
place to the Russian. Du Châtelet was enough disposed to assume any
airs of superiority: at Vienna, on a former embassy, he had embroiled
his court with the Imperial by wrong-headed insolence. He was warm,
captious, and personally brave. Count Czernichew was magnificent
and ostentatious, but profuse of civilities and attentions, and no
ways quarrelsome. He was sitting next to Count Seilern, the Imperial
Ambassador. Du Châtelet came behind, and crowded himself in between
them, taking place above Czernichew. This occasioned much pushing and
struggling, and the Russian told the Frenchman he was very impertinent,
and then quitted the bench. As they left the room when the ball was
finished, Count Czernichew’s coach drawing up, he offered to set Du
Châtelet at home, which was accepted; but, being entered, Du Châtelet
proposed that they should decide the quarrel with their swords; and
they endeavoured to go into St. James’s Park, but the gates were shut.
It was said that Du Châtelet made apologies for his behaviour, and
declared that he had meant no personal rudeness. On the other hand,
he was allowed to have shown most spirit throughout the dispute; yet
he was not without much anxiety how his conduct would be regarded at
home, where it was rather wished to soften the Court of Russia, now
beginning to triumph over the Turks. But Du Châtelet had two powerful
mediators--the eagerness of the Duc de Choiseul to humble the Czarina,
and his inclination for Madame du Châtelet, not only the favourite
of his all-powerful sister, the Duchess de Grammont, but her secret
rival with him. Madame du Châtelet was a handsome and very sensible
woman, but of an indolence beyond example. The Duc de Choiseul liked
her, and she was far from averse to him, yet had resisted his love and
that liberality and power which had thrown every other French woman
he had a mind to into his arms. Du Châtelet, indeed, had chosen not
to leave her exposed to too great temptation; and, notwithstanding
her extreme indifference, which here only served to give offence, had
obliged her to attend him on his embassy.[227] Count Czernichew was
recalled, with apparent dissatisfaction.[228] He was not fortunate in
his embassies: he had been nominated to that of China, but the Chinese
monarch forbade his approach, declaring he would have no alliance with
a murderess. Du Châtelet’s intemperance in the King’s presence was
very ill taken here, where his frowardness, and his wife’s disgusting
coldness, had raised no prejudice in their favour. The King took every
opportunity to distinguish the Russian by the most marked civilities;
and it was proposed to signify the royal displeasure by acquainting
the foreign Ministers _that there was no rank in the box allotted to
them at the balls at Court; and that his Majesty gave that notice from
having been extremely offended at what had passed_. Lord Hertford,
as Lord Chamberlain, was to give the notice; but fearing it was too
strongly worded not to give great disgust in France, he refused to make
the notification, unless authorised by the Privy Council. On this the
message was reconsidered, and the latter part was changed for the words
_to prevent disagreeable altercations for the future_,--a medium still
liable to ridicule; for how could a ball at Court be a private ball,
when everybody was taken out to dance by the Lord Chamberlain according
to their rank? It was, in effect, depriving the foreign ministers alone
of rank on those occasions.[229]
This squabble, and almost every other business of more importance,
was forgotten in the stormy scene that succeeded the rising of
Parliament. Wilkes on his part, Lord Shelburne and Beckford on
theirs, laboured incessantly during the whole summer to spread the
flame of dissatisfaction on the violent measure of forcing Lutterell
into Parliament; and though it caught not universally, the spirit of
remonstrating and petitioning made such progress in several counties
and boroughs, as alarmed the Court, and still more the sober part of
mankind; who, though disapproving the conduct of the Administration,
were apprehensive of such tumults, if not risings, as might, by not
being strong enough to correct, throw additional power into the hands
of the Crown--a prospect that, perhaps, lessened the panic of the
Court, otherwise sufficiently apt to tremble. The Supporters of the
Bill of Rights circulated a letter, recommending subscriptions for
Wilkes; but found men more willing to sign remonstrances than to
contribute their money. Townshend and Sawbridge were chosen Aldermen of
London and Sheriffs of Middlesex.
The same day, the livery of London determined to petition the King on
grievances; and on the 5th of July their petition was delivered to him
by the Lord Mayor, Beckford, and three more, but was received with the
utmost coldness and neglect.
Two days after, the Court was surprised with a more unexpected
phenomenon. Lord Chatham appeared at the King’s levee when it was
thought he would never produce himself again, or was not fit to be
produced in public. He was perfectly well, and had grown fat. The Duke
of Grafton had just time to apprise the King of this mysterious visit.
The King was very gracious, and whispered him to come into the closet
after the levee, which he did, and staid there twenty minutes. Much
silence was observed on what passed; though by degrees it was affirmed
that the conversation was only general and indifferent. Yet hints
were dropped that the King, sounding Lord Chatham on the Middlesex
election, the opinion he gave was not favourable to his Majesty’s
wishes.[230] The active part taken by Lord Shelburne, Beckford, and
Calcraft, made this greatly probable; and his Lordship’s subsequent
conduct corroborated the idea. Still was Lord Chatham very desirous
of recovering his power; and it was not his style to be harsh in
the closet.[231] It was remarked, too, that, not to embitter his
reception, he had come when Lord Temple[232] was detained at Stowe,
by entertaining there several of the foreign ministers. Lord Chatham
lingered affectedly, in the outward room, after his audience, as if to
display the recovery of his health and understanding. To the Duke of
Grafton and the Bedfords he was awkward and cool; embraced Lord Granby
and General Harvey[233] (a personal military favourite of the King),
and was very civil to Lord Hertford and Mr. Conway. In the evening he
returned to Hayes.
Whatever were the motives of his re-appearance, the prospect certainly
favoured him, whether he had a mind to present himself as a mediator to
the fears of the Court, or as a Captain-General to the Opposition. His
creatures governed the City: Lord Granby, influenced by Calcraft, and
dreading the loss of popularity, talked of resigning. The Chancellor
was disgusted with Grafton, whose marriage had hurt him at Court.
Ireland, by the absurd conduct of Lord Townshend, was in confusion; and
the Bedfords were pressing to send Lord Sandwich thither, which would
have increased the ill-humour. And though the Ministers had thoughts
of giving satisfaction to the Colonies, yet, having refused to give
that assurance in Parliament, the Americans would no longer trust them.
The Virginians had voted the right of taxation to be in themselves,
and resolved on a petition against our sending for the criminals to be
tried in England,--a violent measure, dictated by rashness, and, almost
as soon as announced, dropped by timidity. Great divisions reigned in
the East India Company, in which Lord Clive and Sir Laurence Dundas
were contending to engross sole power, the Company having more places
to bestow than the First Lord of the Treasury; the exorbitant wealth of
our empire going hand-in-hand with the advance of prerogative, in the
views of most of our patriots. Wilkes, in the meantime, whatever were
his views, had honesty enough not to smother his private resentments;
and, at this very moment, published an envenomed pamphlet against Lord
Chatham. It was unjustly silent on his merits and services, but touched
with truth the defective parts of his character.
A former friend of Wilkes, who had abandoned him, was more cruelly,
because more iniquitously, treated. Among the rabble of Wilkes’s agents
was one Horne, parson of Brentford. He was son of the poulterer to the
Princess of Wales; but, whether from principle, vanity, or want of
more decent means to attempt distinguishing himself, he had attached
himself to that demagogue; and, with slender parts, had become his
scribe in composing scurrilities for the newspapers, and his factor
at all popular meetings.[234] In other respects his morals were not
reproached; though, as came out afterwards he had, to please Wilkes,
ridiculed his Lords the Bishops, and, to please himself, indulged in
more foppery than became his profession. He now infamously aspersed
Mr. Onslow,[235] one of the Lords of the Treasury, as having accepted
1000_l._ to procure a place for a person in the West Indies,--a
transaction which was proved to have been a gross imposition on the
person who paid the bribe, and in which Mr. Onslow had in no shape
been concerned, till the defrauded person applied to him for redress.
Horne impudently avowed the printed charge to be his; for which Onslow
prosecuted, and cast him in damages at the assizes in Surrey.[236]
Some damp, too, was thrown on the zeal of the Opposition, by the
refusal of Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Kent, to
join in the popular petitions. The city of Bristol, on the other hand,
determined to petition, and voted their contempt to their member, Lord
Clare: but the most grievous outrage fell on the Duke of Bedford. He
was Lord-Lieutenant of Devonshire, had a great estate in the county,
and exercised most signal charity there. In order to prevent a petition
of the county, he went down thither; but while he was at prayers in
the Cathedral of Exeter, a tumultuous mob assembled, pouring out
execrations on him; and had not the bishop conducted him by a private
passage to the palace, his life had been in danger. At Honiton, the
fury of the people rose to such a height, that they pelted him with
stones, and set bull-dogs at him.[237]
In the meantime, Lord Bute returned privately to England from the
waters of Barege, which, it was given out, had perfectly restored his
health; but the temper of the times not favouring his timidity, or the
latter renewing his disorder, he, in a short time, retired to Italy.
The Court of France, however, not being the dupe of his pretended loss
of credit, gave him the same guard, at his lodgings at Barege, as
attended the Comtesse de la Marche, a Princess of the blood; and his
vanity was so weak as to accept this safe homage.
His faithful devotee, Lord Holland, was scarce less obnoxious to
the City. The contemptuous flippancy of his sons, and his own[238]
indiscreet interference in behalf of Lutterell, had brought him again
on the stage, which he pretended to have quitted. The multiplicity and
difficulty of his accounts as Paymaster during the war had prevented
their being liquidated. The Barons of the Exchequer had called on him
to make them up. He had obtained from the Crown a delay of process,
pleading the impediments he received from the proper officers in
Germany. This was, probably, true. It is also probable, that he was not
impatient to be disburthened of such large sums,[239] on which he made
considerable interest. The petition from Middlesex had made this one of
their charges, in their bill of grievances, and described Lord Holland
as _the defaulter for unaccounted millions_. Touched to the quick at
this imputation, he wrote a civil letter to the Lord Mayor, complaining
of the aspersion, and referring him for the falsehood of the accusation
to Alderman Beckford, whom Lord Holland said he had satisfied of the
injustice of it. The Mayor returned only a card, to say he was not
answerable for the contents of the petition; yet he had harangued on
it, as well as presented it. Beckford advertised that Lord Holland had
sent him his defence, but that it had _not_ satisfied him. Lord Holland
then published a justification in the papers. Indeed, the violence of
the petition was much blamed; and, as if conscious of it, the authors
had neither ventured to sign or date it.
Whatever had been Lord Chatham’s views in going to Court, it appeared
that now, at least, his part was taken. A reconciliation was made
between him and Mr. Grenville, which, though never cordial, served at
least to alarm the Bedfords, who, according to their laudable practice,
made immediate overtures to the three brothers,[240] offering to be
content to save Lord Gower, Rigby, and one or two more of their friends
at most; in which number they were careful _not_ to stipulate for their
ally, the Duke of Grafton. These overtures, though renewed at different
times, were rejected. As if to condemn themselves more, they published
a severe pamphlet against the political conduct of Lord Chatham.
Wiltshire and Worcestershire then agreed on a petition, and one from
Surrey was presented. But the capital stroke was struck by the
electors of Westminster, who petitioned the king _to dissolve the
Parliament_,--a step not only absurd, but of most dangerous precedent.
To require him to dissolve an assembly so obsequious, and of whom
they complained for humouring his vengeance, was on the face of it
ridiculous and void of all probability of success. A refusal, indeed,
they might wish to receive, as it would but inflame their grievance:
but on pretence of violated liberty to seek for redress from the
Throne, the aggressor against the bulwark of liberty, however then
betrayed to the Crown, was as noxious a measure as could have been
devised. What King but might obtain some servile addresses against the
most incorruptible House of Commons? Was prerogative the champion to
resort to in defence of injured freedom? The invitation sent to the
Danes by our short-sighted and ignorant ancestors, and the expedient
of calling over the heir of the Crown of France by the barons in the
reign of King John, were scarce more big with folly and indiscretion.
