THE EARL OF CHATHAM

(October 1844)

_1. Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. 4 vols. 8vo. London:

1840.

2. Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Horace Mann. 4 vols.

8vo. London: 1843-4._

MORE than ten years ago we commenced a sketch of the political life

of the great Lord Chatham. We then stopped at the death of George the

Second, with the intention of speedily resuming our task. Circumstances,

which it would be tedious to explain, long prevented us from carrying

this intention into effect. Nor can we regret the delay. For the

materials which were within our reach in 1834 were scanty and

unsatisfactory when compared with those which we at present possess.

Even now, though we have had access to some valuable sources of

information which have not yet been opened to the public, we cannot but

feel that the history of the first ten years of the reign of George the

Third is but imperfectly known to us. Nevertheless, we are inclined to

think that we are in a condition to lay before our readers a narrative

neither uninstructive nor uninteresting. We therefore return with

pleasure to our long interrupted labour.

We left Pitt in the zenith of prosperity and glory, the idol of England,

the terror of France, the admiration of the whole civilised world.

The wind, from whatever quarter it blew, carried to England tidings of

battles won, fortresses taken, provinces added to the empire. At home,

factions had sunk into a lethargy, such as had never been known since

the great religious schism of the sixteenth century had roused the

public mind from repose.

In order that the events which we have to relate may be clearly

understood, it may be desirable that we should advert to the causes

which had for a time suspended the animation of both the great English

parties.

If, rejecting all that is merely accidental, we look at the essential

characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, we may consider each of them

as the representative of a great principle, essential to the welfare of

nations. One is, in an especial manner, the guardian of liberty, and

the other of order. One is the moving power, and the other the steadying

power of the State. One is the sail, without which society would make

no progress; the other the ballast, without which there would be small

safety in a tempest. But, during the forty-six years which followed

the accession of the House of Hanover, these distinctive peculiarities

seemed to be effaced. The Whig conceived that he could not better serve

the cause of civil and religious freedom than by strenuously supporting

the Protestant dynasty. The Tory conceived that he could not better

prove his hatred of revolutions than by attacking a government to

which a revolution had given birth. Both came by degrees to attach more

importance to the means than to the end. Both were thrown into unnatural

situations; and both, like animals transported to an uncongenial

climate, languished and degenerated. The Tory, removed from the sunshine

of the Court, was as a camel in the snows of Lapland. The Whig, basking

in the rays of royal favour, was as a reindeer in the sands of Arabia.

Dante tells us that he saw, in Malebolge, a strange encounter between

a human form and a serpent. The enemies, after cruel wounds inflicted,

stood for a time glaring on each other. A great cloud surrounded them,

and then a wonderful metamorphosis began. Each creature was transfigured

into the likeness of its antagonist. The serpent’s tail divided itself

into two legs; the man’s legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The

body of the serpent put forth arms; the arms of the man shrank into his

body. At length the serpent stood up a man, and spake; the man sank

down a serpent, and glided hissing away. Something like this was the

transformation which, during the reign of George the First, befell the

two English parties. Each gradually took the shape and colour of its

foe, till at length the Tory rose up erect the zealot of freedom, and

the Whig crawled and licked the dust at the feet of power.

It is true that, when these degenerate politicians discussed questions

merely speculative, and, above all, when they discussed questions

relating to the conduct of their own grandfathers, they still seemed to

differ as their grandfathers had differed. The Whig, who, during three

Parliaments, had never given one vote against the Court, and who was

ready to sell his soul for the Comptroller’s staff or for the Great

Wardrobe, still professed to draw his political doctrines from Locke and

Milton, still worshipped the memory of Pym and Hampden, and would still,

on the thirtieth of January, take his glass, first to the man in the

mask, and then to the man who would do it without a mask. The Tory, on

the other hand, while he reviled the mild and temperate Walpole as a

deadly enemy of liberty, could see nothing to reprobate in the iron

tyranny of Strafford and Laud. But, whatever judgment the Whig or the

Tory of that age might pronounce on transactions long past, there can

be no doubt that, as respected the practical questions then pending, the

Tory was a reformer, and indeed an intemperate and indiscreet reformer,

while the Whig was conservative even to bigotry. We have ourselves seen

similar effects produced in a neighbouring country by similar causes.

Who would have believed, fifteen years ago, that M. Guizot and M.

Villemain would have to defend property and social order against the

attacks of such enemies as M. Genoude and M. de La Roche Jaquelin?

Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned demagogues; the

successors of the old Roundheads had turned courtiers. Yet was it long

before their mutual animosity began to abate; for it is the nature of

parties to retain their original enmities far more firmly than their

original principles. During many years, a generation of Whigs, whom

Sidney would have spurned as slaves, continued to wage deadly war with a

generation of Tories whom Jeffreys would have hanged for republicans.

Through the whole reign of George the First, and through nearly half of

the reign of George the Second, a Tory was regarded as an enemy of the

reigning house, and was excluded from all the favours of the Crown.

Though most of the country gentlemen were Tories, none but Whigs were

created peers and baronets. Though most of the clergy were Tories, none

but Whigs were appointed deans and bishops. In every county, opulent and

well descended Tory squires complained that their names were left out of

the commission of the peace, while men of small estate and mean birth,

who were for toleration and excise, septennial parliaments and standing

armies, presided at quarter-sessions, and became deputy lieutenants.

By degrees some approaches were made towards a reconciliation. While

Walpole was at the head of affairs, enmity to his power induced a large

and powerful body of Whigs, headed by the heir-apparent of the

throne, to make an alliance with the Tories, and a truce even with the

Jacobites. After Sir Robert’s fall, the ban which lay on the Tory party

was taken off. The chief places in the administration continued to

be filled with Whigs, and, indeed, could scarcely have been filled

otherwise; for the Tory nobility and gentry, though strong in numbers

and in property, had among them scarcely a single man distinguished by

talents, either for business or for debate. A few of them, however,

were admitted to subordinate offices; and this indulgence produced a

softening effect on the temper of the whole body. The first levee

of George the Second after Walpole’s resignation was a remarkable

spectacle. Mingled with the constant supporters of the House of

Brunswick, with the Russells, the Cavendishes, and the Pelhams, appeared

a crowd of faces utterly unknown to the pages and gentlemen-ushers,

lords of rural manors, whose ale and foxhounds were renowned in the

neighbourhood of the Mendip hills, or round the Wrekin, but who had

never crossed the threshold of the palace since the days when Oxford,

with the white staff in his hand, stood behind Queen Anne.

During the eighteen years which followed this day, both factions were

gradually sinking deeper and deeper into repose. The apathy of the

public mind is partly to be ascribed to the unjust violence with which

the administration of Walpole had been assailed. In the body politic,

as in the natural body, morbid languor generally succeeds morbid

excitement. The people had been maddened by sophistry, by calumny, by

rhetoric, by stimulants applied to the national pride. In the fulness of

bread, they had raved as if famine had been in the land. While enjoying

such a measure of civil and religious freedom as, till then, no great

society had ever known, they had cried out for a Timoleon or a Brutus to

stab their oppressor to the heart. They were in this frame of mind when

the change of administration took place; and they soon found that there

was to be no change whatever in the system of government. The natural

consequences followed. To frantic zeal succeeded sullen indifference.

The cant of patriotism had not merely ceased to charm the public ear,

but had become as nauseous as the cant of Puritanism after the downfall

of the Rump. The hot fit was over, the cold fit had begun: and it was

long before seditious arts, or even real grievances, could bring back

the fiery paroxysm which had run its course and reached its termination.

Two attempts were made to disturb this tranquillity. The banished heir

of the House of Stuart headed a rebellion; the discontented heir of

the House of Brunswick headed an opposition. Both the rebellion and

the opposition came to nothing. The battle of Culloden annihilated

the Jacobite party. The death of Prince Frederic dissolved the faction

which, under his guidance, had feebly striven to annoy his father’s

government. His chief followers hastened to make their peace with the

ministry; and the political torpor became complete.

