Lord Bute humiliates the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Grenville.--General
Conway moves the Repeal of the Stamp Act.--Obtains leave to bring
in a Bill.--Excited State of the Country.--Recommitment moved and
rejected.--Desultory Opposition.--Final Debate.--The Repeal passed
by a large Majority.--Conduct of Lord Rockingham.
While the House of Commons was busied in continuing to read American
papers, and in other necessary affairs of the year, various attempts
were carrying on for cementing that union between Lord Bute and the
Opposition in reality, which seemed to exist, and in their votes did
exist between them in Parliament. I have said that the Favourite
every now and then hung out, by the intervention of his creatures,
hopes of his pardon and protection to the late Ministers--with little
sincerity, as the event showed. Partly, I believe, his conduct was
actuated by a view of aweing the new Ministers into more deference for
him; partly to prevent the diminution of the Crown’s authority, by
relaxation towards the Americans. Certain it is, that Colonel Graeme,
the Queen’s Secretary and much a confident, had indirectly and by an
oblique channel opened a kind of negotiation. George Grenville, the
most untractable of men, and the most unforgiving, recoiled at the
proposal; and, even to save his darling Act, could scarce be brought
to bow the knee again to the Favourite. It was with difficulty that
he would hear of any other terms but a dismission of the Ministers
before the fatal repeal should be passed. At length, the severe attacks
made on him in the House of Commons, and threats of impeachments
for having suppressed material notices, relative to the dangerous
situation and humour of the Colonies, even from the year 1764, which
Lord Halifax had been ordered by the King to lay before Parliament and
had stifled, wrought on his stubborn temper; to which were added the
despotic command of his imperious and intriguing elder brother, who,
however, had the address to wriggle himself out of open genuflexion to
the Favourite. By the intervention of the Duke of York, Lord Temple
prevailed to have a meeting, of himself, his brother, and the Duke of
Bedford, with the Favourite, at the house of Lord Eglinton, a Scotch
emissary, alternately devoted to the Duke of York, to the Favourite,
and to Lord Temple; at the same time Lord of the Bedchamber to the
King. Towards the middle of January this extraordinary congress was
settled and brought to bear; though, at the hour of meeting, Lord
Temple excused himself from attending it. The Favourite, however, had
the triumph of beholding the Duke of Bedford and George Grenville
prostrate before him, suing for pardon, reconciliation, and support.
After enjoying this spectacle of their humiliation for some minutes,
the lofty Earl, scarce deigning to bestow upon them above half a score
monosyllables, stiffly refused to enter into connection with them; on
which the Duke of Bedford said, hastily, “he hoped, however, that what
had passed would remain a profound secret.” “A secret!” replied the
Favourite, “I have done nothing I am ashamed of,--has your Grace?”--and
quitted the room. As if Lord Bute’s refusal of secrecy made it prudent
to expose even more than Lord Bute could tell, the Duke went home,
and at dinner, with sixteen persons, and before all the servants, he
related what had passed; and then said to the Duchess and his court, “I
was against taking this step, but you would make me.” Not nine months
had intervened between the dismission of his brother Mackenzie by that
faction, and their abject application to the Favourite for protection.
What a trade is the politician’s, when it can so debase the human mind!
Comfort yourself, ye poor, ye necessitous; what is the servility of
your lot compared to this of titles and riches?
On the 21st of February the House of Commons came at last to the great
question of the repeal of the Stamp Act. The Opposition endeavoured
to fight it off by pretending fresh accounts were that very morning
arrived of a disposition in some of the Colonies, particularly New
York, to submit to the Act; from whence was inferred the inutility of
repealing it. But this was properly treated as the lie of the day;
and had no effect. General Conway moved for leave to bring in a bill
to repeal that Act; and drew an affecting and alarming picture of the
mischiefs it had occasioned and threatened. All orders for goods from
this country were stopped: the North Americans would neither take any
more, nor pay for what they had had. Eight merchants, who had received
orders to the amount of 400,000_l._, had received counter-orders.