What could triumphant rebellion have demanded more of a King than to
dissolve one Parliament and expose himself to a new election amidst
enraged subjects? It was the act of a rash multitude--yet did not want
abettors, who ought to have acted on sounder and soberer principles.
Was this, alas! a moment to fill the nation with tumult and disorder?
Was the constitution so gone (and nobody thinks worse than I do of the
provocation given by the Court in the case of Lutterell) that anarchy
was the sole engine left that could restore it? Could Lord Chatham,
or Lord Temple, or Grenville (of whom the former had lost their
popularity, and the latter never had any) hope to
“Ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm?”
No--Wilkes and every turbulent agitator in the several counties would
have risen on the froth of a cauldron composed of such pernicious
ingredients. The intrusion of Lutterell was not an evil adequate to
such remedies. True patriots will bear with some ills, and temporize
till a fitter opportunity. Nor would the remedy have been remote,
would the plaintiffs have had virtue to wait and avail themselves
of it. Would the people resist corruption, and elect none but men
of virtue and principle, the election of another Parliament would
furnish redress. Corrupt members must be the consequence of corrupt
constituents. The people had not virtue, nor their leaders patience to
profit of, or wait for, so constitutional a remedy.
Lord Shelburne attacked the Duke of Bedford in his own town of Bedford,
and carried a mayor against him. The celebrated Junius published an
infamous attack on the same Duke, on the insult he had received in
Devonshire, by justifying which the writer gave a riot the air of
premeditated assassination.[241] Sir William Draper, a brave officer,
attached to the Duke and Lord Granby, who had been abused by the same
author, but not of sound intellects, published, with his name, a
challenge to the dark satirist,[242] which the latter answered with
parts, and without any manly spirit. About the same time, one Dr.
Musgrave, who had hawked about to Lord Chatham and other discontented
great men, and to some Ministers, and been rejected by all, an offer
of a discovery which he pretended to have made, that the late peace
had been bought by France of the Princess Dowager, Lord Bute, and Lord
Holland, now published this wild accusation, and cited the Chevalier
D’Eon as one of his evidences. The latter, whose head had been turned
by the vanity of being an under instrument in concluding that peace,
flatly disavowed him; and though in the following winter he had
his charge laid before Parliament, it was grounded on such paltry
information, picked up in a French coffee-house, that faction itself
could not countenance him; and the man and his accusation being voted
infamous, were heard of no more.[243]
The young Emperor of Germany, Joseph the Second, now began to make
himself noticed. Though behaving with perfect deference to, and
appearing to live in cordial amity with, his mother, the Empress-queen,
he discovered symptoms of not intending to waste his reign in
inactivity. He gave great attention to the army; and, as a model of
royal wisdom to be studied, had an interview with the King of Prussia;
at which visit many passions must have been smothered on either side.
The Turks having met the Russian army in those vast plains that divide
their empires, now recovered their superiority by the advantage of
their cavalry, better suited to desultory war: but they had scarce
stemmed the torrent of invasion, before the Czarina struck Europe with
wonder and respect by a measure at once great, daring, and desperate.
She notified her intention of sending a fleet to attack Constantinople
itself. The idea was said to be her own, and she persisted against the
advice of her Ministers. The length of the voyage, its dangers, and
the almost hopeless prospect of success, were lost in the grandeur of
the project. I was then at Paris: the French ministry were confounded,
and dispatched couriers by land to rouse the Ottoman Monarch: French
engineers followed to assist him in fortifying the approach to his
capital, which lay, as he thought, securely surrounded by endless
tracts of sea and land. The Duke of Choiseul, who had sown those seeds
of wide-spread desolation, was confounded at seeing himself excelled
in a nobler style. But few days before this intelligence reached
him, he had had the vain levity, as I was supping with him at his
own house, to send for the last Paris Gazette, which he had dictated
himself, to prove the late victory of the Turks, and read it to the
company. His invasion of Corsica, and the savage cruelties that were
exercised there after the conquest, were puny consolations to his
meddling ambition--yet was all the military glory that decorated his
administration. The first advantages gained there by the French had
been solemnized in a ridiculous manner by ostentatious inscriptions,
that were soon followed by defeats; but hosts continually poured in
on the abandoned islanders; and the deficiency of military skill in
Pascal Paoli, the Dictator of the aspiring Republic, and even his
want of valour, as the French themselves asserted, reduced Corsica
beneath their yoke. Paoli, who aspired to power, not to the fame of
virtue, distinguished between his country and his hopes, and not having
fallen like Leonidas, did not despair like Cato. He made his escape
and arrived in England, where his character had been so advantageously
exaggerated by Mr. Boswell’s enthusiastic and entertaining account of
him, that the Opposition were ready to receive and incorporate him
in the list of popular tribunes. The Court artfully intercepted the
project; and deeming patriots of all nations equally corruptible,
bestowed a pension of 1000_l._ a-year on the unheroic fugitive.
Themistocles accepted the gold of Xerxes, and excused himself from
receiving a visit from Mrs. Macaulay, who had given him printed advice
for settling a republic. I saw him soon after his arrival, dangling
at Court. He was a man of decent deportment, vacant of all melancholy
reflection, with as much ease as suited a prudence that seemed the
utmost effort of a wary understanding, and so void of anything
remarkable in his aspect, that being asked if I knew who it was, I
judged him a Scottish officer (for he was sandy-complexioned and in
regimentals) who was cautiously awaiting the moment of promotion.
All his heroism consisted in bearing with composure the accounts of
his friends being tortured and butchered, while he was sunk into
a pensioner of that very Court that had proclaimed his valiant
countrymen and associates rebels.[244]
Not so passive the English. The weavers mutinied against their masters,
and many were killed by the guards. The Livery of London rejected
Sir Henry Banks, a senior Alderman, for Lord Mayor; and Beckford and
Trecothick being returned by them to the Court of Aldermen, and the
former having the majority was elected a second time. He excused
himself on pretence of age, which was but turned of sixty, and
infirmities which he had not. He was pressed again to accept, and
peremptorily refused the office; but the Sheriffs, with a train of
coaches, entreating him, at the request of the Livery, not to deny
himself to their wishes, he at last yielded. The Livery then inquired
what answer had been returned to their petition? The Aldermen, to
soften them, replied, that none had been given, but his Majesty would
undoubtedly consider of the most constitutional means of redressing
their grievances. They next called for Lord Holland’s letter to the
Lord Mayor, who produced it; adding, that he did not know how Lord
Holland, as a gentleman, could account for publishing his (the Mayor’s)
letter--as if it was justifiable to tax that lord in a public manner,
without process or proofs, of embezzling millions; and unjustifiable
in him, in his own defence, to print the Lord Mayor’s evasion, I might
almost say disavowal, of the charge! Sinking under the aspersion
and loads of abuse, Lord Holland retired to France on pretence of
conducting thither his wife’s sister, Lady Cecilia Lenox, who was
dying, and died there, of a consumption. The City, as if he had fled
from the charge, instructed their Members to endeavour a parliamentary
inquiry into his conduct, and to impeach him if matter were found--but
it came to nothing; and their silence cleared him.
The Marquis of Rockingham and the Cavendishes had kept aloof from
the factious meetings of the rest of the Opposition, and given no
countenance to the spirit of petitioning, which had now gained
Hereford, Newcastle, and the counties of Gloucester and Cornwall. The
Duke of Richmond, who was in France, where I was too, told me with
satisfaction that his friends had resisted an example so inconsistent
with the principles of liberty as appealing to the Crown against the
House of Commons. Their resistance, however, was not stubborn enough
to hold out against popularity, and the arts of a man who meant
nothing less than to assert the constitution, and who made use of the
grievance complained of to force the Crown to employ him, lucratively
to himself, in every attack it meditated against the constitution.
This was Alexander Wedderburne, whose name will be read with horror
when this transaction is remembered, and compared with a change of
conduct as sudden as the former, and as diametrically opposite to this
parenthesis of affected zeal for liberty, and attended by the share
he bore in lighting up a civil war, the view of which was to enslave
America. Edmund Burke, too, had perhaps some influence in seducing
the Whig lords into adoption of the popular measure. Not content
with Lord Rockingham’s feeble politics, and hoping better from the
union of the three brothers, he concerted with them the petition for
Buckinghamshire; and he, Grenville, and Wedderburne drew another for
Yorkshire, the ablest of all those performances; and the Marquis, the
Cavendishes, and the worthy Sir George Saville, promoted that and
another from Derbyshire. A patriot remonstrance composed by an Irishman
born a papist, and by a Scottish creature of Lord Bute, was deservedly
ridiculed.
The Ministers, who should have met the storm early, and who by calling
the Parliament might have intercepted many petitions, sought to
keep off the discussion there, and would not let it meet till after
Christmas. The Duke of Grafton, who had been honoured with the Garter,
and elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, could not bear
the thoughts of business. He diverted himself in the country, coming
to town but once a week, or once a fortnight, to sign papers[245] at
the Treasury; and as seldom to the King. I could but reflect how
different had been the application of Sir Robert Walpole, my father,
who, without relaxation but for two fortnights in the year, found it
difficult enough to govern the kingdom and keep Opposition at bay,
though secure of the King, secure of peace with France by meeting as
pacific dispositions in Cardinal Fleury, void of alarms from Ireland
and America, that were as quiet as his own county of Norfolk, and
called on for no attention to a new empire that had now accrued to us
at the eastern boundary of the world. The consequences were such as
might be expected. Walpole maintained the equilibrium; under Grafton
everything fell into confusion. Were any representations made to him,
he threatened to resign, affirming that he only retained his power,
because his quitting at that crisis would produce a dissolution of
Parliament, from which he foresaw the worst consequences. The only
step he took was to advise with the Chancellor, who told him surlily,
that his Grace had consulted him but twice last session, and then
had acted directly contrary to his advice. He was as blunt with the
King, who telling him he hoped there was no truth in what he saw in
the papers that his Lordship had thoughts of resigning the Seals,
he replied, There was universal discontent amongst the people. Yet
Hussey, the Chancellor’s friend, was warm against the petitions, and
said, if any body moved in Parliament, as Lord Chatham threatened to
do, for a dissolution of Parliament, he would vote for sending that
person to the Tower. Sir Walter Blacket told his constituents, at
Newcastle, that he would cut off his hand rather than sign a petition
to the King to interfere with a resolution of the House of Commons.
In fact, the lower people alone, whom it was easy to lead, gave in to
petitions. The gentry in general discouraged, yet dared not openly
oppose them, either fearing for their future elections, or dreading
the abuse that was cast on all who opposed the popular cry. Sawbridge
and Calcraft obtained at Maidstone a petition from the county of
Kent, though all the magistrates shrunk from it, two gentlemen only
appearing there, and they dissenting. Sawbridge told the mob the King
had abused his prerogative by pardoning murderers. Another demagogue
was less successful--Mr. Thomas Pitt,[246] Grenville’s creature,
having harangued the County of Cornwall in favour of a petition, was
severely reproached with having sold his own borough of Old Sarum to a
Scotch placeman; and for meaning less a redress of grievances than an
opportunity of selling it again by a new general election. Townshend,
no less hot than Sawbridge, abused in open court the courts of justice;
and at a trial of some weavers for destroying looms, being desired by
the judge to quiet a riot without doors, returned and denied there
being any tumult. He and Sawbridge repairing to Spitalfields, the late
principal scene of uproar, Sir Robert Darling, a justice, told them
there had been no mob till their arrival; and if they would not retire,
he would commit them, which they were forced to do; but being ordered
to attend the execution of two condemned cutters, they refused, because
the spot was not specified in the sentence--a sacrifice to the mob
that scandalized the merchants, who had suffered by the late outrages,
and were exposed to daily injuries. The criminals, however, were at
last hanged; but the sheriffs fearing to be insulted by the populace,
and to avoid being reduced to call in the military, went guarded by
a crowd of constables, and were obliged to have the convicts hanged
precipitately. Yet the mob pelted the sheriffs, cut down the gallows,
carried it with one of the bodies to the house of the prosecutor, and
destroyed his looms. A justice of peace sent for guards from the Tower,
while Sawbridge pleaded to the rioters that he had done everything in
his power to save the criminals--a proof that his objection to the spot
of execution had been solely an evasion offered to popularity. The
sheriffs were as negligent of their duty on being required to suppress
the tumults on Wilkes’s[247] birthday, when many windows were broken
for not being illuminated.