Five years after the death of Prince Frederic, the public mind was for

a time violently excited. But this excitement had nothing to do with the

old disputes between Whigs and Tories. England was at war with France.

The war had been feebly conducted. Minorca had been torn from us. Our

fleet had retired before the white flag of the House of Bourbon. A

bitter sense of humiliation, new to the proudest and bravest of nations,

superseded every other feeling. The cry of all the counties and great

towns of the realm was for a government which would retrieve the honour

of the English arms. The two most powerful in the country were the Duke

of Newcastle and Pitt. Alternate victories and defeats had made them

sensible that neither of them could stand alone. The interest of

the State, and the interest of their own ambition, impelled them to

coalesce. By their coalition was formed the ministry which was in power

when George the Third ascended the throne.

The more carefully the structure of this celebrated ministry is

examined, the more shall we see reason to marvel at the skill or the

luck which had combined in one harmonious whole such various and, as it

seemed, incompatible elements of force. The influence which is derived

from stainless integrity, the influence which is derived from the vilest

arts of corruption, the strength of aristocratical connection, the

strength of democratical enthusiasm, all these things were for the first

time found together. Newcastle brought to the coalition a vast mass of

power, which had descended to him from Walpole and Pelham. The public

offices, the church, the courts of law, the army, the navy, the

diplomatic service, swarmed with his creatures. The boroughs, which long

afterwards made up the memorable schedules A and B, were represented

by his nominees. The great Whig families, which, during several

generations, had been trained in the discipline of party warfare, and

were accustomed to stand together in a firm phalanx, acknowledged him

as their captain. Pitt, on the other hand, had what Newcastle wanted, an

eloquence which stirred the passions and charmed the imagination, a high

reputation for purity, and the confidence and ardent love of millions.

The partition which the two ministers made of the powers of government

was singularly happy. Each occupied a province for which he was well

qualified; and neither had any inclination to intrude himself into

the province of the other. Newcastle took the treasury, the civil

and ecclesiastical patronage, and the disposal of that part of the

secret-service money which was then employed in bribing members of

Parliament. Pitt was Secretary of State, with the direction of the

war and of foreign affairs. Thus the filth of all the noisome and

pestilential sewers of government was poured into one channel. Through

the other passed only what was bright and stainless. Mean and selfish

politicians, pining for commissionerships, gold sticks, and ribands,

flocked to the great house at the corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There,

at every levee, appeared eighteen or twenty pair of lawn sleeves; for

there was not, it was said, a single Prelate who had not owed either

his first elevation or some subsequent translation to Newcastle. There

appeared those members of the House of Commons in whose silent votes the

main strength of the Government lay. One wanted a place in the excise

for his butler. Another came about a prebend for his son. A third

whispered that he had always stood by his Grace and the Protestant

succession; that his last election had been very expensive; that

potwallopers had now no conscience; that he had been forced to take

up money on mortgage; and that he hardly knew where to turn for five

hundred pounds. The Duke pressed all their hands, passed his arms round

all their shoulders, patted all their backs, and sent away some with

wages, and some with promises. From this traffic Pitt stood haughtily

aloof. Not only was he himself incorruptible, but he shrank from the

loathsome drudgery of corrupting others. He had not, however, been

twenty years in Parliament, and ten in office, without discovering how

the Government was carried on. He was perfectly aware that bribery was

practised on a large scale by his colleagues. Hating the practice, yet

despairing of putting it down, and doubting whether, in those times,

any ministry could stand without it, he determined to be blind to it.

He would see nothing, know nothing, believe nothing. People who came to

talk to him about shares in lucrative contracts, or about the means of

securing a Cornish corporation, were soon put out of countenance by

his arrogant humility. They did him too much honour. Such matters were

beyond his capacity. It was true that his poor advice about expeditions

and treaties was listened to with indulgence by a gracious sovereign. If

the question were, who should command in North America, or who should

be ambassador at Berlin, his colleagues would condescend to take his

opinion. But he had not the smallest influence with the Secretary of the

Treasury, and could not venture to ask even for a tidewaiter’s place.

It may be doubted whether he did not owe as much of his popularity to

his ostentatious purity as to his eloquence, or to his talents for

the administration of war. It was everywhere said with delight and

admiration that the Great Commoner, without any advantages of birth

or fortune, had, in spite of the dislike of the Court and of the

aristocracy, made himself the first man in England, and made England

the first country in the world; that his name was mentioned with awe in

every palace from Lisbon to Moscow; that his trophies were in all the

four quarters of the globe; yet that he was still plain William Pitt,

without title or riband, without pension or sinecure place. Whenever he

should retire, after saving the State, he must sell his coach horses and

his silver candlesticks. Widely as the taint of corruption had spread,

his hands were clean. They had never received, they had never given, the

price of infamy. Thus the coalition gathered to itself support from all

the high and all the low parts of human nature, and was strong with the

whole united strength of virtue and of Mammon.

Pitt and Newcastle were co-ordinate chief ministers. The subordinate

places had been filled on the principle of including in the Government

every party and shade of party, the avowed Jacobites alone excepted,

nay, every public man who, from his abilities or from his situation,

seemed likely to be either useful in office or formidable in opposition.

The Whigs, according to what was then considered as their prescriptive

right, held by far the largest share of power. The main support of

the administration was what may be called the great Whig connection,

a connection which, during near half a century, had generally had the

chief sway in the country, and which derived an immense authority from

rank, wealth, borough interest, and firm union. To this connection, of

which Newcastle was the head, belonged the houses of Cavendish, Lennox,

Fitzroy, Bentinck, Manners, Conway, Wentworth, and many others of high

note.

There were two other powerful Whig connections, either of which might

have been a nucleus for a strong opposition. But room had been found

in the Government for both. They were known as the Grenvilles and the

Bedfords.

The head of the Grenvilles was Richard Earl Temple. His talents

for administration and debate were of no high order. But his great

possessions, his turbulent and unscrupulous character, his restless

activity, and his skill in the most ignoble tactics of faction, made him

one of the most formidable enemies that a ministry could have. He was

keeper of the privy seal. His brother George was treasurer of the navy.

They were supposed to be on terms of close friendship with Pitt, who had

married their sister, and was the most uxorious of husbands.

The Bedfords, or, as they were called by their enemies, the Bloomsbury

gang, professed to be led by John Duke of Bedford, but in truth led him

wherever they chose, and very often led him where he never would have

gone of his own accord. He had many good qualities of head and

heart, and would have been certainly a respectable, and possibly a

distinguished man, if he had been less under the influence of his

friends, or more fortunate in choosing them. Some of them were indeed,

to do them justice, men of parts. But here, we are afraid, eulogy must

end. Sandwich and Rigby were able debaters, pleasant boon companions,

dexterous intriguers, masters of all the arts of jobbing and

electioneering, and both in public and private life, shamelessly

immoral. Weymouth had a natural eloquence, which sometimes astonished

those who knew how little he owed to study. But he was indolent and

dissolute, and had early impaired a fine estate with the dice-box, and a

fine constitution with the bottle. The wealth and power of the Duke, and

the talents and audacity of some of his retainers, might have seriously

annoyed the strongest ministry. But his assistance had been secured. He

was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Rigby was his secretary; and the whole

party dutifully supported the measures of the Government.

Two men had, a short time before, been thought likely to contest with

Pitt the lead of the House of Commons, William Murray and Henry Fox.

But Murray had been removed to the Lords, and was Chief Justice of the

King’s Bench. Fox was indeed still in the Commons; but means had been

found to secure, if not his strenuous support, at least his silent

acquiescence. He was a poor man; he was a doting father. The office of

Paymaster-General during an expensive war was, in that age, perhaps the

most lucrative situation in the gift of the Government. This office was

bestowed on Fox. The prospect of making a noble fortune in a few years,

and of providing amply for his darling boy Charles, was irresistibly

tempting. To hold a subordinate place, however profitable, after having

led the House of Commons, and having been intrusted with the business of

forming a ministry, was indeed a great descent. But a punctilious sense

of personal dignity was no part of the character of Henry Fox.