The debt to those merchants amounted to 950,000_l._ Antigua was near
ruined by famine. The tax fell chiefly on the poor, particularly on
the poor of Georgia. At home, the situation of our manufacturers was
most calamitous. Nottingham had dismissed a thousand hands: Leicester,
Leeds, and other towns in proportion. Three in ten of the labourers
of Manchester were discharged. The trade of England was not only
stopped, but in danger of being lost. If trade suffered, land would
suffer in its turn. Petitions would have been sent from every trading
town in England, but that they apprehended that the very hearing of
their petitions would delay the repeal. Every part of the Act breathed
oppression. It annihilated juries: and the Admiralty courts might drag
a man three hundred miles from his habitation. The fisheries were in
equal danger. The right of taxation he did not doubt would be given for
us in Westminster Hall; but the conflict would ruin both countries. We
had but five thousand men in three thousand miles of territory: the
Americans an hundred and fifty thousand fighting men. If we did not
repeal the Act, he did not doubt but France and Spain would declare
war, and protect the Americans. As the Colonies would not take our
manufactures, they would set up of their own. He had a piece of cloth,
he said, in his pocket, made at Philadelphia, as cheap as in England.
Would the House risk the whole for so trifling an object as this Act
modified?
I will not detail the rest of the debate, the essence of which had been
so much anticipated. The great, and no trifling argument on the other
side, was the danger from being beaten out of an Act of Parliament,
because disagreeable to those on whom it fell; and the high probability
that the Americans would not stop there; but, presuming on their own
strength, and the timidity of the English Government, would proceed
to extort a repeal of the Act of Navigation. Grenville particularly
exposed the futility of declaring a right which the Government would
not dare to exert: and he pushed the Ministers home with giving up the
brightest jewel of the Crown, the right of taxation. How would they
justify it to his Majesty?--how to future Administrations? Mr. Pitt,
who acknowledged his perplexity in making an option between two such
ineligible alternatives, pronounced, however, for the repeal, as due to
the liberty of unrepresented subjects, and in gratitude to their having
supported England through three wars. He begged to stand a feeble
isthmus between English partiality and American violence. He would
give the latter satisfaction in this point only. If America afterwards
should dare to resist, he would second a resolution of the most
vigorous nature to compel her with every man and every ship in this
country.
At half an hour past one in the morning the committee divided, and the
motion was carried by 275 to 167. This majority, though the question
was but a prelude to the repeal, decided the fate of that great
political contest. And though Lord Rockingham with childish arrogance
and indiscretion vaunted in the palace itself that he had carried the
repeal against the King, Queen, Princess-dowager, Duke of York, Lord
Bute, the Tories, the Scotch, and the Opposition, (and it was true he
had,) yet in reality it was the clamour of trade, of the merchants, and
of the manufacturing towns, that had borne down all opposition.[246]
A general insurrection was apprehended as the immediate consequence
of upholding the bill; the revolt of America, and the destruction of
trade, was the prospect in future. A nod from the Ministers would have
let loose all the manufacturers of Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, and
such populous and discontented towns, who threatened to send hosts to
Westminster to back their demand of repeal. As it was, the lobby of the
House, the Court of Requests, and the avenues were beset with American
merchants. As Mr. Conway went away they huzzaed him thrice, stopped
him to thank and compliment him, and made a lane for his passage. When
Mr. Pitt appeared, the whole crowd pulled off their hats, huzzaed,
and many followed his chair home with shouts and benedictions. The
scene changed on the sight of Grenville. The crowd pressed on him with
scorn and hisses. He, swelling with rage and mortification, seized the
nearest man to him by the collar. Providentially the fellow had more
humour than spleen--“Well, if I may not hiss,” said he, “at least I may
laugh,”--and laughed in his face. The jest caught--had the fellow been
surly and resisted, a tragedy had probably ensued.
