Debates on the Embargo laid on Corn.--Party Tactics.--Walpole exerts
himself to prevent Conway from resigning.--View of Lord Chatham’s
Conduct.
On the 11th of November the Parliament met. Lord Suffolk opposed the
Address of the Lords, and the debate turned on the illegality of the
late Act of Council that had directed the embargo; the Opposition
censuring the Ministers for not having called the Parliament to that
end. To urge that the necessity had been pressing, that the delay
necessarily attendant on issuing writs, on assembling the members, on
passing the Bill, would have wasted the time, while the merchants who
had contracted to send corn abroad would have taken advantage of such
protraction and sent away their corn--and thus the evil would not have
been prevented by paying too scrupulous regard to forms--these reasons
did not satisfy men who would have found greater fault if the evil had
not been prevented. The Duke of Bedford was more moderate, but wished
the Parliament had been assembled. Lord Chatham, for the first time of
his appearing in that House, spoke with coolness, dignity, and art,
declaring that if any man was personal to him, or revived stories
past, he should take no notice of them. This seemed to check Lord
Temple’s heat, who, though severe in arraigning, forbore invectives
against Lord Chatham; but proposed (as Mr. Grenville did in the other
House) to issue 200,000_l._ from the Treasury for the relief of the
poor--a vain attempt at popularity, and deservedly ridiculed. Lord
Northington, with great boldness and defiance, said, he disclaimed
accepting any pardon for the part he had acted in advising the embargo,
and held law-books cheap when weighed against such a crisis. For
himself he had acted on a larger scale. He concluded with haranguing
against disunion. Lord Temple reminded him that two years before, he
had declared unanimity was destructive. Lord Mansfield, from aversion
to Lord Chatham and his Chancellor Camden, was now the advocate of the
Constitution. The Act of Council he maintained was illegal, though he
said he would give no opinion as the case might come before him in
judgment, many suits being commenced, he heard, against officers of the
customs for detaining corn from exportation on the authority of the
Council’s order. Prerogative! there was no such thing: the King could
do nothing but by law; was only free from arrest for debt,--truths that
were scandalous in the mouth of a man whose soul was sold to Despotism.
Lord Camden answered with firmness, and with sharp irony, on the new
Whiggism of the Chief Justice. Himself, he said, had always been Whig,
and should continue so. If it was not yet in our laws, it ought to
be so, that _Salus populi suprema lex_. If this Act was a stretch of
prerogative, _it was but a tyranny of forty days_. This sentence drew
much censure--ridiculously so. In every Government there is--must be--a
supreme power to exert itself when evils are too mighty for the common
channel of law to divert. That power must have relieved the people, or
they would have relieved themselves, for men will not starve, if you
tell them there is no law that can help them. The very phrase, too,
_of forty days_ implied that liberty preceded and succeeded to that
transient tyranny. It is when unlimited that tyranny is dreadful. The
sentence, however, proved the text on which the following libels were
preached for some months. Lord Mansfield was daunted, and retracted,
and the House rose without a division.[293]
In the other House Mr. Grenville held forth on the illegality, and
abused Mr. Conway, not for intention, but for ignorance and blunders.
Burke spoke finely on the same side; but they could not attempt a
division, the Duke of Bedford’s people having absented themselves. The
Tories, however, exclaimed against Lord Camden’s dispensing power;
a clamour that manifested their own principles. The Whigs dread the
prerogative being used _against_ the people; the Tories, it should
seem, _for_ the people.
The schism raised in the Opposition by the Duke of Bedford’s defection,
and the general inclination attached to the late Ministers to close
with Lord Chatham, had discouraged almost all thoughts of opposition.