We have not time to enumerate all the other men of weight who were, by

some tie or other, attached to the Government. We may mention Hardwicke,

reputed the first lawyer of the age; Legge, reputed the first financier

of the age; the acute and ready Oswald; the bold and humorous Nugent;

Charles Townshend, the most brilliant and versatile of mankind; Elliot,

Barrington, North, Pratt. Indeed, as far as we recollect, there were in

the whole House of Commons only two men of distinguished abilities who

were not connected with the Government; and those two men stood so

low in public estimation, that the only service which they could have

rendered to any government would have been to oppose it. We speak of

Lord George Sackville and Bubb Dodington.

Though most of the official men, and all the members of the Cabinet,

were reputed Whigs, the Tories were by no means excluded from

employment. Pitt had gratified many of them with commands in the

militia, which increased both their income and their importance in their

own counties; and they were therefore in better humour than at any time

since the death of Anne. Some of the party still continued to grumble

over their punch at the Cocoa Tree; but in the House of Commons not a

single one of the malcontents durst lift his eyes above the buckle of

Pitt’s shoe.

Thus there was absolutely no opposition. Nay, there was no sign from

which it could be guessed in what quarter opposition was likely to

arise. Several years passed during which Parliament seemed to have

abdicated its chief functions. The journals of the House of Commons,

during four sessions, contain no trace of a division on a party

question. The supplies, though beyond precedent great, were voted

without discussion. The most animated debates of that period were on

road bills and enclosure bills.

The old King was content; and it mattered little whether he were content

or not. It would have been impossible for him to emancipate himself from

a ministry so powerful, even if he had been inclined to do so. But he

had no such inclination. He had once, indeed, been strongly prejudiced

against Pitt, and had repeatedly been ill used by Newcastle; but the

vigour and success with which the war had been waged in Germany, and the

smoothness with which all public business was carried on, had produced a

favourable change in the royal mind.

Such was the posture of affairs when, on the twenty-fifth of October,

1760, George the Second suddenly died, and George the Third, then

twenty-two years old, became King. The situation of George the Third

differed widely from that of his grandfather and that of his great

grandfather. Many years had elapsed since a sovereign of England had

been an object of affection to any part of his people. The first two

Kings of the House of Hanover had neither those hereditary rights which

have often supplied the defect of merit, nor those personal qualities

which have often supplied the defect of title. A prince may be popular

with little virtue or capacity, if he reigns by birthright derived from

a long line of illustrious predecessors. An usurper may be popular, if

his genius has saved or aggrandised the nation which he governs. Perhaps

no rulers have in our time had a stronger hold on the affection of

subjects than the Emperor Francis, and his son-in-law the Emperor

Napoleon. But imagine a ruler with no better title than Napoleon, and

no better understanding than Francis. Richard Cromwell was such a ruler;

and, as soon as an arm was lifted up against him, he fell without a

struggle, amidst universal derision. George the First and George the

Second were in a situation which bore some resemblance to that of

Richard Cromwell. They were saved from the fate of Richard Cromwell by

the strenuous and able exertions of the Whig party, and by the general

conviction that the nation had no choice but between the House of

Brunswick and popery. But by no class were the Guelphs regarded with

that devoted affection, of which Charles the First, Charles the Second,

and James the Second, in spite of the greatest faults, and in the midst

of the greatest misfortunes, received innumerable proofs. Those Whigs

who stood by the new dynasty so manfully with purse and sword did so

on principles independent of, and indeed almost incompatible with, the

sentiment of devoted loyalty. The moderate Tories regarded the foreign

dynasty as a great evil, which must be endured for fear of a greater

evil. In the eyes of the high Tories, the Elector was the most hateful

of robbers and tyrants. The crown of another was on his head; the blood

of the brave and loyal was on his hands. Thus, during many years, the

Kings of England were objects of strong personal aversion to many of

their subjects; and of strong personal attachment to none. They found,

indeed, firm and cordial support against the pretender to their throne;

but this support was given, not at all for their sake, but for the sake

of a religious and political system which would have been endangered

by their fall. This support, too, they were compelled to purchase by

perpetually sacrificing their private inclinations to the party which

had set them on the throne, and which maintained them there.

At the close of the reign of George the Second, the feeling of aversion

with which the House of Brunswick had long been regarded by half the

nation had died away; but no feeling of affection to that house had

yet sprung up. There was little, indeed, in the old King’s character to

inspire esteem or tenderness. He was not our countryman. He never set

foot on our soil till he was more than thirty years old. His speech

betrayed his foreign origin and breeding. His love for his native land,

though the most amiable part of his character, was not likely to endear

him to his British subjects. He was never so happy as when he could

exchange St. James’s for Hernhausen. Year after year, our fleets were

employed to convoy him to the Continent, and the interests of his

kingdom were as nothing to him when compared with the interests of his

Electorate. As to the rest, he had neither the qualities which

make dulness respectable, nor the qualities which make libertinism

attractive. He had been a bad son and a worse father, an unfaithful

husband and an ungraceful lover. Not one magnanimous or humane action

is recorded of him; but many instances of meanness, and of a harshness

which, but for the strong constitutional restraints under which he was

placed, might have made the misery of his people.

He died; and at once a new world opened. The young King was a born

Englishman. All his tastes and habits, good or bad, were English. No

portion of his subjects had anything to reproach him with. Even the

remaining adherents of the House of Stuart could scarcely impute to him

the guilt of usurpation. He was not responsible for the Revolution, for

the Act of Settlement, for the suppression of the risings of 1715 and

of 1745. He was innocent of the blood of Derwentwater and Kilmarnock,

of Balmerino and Cameron. Born fifty years after the old line had been

expelled, fourth in descent and third in succession of the Hanoverian

dynasty, he might plead some show of hereditary right. His age, his

appearance, and all that was known of his character, conciliated public

favour. He was in the bloom of youth; his person and address were

pleasing. Scandal imputed to him no vice; and flattery might without any

glaring absurdity, ascribe to him many princely virtues.

It is not strange, therefore, that the sentiment of loyalty, a sentiment

which had lately seemed to be as much out of date as the belief in

witches or the practice of pilgrimage, should, from the day of his

accession, have begun to revive. The Tories in particular, who had

always been inclined to King-worship, and who had long felt with pain

the want of an idol before whom they could bow themselves down, were

as joyful as the priests of Apis, when, after a long interval, they had

found a new calf to adore. It was soon clear that George the Third was

regarded by a portion of the nation with a very different feeling from

that which his two predecessors had inspired. They had been merely

First Magistrates, Doges, Stadtholders; he was emphatically a King, the

anointed of heaven, the breath of his people’s nostrils. The years of

the widowhood and mourning of the Tory party were over. Dido had kept

faith long enough to the cold ashes of a former lord; she had at last

found a comforter, and recognised the vestiges of the old flame. The

golden days of Harley would return. The Somersets, the Lees, and the

Wyndhams would again surround the throne. The latitudinarian Prelates,

who had not been ashamed to correspond with Doddridge and to shake hands

with Whiston, would be succeeded by divines of the temper of South and

Atterbury. The devotion which had been so signally shown to the House

of Stuart, which had been proof against defeats, confiscations, and

proscriptions, which perfidy, oppression, ingratitude, could not weary

out, was now transferred entire to the House of Brunswick. If George the

Third would but accept the homage of the Cavaliers, and High Churchmen,

he should be to them all that Charles the First and Charles the Second

had been.