It was not so valuable a triumph as he expected, when, on November the
10th, Wilkes carried his long-protracted cause against Lord Halifax.
The damages were laid at 20,000_l._: the jury gave him 4000_l._ One of
the books of the Treasury was produced, in which had been entered a
promise by the now zealous patriot, Mr. Grenville, that Lord Halifax
should be indemnified, if cast in the suit.[248] The jury having
disappointed the expectations of the populace by so moderate a fine,
were hissed, and forced to escape by a back way.
The graver citizens, who do not relish liberty at the risk of their
property, grew alarmed at these wild proceedings, and began to wish
again for the decorous ascendance of moneyed men. The first stand
they made was in Broad Street Ward, where they elected one Rossiter
Alderman against Bull, a man set up by the Supporters of the Bill of
Rights. Soon afterwards, attempts being made to introduce new Common
Councilmen into several wards, the richer citizens exerted themselves
to disappoint, and did disappoint, many of the turbulent candidates.
The scene in Ireland was not less alarming than the ill humour in
England. An augmentation of the forces was designed there. Lord
Townshend, afraid of a remnant of popularity, forbore to announce it in
his speech at opening the session. It was even omitted in the estimates
of the army; the Ministers there not having then acquainted themselves
with what the charge would amount to. The Opposition moved, and carried
by 13, two questions for addressing the Lord-Lieutenant to know the
reason of the omission. The augmentation, however, was carried by 170
to 50. In all other questions, the Viceroy was defeated, particularly
in one very important to the Sovereignty of England. It is usual, on
calling a new Parliament, to assign as the cause some bill sent over by
the Privy Council. The English Government always take care it should
be a money bill. This bill, now returned to them from England, the
House of Commons in Ireland rejected. The blow struck at the whole
constitution of Ireland, as regulated in subservience to England by
Poyning’s Act. The same innovation had been made in the reign of King
William. Lord Sidney, then Deputy of Ireland, immediately, without
waiting for directions from England, prorogued their Parliament, after
making a strong protest against the rejection. He kept it prorogued
till April, however inconvenient to the Government; the King in the
meantime having nothing but his hereditary revenue. The punishment,
however, fell more heavy on the Opposition by the odium it drew on
them from the public creditors and the pensioners of the Court, who
all remained unpaid during the suspension of Parliament. The Duke
of Leinster,[249] a weak man, who aspired to be Lord-Lieutenant;
Lord Shannon,[250] son of the late Speaker, who wished to be one
of the Lords Justices, and was very artful; and the present Speaker
Ponsonby,[251] who coveted Lord Clanbrazil’s place[252] for two lives,
were at the bottom of the new intrigues of the Opposition. The Duke
of Grafton, the Chancellor Camden, and the English Council advised
immediate prorogation; but Lord Hertford, better acquainted with
Ireland, where his estate lay, and which kingdom he had governed,
besought them to wait till the money-bills, which are always
transmitted hither before Christmas, should arrive. This was sound
advice; for, though the rash order was given, the money-bills, which
were actually passed and on the road, did arrive before Lord Townshend
could receive the command for prorogation, which, when he executed it,
was no longer an impediment to the collection of the revenue.
In the beginning of December, the English Privy Council sat on the
dissolution of the Parliament so much demanded. All were unanimous
against it, yet the Chancellor peremptorily condemned the introduction
of Lutterell. Mr. Conway, by my advice, proposed a popular declaration
in the King’s Speech against unusual exertion of prerogative. Most of
the Council approved the idea; and, at Mr. Conway’s request, I drew
words for that purpose; but he had not weight enough with the Duke of
Grafton to get them admitted, or the King had too much influence over
his Grace not to overrule so unpalatable a condescension.
A momentary triumph the Duke obtained over the popular party. Vaughan,
a sanctified leader of the Bill of Rights, offered him 5000_l._ for
the reversion of a place in America. The Duke, who should only have
exposed the man, prosecuted him: yet Vaughan had much to plead in his
excuse. Great debts were owing to him in the colony, of which the place
in question was the Register, who resided in England, whence it was
difficult to get his debts, which amounted to 80,000_l._ registered;
and, therefore, he had tried to purchase the place, which had been
often sold, for his son.[253] The Duke’s over affectation of virtue
drew on him from Junius a detection, in which his active aversion to
corruption did not appear quite so pure as his passive. It was proved
that he had bestowed on Colonel Burgoyne a place, which the latter
was to sell to reimburse himself for the expenses of his election at
Preston. Some other papers from the same hand fell cruelly on Burgoyne.
As the Session approached, Lord Chatham engaged with new warmth in
promoting petitions. He asked Mr. Cholmondeley,[254] Member for
Cheshire, why his county had not petitioned? and told him he himself
would move for dissolution of the Parliament; and, if not able to stand
on his legs, “I will speak,” said he, as he lay on his couch, “in this
horizontal posture.” Calcraft was not less zealous, and more active.
He and Sir Joseph Mawbey obtained a petition from the county of Essex,
though neither High Sheriff, the Members, nor one gentleman of the
county would attend the meeting, at the head of which they were forced
to set Sir Robert Bernard, Knight for Huntingdonshire.
In the City, attempts were made to save three more condemned cutters of
looms, and handbills were dispersed inviting the weavers to assemble on
the morrow in Moorfields, in order to petition the King for a pardon;
but Beckford, the new Lord Mayor, and the Sheriff Sawbridge went
thither and persuaded them to disperse; and the cutters were hanged
without disturbance.
These many essays towards an insurrection were crowned by the
unparalleled remonstrance of Junius to the King, the most daring insult
ever offered to a prince but in times of open rebellion, and aggravated
by the many truths it contained. Nothing could exceed the singularity
of this satire, but the impossibility of discovering the author. Three
men were especially suspected, Wilkes, Edmund Burke, and William Gerard
Hamilton. The desperate hardiness of the author in attacking men so
great, so powerful, and some so brave, was reconcileable only to the
situation of Wilkes; but the masterly talents that appeared in those
writings were deemed superior to his abilities: yet in many of Junius’s
letters an inequality was observed; and even in this remonstrance
different hands seemed to have been employed. The laborious flow of
style, and fertility of matter, made Burke believed the real Junius:
yet he had not only constantly and solemnly denied any hand in those
performances, but was not a man addicted to bitterness; nor could any
one account for such indiscriminate attacks on men of such various
descriptions and professions. Hamilton was most generally suspected.
He, too, denied it--but his truth was not renowned. The quick
intelligence of facts, and the researches into the arcana of every
office, were far more uncommon than the invectives; and men wondered
how any one possessed of such talents, could have the forbearance
to write in a manner so desperate as to prevent his ever receiving
personal applause for his writings: the venom was too black not to
disgrace even his ashes.[255]
A _North Briton_, of very inferior or no merit, followed this
remonstrance, and spared the two royal brothers no more than Junius had
palliated the errors of the King. The Duke of Cumberland, a weak and
debauched boy, was censured for an intrigue with a lady of rank, which
became of public notoriety, and will be mentioned hereafter. The Duke
of Gloucester, a virtuous, discreet, and unexceptionable Prince, had
involved himself in a more serious affair; of which, as I can, I must
give a more particular account than was known to others.
Maria Walpole, second natural daughter of my brother, Sir Edward,
and one of the most beautiful of women, had been married, solely by
my means, to James late Earl of Waldegrave, Governor to the King and
Duke of York, an excellent man, but as old again as she was, and of
no agreeable figure. Her passions were ambition and expense: she
accepted his hand with pleasure, and by an effort less common, proved
a meritorious wife. When after her year of widowhood she appeared
again in the full lustre of her beauty, she was courted by the Duke
of Portland; but the young Duke of Gloucester, who had gazed on her
with desire during her husband’s life, now openly showing himself her
admirer, she slighted the subject, and aspired to the brother of the
Crown. Her obligations to me, and my fondness for her, authorized me
to interpose my advice, which was kindly but unwillingly received.
I did not desist; but pointing out the improbabilities of marriage,
the little likelihood of the King’s consent, and the chance of being
sent to Hanover separated from her children,[256] on whom she doated,
the last reason alone prevailed on the fond mother, and she yielded
to copy a letter I wrote for her to the Duke of Gloucester, in which
she renounced his acquaintance in the no new terms of not being of
rank to be his wife, and too considerable to be his mistress. A short
fortnight baffled all my prudence. The Prince renewed his visits with
more assiduity after that little interval, and Lady Waldegrave received
him without disguise. My part was soon taken. I had done my duty--a
second attempt had been hopeless folly. Though often pressed to sup
with her, when I knew the Duke was to be there, I steadily refused, and
never once mentioned his name to her afterwards, though as their union
grew more serious, she affectedly named him to me, called him _the
Duke_, and related to me private anecdotes of the royal family, which
she could have received but from him. It was in vain; I studiously
avoided him. She brought him to see my house, but I happened not to be
at home; he came again, alone; I left the house. He then desisted, for
I never staid for his court, which followed the Princess Dowager’s,
but retired as soon as she had spoken to me. This, as may be supposed,
cooled my niece’s affection for me; but being determined not to have
the air of being convenient to her from flattery, if she was not
married, and having no authority to ask her the question on which she
had refused to satisfy her father, I preferred my honour to her favour,
and left her to her own conduct. Indeed my own father’s obligations to
the royal family forbad me to endeavour to place a natural daughter of
our house so near the Throne. To my brother the Duke was profuse of
civilities, which I pressed him to decline; and even advised him not
to see his daughter, unless she would own her marriage, which might
oblige the Duke, in vindication of her character, to avow her for his
wife. Married, I had no doubt they were. Both the Duke and she were
remarkably religious; and neither of them dissolute enough to live,
as they did at last, with all the liberties of marriage. The King and
Queen denied their legal union, yet the respect with which they treated
her spoke the contrary; and the homage which all men and all women paid
her by a fortune singular to her, assured the opinion of her virtue,
and made it believed that the King, privy to their secret, had exacted
a promise of their not divulging it. By degrees her situation became
still less problematic; and both the Duke and she affectedly took all
occasions of intimating it by a formal declaration. At first she had
houses, or lodgings, in the palaces nearest to his residence; and the
latter were furnished from the royal wardrobe without limitation.
She changed her liveries to a compound of the royal--was covered
with jewels--the Duke’s gentlemen and equerries handed her to her
chair in public--his equipages were dispatched for her--his sister,
the Queen of Denmark, sent her presents by him, and she quitted all
assemblies at nine at night, saying, “You know I must go.” At St.
Leonard’s Hill, in Windsor Forest, near his own lodge at Cranbourn, he
built her a palace, and lay there every night: his picture and Lord
Waldegrave’s she showed in her bedchamber. These were not the symptoms
of a dissoluble connection! Once they both seemed, in 1766, to be
impatient of ascertaining her rank. She had obtained lodgings in the
most inner court of the palace at Hampton, and demanded permission
of Lord Hertford, Lord Chamberlain, for her coach to drive into it,
an honour peculiar to the royal family. He, feeling the delicacy of
the proposal, which would have amounted to a declaration, unless a
like permission had been indulged to other countesses residing there,
delayed mentioning it to the King, to whom he knew the request would
be unwelcome. Lady Waldegrave sent to the Chamberlain’s office to
know if it was granted. Lord Hertford then was obliged to speak. The
King peremptorily refused, saying, he would not break through old
orders. Afraid of shocking her, Lord Hertford begged I would acquaint
Lady Waldegrave. I flatly refused to meddle in the business. In the
meantime the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland went to Hampton Court.