Grenville and his dozen of followers in vain attempted to rekindle
it, and though Lord Rockingham wished to figure as leader of a party
even out of place, and Burke, an adventurer, was to push his way by
distinguishing himself as a formidable antagonist; yet the decency
of that set of men was such, even of Lord John Cavendish, that they
did not care to fly out. They retained much deference for Mr. Conway;
and too many of their friends remained still in place, whom they
might displease and lose, and without whom their numbers would be
inconsiderable. They had acted, too, with such recent animosity to
George Grenville, that it was a bitter resource to join his standard:
nor were he and Lord Rockingham compatible, the Treasury being the
object which neither would cede to the other. So forlorn a prospect
deadened all factious spirit: Lord Temple went out of town. The Dukes
of Bedford and Richmond were to go on the 19th; and though some scanty
forces might rally after Christmas, all who waited to judge from the
size of the majority whether duration might be expected to the present
Ministry, would probably by that time have enlisted themselves in the
troops of the Court. This moment, fortunate beyond all calculation, did
Lord Chatham pitch upon to do the wildest of acts for the silliest of
reasons. Without waiting to let so prosperous a conjuncture ripen into
a system, he seemed to take a fortuitous concurrence of circumstances
for established power; and though the predominant influence of the
Court preserved him from falling, he involved himself in such a
labyrinth of difficulties, that he found no other way of extricating
himself than by a conduct more preposterous than the series of
imprudence which had drawn him into his perplexed situation. I must now
relate what he lost and for whom.
There was a nephew of the Duke of Newcastle who, when the Whigs had
broken with the Court and sought to place Lord Chatham at their
head, had attached himself particularly to that chieftain. Lord
Lincoln,[294] the other nephew of the Duke, had quarrelled, as I have
said, indecently and ungratefully with his uncle. Mr. Shelley,[295] the
hero of the present episode, had copied that ingratitude, and for no
worthier reason than because a peerage, to which he had no pretensions,
had not been added to the boons his lavish uncle had already heaped on
him, had joined himself to his cousin. But Mr. Pitt was his standard;
and, furnishing himself with scraps of that orator’s new-coined
diction, he retailed them on the most ordinary occurrences; so that as
Mr. Pitt was called _the Great Commoner_, the nickname of _the Little
Commoner_ was bestowed on Shelley in ridicule.[296] This insignificant
person did Lord Chatham, to gratify Lord Lincoln, design for Treasurer
of the Household. Mr. Conway had remonstrated against the dismission of
Lord Edgcumbe,[297] who held that staff, insisting that an equivalent,
at least, should be given to Lord Edgcumbe, and with his consent. This
had passed about a month before the meeting of the Parliament, and Lord
Chatham said no more at that time. But six days after the opening of
the session, Lord Shelburne, being with Mr. Conway, said, “I wish you
would tell me how to write a civil letter to Lord Edgcumbe.” Conway
started, and asked on what occasion? “To notify his dismission,”
replied the other. Lord Chatham, it seems, had offered a Lordship of
the Bedchamber to Lord Edgcumbe, a man of forty-five, very high in the
Navy, who had served with reputation in Lord Chatham’s favourite war,
and who, into a place only fit for a boy, must have entered below
thirteen other boys! Lord Edgcumbe very properly declining such a post,
Lord Chatham affected to resent it as an affront to the King, and wrote
a verbose notification of the refusal to Mr. Conway, with frequent
repetitions of his Majesty’s name and intentions. Conway, wounded at
the treatment both of himself and Lord Edgcumbe, wrote a firm answer,
justifying the latter.[298] Lord Rockingham, getting wind of this
transaction, hurried to Mr. Conway, artfully reminding him that the
late Duke of Devonshire, at his death, had recommended Lord Edgcumbe
to the Duke of Cumberland; and that Lord Edgcumbe himself had lately,
at Mr. Conway’s request, chosen his nephew, Lord Beauchamp,[299] into
Parliament.[300] But Lord Chatham’s own conduct exasperated Conway
more than any incendiary could. He wrote again to Conway, imputing all
to the King’s intentions and to the necessity of accommodation. He
could not have assigned a weaker reason. Shelley would not even have
a seat in Parliament, for the Duke of Newcastle refused to re-elect
him. Lord Edgcumbe commanded four boroughs, and it was within a year of
the general election. Instead of replying by letter, Conway went and
expostulated with Lord Chatham on the ill-usage of his friend, and of
the silence to himself, desiring to retire; did not mean to oppose, but
thought that the Government could do without him now Charles Townshend
was in their service. Lord Chatham talked of his desire of pleasing all
parties by taking some of all: some Bedfords--Burke, to please Lord
Rockingham--(but Burke had said he would take nothing but on proviso of
resigning, if Lord Rockingham went into opposition--though, as the Duke
of Grafton told me, Burke would not have been obdurate if his demands
had not been too extravagant)--Norton--Conway remonstrated--Lord
Chatham rejoined, “only in case of a vacancy, perhaps Master of the
Rolls, if the present should die.”