The Prince, whose accession was thus hailed by a great party long

estranged from his house, had received from nature a strong will, a

firmness of temper to which a harsher name might perhaps be given, and

an understanding not, indeed, acute or enlarged, but such as qualified

him to be a good man of business. But his character had not yet fully

developed itself. He had been brought up in strict seclusion. The

detractors of the Princess Dowager of Wales affirmed that she had kept

her children from commerce with society, in order that she might hold an

undivided empire over their minds. She gave a very different explanation

of her conduct. She would gladly, she said, see her sons and daughters

mix in the world, if they could do so without risk to their morals. But

the profligacy of the people of quality alarmed her. The young men were

all rakes; the young women made love, instead of waiting till it was

made to them. She could not bear to expose those whom she loved best to

the contaminating influence of such society. The moral advantages of

the system of education which formed the Duke of York, the Duke of

Cumberland, and the Queen of Denmark, may perhaps be questioned. George

the Third was indeed no libertine; but he brought to the throne a mind

only half open, and was for some time entirely under the influence of

his mother and of his Groom of the Stole, John Stuart, Earl of Bute.

The Earl of Bute was scarcely known, even by name, to the country which

he was soon to govern. He had indeed, a short time after he came of age,

been chosen to fill a vacancy, which, in the middle of a parliament, had

taken place among the Scotch representative peers. He had disobliged

the Whig ministers by giving some silent votes with the Tories, had

consequently lost his seat at the next dissolution, and had never been

re-elected. Near twenty years had elapsed since he had borne any part

in politics. He had passed some of those years at his seat in one of

the Hebrides, and from that retirement he had emerged as one of the

household of Prince Frederic. Lord Bute, excluded from public life, had

found out many ways of amusing his leisure. He was a tolerable actor

in private theatricals, and was particularly successful in the part of

Lothario. A handsome leg, to which both painters and satirists took care

to give prominence, was among his chief qualifications for the stage.

He devised quaint dresses for masquerades. He dabbled in geometry,

mechanics, and botany. He paid some attention to antiquities and works

of art, and was considered in his own circle as a judge of painting,

architecture, and poetry. It is said that his spelling was incorrect.

But though, in our time, incorrect spelling is justly considered as a

proof of sordid ignorance, it would be unjust to apply the same rule to

people who lived a century ago. The novel of Sir Charles Grandison

was published about the time at which Lord Bute made his appearance

at Leicester House. Our readers may perhaps remember the account which

Charlotte Grandison gives of her two lovers. One of them, a fashionable

baronet who talks French and Italian fluently, cannot write a line in

his own language without some sin against orthography; the other, who is

represented as a most respectable specimen of the young aristocracy,

and something of a virtuoso, is described as spelling pretty well for

a lord. On the whole, the Earl of Bute might fairly be called a man

of cultivated mind. He was also a man of undoubted honour. But his

understanding was narrow, and his manners cold and haughty. His

qualifications for the part of a statesman were best described by

Frederic, who often indulged in the unprincely luxury of sneering at his

dependants. “Bute,” said his Royal Highness, “you are the very man to be

envoy at some small proud German court where there is nothing to do.”

Scandal represented the Groom of the Stole as the favoured lover of

the Princess Dowager. He was undoubtedly her confidential friend. The

influence which the two united exercised over the mind of the King was

for a time unbounded. The Princess, a woman and a foreigner, was not

likely to be a judicious adviser about affairs of State. The Earl

could scarcely be said to have served even a noviciate in politics. His

notions of government had been acquired in the society which had been in

the habit of assembling round Frederic at Kew and Leicester House. That

society consisted principally of Tories, who had been reconciled to the

House of Hanover by the civility with which the Prince had treated them,

and by the hope of obtaining high preferment when he should come to the

throne. Their political creed was a peculiar modification of Toryism. It

was the creed neither of the Tories of the seventeenth nor of the

Tories of the nineteenth century. It was the creed, not of Filmer

and Sacheverell, not of Perceval and Eldon, but of the sect of which

Bolingbroke may be considered as the chief doctor. This sect deserves

commendation for having pointed out and justly reprobated some great

abuses which sprang up during the long domination of the Whigs. But

it is far easier to point out and reprobate abuses than to propose

beneficial reforms: and the reforms which Bolingbroke proposed would

either have been utterly inefficient, or would have produced much more

mischief than they would have removed.

The Revolution had saved the nation from one class of evils, but had at

the same time--such is the imperfection of all things human--engendered

or aggravated another class of evils which required new remedies.

Liberty and property were secure from the attacks of prerogative.

Conscience was respected. No government ventured to infringe any of the

rights solemnly recognised by the instrument which had called William

and Mary to the throne. But it cannot be denied that, under the new

system, the public interests and the public morals were seriously

endangered by corruption and faction. During the long struggle against

the Stuarts, the chief object of the most enlightened statesmen had been

to strengthen the House of Commons, The struggle was over; the victory

was won; the House of Commons was supreme in the State; and all the

vices which had till then been latent in the representative system were

rapidly developed by prosperity and power. Scarcely had the executive

government become really responsible to the House of Commons, when it

began to appear that the House of Commons was not really responsible

to the nation. Many of the constituent bodies were under the absolute

control of individuals; many were notoriously at the command of the

highest bidder. The debates were not published. It was very seldom known

out of doors how a gentleman had voted. Thus, while the ministry was

accountable to the Parliament, the majority of the Parliament was

accountable to nobody. In such circumstances, nothing could be more

natural than that the members should insist on being paid for their

votes, should form themselves into combinations for the purpose of

raising the price of their votes, and should at critical conjunctures

extort large wages by threatening a strike. Thus the Whig ministers

of George the First and George the Second were compelled to reduce

corruption to a system, and to practise it on a gigantic scale.

If we are right as to the cause of these abuses, we can scarcely be

wrong as to the remedy. The remedy was surely not to deprive the House

of Commons of its weight in the State. Such a course would undoubtedly

have put an end to parliamentary corruption and to parliamentary

factions: for, when votes cease to be of importance, they will cease

to be bought; and, when knaves can get nothing by combining, they will

cease to combine. But to destroy corruption and faction by introducing

despotism would have been to cure bad by worse. The proper remedy

evidently was, to make the House of Commons responsible to the nation;

and this was to be effected in two ways; first, by giving publicity to

parliamentary proceedings, and thus placing every member on his trial

before the tribunal of public opinion; and secondly, by so reforming the

constitution of the House that no man should be able to sit in it

who had not been returned by a respectable and independent body of

constituents.

Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke’s disciples recommended a very different

mode of treating the diseases of the State. Their doctrine was that a

vigorous use of the prerogative by a patriot King would at once break

all factious combinations, and supersede the pretended necessity of

bribing members of Parliament. The King had only to resolve that he

would be master, that he would not be held in thraldom by any set

of men, that he would take for ministers any persons in whom he had

confidence, without distinction of party, and that he would restrain his

servants from influencing by immoral means either the constituent bodies

or the representative body. This childish scheme proved that those

who proposed it knew nothing of the nature of the evil with which they

pretended to deal. The real cause of the prevalence of corruption and

faction was that a House of Commons, not accountable to the people, was

more powerful than the King. Bolingbroke’s remedy could be applied only

by a King more powerful than the House of Commons. How was the patriot

Prince to govern in defiance of the body without whose consent he could

not equip a sloop, keep a battalion under arms, send an embassy, or

defray even the charges of his own household? Was he to dissolve the

Parliament? And what was he likely to gain by appealing to Sudbury and

Old Sarum against the venality of their representatives? Was he to send

out privy seals? Was he to levy ship-money? If so, this boasted reform

must commence in all probability by civil war, and, if consummated, must

be consummated by the establishment of absolute monarchy. Or was the

patriot King to carry the House of Commons with him in his upright

designs? By what means? Interdicting himself from the use of corrupt

influence, what motive was he to address to the Dodingtons and

Winningtons? Was cupidity, strengthened by habit, to be laid asleep by a

few fine sentences about virtue and union?

Absurd as this theory was, it had many admirers, particularly among men

of letters. It was now to be reduced to practice; and the result was, as

any man of sagacity must have foreseen, the most piteous and ridiculous

of failures.