The former asked Ely, of the Chamberlain’s office, if the request was
granted; and being told Lord Hertford was to ask it of his Majesty,
the Duke, losing his usual temper, said passionately, “Lord Hertford
might have done it without speaking to the King (which would have been
rash indeed!)--but that not only Lady Waldegrave’s coach should drive
in, but that she herself should go up the Queen’s staircase.” This
being reported to Lord Hertford, he again pressed me to interpose; but
I again refused: but, lest the Duke should resent it, I advised him to
write to my niece: but she threw up her lodgings, when she could not
carry the point she had aimed at. She obtained, however, about a year
after, a sort of equivocal acknowledgment of what she was. The Duke of
Gloucester gave a ball to the King and Queen, to which nobody, without
exception, but certain of their servants and their husbands, and
wives, and children, were admitted: yet Lady Waldegrave and her eldest
daughter appeared there. She could have no pretension to be present,
being attached by no post to either King or Queen; and it spoke itself,
that the Duke could not have proposed to introduce his mistress[257] to
an entertainment dedicated to the Queen. The Princess Dowager (and she
was then believed to be the principal obstacle to the publicity of the
marriage) alone treated Lady Waldegrave with coldness[258]--another
presumption of their being married. His declining health often carried
the Duke abroad. The Great Duke, with whom he contracted a friendship,
told Lady Hamilton, wife of our Minister at Naples, that the Duke had
owned his marriage to him. It was this union that was censured in the
_North Briton_, as threatening a revival of the feuds of the two roses,
by a Prince of the blood marrying a subject.
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
LONDON:
Printed by S. & J. BENTLEY, WILSON and FLEY,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The pamphlet alluded to was intituled “A Letter to his Grace
the Duke of Grafton, First Commissioner of his Majesty’s Treasury.”
Editions were printed at London, Paris, and Berlin. It bears with less
severity on the Duke than on Lord Chatham, who is held up to public
ridicule and scorn as an apostate to the cause of liberty, and “the
abject crouching deputy of the proud Scot,” whom he is represented as
having previously persecuted and insulted. This virulent and tedious
invective concludes thus:--“But I have done with Lord Chatham; I leave
him to the poor consolation of a place, a pension, and a peerage, for
which he has sold the confidence of a great nation. Pity shall find
and weep over him.” It is altogether a poor performance. The only
part now of any interest, is the narrative it contains of Wilkes’s
arrest and examination for the publication of the _North Briton_,
in 1763.--(Almon’s Life of Wilkes, vol. iii. p. 184.--Biographical
Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 6.)--E.
[2] Walpole must have meant weeks. The Pope declined receiving them
on account of the expenses attending the support of so large a body.
Subsequently the miserable pittance of a franc per diem was assigned to
each of them.--E.
[3] M de Mello afterwards became Minister of Marine in Portugal,
under the Marquis of Pombal, and held that post several years with
great reputation. His ability and experience in business, obliged the
Court to retain him in the Government after the disgrace of Pombal,
notwithstanding his connexions with that statesman, and the known
liberality of his opinions.--(Dispatch from Mr. Walpole, minister at
Lisbon, in Smith’s Life of Pombal, vol. ii. p. 301.)--E.
[4] The exchange to which Walpole refers was not accomplished without
serious difficulty, the Indian Militia raised by the Jesuits having
long successfully resisted the Spanish and Portuguese forces employed
to carry the treaty into effect. The transaction has generally been
ascribed to the intrigues of the Dominicans, the ancient enemies of
the Jesuits, and their competitors for spiritual dominion in the
New World. The conspiracy of Tavora quickly followed, and furnished
Pombal with the ostensible pretext he so ardently desired, for the
expulsion of the order from Portugal (in 1759), and it also shook their
influence throughout Europe. They lingered on in France, proscribed
by the Parliaments, and odious to the great majority of the people,
until 1764, when the edict against them was wrung from Louis XV. by
the importunities of Choiseul. The same minister has been supposed to
have determined the Court of Spain to pursue a similar course; and no
doubt his influence and that of his master were used for that purpose.
But the real author of the bold and statesmanlike measure described in
the text, was Don Pedro D’Aranda, the Captain-General, and President of
the Council of Castile. During a lengthened absence from Spain, he had
formed in the society of Montesquieu, D’Alembert, and Diderot, as well
as of Frederic the Great, plans of national reform, which he knew to be
incompatible with the existence of the Jesuits; and from the moment of
his accession to power he seems to have been bent on their destruction.
His manly and persuasive eloquence, a mind full of resources, and a
character indomitably resolute, gained him an extraordinary sway over
the divided councils of an ignorant and imbecile Court. The Jesuits
had irritated Charles by their intrigues, both at Rome and Madrid,
during the reign of his predecessor. Their interference with the
various departments of the State had gradually identified them, in
the opinion of the people, with the grievous abuses under which the
country suffered, and all the rising talent of Spain was secretly
opposed to them. D’Aranda boldly arraigned them as the instigators of
the insurrection against Squillaci, which, for some hours, had placed
the royal family and the capital at the mercy of the mob. He availed
himself of the influence he had acquired by quelling that insurrection
to press the charge with his characteristic impetuosity. The alarm of
the King, and the confidence of the accuser, supplied the deficiency of
conclusive proofs, and D’Aranda prevailed.
No sooner was the edict obtained, than it appeared that the most minute
arrangements had been made throughout Spain for its immediate execution
by Campomanes, then a young man, and lately appointed to the ministry;
and the skill with which this was accomplished is still cited by the
native historians as the masterpiece of that statesman, high as his
reputation deservedly stands in his own country as an economist, a
writer, and a minister. See the Supplementary Chapter by Muriel to the
French translation of Coxe’s History of the Spanish Bourbons, vol. v.
p. 65; one of the most valuable of that work.--E.
[5] Sebastian Joseph de Carvalho a Mello Count D’Ocyras, and Marquis of
Pombal, was born in 1699, and died in 1782, in his 83rd year. He had
been Minister and master of Portugal for twenty-seven years--a period
rendered interesting by his vigorous efforts for the regeneration of
his country. This was an undertaking, however, beyond the power of
any individual, however eminent or able, to accomplish; and the harsh
and often unprincipled means he employed to attain his ends made his
reforms odious to a large portion of the community, and precipitated
their decline from the moment that he had fallen into disgrace.--E.
[6] Jane Warburton, widow of John Duke of Argyle, and mother of
Caroline Countess Dowager of Dalkeith, who had married for her second
husband Charles Townshend, and inherited a great fortune on her
mother’s death.
[7] See Lord Bristol’s letter to Lord Chatham of the 5th of April,
conveying the King’s kind message and the King’s own letter to Lord
Chatham of the 30th of April, to the same effect.--Chat. Corresp. vol.
iii. pp. 240. 252. His Majesty appears to have acted most considerately
and handsomely towards Lord Chatham throughout his illness.--E.
[8] Henry Crabb Boulton, M.P. for Worcester, died in 1773. He was
chairman of the East India Company, in the same year. He also presided
over the Committee appointed by the General Court of Proprietors to
oppose Lord North’s Bill for the better regulation of the Company,
and exerted himself most actively to defeat that measure. It was at
his instigation that the Corporation of the City of London, moved by
the important consideration that 1000 freemen were interested in the
question, made common cause with the Company, and petitioned Parliament
on its behalf.--E.
[9] Mr. Townshend had not many months before entertained a very
different opinion of this great man, as appears from the following
passage in the Duke of Grafton’s MS. Memoirs. “On the night preceding
Lord Chatham’s first journey to Bath, Mr. Charles Townshend was for
the first time summoned to the Cabinet. The business was on a general
view and statement of the actual situation and interests of the various
powers in Europe. Lord Chatham had taken the lead in this consideration
in so masterly a manner, as to raise the admiration and desire of us
all to co-operate with him in forwarding his views. Mr. Townshend was
particularly astonished, and owned to me, as I was carrying him in my
carriage home, that Lord Chatham had just shown to us what inferior
animals we were, and that as much as he had seen of him before,
he did not conceive till that night his superiority to be so very
transcendent.”--E.
[10] The following more friendly account of this singular scene is
transcribed from Sir George Colebrooke’s Memoirs.
“Mr. Townshend loved good living, but had not a strong stomach. He
committed therefore frequent excesses, considering his constitution,
which would not have been intemperance in another. He was supposed,
for instance, to have made a speech in the heat of wine, when that
was really not the case. It was a speech in which he treated with
great levity, but with wonderful art, the characters of the Duke of
Grafton and Lord Shelburne, whom, though his colleagues in office,
he entertained a sovereign contempt for, and heartily wished to get
rid of. He had a black ribbon over one of his eyes that day, having
tumbled out of bed, probably in a fit of epilepsy, and this added to
the impression made on his auditors that he was tipsy, whereas it was a
speech he had meditated a great while upon, and it was only by accident
that it found utterance that day. I write with certainty, because Sir
George Yonge and I were the only persons who dined with him, and we
had but one bottle of champagne after dinner, General Conway having
repeatedly sent messengers to press his return to the House.”--E.
[11] Francis Bernard, Esq. He had been Governor of New Jersey from 1758
to 1760 when he was promoted to Massachusets. He is praised by the
writers unfavourable to the Americans for his zeal in maintaining the
authority of the mother country.--(Stedman’s History of the American
War, vol. i. p. 58.) Unhappily this zeal was not tempered by judgment.
He has been justly censured by Mr. Burke. He was made a Baronet in
1769, died in 1779. The late benevolent Sir John Bernard was his second
son.--E.
[12] This speech will long be memorable, as it again opened the wounds
scarce skinned over by the repeal of the Stamp Act. The loss of the
land-tax occasioned this speech and the ensuing taxes; those taxes
produced opposition; that opposition gave a handle to the friends of
prerogative to attempt despotism in America; and that attempt has
caused a civil war in America, whence is just arrived notice of the
first bloodshed, as I transcribe these Memoirs--in June, 1775.
At this later period (when thirteen provinces are actually lost) the
leading steps may be summed up thus: Grenville (who had adopted from
Lord Bute a plan of taxation formed by Jenkinson) had provoked America
to resist. The Rockingham Administration had endeavoured to remedy
that mischief by repealing the Stamp Act; and perhaps might have
prevented a farther breach, though ambitious leaders, and perhaps some
true republican patriots, might have entertained hopes of separating
the Colonies from Great Britain; and France had certainly fomented
those designs. The pernicious mischief of lowering the land-tax gave
a handle to Charles Townshend to propose his new taxes (instigated,
as was supposed, by the secret cabal at Court, or officiously to make
his court there.) Thus the ambition of the Court began the quarrel;
Grenville was a second time, though then without foreseeing it, an
instrument of renewing it; and the Crown, that delighted in the
mischief, ended with being the great sufferer, and America happily
became perfectly free.--W.
[It is not unlikely, as Sir George Colebrooke observes, “that as the
Court had never intended to abandon the principle of taxation. Mr.
Townshend was not sorry to have an opportunity of ingratiating himself
at St. James’s, by proposing taxes which, though levied in America,
were not laid on American growth, or American industry, and so far
he hoped they would find admittance into the Colonies.”--(Sir George
Colebrooke’s MS. Memoirs.) Many of the Americans attached to the
British connexion were also of that opinion, and told Mr. Townshend
“Only let the tax bear the appearance of port duties, and it will
not be objected to.”--(Cavendish’s Debates, vol. i. p. 213.) At home
the measure was opposed by a very slender minority in Parliament
representing no powerful interests exclusive of the merchants engaged
in the American trade, whose fears for the debts owing to them in
the Colonies made them so tremblingly apprehensive, that their
remonstrances carried less weight with the Government than would
otherwise have been due to their intelligence and wealth. The country
also had taken umbrage at the intemperate language of the Colonists,
and regarded with some distrust the moderate policy of the Government;
so that Mr. Townshend had to contend with the taunts of the Opposition,
the popular voice, and the wishes of the Court--a combination far too
strong for a statesman of his temperament to resist.]--E.