While this matter was in suspense, Mr. Conway moved the House of
Commons for leave to bring in a bill in favour of _all_ who had acted
under the Order of Council for restraining exportation of grain.
Grenville said the motion was not adequate to the case: the indemnity
ought to extend to the Privy Council, as had been customary in the
reign of Charles II. and at the Revolution. Yet he would not then
propose the amendment; would wait to see the bill. If he should not
find the extension there, that great question would and should be
discussed. Burke, more moderate, said, it would be sufficient if
the preamble specified _all those who had counselled or advised_.
Beckford, to disculpate the Chancellor, said, _in times of danger the
Crown might dispense with law_. Grenville started up, and demanded that
the clerk should take down those words. Beckford said, he was glad to
see that gentleman so zealous for liberty _at present_, but that he had
interrupted him before he had finished his sentence; that he was going
to add, _by the advice of his Council, for the salus populi_. Grenville
demanded that those words should be taken down too. Several interposed,
and desired that Beckford might have leave to explain himself.
Grenville said, he aimed at the doctrine, not the person. Beckford
pleaded ignorance, and that he was not one of the docti. Nugent
replied, that the House had often been witness to his ignorance. “But,
sir,” said he, “I exaggerate his ignorance to excuse him.” Hussey,
a very honest man, and who had refused any preferment, though an
intimate friend of the Chancellor, stated an explanation of Beckford’s
meaning, which, indeed, was totally the reverse, and a full definition
of liberty against a dispensing power, which the House accepted. I
went home with Mr. Conway, and though I entirely approved what the
Council had done, yet as precedents of power cannot be too strongly
guarded against, I begged him, as Hussey had advised, to obtain a firm
declaration against a dispensing power in the preamble to the bill. He
was zealously of that opinion, and said he would. I told him, if Lord
Chatham objected, _that_ would be a much more laudable and wise subject
for breaking with him, than on the private case of Lord Edgcumbe, which
the world would consider but as a squabble about places and power. The
Duke of Richmond and Burke tried to persuade me that Mr. Conway ought
to break on Lord Edgcumbe, as their friends would desert the party, if
the party did not resent the ill-treatment of individuals. I replied, I
would neither flatter his Grace, nor Lord Rockingham; that, next to my
country, I consulted Mr. Conway’s honour, and desired they should know
it. That Mr. Conway could not break for Lord Edgcumbe, when he had not
quarrelled with Lord Chatham on the Duke of Richmond’s account. That
if he quarrelled on some constitutional point, he would bring double
strength to the party. To break on persons might be called faction;
and I thought too well of his friends to believe they would leave
him. Hitherto they had not been very considerable; but their conduct
in Administration, and their quiet behaviour since out of place,
would give them new importance. That they said, Lord Chatham wanted
to ruin their party: he might, but was recruiting them. That he would
reduce himself to be dependent on Lord Bute, and would become of no
consequence.--I did not persuade them, nor they me.
Lord Edgcumbe conducted himself with singular temper, being, in truth,
desirous of an indemnification, which he told Mr. Conway he would
still accept. The latter tried to obtain an earldom for him. Lord
Chatham refused it with much verbiage, and pleaded the honour of the
King engaged, and that himself had always determined to break all
parties; and a wise method[301] he took, no doubt, by declaring that
intention! It was not much wiser when he condescended to intimate that
he would offer something to Lord Edgcumbe, but not for some days,
lest he should seem to be forced. Lord John Cavendish said to me, he
supposed Lord Chatham would not yield. I replied, Certainly not; but
if he would, we should have a great triumph. This was to reconcile
them to it in case the offer came. He told me the Duke of Portland and
Lord Besborough would resign, unless Mr. Conway should desire them
not. I understood this; it was an artifice to lay him under stronger
obligations to them. Lord Besborough, extremely unwilling to resign,
offered to give up the Post Office to Lord Edgcumbe, and, though a
place he should dislike, (for he was still an older man,) to take
the Bedchamber himself. Mr. Conway, charmed, as thinking this would
accommodate everything, immediately sent word of it to the Duke of
Grafton; but in a little hour received from Lord Chatham a haughty and
despotic answer, _that he would not suffer connections to force the
King_. Mr. Conway, losing all patience, wrote to the Duke of Grafton,
_that such language had never been held west of Constantinople_.