On the very day of the young King’s accession, appeared some signs which

indicated the approach of a great change. The speech which he made to

his Council was not submitted to the Cabinet. It was drawn up by Bute,

and contained some expressions which might be construed into reflections

on the conduct of affairs during the late reign. Pitt remonstrated,

and begged that these expressions might be softened down in the printed

copy; but it was not till after some hours of altercation that Bute

yielded; and even after Bute had yielded, the King affected to hold out

till the following afternoon. On the same day on which this singular

contest took place, Bute was not only sworn of the Privy Council, but

introduced into the Cabinet.

Soon after this Lord Holdernesse, one of the Secretaries of State, in

pursuance of a plan concerted with the Court, resigned the seals. Bute

was instantly appointed to the vacant place.

A general election speedily followed, and the new Secretary entered

Parliament in the only way in which he then could enter it, as one of

the sixteen representative peers of Scotland. [In the reign of Anne, the

House of Lords had resolved that, under the 23rd article of Union, no

Scotch peer could be created a peer of Great Britain. This resolution

was not annulled till the year 1782.]

Had the ministers been firmly united it can scarcely be doubted that

they would have been able to withstand the Court. The parliamentary

influence of the Whig aristocracy, combined with the genius, the virtue,

and the fame of Pitt, would have been irresistible. But there had been

in the Cabinet of George the Second latent jealousies and enmities,

which now began to show themselves. Pitt had been estranged from his old

ally Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Some of the ministers were

envious of Pitt’s popularity. Others were, not altogether without cause,

disgusted by his imperious and haughty demeanour. Others, again, were

honestly opposed to some parts of his policy. They admitted that he had

found the country in the depths of humiliation, and had raised it to

the height of glory; they admitted that he had conducted the war with

energy, ability, and splendid success; but they began to hint that the

drain on the resources of the State was unexampled, and that the public

debt was increasing with a speed at which Montague or Godolphin would

have stood aghast. Some of the acquisitions made by our fleets and

armies were, it was acknowledged, profitable as well as honourable; but,

now that George the Second was dead, a courtier might venture to ask why

England was to become a party in a dispute between two German powers.

What was it to her whether the House of Hapsburg or the House of

Brandenburg ruled in Silesia? Why were the best English regiments

fighting on the Main? Why were the Prussian battalions paid with English

gold? The great minister seemed to think it beneath him to calculate the

price of victory. As long as the Tower guns were fired, as the streets

were illuminated, as French banners were carried in triumph through

London, it was to him matter of indifference to what extent the public

burdens were augmented. Nay, he seemed to glory in the magnitude of

those sacrifices which the people, fascinated by his eloquence and

success, had too readily made, and would long and bitterly regret. There

was no check on waste or embezzlement. Our commissaries returned from

the camp of Prince Ferdinand to buy boroughs, to rear palaces, to rival

the magnificence of the old aristocracy of the realm. Already had

we borrowed, in four years of war, more than the most skilful and

economical government would pay in forty years of peace. But the

prospect of peace was as remote as ever. It could not be doubted

that France, smarting and prostrate, would consent to fair terms of

accommodation; but this was not what Pitt wanted. War had made him

powerful and popular; with war, all that was brightest in his life was

associated: for war his talents were peculiarly fitted. He had at length

begun to love war for its own sake, and was more disposed to quarrel

with neutrals than to make peace with enemies.

Such were the views of the Duke of Bedford and of the Earl of Hardwicke;

but no member of the Government held these opinions so strongly as

George Grenville, the treasurer of the navy. George Grenville was

brother-in-law of Pitt, and had always been reckoned one of Pitt’s

personal and political friends. But it is difficult to conceive two men

of talents and integrity more utterly unlike each other, Pitt, as his

sister often said, knew nothing accurately except Spenser’s Fairy Queen.

He had never applied himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. He was

a wretched financier. He never became familiar even with the rules of

that House of which he was the brightest ornament. He had never studied

public law as a system; and was, indeed, so ignorant of the whole

subject, that George the Second, on one occasion, complained bitterly

that a man who had never read Vattel should presume to undertake the

direction of foreign affairs. But these defects were more than redeemed

by high and rare gifts, by a strange power of inspiring great masses

of men with confidence and affection, by an eloquence which not only

delighted the ear, but stirred the blood, and brought tears into the

eyes, by originality in devising plans, by vigour in executing them.

Grenville, on the other hand, was by nature and habit a man of details.

He had been bred a lawyer; and he had brought the industry and acuteness

of the Temple into official and parliamentary life. He was supposed to

be intimately acquainted with the whole fiscal system of the country. He

had paid especial attention to the law of Parliament, and was so learned

in all things relating to the privileges and orders of the House of

Commons that those who loved him least pronounced him the only person

competent to succeed Onslow in the Chair. His speeches were generally

instructive, and sometimes, from the gravity and earnestness with which

he spoke, even impressive, but never brilliant, and generally tedious.

Indeed, even when he was at the head of affairs, he sometimes found it

difficult to obtain the ear of the House. In disposition as well as in

intellect, he differed widely from his brother-in-law. Pitt was utterly

regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch out his hand to take it;

and when it came, he threw it away with childish profusion. Grenville,

though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man

of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success

and popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive;

Grenville’s character was stem, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing

was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the

dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always

croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an

overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general applause, compared him, in a

time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit whom Ovid described looking

down on the stately temples and wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able

to refrain from weeping because she could find nothing at which to weep.

Such a man was not likely to be popular. But to unpopularity Grenville

opposed a dogged determination, which sometimes forced even those who

hated him to respect him.

It was natural that Pitt and Grenville, being such as they were, should

take very different views of the situation of affairs. Pitt could see

nothing but the trophies; Grenville could see nothing but the bill. Pitt

boasted that England was victorious at once in America, in India, and in

Germany, the umpire of the Continent, the mistress of the sea. Grenville

cast up the subsidies, sighed over the army extraordinaries, and groaned

in spirit to think that the nation had borrowed eight millions in one

year.

With a ministry thus divided it was not difficult for Bute to deal.

Legge was the first who fell. He had given offence to the young King in

the late reign, by refusing to support a creature of Bute at a Hampshire

election. He was now not only turned out, but in the closet, when he

delivered up his seal of office, was treated with gross incivility.

Pitt, who did not love Legge, saw this event with indifference. But the

danger was now fast approaching himself. Charles the Third of Spain had

early conceived a deadly hatred of England. Twenty years before, when

he was King of the Two Sicilies, he had been eager to join the coalition

against Maria Theresa. But an English fleet had suddenly appeared in

the Bay of Naples. An English Captain had landed, and proceeded to the

palace, had laid a watch on the table, and had told his majesty that,

within an hour, a treaty of neutrality must be signed, or a bombardment

would commence. The treaty was signed; the squadron sailed out of the

bay twenty-four hours after it had sailed in; and from that day the

ruling passion of the humbled Prince was aversion to the English name.

He was at length in a situation in which he might hope to gratify that

passion. He had recently become King of Spain and the Indies. He saw,

with envy and apprehension, the triumphs of our navy, and the rapid

extension of our colonial Empire. He was a Bourbon, and sympathised with

the distress of the house from which he sprang. He was a Spaniard; and

no Spaniard could bear to see Gibraltar and Minorca in the possession of

a foreign power. Impelled by such feelings, Charles concluded a secret

treaty with France. By this treaty, known as the Family Compact, the

two powers bound themselves, not in express words, but by the clearest

implication, to make war on England in common. Spain postponed the

declaration of hostilities only till her fleet, laden with the treasures

of America, should have arrived.

The existence of the treaty could not be kept a secret from Pitt. He

acted as a man of his capacity and energy might be expected to act.

He at once proposed to declare war against Spain, and to intercept the

American fleet. He had determined, it is said, to attack without delay

both Havanna and the Philippines.