[13] The third resolution was, “That until provision shall have been
made by the Assembly for furnishing the King’s troops with all the
necessaries required by the said Act (of 5 Geo. III.) the Government,
and Council, and Assembly be restrained and prohibited from passing or
assenting to any act of Assembly, &c.” It was opposed at considerable
length by Mr. Pownall, late Governor of Massachusets, on the ground
that the provisions of the Act were incompatible with the nature of the
people and the circumstances of many parts of the country, and that its
object might be effectually obtained by a colonial act, such as the
Assembly of Massachusets had passed at his recommendation some time
before. Governor Pownall’s speech is reported, probably by himself, in
Parl. Hist. vol. xvi. p. 331.--E.
[14] The previous discussions of the East India question are noticed
in the Second Volume pp. 394, 427, 449. They convey no exalted
notion of the sagacity or virtue of the parties concerned in them.
The sole object of the Ministers appears to have been to extort the
largest possible sum of money from the Company, without regard to
the prosperity of our commercial relations with India, the proper
administration of the territories of the Company, or the welfare of
the Indian population. The Company in like manner, directors and
proprietors, displayed an utter unfitness for the discharge of the
vast jurisdiction to which they laid claim. The venality and rapacity
of their officers in India almost found a parallel in the disgraceful
trafficking for votes and patronage in the Court of Proprietors, and
the speculations and maladministration of the directors. Their affairs
had fallen into great disorder,--the natural result of these practices
on such a vicious system as the annual election of the directors and
the low amount of the franchise of the proprietors. It was no wonder
that all sought to escape any interference or control on the part of
the Government. Strange to say, these crying evils were regarded with
indifference by the public, and every effort made by Government to
repress them met with determined resistance from the great mercantile
interests of the City of London. Indeed the cause of the Company became
so popular that many of the leading Whigs very inconsistently yielded
to the general feeling, and were found among its warmest advocates.
Conway wanted firmness to oppose this delusion. Of all the Ministers,
Lord Chatham alone did not entirely forget that he was a statesman. He
protested throughout against the rights claimed by the Company over
the conquered provinces, and he did not disguise his contempt for that
body. Indistinctly as his views are expressed, and extravagant as may
have been his belief of the extent of the revenues of the Company, he
appears to have carried his views for their appropriation beyond those
of mere revenue considerations to this country, and if his health had
admitted of his entering further into the controversy, and he had been
assisted in matters of detail, it is not unlikely that he would have
struck out a scheme worthy of his genius for the government of this
vast empire.--E.
[15] William Fitzherbert, of Tissington, M. P. for Derby, and a Lord of
Trade, an amiable man, whose intimate friendship with Burke, Johnson,
Cumberland, and other eminent literary men of his day, has been
gratefully recorded in their works. Dr. Johnson’s exquisite description
of him has often been quoted. He committed suicide in a fit of phrenzy,
in 1772. The late Lord St. Helens was his son.--E.
[16] Thomas Nuthall, appointed Solicitor of the Treasury, through
Lord Chatham’s interest, and his lordship’s intimate friend and law
adviser. Many letters to and from him are contained in the Chatham
Correspondence. He was shot by a highwayman on Hounslow Heath, and
expired a few hours afterwards, in March, 1775.--E.
[17] Mary, wife of Edward Duke of Norfolk, one of the daughters and
co-heiresses of Edward Blount of Blagden, in Devonshire. The biographer
of the Blount family states that “she graced her high station by the
beauty and dignity of her person, and the splendour of her wit and
talents.” She had lived with her husband in the South of France, until
he succeeded to the dukedom on the death of his elder brother, without
issue, in 1732. She died without issue in 1773. The Duke survived her
and died at the advanced age of 92, in 1777.--(History of the Croke and
Le Blount Family, vol. ii. p. 150.)--E.
[18] The debate was hot and personal. Lord Denbigh threw out
indirect reflections on Chief Justice Wilmot, and on being stopped
as disorderly, he turned upon Lord Mansfield, and went so far as to
give his lordship the lie. Eventually he was obliged to ask pardon,
which Lord Mansfield seems to have given with rather unbecoming
alacrity.--(Duke of Bedford’s Journal, in Cav. Parl. Deb., vol. i.
Appendix.) On the following day, the Duke of Grafton communicated
the result of the division by letter to Lord Chatham, and earnestly
entreated an interview to consider what was to be done. Lord Chatham,
as before, begged “to be allowed to decline the honour of the visit,
finding himself quite unable for a conversation which he should be
otherwise proud and happy to embrace.”--(Chatham Correspondence, vol.
iii. pp. 255, 256.)--E.
[19] The Duke says in his MS. Memoirs--
“Though I expected to find Lord Chatham very ill indeed, his situation
was different from what I had imagined: his nerves and spirits were
affected to a dreadful degree, and the sight of his great mind, bowed
down and thus weakened by disorder, would have filled me with grief
and concern even if I had not long borne a sincere attachment to his
person and character. The confidence he reposed in me, demanded every
return on my part, and it appeared like cruelty in me to have been
urged by any necessity to put a man I valued to so great suffering. The
interview was long and painful: I had to run over the many difficulties
of the session, for his lordship, I believe, had not once attended the
House since his last return from Bath. I had to relate the struggles
we had experienced in carrying some points, especially in the House
of Lords; the opposition, also, we had encountered in the East India
business, from Mr. Conway as well as Mr. Townshend, together with
the unaccountable conduct of the latter gentleman, who had suffered
himself to be led to pledge himself at last, contrary to the known
decision of every member of the Cabinet, to draw a certain revenue from
the Colonies, without offence to the Americans themselves; and I was
sorry to inform Lord Chatham, that Mr. Townshend’s flippant boasting
was received with strong marks of a blind and greedy approbation from
the body of the House; and I endeavoured to lay everything before
his lordship as plainly as I was able, and assured him that Lords
Northington and Camden had both empowered me to declare how earnestly
they desired to receive his advice as to assisting and strengthening
the system he had established by some adequate accession, without which
they were satisfied it could not nor ought to proceed.
“It was with difficulty that I brought Lord Chatham to be sensible of
the weakness of his Administration, or the power of the united faction
against us, though we received every mark we could desire of his
Majesty’s support. At last, after much discourse and some arguing, he
proceeded to entreat me to remain in my present station, taking that
method to strengthen the Ministry which should appear to me to be the
most eligible; and he assured me that if Lords Northington and Camden,
as well as myself, did not retain our high places, there would be an
end to all his hopes of being ever serviceable again as a public man.”
Eventually Lord Chatham acquiesced in the Duke entering into a
negotiation with the Bedford or Rockingham party--though he preferred
the former,--a preference which explains the Duke’s remark in the text
of p. 49.--E.
[20] Conway was right--Prince Ferdinand realized very little property
during the war, and died poor. The vast sums drawn from England fell
into the hands of subordinate agents.--E.
[21] They were both descendants of Charles II.
[22] A brief report of the debate is given from Lord Hardwicke’s Notes
in the “Parliamentary History,” vol. xvi. p. 350, by which it appears
that Lord Mansfield’s opposition was most decided and effective. He
treated it as an unprecedented exertion of absolute power to set aside
a legal act of private men legally empowered to dispose of their own
property--they having neither violated the general principles of
justice nor the bye-laws of the Company; their circumstances being
amply adequate to the payment of the dividend: and he also insisted
that stock-jobbing would be promoted by the bill, and left no doubt
of his own impression that such was its sole object. These arguments
are reproduced with great ability in the Protest, and have never
been satisfactorily refuted. The insolvency of the Company--a ground
afterwards abandoned by the Government--seems to be the only legitimate
defence that could have been alleged for such an arbitrary act.--E.
[23] Many, if not all of these, are to be found in the third volume of
Lord Chatham’s Correspondence.--E.
[24] Lord Holland had long vented this maxim, though he himself and
Lord Chatham had proved the futility of it in the last reign, when they
had successfully attacked the Duke of Newcastle’s Administration, on
his setting Sir Thomas Robinson to lead the House of Commons. Lord Bute
at the same instigation had erected himself into Minister, with Sir
Francis Dashwood for his substitute, and though it is true the nation
bore it for one session, it was so ridiculous an Administration, that
the Earl took fright, resigned himself, and deposed his deputy. The
King not having courage to repeat the system, though he liked it, had
recourse to an artful expedient, which answered his purpose--which was
to set up an ostensible Minister, but govern by his secret junto. Lord
Rockingham had really been Minister for one year, but found he could
not gain the King’s confidence without submitting to the junto, and
he was removed for Lord Chatham, another real Minister, whose madness
or mad conduct left the King at liberty to revert to his own system,
and then the Duke of Grafton and Lord North submitted to be ostensible
Ministers.
[25] This was not exactly the purport of the message: see infra pp. 87,
88, _note_. The Duke of Bedford’s construction of it may be seen from
the following passage in his Journal:--“Mr. Rigby informed us of the
good temper of mind in which he found Mr. Grenville with regard to any
Administration which could be formed to defeat the secret influence
of Lord Bute, and whose measures should be pursued conformable to his
sentiments about America, &c.”--(Duke of Bedford’s Journal, 11th of
July.)--E.
[26] George Lord Townshend.
[27] Lady Caroline Campbell, wife of General Conway.
[28] Lady Caroline Campbell, wife of Charles Townshend. These two
ladies were daughters of two Johns Dukes of Argyll, and were widows of
the Earls of Ailesbury and Dalkeith.
[29] According to the Duke of Bedford’s Journal, this meeting
originated with the Duke of Newcastle: it look place at Newcastle House
on the 21st, at 9 o’clock in the evening. The two Dukes, the Marquis,
and Messrs. Rigby and Dowdeswell were the only persons present. The
point on which they finally disagreed was Mr. Conway’s continuing
Secretary of State with the lead in the Commons. “This,” says the Duke,
“necessarily put an end to any further possibility of going on, and
we broke up with our declaring ourselves free from all engagements to
one another, and to be as before this negotiation began.”--Cavendish’s
Debates, vol. i. Appendix, p. 606.--E.
[30] At the beginning of the ensuing year, being in great danger, and
recovering to some degree, he resolved to give over politics; he was
then seventy-four. This determination he notified by letter to Princess
Amelie, Lord Rockingham, and others; for he could not quit folly but in
a foolish manner. He languished near ten months, and died November 17,
1768.
[31] Many of the letters that passed between the Opposition leaders
during this negotiation are preserved among the Bedford MSS. They
confirm substantially the narrative in the text. The Grenvilles appear
from first to last to have been the real obstacles to any satisfactory
arrangement. The Duke of Bedford would probably have been satisfied
with such a share of power as would (to use his own words) “rescue
the King and the country out of the hands of Lord Bute, and restore
strength and energy to the Government upon a constitutional footing,
free from _favouritism_ and the _guidance_ of a Minister not in a
responsible employment.”--(MS. Letter to the Marquis of Rockingham,
July 16.) He thought less of measures than of men, and his bold,
sanguine turn of mind made him underrate the difficulties inseparable
from a coalition. Mr. Grenville looked much further than the exclusion
of Lord Bute. He concurred in the idea of an extended and comprehensive
administration on the ostensible ground that such an administration
was likeliest to be a permanent one, but his concurrence hinged on
the condition “that a plan of measures should be adopted to the
satisfaction of Lord Temple and himself, and particularly the capital
measure of asserting and _establishing_ the sovereignty of Great
Britain over the Colonies,” which he insinuates had been purposely kept
back by Lord Rockingham. This was the purport of the message brought
from him by Mr. Rigby to Woburn.--(MS. Letter from Mr. Grenville to Mr.
Rigby, July 16.) From the moment that his determination was made known,
all hopes of union between the parties in Opposition were at an end.