Still, however, to prevent the rupture, I persuaded him to soften the
expression to, _in this country_; and insinuated to him, that Lord
Besborough’s offer was a snare laid by Lord John, and conceived from my
having told him that Lord Chatham would certainly not bend.
On the 22nd the Duke of Grafton told Mr. Conway that Lord Chatham had
no objection to his proposing anything to the King in favour of Lord
Edgcumbe, but would not himself: and the Duke added, “If the King
would still grant it.” This made me fear another repulse. Mr. Conway,
however, who scorned to bend to Lord Chatham’s haughtiness, desired his
brother to ask an audience of the King, in order to make the proposals.
Yet I obtained a delay till I should try to prevail on Lord Edgcumbe
to accept the Bedchamber. In the mean time I met Lord Rockingham, who,
taking me aside, laughed at the idea of Lord Besborough’s proposal;
said it was a joke, and that Lord Chatham would only have laughed at
them for it. I said, very seriously, “What, my Lord, have you sent
Mr. Conway on a fool’s errand, and now disavow him?” He replied, the
party knew nothing of it. Lord Besborough had done it from himself to
prevent a rupture. I said Mr. Conway had received the proposal from
the Duke of Portland. He said, he was sure not: yet so it proved. He
pressed me earnestly to encourage Mr. Conway to resign. I said I could
not take upon me to advise him to give up all he had. He laughed and
said, it could not be for long; everything came round in this country.
I replied, “Your Lordship, with twenty thousand pounds a year, talks
very much at your ease; but Mr. Conway would have nothing in the world,
and would not go into opposition to recover his fortune. He has told
both Lord Chatham and the Duke of Grafton that he will not oppose.”
This conversation was so ill taken, which was indifferent to me, that
it broke off all correspondence between me and Lord Rockingham. I went
to Mr. Conway and represented to him that they were trying to dupe him:
that they now disavowed him, as they had done on Lord Chatham’s visit
to the Marquis; and I added, that though Lord Rockingham affected to
resent so warmly for him the treatment of Lord Chatham, his Lordship
had treated him in the same manner the last spring on the establishment
for the Princes. I wished to stop Mr. Conway from resigning till Lord
Chatham should have gained the Bedfords from George Grenville; I wished
to give Grenville time to involve himself in further declarations for
liberty; I wished Mr. Conway to have a regiment again, which I had been
the cause of his losing; and I was not unwilling to convince Lord
Rockingham and Lord John Cavendish that Mr. Conway was not to receive
orders from them. Of these four points, of which the second in truth
would have availed little[302] but to disgrace Grenville if he returned
to power, I accomplished all but one; and it will be soon seen that
that, like many other prudential views, was defeated solely by the
mismanagement of Lord Chatham. Wearisome contests it cost me for six
months to prevent Mr. Conway’s resignation; and though I succeeded, and
afterwards shut the door both on Grenville and Lord Rockingham, the
person[303] who profited of my fatigues, and of the credit I had with
Mr. Conway, proved so unworthy; and so sick did I grow both of that
person and of the fatigues I underwent, that I totally withdrew myself
from the scene of politics, and tasted far more satisfaction in my
retreat than I had done in the warmest moments of success and triumph.
The joys of a private station present themselves--are bought by no
anxiety. I never found pleasures answer that were purchased by trouble.
It is like many moral aphorisms, a theme for poets, untrue in practice.