His wise and resolute counsel was rejected. Bute was foremost in

opposing it, and was supported by almost the whole Cabinet. Some of

the ministers doubted, or affected to doubt, the correctness of Pitt’s

intelligence; some shrank from the responsibility of advising a course

so bold and decided as that which he proposed; some were weary of his

ascendency, and were glad to be rid of him on any pretext. One only of

his colleagues agreed with him, his brother-in-law, Earl Temple.

Pitt and Temple resigned their offices. To Pitt the young King behaved

at parting in the most gracious manner. Pitt, who, proud and fiery

everywhere else, was always meek and humble in the closet, was moved

even to tears. The King and the favourite urged him to accept some

substantial mark of royal gratitude. Would he like to be appointed

governor of Canada? A salary of five thousand pounds a year should be

annexed to the office. Residence would not be required. It was true that

the governor of Canada, as the law then stood, could not be a member of

the House of Commons. But a bill should be brought in, authorising Pitt

to hold his Government together with a seat in Parliament, and in the

preamble should be set forth his claims to the gratitude of his country.

Pitt answered, with all delicacy, that his anxieties were rather for

his wife and family than for himself, and that nothing would be so

acceptable to him as a mark of royal goodness which might be beneficial

to those who were dearest to him. The hint was taken. The same Gazette

which announced the retirement of the Secretary of State announced also

that, in consideration of his great public services, his wife had been

created a peeress in her own right, and that a pension of three thousand

pounds a year, for three lives, had been bestowed on himself. It was

doubtless thought that the rewards and honours conferred on the great

minister would have a conciliatory effect on the public mind. Perhaps,

too, it was thought that his popularity, which had partly arisen from

the contempt which he had always shown for money, would be damaged by a

pension; and, indeed, a crowd of libels instantly appeared, in which he

was accused of having sold his country. Many of his true friends thought

that he would have best consulted the dignity of his character by

refusing to accept any pecuniary reward from the Court. Nevertheless,

the general opinion of his talents, virtues, and services, remained

unaltered. Addresses were presented to him from several large towns.

London showed its admiration and affection in a still more marked

manner. Soon after his resignation came the Lord Mayor’s day. The King

and the royal family dined at Guildhall. Pitt was one of the guests.

The young Sovereign, seated by his bride in his state coach, received a

remarkable lesson. He was scarcely noticed. All eyes were fixed on the

fallen minister; all acclamations directed to him. The streets, the

balconies, the chimney tops, burst into a roar of delight as his chariot

passed by. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs from the windows. The

common people clung to the wheels, shook hands with the footmen, and

even kissed the horses. Cries of “No Bute!” “No Newcastle salmon!” were

mingled with the shouts of “Pitt for ever!” When Pitt entered Guildhall,

he was welcomed by loud huzzas and clapping of hands, in which the very

magistrates of the city joined. Lord Bute, in the meantime, was hooted

and pelted through Cheapside, and would, it was thought, have been

in some danger, if he had not taken the precaution of surrounding his

carriage with a strong bodyguard of boxers.

Many persons blamed the conduct of Pitt on this occasion as

disrespectful to the King. Indeed, Pitt himself afterwards owned that

he had done wrong. He was led into this error, as he was afterwards

led into more serious errors, by the influence of his turbulent and

mischievous brother-in-law, Temple.

The events which immediately followed Pitt’s retirement raised his fame

higher than ever. War with Spain proved to be, as he had predicted,

inevitable. News came from the West Indies that Martinique had been

taken by an expedition which he had sent forth. Havanna fell; and it was

known that he had planned an attack on Havanna. Manilla capitulated;

and it was believed that he had meditated a blow against Manilla. The

American fleet, which he had proposed to intercept, had unloaded an

immense cargo of bullion in the haven of Cadiz, before Bute could

be convinced that the Court of Madrid really entertained hostile

intentions.

The session of Parliament which followed Pitt’s retirement passed over

without any violent storm. Lord Bute took on himself the most prominent

part in the House of Lords. He had become Secretary of State, and indeed

Prime Minister, without having once opened his lips in public except as

an actor. There was, therefore, no small curiosity to know how he would

acquit himself. Members of the House of Commons crowded the bar of the

Lords, and covered the steps of the throne. It was generally expected

that the orator would break down; but his most malicious hearers were

forced to own that he had made a better figure than they expected. They,

indeed, ridiculed his action as theatrical, and his style as tumid. They

were especially amused by the long pauses which, not from hesitation,

but from affectation, he made at all the emphatic words, and Charles

Townshend cried out, “Minute guns!” The general opinion however was,

that, if Bute had been early practised in debate, he might have become

an impressive speaker.

In the Commons, George Grenville had been intrusted with the lead. The

task was not, as yet, a very difficult one for Pitt did not think fit

to raise the standard of opposition. His speeches at this time were

distinguished, not only by that eloquence in which he excelled all his

rivals, but also by a temperance and a modesty which had too often been

wanting to his character. When war was declared against Spain, he justly

laid claim to the merit of having foreseen what had at length

become manifest to all, but he carefully abstained from arrogant and

acrimonious expressions; and this abstinence was the more honourable to

him, because his temper, never very placid, was now severely tried, both

by gout and calumny. The courtiers had adopted a mode of warfare, which

was soon turned with far more formidable effect against themselves. Half

the inhabitants of the Grub Street garrets paid their milk scores,

and got their shirts out of pawn, by abusing Pitt. His German war, his

subsidies, his pension, his wife’s peerage, were shin of beef and gin,

blankets and baskets of small coal, to the starving poetasters of the

Fleet. Even in the House of Commons, he was, on one occasion during this

session, assailed with an insolence and malice which called forth the

indignation of men of all parties; but he endured the outrage with

majestic patience. In his younger days he had been but too prompt to

retaliate on those who attacked him; but now, conscious of his great

services, and of the space which he filled in the eyes of all mankind,

he would not stoop to personal squabbles. “This is no season,” he said,

in the debate on the Spanish war, “for altercation and recrimination.

A day has arrived when every Englishman should stand forth for his

country. Arm the whole; be one people; forget everything but the public.

I set you the example. Harassed by slanderers, sinking under pain and

disease, for the public I forget both my wrongs and my infirmities!” On

a general review of his life, we are inclined to think that his genius

and virtue never shone with so pure an effulgence as during the session

of 1762.

The session drew towards the close; and Bute, emboldened by the

acquiescence of the Houses, resolved to strike another great blow, and

to become first minister in name as well as in reality. That coalition,

which a few months before had seemed all-powerful, had been dissolved.

The retreat of Pitt had deprived the Government of popularity. Newcastle

had exulted in the fall of the illustrious colleague whom he envied and

dreaded, and had not foreseen that his own doom was at hand. He still

tried to flatter himself that he was at the head of the Government; but

insults heaped on insults at length undeceived him. Places which

had always been considered as in his gift, were bestowed without any

reference to him. His expostulations only called forth significant

hints that it was time for him to retire. One day he pressed on Bute the

claims of a Whig Prelate to the archbishopric of York. “If your grace

thinks so highly of him,” answered Bute, “I wonder that you did not

promote him when you had the power.” Still the old man clung with a

desperate grasp to the wreck. Seldom, indeed, have Christian meekness

and Christian humility equalled the meekness and humility of his patient

and abject ambition. At length he was forced to understand that all

was over. He quitted that Court where he had held high office during

forty-five years, and hid his shame and regret among the cedars of

Claremont. Bute became First Lord of the Treasury.