On the following Monday, when the report was to be made from the
committee, Grenville’s friends, seeing the inutility of their
struggles, laboured to persuade him to contest the matter no farther;
but it was too much to give up his favourite bill and his favourite
occupation, talking, both at once. The last debate, too, had been
much abridged by the impatience of the committee, worn out by so many
successive discussions of the same subject. Many speakers had not been
attended to; others forced to sit down without being heard. Something
of this was imputed to the partiality of Rose Fuller, the Chairman;
and, before he could make his report, Mr. Shifner ironically proposed
to thank him for his great impartiality;[247] Onslow defended, and
moved to thank him seriously. This provoked so much, that Fuller was
accused of not doing his duty by suppressing the riots and insults
offered to several members who had voted against the repeal. The
indignities heaped on George Grenville were particularized; and he
himself said that both England and America were now governed by the
mob. Conway quieted the dispute by declaring the pains taken by the
Administration to prevent far greater tumults and extensive petitioning.
Lord Strange then proposed to postpone the Report, that, since repeal
was intended, the House might rescind its resolution on the right
of taxing, which would be inconsistent with giving it up. This the
majority would not allow; and Dyson, on the modifying plan, hinting
that internal taxes might be laid to ascertain the right, Lord
Palmerston said, that modifying would be giving up the right and
retaining the oppression. The Report being then made, Oswald moved to
recommit it. Hussey showed the badness of the Act, which all allowed,
(even Grenville having offered to correct it,) and declared the most
advisable method was a requisition to the Provinces to raise money for
the service of the Government. Norton broke out on the resistance of
the Colonies, and said, that to resist a known law was High Treason.
Huske, a wild, absurd man, very conversant with America, had still
sense enough to show that the Americans could not be independent, for
they would be obliged to lay an internal tax for the support of their
own paper-currency, and could not impose that tax without the consent
of Parliament. T. Townshend referred to a letter of Governor Bernard (a
great favourite of Grenville, and warm for the sovereignty of England)
in which he had advised to get rid of the Stamp Act. At eleven at night
the recommitment was rejected by 240 to 133; and the Bill for Repeal
was ordered to be brought in.
Dr. Blackstone then moved an instruction to the committee for bringing
in the bill, that all votes of the Assemblies should be expunged that
were repugnant to the rights of the Legislature of Great Britain.
Mr. Yorke said, that an Act declaratory of the right would be a
virtual expunging of their votes. This George Grenville treated with
much contempt, and as a mere evasion; and let loose all his acrimony
against the Ministers for reversing his Stamp Act. Conway said he
was surprised at so much fondness for a bill which the late Ministers
had so much neglected while they had power to enforce it. He had been
looking for the orders they had given, and could find but one, and that
from the Treasury, settling how much poundage should be deducted from
the profits of the Stamp-duty. This had been their only order till the
12th of July, when they had determined to send a military force. (This
was at the conclusion of their power.) Grenville replied, orders had
been given, for Stamp-officers had been appointed. At near two in the
morning Dr. Blackstone’s motion was rejected without a division.
The Bill of Repeal was but faintly opposed in its course, the
Opposition reserving their fire for the third reading. Wedderburne and
Dyson, however, moved to annex a clause declaratory of the law, and
enacting that in case any person or persons should print, or cause to
be printed, any paper calling the said law in question, or abuse it in
any manner whatsoever, should be guilty of a præmunire. The Ministers
objected; and Rose Fuller, with severe invectives on the Tories, said
such a motion would have been well-timed in the reigns of Henry VIII.
or Charles II. Wedderburne replied by showing he had taken the words of
his motion from the Act of Settlement. The motion was rejected.
March 4th was fixed for passing the declaratory Bill of Right, and
the Repeal. Mr. Pitt objected again to the first, and avowed his
opinion that the Parliament had no right of taxing North America
while unrepresented. “He had heard,” he said, “that this opinion had
been treated in his absence as nonsense, as the child of ignorance,
as the language of a foreigner who knew nothing of the Constitution.