The heartiness and warmth with which Lord Rockingham’s overtures were
in the first instance received at Woburn, gave his disappointment
additional bitterness. (Letter from Lord Albemarle to Mr. Rigby, July
23, Bedford MSS.) The unpleasant truth was thus also revealed to him,
that his destiny was rather to correct and to advise than to administer
the Government. Mr. Burke must have strangely deceived himself when
he complimented the Marquis on his magnanimity in refusing office at
the price of the abandonment of his friends. It was the union of the
Bedford and Grenville parties that had broken up his administration
and now alone prevented his reconstructing it, with the additional
injury of almost destroying the Opposition. Indeed Lord Rockingham felt
no little embarrassment how to give an ostensible explanation of his
conduct, or to state the principles on which the Opposition ought to
be conducted in future. (See his Letters to Mr. Dowdeswell.--Cavendish
Debates, vol. i. Appendix 2, p. 583.) He had no feelings in common
with his new allies beyond a distrust of the King, and hatred of
Lord Bute. His political sympathies, and in some degree his personal
friendships were with the Ministers. Thus he was brought into a false
position, which made his course most difficult, and fully explains the
following passage in one of his letters:--“You know I never disguised
to my friends that I considered them as a forlorn hope, but that the
maintenance of character and credit was in honour incumbent upon them,
and would in the first place be a comfort to their own minds, and
though it might appear improbable at present, yet it was not impossible
that such conduct might ultimately prove the best policy.” The Duke
of Richmond had strongly recommended the Marquis to come in without
the Grenvilles and Bedfords (see the Duke’s Letter to Burke, in Burke,
Coll. Corresp. vol. 1. p. 139): and it would seem that the party
afterwards regretted that this advice had not been followed, though as
long as the King continued unfavourable to them, it surely is more than
doubtful that they would have succeeded better than in the preceding
year.
Of the various accounts which have been published of these
negotiations, Walpole’s is the most clear and impartial, as well
as interesting. It is confirmed in all essential points both by
Mr. Dowdeswell’s narrative in his life of his father, and the Duke
of Bedford’s Private Journal,--authorities of equal authenticity,
though proceeding from opposite political sources. Almon’s (Political
Register, vol. i. pp. 201–208,) is justly condemned by Lord Rockingham
as most unfair, and that nobleman is probably right in ascribing it to
Lord Temple.--E.
[32] It appears from the Duke of Bedford’s Journal that he had a long
interview with Lord Rockingham on the 23rd, in which the latter behaved
very politely and cordially to him, and it was probably out of that
interview that the Duke of Richmond’s communication originated. Lord
Rockingham subsequently considered that nothing but the interference
of the Grenvilles prevented the Duke’s concurrence with him in forming
a Ministry. The Duke of Grafton seems to have been of the same
opinion.--(Bedford MSS.)--E.
[33] It was after Mr. Pelham’s death, when he had joined the Duke of
Newcastle, and was made Secretary of State. He came to me and told me
he believed that he could procure for my own life the place I held
during my brother’s, if I would be well with the Duke of Newcastle. I
replied warmly and peremptorily, “Mr. Fox, do you think that, after
laughing at the Duke of Newcastle all my life, I will stoop to accept a
favour from him?”
[34] A distinct confirmation of Lord Bute’s statement may be found in
the Memoirs of Mr. Dutens, the Secretary to Mr. Mackenzie. His Lordship
assured that gentleman “that since the year 1766 he never interfered,
directly or indirectly, with public affairs, nor had privately seen the
King during that period. He continued to visit regularly the Princess
of Wales; but when the King came to see his mother, he always retired
by a back staircase.”--(Memoirs of a Traveller now in Retirement, vol.
iv. p. 183.)--E.
[35] Lord Beauchamp and Lord Mountstewart, sons of the Earls of
Hertford and Bute, had married the two daughters of the late Lord
Windsor.
[36] Lord Chancellor Bowes; he was an Englishman who had practised
at the Irish Bar, where he had successively filled the offices of
Solicitor and Attorney General. He was afterwards Lord Chief Baron,
and on the death of Lord Jocelyn obtained the Great Seal with an Irish
Peerage. He died in 1767 without male issue. He is said to have been
learned and eloquent, and to have presided in the House of Lords with
great dignity. Some interesting letters from him to Mr. Dodington are
printed in the Appendix to Adolphus’s History of George the Third.--E.
[37] This portrait has the broad lines of truth, and is more to be
depended upon than Mr. Burke’s splendid and affectionate panegyric,
(Speech on American Taxation;) and yet who can blame the warmth with
which this great man claims admiration for a genius which in some
points resembled his own? It is to be regretted that of the many
eminent literary men who enjoyed Mr. Townshend’s intimacy, none should
have left behind any memorial by which his wonderful qualities might be
justly appreciated. In the absence of all biographical information, the
following loose memoranda from Sir George Colebrooke’s Memoirs are not
without value.
“The ambition of Mr. Townshend would not have been gratified but by
being Minister; and doubtless, had he lived to see the Duke of Grafton
resign, he must have had the offer which was made to Lord North, who
succeeded him as Chancellor of the Exchequer. But he never would have
remained Premier as long as Lord North did. Though much his superior
in eloquence and abilities, he wanted the nerve necessary to conduct
business with steadiness; and instead of engaging in hostilities with
America, he would have been the first to flinch from them, had he
lived and been allowed to guide. So far, therefore, his death may be
considered as a public loss. As a private man, his friends had used to
say that they should not see his like again. Though they were often
the butts of his wit, they always returned to his company with fresh
delight, which they would not have done had there been either malice or
rancour in what he said. He loved society, and in his choice of friends
preferred those over whom he had a decided superiority in talent. He
was satisfied when he put the table in a roar, and he did not like to
see it done by another. When Garrick and Foote were present, he took
the lead, and hardly allowed them an opportunity of showing their
talents of mimicry, because he could excel them in their own art. He
shone particularly in taking off the principal members of the House
of Commons. Vanity was his ruling passion, and he sacrificed, even
before his wife and daughter, all sense of decorum to a joke: I have
seen instances of this which would have shocked Lord Rochester. Among
the few he feared was Mr. Selwyn; and at a dinner at Lord Gower’s
they had a trial of skill, in which Mr. Selwyn prevailed. When the
company broke up, Mr. Townshend, to show he had no animosity, carried
him in his carriage to White’s; and as they parted, Mr. Selwyn could
not help saying, ‘Remember, this is the first set-down you have given
me to-day.’ As Mr. Townshend lived at considerable expense, and had
little paternal fortune, he speculated occasionally both in the French
and English funds. With regard to the first, he had a concern with me
in _contrats sur le cuir_, in which we lost, and he gave me his bond
for his share of the difference, which was paid after his death. When
he was Chancellor of the Exchequer the Duke of Grafton gave a dinner
to several of the principal men in the City to settle the loan. Mr.
Townshend came in his nightgown, and after dinner, when the terms were
settled, and everybody present wished to introduce some friend on the
list of subscribers, he pretended to cast up the sums already admitted,
said the loan was full, huddled up his papers, got into a chair and
returned home, reserving to himself by this manœuvre a large share in
the loan. Where he was really a great man was in Parliament. Nobody,
excepting Mr. Pitt, possessed a style of oratory so perfectly suited
to the House. He read sermons, particularly Sherlock, as models of
eloquence and argumentation.”--E.
[38] Of Greenwich; a title that had been borne by her father, John Duke
of Argyle.
[39] Mr. Andrews, Provost of the University of Dublin, M.P. for
Derry, a man of talent and accomplishments, which he disgraced by his
subserviency to the Castle and the Ministerial leaders. His agreeable
conversation and conviviality made him very influential in Irish
society. He died suddenly at Shrewsbury in 1774.--(Hardy’s Life of Lord
Charlemont, vol. i. p. 149.)--E.
[40] A more detailed account of the Duke of York is given in George
Selwyn and his Contemporaries, vol. ii. p. 195. He seems to have been
a frivolous, dissipated youth, in all respects unlike the King, whose
disapprobation of his conduct deserves praise rather than censure.--E.
[41] Lord North at first refused the Exchequer from a distrust of his
ability to encounter Mr. George Grenville on financial questions. Lord
Barrington was then applied to, and had consented, when Lord North
agreed to accept.--(Lord Barrington’s Life, pp. 105–112.) The latter
proved perfectly equal to his office, and had he risen no higher would
have left a considerable name as a statesman of extensive “knowledge,
of a versatile understanding fitted for all sorts of business, and
a most accomplished debater.” Unhappily for himself and his country
he wanted firmness to resist the solicitations of his Sovereign,
and submitted to be the instrument of carrying into effect measures
which have stamped his Administration with indelible disgrace.--An
interesting account of Lord North is given in Lord Brougham’s Statesmen
of the Time of George the Third, vol. i. pp. 1–49, and above all in
Lady Charlotte Lindsay’s Letter in the Appendix, pp. 391–7.--E.
[42] The differences between Portugal and Spain were subsequently
adjusted by an agreement that each nation should maintain the
undisputed enjoyment of the country in its possession on the 28th of
May, 1767. The plans of Pombal for the encouragement of the domestic
trade of Portugal, such as his establishing the Oporto and other
great companies, were necessarily most injurious to the interests of
foreigners, and especially of the English, many of whose merchants were
utterly ruined. Mr. Lyttelton was employed to obtain redress of these
grievances without success.--E.
[43] Sir Thomas Sewell, formerly M.P. for Winchelsea, enjoyed most
extensive practice at the Bar, and has left the reputation of a sound
and acute judge. His decisions, however, are only known from the
reports of them in Ambler’s collection, which unfortunately are very
brief. The late Chief Baron Alexander, himself an excellent lawyer,
used to mention him with great respect. He died in 1784, leaving an
only son, Thomas Bailey Heath Sewell, who settled on an estate which
his father had purchased in Surrey, in the neighbourhood of Chertsey,
and died without issue in 1808.--E.
[44] See for an account of Lord Shannon, vol. i. p. 1.--E.
[45] Mr. Tisdall never obtained the object of his ambition; probably
because the Government would not venture to promote an Irishman to
such a post. He represented the University of Dublin for nearly
thirty years, was a successful lawyer, and could hardly be termed an
unsuccessful politician, for he steered a steady course through the
tumults of his day, maintaining amidst occasional fluctuations of
popularity great personal influence to the last. It is said of him
that his countenance was never gay, his mind never gloomy. He died in
1777.--(Hardy’s Life of Lord Charlemont, vol. i. p 153.)--E.
[46] Far from interfering, as Walpole states, to defeat the intrigues
of Tisdall and the Irish Council, Lord Townshend wholly lent himself
to them, and nearly prevailed on the Cabinet to raise that ambitious
lawyer to the Chancellorship. (Duke of Grafton’s MSS.) He afterwards
yielded other points with equal facility, and indeed seldom showed any
vigour throughout his Administration, except in his disputes with his
colleagues in England. He enjoyed advantages which had been denied to
his predecessors; for the English Government were at length beginning
to feel “that the time must come when a different plan of government
ought to take place in Ireland. Lord Chatham had intended to begin it;
and, to enable himself to contend with the powerful connexions there,
proposed to establish himself upon the basis of a just popularity, by
shortening the duration of Parliament, and granting other measures
which the Irish appeared to have most at heart. These views went far
beyond the reach of Lord Townshend.” (MS. Letter from Lord Camden
to the Duke of Grafton.) Instructions were accordingly given to
Lord Townshend in a spirit of great liberality for that day; but he
frittered away their effect by the indiscretion with which he executed
them. The firmness, consistency, and judgment--the constant exercise
of perseverance and self denial, requisite for contending with the
factions that stood between the Crown and the people, did not belong
to him. If he could only enjoy his ease and his pleasures, and receive
the homage usually paid to his station, he was content; the patronage
of the Castle continued to be applied to the same unworthy purposes as
before, and the interests of the people to be equally neglected. If
neither harsh nor oppressive, he held the reins of Government with too
careless a hand for its course to be attended with real benefit to the
country.--E.
[47] John Hobart, third Earl of Buckinghamshire; he had already
been Ambassador in Russia, and in 1777 succeeded Lord Harcourt as
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. His Administration partook of the weakness
of Lord North’s Government, as was too plainly shown by the embodying
of the Irish volunteers, and the concessions made to Irish trade; the
latter, however just, being too evidently extorted from the Government
to obtain any lasting gratitude. Lord Buckinghamshire was an amiable
nobleman of fair intentions and pleasing manners. He died in 1783,
without male issue.--E.