All proposals of accommodations proving fruitless,[304] Lord
Edgcumbe was dismissed, and his staff placed in Shelley’s hands. The
wound rankled so deeply in Mr. Conway’s bosom, that he dropped all
intercourse with Lord Chatham; and though he continued to conduct the
King’s business in the House of Commons, he would neither receive nor
pay any deference to the Minister’s orders, acting for or against,
as he approved or disliked his measures;--a scorn that became his
character, and which he supported with very different dignity from that
of Lord Chatham, whose tone being fictitious and assumed, could not
bear him out in the implicit obedience he expected. Like oracles and
groves, whose sanctity depended on the fears of the devout, and whose
mysterious and holy gloom vanished as soon as men dared to think and
walk through them, Lord Chatham’s authority ceased with his popularity;
and his godhead, when he had affronted his priests.
In all his actions was discernible an imitation of his model, Ximenes;
a model ill-suited to a free government, and worse to a man whose
situation and necessities were totally different. Was the poor monk
thwarted or disgraced, the asylum of his convent was open; and a
cardinal, who was clothed in a hair-cloth at Court, missed no fine
linen, no luxury, in his cloister. Lord Chatham was as abstemious
in his diet; but mixed Persian grandeur with herbs and roots. His
equipages and train were too expensive for his highest zenith of
wealth, and he maintained them when out of place and overwhelmed with
debts: a wife and children were strange impediments to a Ximenes.
Grandeur, show, and a pension could not wrestle with an opulent and
independent nobility, nor could he buy them, though he had sold
himself. His services to his country were far above those of Ximenes,
who trampled on Castilian pride but to sacrifice it to the monarch
of Castile. Lord Chatham had recalled the spirit of a brave nation,
had given it victory and glory, and victory secured its liberty.
As Ximenes had no such objects, the inflexibility of Ximenes was
below the imitation of Camillus. It was mean ambition to stoop from
humbling the crowned heads of France and Spain, to contend with proud
individuals and the arrogance of factions--at least, would a real
great man have doated on a coronet, who prided himself in lowering the
peerage? Lord Chatham had been the arbiter of Europe; he affected to
be the master of the English nobility: he failed, and remained with
a train of domestics whom he could not pay. More like Nicholas Rienzi
than Ximenes, the lord of Rome became ridiculous by apeing the tawdry
pageant of a triumph. Yet, as what is here said is the voice of truth,
not the hiss of satire, British posterity will ever remember that, as
Lord Chatham’s first Administration obtained and secured the most real
and substantial benefits to his country, the puerilities of his second
could not efface their lustre. The man was lessened, not his merits.
Even the shameful peace of Paris, concluded in defiance of him, could
not rob the nation of all he had acquired; nor could George the Third
resign so much as Pitt had gained for George the Second. Half the
empire of Indostan, conquered under his Administration by the spirit
he had infused, still pours its treasures into the Thames. Canada was
subdued by his councils, and Spain and France--that yet dread his
name, attest the reality of his services. The memory of his eloquence,
which effected all these wonders, will remain when the neglect of
his cotemporaries, and my criticisms, will be forgotten. Yet it was
the duty of an annalist, and of a painter of nature, to exhibit the
varying features of his portrait. The lights and shades of a great
character are a moral lesson. Philosophy loves to study the man more
than the hero or the statesman; and whether his qualities were real
or fictitious, his actions were so illustrious, that few names in the
registers of Time will excite more curiosity than that of William Pitt.
When Mr. Conway presented the Bill of Indemnity to the House, he
ushered it in with strong declarations against the Chancellor’s
doctrine of necessity justifying a dispensing power. He was much
applauded by Grenville for extending the Indemnity to the Council, the
latter inveighing against Lord Camden, and ascribing his tenets to
folly, ignorance, weakness, and wickedness, such as cost Charles I.
his life, and James II. his crown. Conway, who felt that himself had
gone too far, took that opportunity of apologizing for the Chancellor,
who, he said, he believed was no friend to a dispensing power in an
odious light: the dispensing power claimed by Charles and James had not
been founded on necessity. The Bill was ordered to be printed. After
the debate I asked Lord John Cavendish if it was not more desirable
to have the dispensing power condemned by a Minister than by a man in
opposition?