The favourite had undoubtedly committed a great error. It is impossible

to imagine a tool better suited to his purposes than that which he thus

threw away, or rather put into the hands of his enemies. If Newcastle

had been suffered to play at being first minister, Bute might

securely and quietly have enjoyed the substance of power. The gradual

introduction of Tories into all the departments of the Government might

have been effected without any violent clamour, if the chief of the

great Whig connection had been ostensibly at the head of affairs. This

was strongly represented to Bute by Lord Mansfield, a man who may justly

be called the father of modern Toryism, of Toryism modified to suit an

order of things under which the House of Commons is the most powerful

body in the State. The theories which had dazzled Bute could not

impose on the fine intellect of Mansfield. The temerity with which Bute

provoked the hostility of powerful and deeply rooted interests, was

displeasing to Mansfield’s cold and timid nature. Expostulation,

however, was vain. Bute was impatient of advice, drunk with success,

eager to be, in show as well as in reality, the head of the Government.

He had engaged in an undertaking in which a screen was absolutely

necessary to his success, and even to his safety. He found an excellent

screen ready in the very place where it was most needed; and he rudely

pushed it away.

And now the new system of government came into full operation. For the

first time since the accession of the House of Hanover, the Tory party

was in the ascendant. The Prime Minister himself was a Tory. Lord

Egremont, who had succeeded Pitt as Secretary of State, was a Tory,

and the son of a Tory. Sir Francis Dashwood, a man of slender parts,

of small experience, and of notoriously immoral character, was made

Chancellor of the Exchequer, for no reason that could be imagined,

except that he was a Tory, and had been a Jacobite. The royal household

was filled with men whose favourite toast, a few years before, had been

the King over the water. The relative position of the two great national

seats of learning was suddenly changed. The University of Oxford had

long been the chief seat of disaffection. In troubled times the High

Street had been lined with bayonets; the colleges had been searched by

the King’s messengers. Grave doctors were in the habit of talking very

Ciceronian treason in the theatre; and the undergraduates drank bumpers

to Jacobite toasts, and chanted Jacobite airs. Of four successive

Chancellors of the University, one had notoriously been in the

Pretender’s service; the other three were fully believed to be in secret

correspondence with the exiled family. Cambridge had therefore been

especially favoured by the Hanoverian Princes, and had shown herself

grateful for their patronage. George the First had enriched her library;

George the Second had contributed munificently to her Senate House.

Bishoprics and deaneries were showered on her children. Her Chancellor

was Newcastle, the chief of the Whig aristocracy; her High Steward was

Hardwicke, the Whig head of the law. Both her burgesses had held office

under the Whig ministry. Times had now changed. The University of

Cambridge was received at St. James’s with comparative coldness. The

answers to the addresses of Oxford were all graciousness and warmth.

The watchwords of the new Government were prerogative and purity. The

sovereign was no longer to be a puppet in the hands of any subject, or

of any combination of subjects. George the Third would not be forced to

take ministers whom he disliked, as his grandfather had been forced to

take Pitt. George the Third would not be forced to part with any whom

he delighted to honour, as his grandfather had been forced to part with

Carteret. At the same time, the system of bribery which had grown up

during the late reigns was to cease. It was ostentatiously proclaimed

that, since the accession of the young King, neither constituents nor

representatives had been bought with the secret-service money. To free

Britain from corruption and oligarchical cabals, to detach her from

continental connections, to bring the bloody and expensive war with

France and Spain to a close, such were the specious objects which Bute

professed to procure.

Some of these objects he attained. England withdrew, at the cost of

a deep stain on her faith, from her German connections. The war with

France and Spain was terminated by a peace, honourable indeed and

advantageous to our country, yet less honourable and less advantageous

than might have been expected from a long and almost unbroken series

of victories, by land and sea, in every part of the world. But the only

effect of Bute’s domestic administration was to make faction wilder, and

corruption fouler than ever.

The mutual animosity of the Whig and Tory parties had begun to

languished after the fall of Walpole, and had seemed to be almost

extinct at the close of the reign of George the Second. It now revived

in all its force. Many Whigs, it is true, were still in office. The Duke

of Bedford had signed the treaty with France. The Duke of Devonshire,

though much out of humour, still continued to be Lord Chamberlain.

Grenville, who led the House of Commons, and Fox, who still enjoyed in

silence the immense gains of the Pay Office, had always been regarded as

strong Whigs. But the bulk of the party throughout the country regarded

the new minister with abhorrence. There was, indeed, no want of popular

themes for invective against his character. He was a favourite; and

favourites have always been odious in this country. No mere favourite

had been at the head of the Government since the dagger of Felton had

reached the heart of the Duke of Buckingham. After that event the most

arbitrary and the most frivolous of the Stuarts had felt the necessity

of confiding the chief direction of affairs to men who had given

some proof of parliamentary or official talent. Strafford, Falkland,

Clarendon, Clifford, Shaftesbury, Lauderdale, Danby, Temple, Halifax,

Rochester, Sunderland, whatever their faults might be, were all men

of acknowledged ability. They did not owe their eminence merely to the

favour of the sovereign. On the contrary, they owed the favour of the

sovereign to their eminence. Most of them, indeed, had first attracted

the notice of the Court by the capacity and vigour which they had shown

in opposition. The Revolution seemed to have for ever secured the

State against the domination of a Carr or a Villiers. Now, however,

the personal regard of the King had at once raised a man who had seen

nothing of public business, who had never opened his lips in Parliament,

over the heads of a crowd of eminent orators, financiers, diplomatists.

From a private gentleman, this fortunate minion had at once been turned

into a Secretary of State. He had made his maiden speech when at the

head of the administration. The vulgar resorted to a simple explanation

of the phaenomenon, and the coarsest ribaldry against the Princess

Mother was scrawled on every wall, and sung in every alley.

This was not all. The spirit of party, roused by impolitic provocation

from its long sleep, roused in turn a still fiercer and more malignant

Fury, the spirit of national animosity. The grudge of Whig against Tory

was mingled with the grudge of Englishman against Scot. The two sections

of the great British people had not yet been indissolubly blended

together. The events of 1715 and of 1745 had left painful and enduring

traces. The tradesmen of Cornhill had been in dread of seeing their

tills and warehouses plundered by barelegged mountaineers from the

Grampians. They still recollected that Black Friday, when the news

came that the rebels were at Derby, when all the shops in the city were

closed, and when the Bank of England began to pay in sixpences. The

Scots, on the other hand, remembered, with natural resentment, the

severity with which the insurgents had been chastised, the military

outrages, the humiliating laws, the heads fixed on Temple Bar, the fires

and quartering blocks on Kennington Common. The favourite did not suffer

the English to forget from what part of the island he came. The cry

of all the south was that the public offices, the army, the navy,

were filled with high-cheeked Drummonds and Erskines, Macdonalds and

Macgillivrays, who could not talk a Christian tongue, and some of whom

had but lately begun to wear Christian breeches. All the old jokes on

hills without trees, girls without stockings, men eating the food of

horses, pails emptied from the fourteenth story, were pointed against

these lucky adventurers. To the honour of the Scots it must be said,

that their prudence and their pride restrained them from retaliation.

Like the princess in the Arabian tale, they stopped their ears tight,

and, unmoved by the shrillest notes of abuse, walked on, without once

looking round, straight towards the Golden Fountain.

Bute, who had always been considered as a man of taste and reading,

affected, from the moment of his elevation, the character of a Maecenas.

If he expected to conciliate the public by encouraging literature and

art, he was grievously mistaken. Indeed, none of the objects of his

munificence, with the single exception of Johnson, can be said to

have been well selected; and the public, not unnaturally, ascribed the

selection of Johnson rather to the Doctor’s political prejudices than to

his literary merits: for a wretched scribbler named Shebbeare, who had

nothing in common with Johnson except violent Jacobitism, and who had

stood in the pillory for a libel on the Revolution, was honoured with

a mark of royal approbation, similar to that which was bestowed on the

author of the English Dictionary, and of the Vanity of Human Wishes. It

was remarked that Adam, a Scotchman, was the Court architect, and

that Ramsay, a Scotchman, was the Court painter, and was preferred to

Reynolds. Mallet, a Scotchman, of no high literary fame, and of infamous

character, partook largely of the liberality of the Government. John

Home, a Scotchman, was rewarded for the tragedy of Douglas, both with a

pension and with a sinecure place. But, when the author of the Bard,

and of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, ventured to ask for a

Professorship, the emoluments of which he much needed, and for the

duties of which he was, in many respects, better qualified than any man

living, he was refused; and the post was bestowed on the pedagogue under

whose care the favourite’s son-in-law, Sir James Lowther, had made such

signal proficiency in the graces and in the humane virtues.

