Meeting of Parliament.--Debates on the Stamp Act and the state of
North America.--Death of Prince Frederick, the King’s youngest
brother.--Walpole’s Observations upon the state of France at this
period.--Death of the Dauphin.
On the 17th of December the Parliament met. Grenville, apprized of
the intention to repeal the Stamp Act, had laboured to form a strong
Opposition, giving out that the Ministers were going to rescind all
his acts, because his. The very first day of the session he proposed
to address the Crown, to know how the Stamp Act had been enforced; and
in amendment of the address, proposed to insert the word _rebellious_
in speaking of the Colonies.[191] He professed great readiness to
congratulate his Majesty on the birth of a young Prince. With regard
to the Duke of Cumberland’s death, he would not, he said, flatter dead
whom he had never flattered living. He was answered by Elliot, Lord
George Sackville, and Norton, who, though dismissed, showed he had not
imputed his disgrace to the Crown; and whatever the intentions of the
Crown might be, it was thought proper that a majority should first
be secured, lest the Cabinet should again be taken by storm. Charles
Townshend spoke for the Ministry,[192] with great encomiums on Conway.
Grenville finding so little countenance, withdrew his motion.
In the other House, Lord Suffolk moved for an assurance to the King
that the Lords would support his Majesty and the Parliament against the
Colonies. He was supported by the Duke of Bedford, the Lords Gower,
Halifax, Sandwich, and Temple. The last declared there was no truth in
the reports spread of differences between him and Mr. Pitt; they agreed
on every point. The first assertion was false; the latter soon proved
to be so. Lord Shelburne spoke for the Ministers, though his friend
Colonel Barré had declined their offers.[193] But the concurrence of
Shelburne and the retiring of Lord Camden spoke sufficiently, that they
knew or suspected Mr. Pitt would take part for the repeal.[194] The
Chancellor, Lord Pomfret, and the Duke of Grafton opposed the motion.
Lord Mansfield, in a timid trimming speech, besought the Ministers
to agree to the motion, and retired. The question was rejected by 80
to 24, though the new Opposition had flattered themselves that in
the House of Lords lay their greatest strength. But they were sorely
disappointed of Lord Bute’s support, which they expected on all the
questions relative to America.
Two days after the former motion, the Duke of Bedford moved for all
papers that had been sent to America relating to the Stamp Act, and
since the passing of it. The Duke of Grafton quashed that proposal, by
promising _all_ the papers should be produced. Rigby moved the same
question in the Commons, and was severely treated by Beckford, and the
motion was rejected, the Duke of Grafton forgetting to acquaint the
Ministers in that House that he had granted the demand to the Lords.
This obliged the King to send the papers to the House of Commons
likewise.
Grenville, the next day, by surprise, proposed that the House should
adjourn, but to the 9th instead of the 14th as the Ministers intended,
in consideration of the urgent affairs of America--as if five days
could make any difference. But the motion was rejected by 77 to 35: so
ductile and subservient to present power was that assembly! Alderman
Baker called Grenville’s an insolent motion: being called to order, he
was silent for some minutes; and then said, he had been trying to find
another word--if the House could, he desired them to supply it. Then
treating Grenville as the author of all the troubles in America, the
latter threw the blame from himself on the Parliament.
Lord Temple, disheartened at so unpromising an outset of the session,
had the confidence and meanness to hurry to Mr. Pitt at Bath; and
now stooped to solicit the assistance of him whom he had so lately
traversed, and whose offers he had so haughtily rejected. Mr. Pitt in
his turn was inflexible.
On the 29th of December, died the King’s youngest brother, Prince
Frederick, an amiable youth, and the most promising, it was thought,
of the family. The hereditary disorder in his blood had fallen on his
lungs and turned to a consumption.
I will close the account of this remarkable year with a few
observations I made in France.
Louis the Fifteenth did not want sense, and had as much humanity as was
consistent with insensibility and indolence. The first prevented him
from suspecting evils that did not immediately fall under his eye;
and the latter from inquiring what oppressions his people suffered.