Yet the common law was his guide; it was civil law that was the
foreigner.” To this he added severe reflections on Dr. Hay, the person
he alluded to, for having adopted arbitrary notions from the civil
law. “For himself, he was sorry to have been treated as an overheated
enthusiastic leveller, yet he had served the highest and best Prince
in Christendom, and the most valiant and brave nation, and never would
change his opinions till the day of his death. If he was one of the
weakest men in the kingdom, at least he was one of the soberest;[248]
had no animosities, no pursuits; he wished to live and die a dutiful
subject, and to see such an Administration as the King should like,
and the people approve. Wales had never been taxed till represented;
nor did he contend for more than had been given up to Ireland in the
reign of King William.” He quoted one or two authors; said he was a
solitary, unconversing man, and not a very reading man neither; but he
loved old books and old friends; and though his books and his opinions
might be nonsensical, he should still adhere to them; and declared
he never gave his dissent with more dislike to a question than he now
gave it at present.” Dr. Hay excused himself, and pleaded having been
misrepresented; and then he and Rigby argued for the repeal, if it must
pass, without the declaratory law. Mr. Pitt moved to leave out the
words _in all cases whatsoever_; and the debate turned chiefly on the
resemblance or non-resemblance of Ireland to America, in the privileges
enjoyed by the former. The amendment was rejected, and the bill
passed.[249]
The Bill for Repeal was then read for the last time, and eagerly and
obstinately combated by Grenville and his party. Bamber Gascoyne
produced a letter written to Liverpool, by Sir William Meredith, in
which the latter had said to the Mayor, “Lord Bute’s friends, Mr.
Grenville’s party and the rank Tories, voted for this bloody question;
and considering we had been beaten twice in the House of Lords, we were
surprised to find our numbers were 275 to 167; I hope soon to send
you word of the repeal. P. S.--Mr. Pitt will soon be at the head of
affairs.”
Pitt rose and said, He had heard somewhere, no matter where--a bird
in the air had told him--of a meeting that had lately been held
(between Bute, Bedford, and Grenville) of which he could not learn the
particulars; but had heard that at that meeting the noble Lord (Bute)
behaved like himself and like a nobleman. It was a name which had
been much bandied about in a way it did not deserve. “I am inflexibly
bent,” continued he, “to resist his return to power; but how could
that prophet (Sir W. Meredith) imagine a thing so improbable as that I
should be at the head, when I am so extremely at the tail of affairs,
as I am now, with five friends in the other House, and four in this?
In the order and class of salutary and preventive things, I never
felt greater satisfaction than in giving my vote for this repeal. You
could not subsist and be a people with that defalcation of imports.
America is over-glutted with nothing but the Stamp Act. Nothing but
a disposition to heal and strengthen the Government can make you a
people. I have my doubts if there would have been a Minister to be
found who would have dared to have dipped the royal ermines in the
blood of the Americans. This country, like a fine horse, to use a
beautiful expression of Job, whose neck is clothed in thunder, if you
soothe and stroke it, you may do anything; but if an unskilful rider
takes it in hand, he will find that, though not vicious, yet it has
tricks. I repeat it, I never had greater satisfaction than in the
repeal of this Act.”
This speech gave great offence to Grenville, who replied, “Let his bird
have told him what it would, yet, in justice to the noble Lord (Bute),
he would declare that it was impossible to behave better than he had
done; but why was that meeting mentioned? to what end? He had heard a
bird speak, too, of a meeting, or meetings, on other occasions. But
the gentleman had doubted whether a Minister would have been found to
dip the royal ermines in blood;--no, sir, not dip the royal ermines
in blood; but I am one who declare, if the tax was to be laid again,
I would do it; and I would do it now if I had to choose; since he has
exerted all his eloquence so dangerously against it, it becomes doubly
necessary. It is necessary from the increase of the debt in the late
war; he knows I was against the enormous expense of the German war. Are
all those boasted triumphs shrunk to the meanness of supporting such a
measure as this? I envy not the popularity; let him have the bonfire; I
rejoice in the hiss. Was it to do again, I would do it.”