[48] John third Duke of Roxburgh, born in 1740, succeeded his father
in 1755. He was one of the handsomest men of his day, and not less
remarkable for the grace and nobleness of his manners. In early life,
during his travels he visited the small court of Mecklenburgh, where
he is said to have gained the affections of the Princess Christiana,
the Duke’s eldest daughter. Indeed, their marriage was believed to
have been prevented only by the application of George the Third for
the hand of her younger sister. This belief was strengthened by the
Princess and the Duke remaining unmarried through life. Notwithstanding
this incident, the Duke became a favourite companion of George the
Third. His name is now best known as an eminent collector of books.
He died in 1804, and was succeeded by his cousin, Lord Bellenden, on
whose death the title was claimed by Sir James Innes, and, after a long
process, the House of Lords pronounced him the fifth Duke of Roxburgh
in 1812.--(Wood’s Peerage of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 456.)--E.
[49] Mr. Burke’s speech may be found in the Parliamentary History,
vol. xvi. p. 386, where it is stated to be the first of his speeches
of which a report has been preserved. The opinions he entertained on
the dearness of provisions are stated with more force and perspicuity
in his celebrated “Thoughts on Scarcity.” (Works, vol, vii. p. 375.) A
petition from the City was presented on the first day of the session,
in which, after soliciting the continuance of the temporary acts passed
in the preceding session, prohibiting the exportation of corn, and
allowing its free importation, the petitioners ascribe the high price
of meat in a great degree to the recent increase in the breeding of
horses, owing partly to the growing practice of employing them instead
of oxen in tillage, and partly to the exportations to the Continent;
whereby the number of cattle for slaughter was necessarily diminished;
secondly, to the unlimited consumption of ewe lambs and cow calves in
all seasons of the year, merely to gratify the unreasonable appetites
of the rich and luxurious. The consolidation of small farms was also
deprecated in the strongest terms.--The Duke of Grafton was opposed to
unlimited importation of corn, on the ground that it would encourage
smuggling.--(Bedford MSS.)--E.
[50] Dr. Loyd, Dean of Norwich, who had been tutor to Mr. Grenville’s
sons.
[51] He was couched during this negotiation, in which he took little or
no part, though his name was often made use of. He recovered a small
degree of sight, and went into public and played at cards, yet, as he
said himself, saw very imperfectly.
[52] Mr. Meynell was M.P. for Stafford, and the Duke’s intimate friend,
as appears in his Grace’s Memoirs. He was a man of high fashion,
in which service he spent a large portion of a noble estate on the
turf and other expensive amusements and vices so popular with the
aristocracy of that day. Captain Meynell, M.P. for Lisburn, is his
grandson and lineal representative.--E.
[53] I can find nothing among the Bedford papers to show how the
negotiation of the Bedford party with the Government originated,
or how it was conducted. The following are the last letters that
passed between the Duke and Mr. Grenville previous to their political
separation. Some unimportant matter only is omitted.
_Duke of Bedford to Mr. Grenville._
Woburn Abbey, Nov. 5th, 1767.
“I should have been very glad to have had an opportunity of talking
to you fully on the present state of political affairs, and of the
steps it may be proper to take at the beginning of the ensuing
session. If such a coalition as to unite in Opposition all those
who are adverse to the present Administration could be obtained, it
would at least have this one good effect--to render the Ministers
incapable of carrying on the business of this session, though I
fear a further coalition of what would be advisable to be done in
future would be impracticable. You see I am readier to pull down
than to set up; that is owing to the unfortunate crisis of the
times. So far as to what relates to the general plan of politics.”
_Mr. Grenville to the Duke of Bedford._
“Weston, November 6th, 1767.
“I shall always be happy in any opportunity of explaining to your
Grace my ideas upon the public business, and of improving myself
by learning your opinion, which nobody can more highly regard
than I do. I purpose being in London on the Saturday before the
meeting of Parliament, when my first care will be to wait upon
your Grace, if you are then arrived. In the mean time, as you wish
to know my thoughts on the present state of political affairs, I
can only say that they continue to be the same that you have long
known them. I think that public measures must be the great object
of every honest man’s attention, and that from them we must derive
our security, or shortly meet with our destruction. By public
measures, I mean the maintaining the peace abroad with the utmost
vigilance, by the firmest as well as the most temperate conduct,
both of which I look on as equally necessary for that purpose;--I
mean a settled, moderate, and frugal Government at home, to heal
the grievous wounds which contrary principles have inflicted upon
us;--I mean the availing ourselves of every resource to save, if
possible, our sinking public credit, to restore our declining
trade, and to strengthen us in time of peace against that day
of danger which the first war we are engaged in must bring upon
us;--I mean the asserting and establishing the lawful authority of
the King and Parliament over every part of our dominions in every
part of the world: these, my dear lord, I am sensible are general
expressions, which few gentlemen in words will venture directly
to contradict; but I, as well as your Grace, mean the reality and
not the words, and can therefore only give an assent to a system
of measures conformable to them. I shall readily support these
principles, whoever shall propose them; and I never can support
any Ministry which act in contradiction to them. The steps to be
taken at the beginning of the ensuing session must necessarily
depend on the plan to be opened by the Ministry, if any is formed,
and on the dispositions of mankind. I am entirely ignorant of the
former; but as to the latter, it appears to me that there is a
general listlessness and supineness in all degrees of men, from
which I fear nothing but the stroke of calamity will rouse them.
The present Ministry may probably be overturned by many events,
and from their own weakness and inability, if no other cause
co-operates. But the difficulty in the present unhappy crisis, as
your Grace truly observes, is how to set up what is right; and I
must fairly own that I do not see any means of it, until the King’s
mind shall be possessed with a serious conviction of the danger,
or the people be brought to open their eyes on the brink of a
precipice before they fall into it. My course, however, will be,
at all events, to acquit myself of what I owe to them and to my
friends, as well as to my own character and opinions; but I believe
that our attendance will be very thin in the House of Commons, from
a variety of circumstances.”
No meeting took place between the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Grenville
subsequently to the date of these letters, though they remained at
their country seats, within a few hours’ journey of each other, for the
ensuing fortnight. The tone of the correspondence is ominous of the
approaching rupture; and if the Duke had been seeking a fair pretext
for dissolving his connection with an impracticable associate, it
was certainly presented by Mr. Grenville’s letter. Nothing could be
more plain than that Mr. Grenville would oppose any Administration
that might succeed the Duke of Grafton’s, unless it submitted to his
dictation,--or, in other words, the little that could be gained by
overthrowing the Duke of Grafton’s Government would be the substitution
of one weak Government for another. The Duke of Bedford had, upon
principle, long considered that of all Governments a weak one was
the worst. It was from this feeling alone that, when a member of Mr.
Grenville’s Cabinet, he had eagerly courted the accession of Mr. Pitt,
whose views in many respects differed much from his own, and this was
the main ground of his opposition to the Duke of Grafton. His scruples
being removed by the retirement of Conway, it was now in his power
to give the Government the strength which it so much wanted. This
consideration was no doubt strongly urged upon him by Mr. Rigby, Lord
Weymouth, and other aspirants to office. It was his nature to love his
friends--not wisely, but too well; and he perhaps more readily yielded
to their wishes from the resolution he had taken to accept nothing for
himself. On the 20th of November he came to London to prepare for the
operation on his eyes, which was performed on the 5th of December by
Baron Wenzel, the celebrated oculist, so that, as Walpole observes, it
was impossible for him to have been concerned in the details of the
negotiation.--E.
[54] Lord Lisburne had been raised to an Irish Earldom in the
preceding year, almost immediately on his succeeding his father. He
was great-grandson of the celebrated Earl of Rochester, one of whose
daughters, and eventually coheiresses, had married Mr. Vaughan, the
grandfather of Lord Lisburne. He was a good scholar, and the editor has
seen in the library he collected at Mamhead in Devonshire, the seat
where he passed his latter years, many evidences of his attention to
ancient and modern literature. He died at an advanced age in 1800. The
present Lord Lisburne is his grandson.--E.
[55] He was entirely in the Grenville interest.--E.
[56] The Jockey Club was composed of noblemen and gentlemen frequenters
of Newmarket.
[57] See more of Lord Weymouth vol. ii. p. 176, _note_.--E.
[58] Governor Walsh was an intimate friend of Lord Clive, through
whom he probably was thus employed by Mr. Grenville, that nobleman’s
political patron.--E.
[59] Thomas Brand, Esq., of the Hoo in Hertfordshire, had married Lady
Caroline Pierrepont, half-aunt of the Duchess of Bedford. He died
before any creation of peers, which did not happen till ten years after
this date. [Mr. Brand was M.P. for Shoreham, and died in 1770; his son
married Gertrude Roper, sister and heir of Lord Dacre, on whose death
she succeeded to that ancient barony, which descended to her son,
Thomas Brand, the present Lord Dacre, in 1819.--E.]
[60] See vol. i. p. 358, _note_.--E.
[61] Afterwards Ambassador at Vienna, and at length Secretary of
State.--E.
[62] Frederic St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke. [He was nephew and
successor of the famous Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, to whom
he bore some resemblance, in personal graces and vivacity, as well
as in laxity of morals. Several of his letters are given in “George
Selwyn and his Cotemporaries,” and show a smattering of literature.
His marriage with the accomplished Lady Diana Beauclerc was dissolved
more from his fault than hers in 1768, and he died in 1787. The present
Viscount is his grandson.--E.]
[63] Robert Sawyer Herbert, uncle of the Earl of Pembroke. [He was
Surveyor-General of the Crown Lands from 1760 to 1768, and died in
1769.--E.]
[64] A clear and impartial statement of this great case is given by Mr.
Adolphus, in his History, vol. i. p. 308.--E.
[65] Edward Willes, second son of Sir John Willes, Lord Chief Justice
of the Common Pleas in the reign of George the Second.
[66] Attorney-General to King George the Second.
[67] Second son of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke.
[68] Dunning’s relations with Wilkes and with Lord Shelburne furnish
abundant reasons for the undistinguished figure he made in the House
during the short period that he remained Solicitor-General. He was of
course distrusted and slighted by Lord North, who would have obtained
his dismissal within a few months after his appointment, but for the
intervention of Lord Camden.--(Duke of Grafton’s MS. Memoirs.) Few
men could have succeeded under such circumstances. As soon as he was
released from this constraint, his great powers obtained the full
recognition of the House. Wraxall describes him (after the date of
these Memoirs) as one of the leaders of the Opposition, the constant
associate, and not unworthy fellow labourer of Burke, and says, “that
so powerful was reason, flowing from his lips, that every murmur
became hushed and every ear attentive. Though he neither delighted nor
entertained his hearers, he subdued them by powers of argumentative
ratiocination which have rarely been exceeded.”--(Historical Memoirs,
vol. i. p. 42.) His success was more remarkable from the extreme
meanness of his person, and the badness of his voice. At the bar he
excited universal admiration. Hannah More, in a letter on the Duchess
of Kingston’s trial, wrote of him,--“His manner is insufferably bad,
coughing and spitting at every word, but his sense and expression
pointed to the last degree. He made her Grace shed bitter tears.” A
great authority (Lord Brougham) has recorded that the fame of his legal
arguments still lives in Westminster Hall,--(Historical Sketches,
&c., vol. iii. p. 158) and one of the most accomplished of his
contemporaries has left a tribute to his memory, so beautifully worded
that one cannot read it without pleasure. “His language was always
pure, always elegant, and the best words dropped easily from his lips
into the best places with a fluency at all times astonishing, and when
he had perfect health really melodious. That faculty, however, in which
no mortal ever surpassed him, and which all found irresistible, was
his wit. This relieved the weary, calmed the resentful, and animated
the drowsy; this drew smiles even from such as were the objects of it,
and scattered flowers over a desert, and, like sun-beams sparkling on
a lake, gave spirit and vivacity to the dullest and least interesting
cause. Not that his accomplishments as an advocate consisted
principally of volubility of speech, or liveliness of raillery. He was
endued with an intellect sedate yet penetrating, clear yet profound,
subtle yet strong. His knowledge, too, was equal to his imagination,
and his memory to his knowledge.” (Sir William Jones’s Works, vol. iv.
p. 577.)--E.