He was more shy than reserved, and all these qualities tended to
make him the slave of habit. He hated new faces rather than loved
old servants. Being free from ambition, having no appetite for glory
of any kind, and impressed with sentiments of devotion, he preferred
peace, and listened to any overtures of treaty, whether victorious or
vanquished. To the Queen he had been for many years strictly constant;
was always a civil husband, and, in her last illness, a tender one. To
his children he was most affectionate.[195] To his mistresses profuse,
but capable of harshness whenever he quitted them. Cardinal Fleury
governed him with unbounded authority. Madame de Pompadour, by art, and
at last by complaisance in procuring other women for him, engrossed
him entirely, but with no hold on his affections, for her death made
not the slightest impression on him.[196] The Duc de Choiseul having
been placed by her, succeeded to the ascendant that habit gives, and
thence excluded other favourites, rather than became one himself. The
King’s life was regulated by the most mechanic sameness. An hour or
two he could not deny to his Ministers: hunting took up the rest of
daylight. Women amused his private hours: cards and a supper, with
a select company, concluded the evening. All the flattery of that
vain and obsequious nation, who love themselves in their kings, gave
him no pleasure. It was a negative kind of nature that could neither
be totally spoiled nor amended. But the true picture of him was an
anecdote, that I learned from good authority. A sensible confident
of Cardinal Fleury reproached him with not making the King apply to
business. This was the answer of that wise Minister: “I have often
endeavoured what you recommend; and one day went so far as to tell
the King that there had been kings dethroned in France for their
_fainéantise_.” It seemed to strike him deeply. He made no reply: but
two days afterwards said to me, “I have been reflecting on what you
told me of some of my predecessors being deposed--pray resolve me: when
the nation deposed them, were they allotted large pensions?” “From that
moment,” said the Cardinal, “I saw it was in vain to labour at making
him a great King.”
The Queen was not only a pious but a good woman. Indifferent to the
gallantries of her husband, and free from ambition, she lived well with
him, his mistresses, and ministers. Fond of talking and universally
obliging, the nation thought her void of any particular attachment; yet
she showed an unalterable friendship to the Duchess de Luynes: and her
affection to her father, King Stanislas, and the loss of her son the
Dauphin undoubtedly hastened her death. Though she could not prevent
the expulsion of the Jesuits, the King’s esteem for her mitigated
their fall. It was to the honour of both that, though the daughters
of Stanislas and Augustus, the Queen and the Dauphiness lived in
uninterrupted harmony.
The Dauphin, who died while I was in France, was totally unknown till
his death. His great caution of not giving jealousy to his father,
and his respectable fear of not alarming the bigotry of his mother
and wife, had made him conceal both his good sense and the freedom of
his sentiments with such care, that the former was not suspected; and
the latter was so unknown, that the nation, now running with their
usual vehemence into any new opinion, and, consequently, growing
Freethinkers, believed and hated him as an enthusiast. Yet he had a
good understanding, had carefully, though secretly, cultivated it, and
was a modern philosopher in the largest sense of that term. During
his illness, which continued many weeks, he seemed neither to regret
his youth nor hopes; was patient, complaisant, and indulgent; and
a few days before his death gave proof of his good sense and good
nature. A man of quality that attended him had the brutal absurdity
to solicit him to ask some favour, on his behalf, of the King, “who,”
said the person, “can refuse your Royal Highness nothing in your
present condition.” The Dauphin laughed at the indelicacy, but would
not divulge the name of the man. To please his family the Prince went
through all the ceremonies of the Church, but shewed to his attendants,
after they were over, how vain and ridiculous he thought them. Many
expressions he dropped in his last hours that spoke the freedom of his
opinions; and to the Duc de Nivernois he said, he was glad to leave
behind him such a book as Mr. Hume’s Essays.[197]
The Dauphiness, with whom he lived on the best terms, he had, however,
no fondness for: his first wife had been far more dear to him. The
second was morose and ungracious; and, dying in a year after her
husband, was not at all regretted. In her last moments, having sharply
reprimanded the Duchesse de Lauragais, the latter, turning to another
lady, said, “Cette Princesse est si bonne, qu’elle veut que personne ne
la regrette.”[198]
The Duc de Choiseul, the Prime Minister, was a man of excellent parts,
but of a levity and indiscretion, which most of that nation divest
themselves of before his age, or when they enter into business. Except
the hours which he spent with the King, the rest of his life was
dissipation, pleasure, profuseness, and bons mots. Rash, daring, and
presumptuous; good-humoured, but neither good nor ill-natured; frank,
gay, and thoughtless, he seemed the Sovereign more than the Minister of
a mighty kingdom. Scorning, rather than fearing, his enemies, he seldom
undermined and seldom punished them. He dissipated the nation’s wealth
and his own; but did not repair the latter by plunder of the former.
