The events of this year on the continent of Europe offer a striking
contrast to the repose of England. While the wise and steadfast policy
of Mr. Pitt had secured to this country the blessings of peace, now
rapidly expanding into a condition of almost unexampled prosperity,
France was undergoing the throes of that desolating Revolution which
brought the Sovereign to the scaffold, and laid the train of those
disasters which finally expelled the Bourbons from the throne. There are
few traces of those disturbing circumstances in the correspondence of
Lord Buckingham and his brother, which, in consequence of the frequent
opportunities they now enjoyed of personal intercourse, had become
scanty, and, so far as public affairs were concerned, unimportant.
Slight scraps of intelligence, the last rumour from abroad, or matters
of purely personal or domestic interest, form the staple of the letters
that passed between them at this period.
It was in this year that Edmund Burke, to the infinite surprise of his
old allies, published his famous pamphlet on the French Revolution. The
impression it made in England may be accepted as an evidence of the
soundness of the national judgment, and the devotion of the people to
the established institutions of the country. This healthy condition of
the public mind was attributable, in a greater degree than we can
venture now to estimate, to the spirit of patriotism and union awakened
in the kingdom by the firm Administration of Mr. Pitt and his friends.
They had restored the general confidence in the justice and stability of
the Government, which the weakness and divided councils of former
Cabinets had dissipated; they had struck the happy mean between the
prerogatives of the Crown and the encroachments of the Legislature; and,
above all, in the recent conflicts on the Regency question, they had
successfully asserted the doctrine, that the rights of the Sovereign and
the rights of the people were founded on a common basis; and, by showing
that their interests were identical, they had reconciled those extreme
elements in the Constitution which a powerful party had laboured, with
great eloquence and considerable effect, to separate on the grounds of a
natural antagonism. Their popularity was unbounded, and saved the
country. Paine's "Age of Reason" fell innocuous upon the people; the
tidings of the Revolution, and of the massacres that tracked its daily
steps in blood, excited wonder and horror, but produced no frenzy of
imitation such as they inspired elsewhere; and while Europe was
convulsed with alarms, England, strong in her liberties and
self-reliance, was united and unmoved.
In Ireland, the departure of Lord Buckingham was followed by a revival
of the factious intemperance his energy had for a season suppressed. The
Parliament opened in disorder, and carried on its debates in a tone of
vindictive hostility to the British connection. The opponents of
Government had strengthened their hands by the accession of new orators,
and by the occasional lapses into their old violence of others who had
given in their submissions to the late Viceroy, and who, now that he was
gone, affected an independence of their obligations. The Lord Chancellor
Fitzgibbon was growing into increasing disfavour with the Opposition,
and becoming, by the force of resistance, more English and less popular
than before. The invectives in which the wild passions of party found a
congenial vent, descended to the fiercest recriminations, and led to the
severance of friendships, and personal rencontres. Fitzgibbon and the
Ponsonbys, who had hitherto preserved unimpaired, amidst the contentions
of the Senate, their intimate relations in private life, were now cast
asunder by an explosion of animosity that tempted the Chancellor to
declare "that he would never speak to them again;" even the close bonds
that united the Ponsonbys and the Beresfords were imperceptibly relaxed;
and Mr. Hobart, to use his own expression, was "obliged to fight Mr.
Curran," for which he excuses himself to Lord Buckingham by saying that
"in any other country in Europe he would not have met him." In no other
country, undoubtedly, from a cause so absurd and unwarrantable, could
the necessity for such a meeting have arisen. Numerous letters from
Ireland conveyed fragments of news of this kind to Lord Buckingham in
his retirement, the old supporters of Administration still seeming to
look up to him for encouragement and advice. But these letters are not
now of sufficient interest to justify their publication.
Such, indeed, is the general character of the correspondence of the
year. One letter, however, announces an incident which cannot be so
satisfactorily recorded as in the language of the writer. Mr. Grenville
was about to receive that recognition of his great talents and important
services which few men had earned so worthily or were destined to wear
more honourably and usefully. The absence of all exultation at his
approaching elevation to the peerage, and his near assumption of the
title by which he is best known in the history of the country, is a
characteristic of that nobility of mind which conferred dignity upon,
rather than derived it from, the station to which he was advanced.