[69] Lord Bottetort’s proposal was absolutely monstrous, being nothing
less than a gross fraud on his creditors. In the present day it would
not have been entertained for a moment. Neither the Attorney-General
nor the Home Office, however, raised any objections, and it would seem
from the Duke of Grafton’s Memoirs that the case was heard before
the Commissioners of the Privy Seal, and the claim allowed; but on
referring to the Records in the Privy Seal Office, I find that the
patent _did not_ pass.--E.
[70] Sir Thomas Stapylton, Bart., of Rotherfield Greys, Oxon, married
Mary, daughter of Mr. Fane of Wormsley, and niece of the Earl of
Westmoreland. His eldest son became in 1788 Lord le Despencer,
the abeyance of that ancient barony having been determined in his
favour.--E.
[71] The Honourable Robert Lee, uncle to the Earl of Lichfield, whom
he succeeded in that title in 1772. He died without issue in 1770, and
was the last of his family. The title became extinct and Ditchly has
descended to Lord Dillon.--E.
[72] The proceedings are reported in Parliamentary History, vol. xvi.
p. 397. Mr. Adolphus says in a note to his History, vol. i. p. 337.
“The whole matter was treated with great ridicule by writers of all
parties,” a statement which may easily be believed if Mr. Grattan’s
story be true, that the peccant aldermen completed their bargain with
the Duke of Marlborough during their imprisonment in Newgate.--E.
[73] When this was written, it alluded only to the opposition
occasioned by Lord George in Ireland. He has since engrafted himself on
Mr. Grenville’s persecution of America.
[74] Sir Robert Rich, Bart., had been made Field Marshal in 1757.
His Brigadier’s commission is dated as far back as 1727, so that he
must have been very aged when he died. His name does not appear as
having ever been employed on active service. He was succeeded in his
baronetcy and estates by his eldest son, General Rich, who had lost an
arm at Culloden; one of his daughters became the second wife of Lord
Lyttelton.--E.
[75] Chauncy Townshend was M.P. for Wigton in Scotland. He died in
1770. The Annual Register states that he was the first Englishman
that represented a Scotch borough (vol. xiii. p. 114). His son became
an Alderman for the City of London, and a politician of sufficient
notoriety to be often noticed in this work.--E.
[76] Thomas Fonnereau, of Christ-church Park, near Ipswich. He was
out of humour with the Minister for having refused him the place of
Receiver-General of Suffolk. It is said that he had the offer of being
Joint Postmaster General, which did not suit or satisfy him. He had the
reputation of being very acute and persevering in business; the Lizard
Lighthouses were projected and erected by him, and he had a lease of
the tolls, which must have been very productive; but his expenses at
Aldborough and Sudbury, for which he also returned a member, kept him
poor. He had made himself remarkable for his loyalty in the rebellion
of 1745, when he made a speech to the grand jury of Suffolk, which
was publicly distributed at their request. He was obstinate rather
than peevish, and his manners were generally very agreeable. He died a
bachelor in 1779, in the eightieth year of his age.--E.
[77] Nullum tempus occurrit regi et ecclesiæ: an old absurd maxim of
law.
[78] Vide The Character of Wilkes as a Politician and a Writer, in Lord
Brougham’s “Statesmen of the Time of George the Third,” vol. iii. p.
181.
[79] “An Enquiry into the Doctrine lately propagated concerning
Libels, Warrants, and the Seizure of Papers, with a view to some
late proceedings, and the defence of them by the majority upon the
principles of the Constitution, in a letter to Mr. Almon from the
father of Candor.” In the later editions it is intituled “A Letter
concerning Libels, &c.,” and both Almon and “the father of Candor” are
removed from the title page. “Candor” is the signature of a very clever
letter to the _Public Advertiser_ published a short time before by
Almon on the same subject, severely attacking the Government under the
pretence of defending it. The humour is sustained through fifty-four
pages with great skill and vivacity, and the points in controversy
are very cleverly handled. It may still be read with interest. “The
Enquiry” was one of the most popular tracts of its day. It went through
five editions in a few months. It has the merit of propounding sound
constitutional doctrines in a clear and familiar style; of boldly
denouncing error, and disseminating truth. The reasoning is forcible,
and the legal research and knowledge displayed throughout are very
considerable, especially in the use made of the early decisions of the
Courts of Law. It may fairly be said to have settled the question,
for very little was urged on the other side afterwards. As a literary
composition, it can claim but moderate praise. The style is loose
and careless, and wants the easy flow, the perspicuous diction
and classical taste which may be found in some other contemporary
tracts--such, for instance, as Mr. Charles Yorke’s “Considerations on
the Law of Forfeiture.” In parts it is rather dull, and the materials,
valuable as they are, might have been arranged with more effect. They
appear to have come from different and unequal hands; for if the
acuteness, wit, and learning of Dunning may be traced through many
pages, remarks occasionally occur which could hardly have proceeded
from a practising lawyer. I can find no authority in support of the
general belief of his being the author. I suspect he only revised
it, and that Lord Chatham did the same. There are passages strongly
partaking of the spirit and peculiar mode of expression of the latter.
Some interesting extracts might be made from this able tract. The
following severe censure of Lord Mansfield must have been written by
one who well knew the character he was describing. “I wish that when
a Chief is found to be clandestinely meddling in matters of State in
perversion of the law, he may be dragged into broad day-light, and his
name and memory be branded for ever to the latest posterity. I cannot
indeed figure to myself a meaner or more pernicious person than a
chief justice, with a great income for life given him by the public,
in order to render him independent, privately listening to every
inclination of every ministry, and warping and wire-drawing the plain
letter of the law in order to accommodate it to their inclinations,
instead of pursuing the course of established precedents, inviolably,
intrepidly, and openly, without regard to party or person. The chapter
of expediency is the very worst source of adjudication, inasmuch as it
tends to the setting afloat, by degrees, of the whole law of the realm.
“In our law the judges are bound by a sacred oath to determine
according to the known laws and ancient customs of the realm, set down
in judicial decisions and resolutions of learned, wise, and upright
judges, upon a variety of particular facts and cases, which, when they
have been thus in use, and practised time out of mind, are a part of
the common law of the kingdom * * * ‘To allow of any man’s discretion,’
says Lord Coke, ‘that sits in the seat of justice, would bring forth a
monstrous confusion.’ It is indeed wonderful that any man should have
so servile a disposition; for let his abilities be what they will,
he will always be regarded as a contemptible personage. This sort of
profligate magistrate may be sure of being used by every ministry, but
of being esteemed by none; seeing no set of men can depend upon him
any longer than they remain in office and power, his only principle
of action being an implicit obedience to the old tutelar Saint at St.
James’s. He must be in truth--
‘A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend,
Dreading even fools:’
and cowardice in a judge is but another name for corruption.” P. 85.--E.
[80] They were not written by Dr. Franklin, but by John Dickenson,
a citizen of Pennsylvania, and gained for their author the thanks
of the Assembly of Massachusets. He warned his countrymen not to be
deluded by the moderate rate of the new duties,--a circumstance which
he characterized as artfully intended to prepare their reception
of a collar, whose increasing weight would gradually bow them to
the ground; and he encouraged them to hope that a deliverance from
this evil would be obtained by a resumption of the same general and
animated opposition which had procured the repeal of the Stamp Act. The
arguments by which the author supported his doctrine of the illegality
of internal taxes on America, are said to have converted Dr. Franklin.
They had at least the merit of furnishing an excuse for his change of
opinion.--(Grahame’s History of North America, vol. iv. p. 262.)--E.
[81] See infra.
[82] “Rodondo; or, the State Jugglers,” was published in 1763. The
third canto soon followed the first and second; and a fourth was
promised, but never appeared, probably owing to the author’s being
rewarded with the post of Attorney-General of Grenada, where he died
in 1774. He also wrote “Woodstock; a Poem,” reprinted in Pearch’s
collection. His daughter married Dr. afterwards Sir John Elliot, the
eminent physician.--(MS. note in the British Museum.)
With abundance of humour and no mean skill in versification, this poem
might have ranked high among English satires, had the author bestowed
more pains on its action; this is below criticism. A description of
Mr. Pitt after the manner of Hudibras, with an invocation to the Muse,
fills the first canto.--The second contains little beyond a shrewish
lecture delivered by Lady Chatham to Mr. Pitt, and a long message from
the latter to his footman. In the third is Mr. Pitt’s capitulation to
the gout, and the distribution of his defects among his followers.
The various characters are introduced awkwardly enough, as if to show
the author’s proficiency in the art of vituperation; and in the last
canto, where he descends to attack some of the City politicians,
his coarseness becomes disgusting. This particularly applies to his
invectives against Churchill. The shafts which he aims at Pitt are more
worthy of their object.
The motto is ingenious and appropriate:
“Uno minor est Jove--dives,
Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum
Præcipue sanus, nisi cum pituita molesta est.”
After fixing the date of his story:--
“When knowledge, courage, sense, and worth
Were first defined by North and South,
And Tweed’s irremeable waves
Became the boundary of knaves;--”
a portrait is given of the hero, of which these lines are a fair
specimen.
“He raised the Nation’s apprehensions,
With Court-corruption, Places, Pensions:
Words which, when well dissected, mean,
That _I_ am _out_ and you are _in_;
And which, when properly repeated,
In every Question that’s debated,
Can ope a thousand mouths at once,
And make a hero of a dunce.
Your IF is good at making peace:
Rodondo went to war with these.
* * * * *
The Nation knows
My maxim ever was _Oppose_;
And be the Minister who will,
My maxim is--Oppose him still.
For though to Britain necessary,
’Tis good for me that all miscarry,
Excepting _one_--I need not name him,--
Envy herself would blush to blame him.”
The Common Destiny of Statesmen is lively and imaginative, but too long
to be inserted here.
The following lines are also of more than common merit:--
“O Disappointment! but for thee,
What were this land of liberty?
Were’t not for thee on English ground
No trace of Patriot could be found.
Thou comest indeed with rueful face
To fruitless hunters after place,
Blasting their hopes, but in exchange,
Presenting prospects of revenge.
Just so an egg when overdrest
Becomes confounded hard to digest;
And in the place of wholesome _chyle_,
Produces copious floods of bile.”--E.
[83] This satire was published in 1703, in small 4to. (66 pages) with
this title, “Patriotism; a mock heroic, in five cantos.”
“Behold thy Gods O Israel.” (1 Kings.)
Cumberland says of this poem that “it is one of the keenest and
wittiest satires extant in our language. Lord Temple, Wilkes, and
others of the party were attacked with unsparing asperity, and much
critical acumen. Churchill, the Dryden of the age, and indisputably a
man of first-rate genius, was too candid not to acknowledge the merit
of the poem; and when he declined taking up the gauntlet so pointedly
thrown down to him, it was not because he held his challenger in
contempt.” (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 212.) True as this may partially be,
the poem has great defects. The poverty and incompleteness of the
allegory are alone fatal to its interest; Pride, Faction, Folly and
Ambition are made to perambulate the town, to carouse together, and
reciprocate declamatory speeches without any adequate result,--these
speeches indeed being the only object for which they are introduced.
The total absence of incident is sought to be redeemed by descriptions,
some of which are lively enough. Abuse of popular licence and eulogies
of the King and his Ministers form the staple of the poem. It opens
with an account of the visit of Pride to the Mansion House, and
the hospitality of Beckford is rather ungratefully returned by the
following (among other) spirited lines on his followers.
“To please the mob Byng stains the blushing deep,
And Blakeney[A] earns a Peerage in his sleep;
To please the mob our fleets their canvas strain,
And expeditions hide the wondering main.
The main more wondering wafts them back, alas!
Thinned with the wars of Rochfort and St. Cas.
What matter, since defeat our joy inspires,
And Cassel[B] lost can light a thousand fires?”