Mr. Pitt’s superiority he could never digest nor forgive; and though
he was incapable of little mischief in his own country, great crimes
had rather a charm for him. He excited the war between the Russians and
Turks, to be revenged on the Czarina; and I saw him exult childishly in
his own house on her first defeats. At last he descended to the mean
and cruel oppression of Corsica, for the sake of gathering a diminutive
laurel, after being baffled in the large war. Gallantry without
delicacy was his constant pursuit. His wife, the most perfect character
of her sex, loved him to idolatry;[199] but, though a civil husband,
he spared her no mortification that his carelessness could inflict.
His sister, the Duchesse de Grammont, too openly connected with him by
more ties than of blood, had absolute influence over him, and exerted
it cruelly and grossly to insult the Duchesse de Choiseul, who, more
than once, was on the point of retiring into a convent, though without
the least belief of the doctrines held there. Madame de Grammont, who
had none of the accomplishments that graced the small but harmonious
figure of the Duchesse de Choiseul, had masculine sense, and almost
masculine manners. She was wonderfully agreeable when she pleased, a
vehement friend, a rude and insolent enemy. The nation revered and
neglected the wife; detested and bowed to the sister. The Minister had
crushed the Jesuits, for he loved sudden strokes of _éclat_; and, to
carry that measure, had countenanced the Parliaments till they grew
almost too ungovernable. But as he seldom acted on deep system, he
sometimes took up a tone of authority, and as quickly relaxed it--a
conduct that confounded the nation and a little the Parliaments; but
that war from thoughtlessness, or to ruin a rival, the Duc d’Aiguillon,
he chiefly left to the latter; and he could not have left it to worse
hands. Proud, ambitious, vindictive, and void of honour or principle,
the Duc d’Aiguillon, with very moderate parts, aimed at power with
the Crown, by being the Minister of its tyranny.[200] The infamous
oppression exercised on that undaunted man, M. de la Chalotais,[201]
flowed from the revenge of this Duc, who, to carry his point, lent
himself even to the exploded Jesuits: and though that connection could
be no secret to the Duc de Choiseul, he suffered rather than encouraged
a plan that clashed so much with the service he had rendered to his
country by abolishing the Order. Nor was it to his honour that shame
and the outcry of mankind rescued M. de la Chalotais, rather than the
justice of the Prime Minister.[202]
The Parliaments of France were filled with many great, able, and
steady magistrates. The philosophy and studies of the age had opened
their eyes on the rights of mankind; and they attempted with heroic
firmness to shake off the chains that galled their country. Yet a
distinction should be made between the magistrates and the men called
or calling themselves philosophers. The latter were really a set of
authors and beaux esprits, who, aping the sentiments of Montesquieu,
Rousseau, and Voltaire, especially of the latter, endeavoured to raise
themselves to an independent rank, to a kind of legislation in the
community. After attacking and throwing off Christianity, they ran
wildly into the fondest and most absurd doctrines of the old Greek
philosophers; and, with the lightness of their own nation, and prompted
by arrogance and love of pre-eminent singularity, they wrote atheism
with little reserve, and talked it without any. The chief of these vain
and loquacious witlings were D’Alembert,[203] Diderot, and that puny
writer Marmontel. I am sorry to add to the list the name of a far
more amiable and more profound man, M. Buffon, though, except in their
indecent petulance, he too much resembled the rest of his cotemporaries
in his sentiments. The women, who hurry into any new fashion, and then
lead it, talked of matter and metaphysics with as little caution and as
much ignorance as their directors. The magistrates of the Parliaments
were very different men. Sober on the religion of their country,
they meddled with it no farther than as it interfered with liberty;
and few of them were so audacious in their most private conversation
as to adopt the abominable licentiousness of the men I have been
describing. But if they were decent on religion, they had not the
same prudence in the conduct of their civil views. Heated by the term
_Parliament_, they chose to believe, at least to inculcate the belief,
that they were possessed of the rights of a British Senate. Nothing
could be more meritorious than a struggle for such a system. But the
Parliaments of France were not only nothing but courts of judicature,
but the pretension was too early and too untimely to be yet pushed.
As I had some friends in the Parliament of Paris, I remonstrated to
them on the danger they ran of over-turning an excellent cause by
their precipitation. To obtain solidly and step by step some material
concessions, was the conduct they should have pursued. Whatever little
they should so attain would be a benefit to the nation; time and
precedent might add more. A minority or national distress would have
opened a wider door; but by setting out with unbounded pretensions,
unfounded in their Constitution, they warned the Crown to be on its
guard; and, what was worse, they could depend on no support but in
their own courage and in that uncertain resource, patriotic martyrdom.