Pitt desired to say one word in answer. “What that bird, alluded to
two years ago, did say, I will tell gentlemen. The noble Lord (Bute)
came to my lodging on a message from the King--I suppose because I
was lame--not to converse with a hermit, but about coming into the
King’s service. The noble Lord behaved with great fairness. I had an
interview; was dismissed with the same marks of favour by the King.
Some time ago I had another meeting with a royal person (Duke of
Cumberland), who is no more. I objected to the brother of the noble
Lord being Minister for Scotland; had no objection to his having a
sinecure. I was again dismissed with the same graciousness by the King.
But I am charged with the expense of the German war. If the honourable
gentleman had such strong objections to that war, why did he not resign
his post of Treasurer of the Navy?” Grenville had nothing to reply; and
in fact it ill became him to plead disapprobation of measures in which
he had concurred, rather than resign so very lucrative an employment.
The repeal passed by 250 to 122. It made its way even through the
House of Lords by a majority of more than thirty, but was followed by
a strenuous protest drawn up by Lord Lyttelton. Lord Camden took the
same part as Mr. Pitt, and declared against the right of taxing. He
also detected Lord Mansfield, who had quoted two laws that had never
existed. As I am possessed of no notes relative to the debates in
that House, I do not pretend to extend the detail of them. The most
remarkable event was Lord Bute’s speaking: he censured the timidity of
the repeal, wished to see firm and able Ministers, and denied enjoying
any present influence, and protested against accepting any future power.
The victorious Ministers having thus secured a majority on the most
difficult point, determined to make use of it to alleviate other
aggrieved subjects, and to extend their own popularity. The tax on
Cider had given great uneasiness to the Western counties, particularly
from its being collected by the mode of excise. The City of London had
adopted those disgusts; and Lord Bute, under whose Administration the
tax had been laid, had sunk beneath the panic after he had carried the
measure. To alter that mode of collection was the next step taken by
the Ministers; and they found it no difficult task to obtain the assent
of so time-serving a Parliament, who by turns enacted and repealed
whatever was proposed to them, and who supported every successive
Minister of that period, and deserted him the moment he lost his power.
I do not know that other Parliaments have not, or would not have been
as bad; but no Parliament ever had so many opportunities of being
impudent. The Opposition not well pleased with Lord Bute’s ineffectual
support, and angry that he did no more than encourage them to oppose,
were little anxious to save the honour of his Cider Act, and the repeal
of the excise passed easily.
In all these debates, nothing was more marked than the acrimony between
Grenville and Conway. The latter appeared to be a much abler man of
business than had been expected. Mr. Dowdeswell, on the contrary, sunk
much in the estimation of mankind, and seemed but a duller edition of
Mr. Grenville, though without his malignity. Never did the intemperate
rage of talking, which possessed the latter, display itself more
copiously than on the debates relative to the Stamp Act. It occasioned
his being ridiculed with much humour.
The man who did not make long speeches, but who absented himself on
pretence of illness on most of the debates, was Charles Townshend. He
was afraid, by speaking, of losing a place which nothing had given,
nothing could preserve, but his speaking.
But though the heat of the day lay on Conway, the power was solely
engrossed by Lord Rockingham. He admitted the Duke of Grafton and Mr.
Conway to no partnership. He was even so indiscreet as to bestow on a
relation of his own the vacant place of Commissioner of the Revenue in
Ireland, which had been promised by Lord Hertford, the Lord-Lieutenant,
to an Irishman of note.[250] This occasioned ill-blood between the
Lord-Lieutenant, Conway’s brother, and the head of the Treasury. Lord
Hertford, whose great property lay in that country, and who had always
assiduously courted the Irish, was at first very successful there. But
his economic temper, malevolently exaggerated, and too great propensity
to heap emoluments on his children, though in few instances, and an
appearance of similitude in the disposition of his son, Lord Beauchamp,
soured the conclusion of that Session of Parliament, and occasioned to
the Viceroy several mortifications.