The Crown, popular in France whenever it pleases, and almost in any
country, and powerful without popularity in that country, could not
but regard their pretensions with the eye of jealousy. The nobility,
ignorant, haughty, and willing to be tyrannized over by _one_ that they
might be authorized to tyrannize over _thousands_, were, and must be,
disinclined to the extension of subordinate jurisdiction. The clergy
were the natural and now the provoked enemies of the Parliaments. The
military are seldom captivated by any franchises but their own; are
devoted to the Crown, and led by, and composed of, the nobility: nor
did the Parliaments take any pains to make a schism in the soldiery.
Even the people, who would taste most benefit from acquisitions to
liberty, were disinclined to the Parliaments. The Presidents purchase
their charges, and enjoy them with a[204] state and haughtiness that
is ill-relished by the commonalty. Able manifestos were slight arms
against such a combination of prejudices. While I staid in France I
had an opportunity of seeing with what a momentary breath the Crown
could puff away a cloud and tempest of remonstrances. Being pushed too
home, the King, suddenly and very early in the morning, appeared in
the Chamber of Parliament. The Magistrates were in bed, were summoned,
and found the King surrounded with his guards, and with all the
apparatus of majesty. He commanded four of his Ministers to take their
seats at his feet in a place where they had no right. He called for
the registers, tore out their remonstrances, enjoined silence to the
Parliament, and departed. In the street he met the Sacrament, alighted
from his coach, knelt in the dirt, and received the blessings of all
the old beggar-women. By night the consternation was universal; no man
dropped a word, unless in commendation of the King’s firmness. The
Magistrates sighed, but respectfully. The philosophers were frightened
out of their senses. In a few months the Parliaments recovered their
spirit, and the Court again temporized. Yet when their memorials had
been read, and had their vogue in common with the poems and operas of
the week, the sensation ceased, and lettres de cachet lost nothing of
their vigour.
There was scarce a man of quality in France above the rank of president
that countenanced the cause. There was one of the blood royal that
affected to be their protector; but too much despised by the Court, too
inconsiderable and too half-witted to hurt anybody but himself. This
was the Prince of Conti. Handsome and royal in his figure, gracious
at times, but arrogant and overbearing, luxurious and expensive,
he had gathered together a sort of Court of those who had no hopes
at the King’s, but without the power of giving or receiving any
support. Confused in his ideas, yet clear in his opinion of superior
intelligence, he was at once diffuse and incomprehensible. The little
tyrant of a puny circle, he gave himself for the patron of liberty. No
man would have carried his own privileges farther. The Court took no
umbrage at such a foe.[205]
It could not but be a singular satisfaction to me to find in so adverse
a nation so few men whose abilities were formidable. One or two of
the subordinate Ministers were men of domestic and civil address. The
Prince de Soubise, a sensible man of fair character, who enjoyed the
most personal favour with the King, and, it was thought, might be
Minister if he pleased, had no ambition.[206] The Maréchal d’Estrèes
was a good-humoured old nurse;[207] the Maréchal de Broglie[208] as
empty a man, except in the theory of discipline, as ever I knew. The
Comte, his brother, who had more parts, had not enough to make them
useful;[209] and both brothers were in disgrace. The Marquess de
Castries,[210] a good officer, was not on any terms with Choiseul,
and was no deep genius. The Duc de Praslin, the Minister’s cousin,
was ill-tempered and disagreeable, and far from possessing superior
abilities.[211] The clergy were at a low ebb. The Archbishop of
Toulouse, reckoned the most rising of the order, was aspiring and
artful, but absorbed in his own attention to intrigue, which gave
him an air of absence. He was only considerable by comparison.[212]
He and many of his order did not disguise their contempt for their
own religion. As the women who had most sway were Freethinkers, a
fashionable clergyman was by consequence an infidel. The ablest man I
knew, and he as indiscreet as the Duc de Choiseul, was the old Comte
de Maurepas. Lively, gay, and agreeable, he seemed to feel no regret
for his disgrace, though he ought to have blushed at the imprudence
that occasioned it. He had not only caused to be written, but himself,
at his own table at Versailles, before a large company, had sung, a
severe ballad on Madame de Pompadour. His fall and a long exile were
the consequence. To make his ruin irrecoverable, she persuaded the King
that he had poisoned a former mistress, the Duchesse de Chateauroux.
From the same animosity, Madame de Pompadour had diverted a large sum
that Maurepas had destined to re-establish their marine. Knowing his
enmity to this country, I told him, and the compliment was true, that
it was fortunate for England that he had been so long divested of
power.[213]