Thus, the First Lord of the Treasury was detested by many as a Tory, by

many as a favourite, and by many as a Scot. All the hatred which flowed

from these various sources soon mingled, and was directed in one torrent

of obloquy against the treaty of peace. The Duke of Bedford, who

had negotiated that treaty, was hooted through the streets. Bute was

attacked in his chair, and was with difficulty rescued by a troop of the

guards. He could hardly walk the streets in safety without disguising

himself. A gentleman who died not many years ago used to say that he

once recognised the favourite Earl in the piazza of Covent Garden,

muffled in a large coat, and with a hat and wig drawn down over his

brows. His lordship’s established type with the mob was a jack-boot,

a wretched pun on his Christian name and title. A jack-boot, generally

accompanied by a petticoat, was sometimes fastened on a gallows, and

sometimes committed to the flames. Libels on the Court, exceeding in

audacity and rancour any that had been published for many years, now

appeared daily both in prose and verse. Wilkes, with lively insolence,

compared the mother of George the Third to the mother of Edward the

Third, and the Scotch minister to the gentle Mortimer. Churchill, with

all the energy of hatred, deplored the fate of his country invaded by

a new race of savages, more cruel and ravenous than the Picts or the

Danes, the poor, proud children of Leprosy and Hunger. It is a

slight circumstance, but deserves to be recorded, that in this year

pamphleteers first ventured to print at length the names of the great

men whom they lampooned. George the Second had always been the K--. His

ministers had been Sir R--W--, Mr. P--, and the Duke of N--. But the

libellers of George the Third, of the Princess Mother, and of Lord Bute

did not give quarter to a single vowel.

It was supposed that Lord Temple secretly encouraged the most scurrilous

assailants of the Government. In truth, those who knew his habits

tracked him as men track a mole. It was his nature to grub underground.

Whenever a heap of dirt was flung up it might well be suspected that he

was at work in some foul crooked labyrinth below. Pitt turned away from

the filthy work of opposition, with the same scorn with which he had

turned away from the filthy work of government. He had the magnanimity

to proclaim everywhere the disgust which he felt at the insults offered

by his own adherents to the Scottish nation, and missed no opportunity

of extolling the courage and fidelity which the Highland regiments had

displayed through the whole war. But, though he disdained to use any

but lawful and honourable weapons, it was well known that his fair blows

were likely to be far more formidable than the privy thrusts of his

brother-in-law’s stiletto.

Bute’s heart began to fail him. The Houses were about to meet. The

treaty would instantly be the subject of discussion. It was probable

that Pitt, the great Whig connection, and the multitude, would all be on

the same side. The favourite had professed to hold in abhorrence those

means by which preceding ministers had kept the House of Commons in

good humour. He now began to think that he had been too scrupulous. His

Utopian visions were at an end. It was necessary, not only to bribe,

but to bribe more shamelessly and flagitiously than his predecessors, in

order to make up for lost time. A majority must be secured, no matter

by what means. Could Grenville do this? Would he do it? His firmness

and ability had not yet been tried in any perilous crisis. He had been

generally regarded as a humble follower of his brother Temple, and of

his brother-in-law Pitt, and was supposed, though with little reason, to

be still favourably inclined towards them. Other aid must be called in.

And where was other aid to be found?

There was one man, whose sharp and manly logic had often in debate been

found a match for the lofty and impassioned rhetoric of Pitt, whose

talents for jobbing were not inferior to his talents for debate, whose

dauntless spirit shrank from no difficulty or danger, and who was as

little troubled with scruples as with fears. Henry Fox, or nobody, could

weather the storm which was about to burst. Yet was he a person to whom

the Court, even in that extremity, was unwilling to have recourse. He

had always been regarded as a Whig of the Whigs. He had been the friend

and disciple of Walpole. He had long been connected by close ties with

William Duke of Cumberland. By the Tories he was more hated than any

man living. So strong was their aversion to him that when, in the late

reign, he had attempted to form a party against the Duke of Newcastle,

they had thrown all their weight into Newcastle’s scale. By the

Scots, Fox was abhorred as the confidential friend of the conqueror of

Culloden. He was, on personal grounds, most obnoxious to the Princess

Mother. For he had, immediately after her husband’s death, advised the

late King to take the education of her son, the heir-apparent, entirely

out of her hands. He had recently given, if possible, still deeper

offence; for he had indulged, not without some ground, the ambitious

hope that his beautiful sister-in-law, the Lady Sarah Lennox, might be

queen of England. It had been observed that the King at one time

rode every morning by the grounds of Holland House, and that on such

occasions, Lady Sarah, dressed like a shepherdess at a masquerade, was

making hay close to the road, which was then separated by no wall from

the lawn. On account of the part which Fox had taken in this singular

love affair, he was the only member of the Privy Council who was not

summoned to the meeting at which his Majesty announced his intended

marriage with the Princess of Mecklenburg. Of all the statesmen of the

age, therefore, it seemed that Fox was the last with whom Bute the

Tory, the Scot, the favourite of the Princess Mother, could, under any

circumstances, act. Yet to Fox Bute was now compelled to apply.

Fox had many noble and amiable qualities, which in private life

shone forth in full lustre, and made him dear to his children, to his

dependants, and to his friends; but as a public man he had no title

to esteem. In him the vices which were common to the whole school of

Walpole appeared, not perhaps in their worst, but certainly in their

most prominent form; for his parliamentary and official talents made all

his faults conspicuous. His courage, his vehement temper, his contempt

for appearances, led him to display much that others, quite as

unscrupulous as himself, covered with a decent veil. He was the most

unpopular of the statesmen of his time, not because he sinned more than

many of them, but because he canted less.

He felt his unpopularity; but he felt it after the fashion of strong

minds. He became, not cautious, but reckless, and faced the rage of the

whole nation with a scowl of inflexible defiance. He was born with a

sweet and generous temper; but he had been goaded and baited into a

savageness which was not natural to him, and which amazed and shocked

those who knew him best. Such was the man to whom Bute, in extreme need,

applied for succour.

That succour Fox was not unwilling to afford. Though by no means of

an envious temper, he had undoubtedly contemplated the success and

popularity of Pitt with bitter mortification. He thought himself Pitt’s

match as a debater, and Pitt’s superior as a man of business. They had

long been regarded as well-paired rivals. They had started fair in the

career of ambition. They had long run side by side. At length Fox had

taken the lead, and Pitt had fallen behind. Then had come a sudden turn

of fortune, like that in Virgil’s foot-race. Fox had stumbled in the

mire, and had not only been defeated, but befouled. Pit had reached the

goal, and received the prize. The emoluments of the Pay Office might

induce the defeated statesman to submit in silence to the ascendency of

his competitor, but could not satisfy a mind conscious of great powers,

and sore from great vexations. As soon, therefore, as a party arose

adverse to the war and to the supremacy of the great war minister, the

hopes of Fox began to revive. His feuds with the Princess Mother, with

the Scots, with the Tories, he was ready to forget, if, by the help of

his old enemies, he could now regain the importance which he had lost,

and confront Pitt on equal terms.

The alliance was, therefore, soon concluded. Fox was assured that, if he

would pilot the Government out of its embarrassing situation, he should

be rewarded with a peerage, of which he had long been desirous. He

undertook on his side to obtain, by fair or foul means, a vote in favour

of the peace. In consequence of this arrangement he became leader of

the House of Commons; and Grenville, stifling his vexation as well as he

could, sullenly acquiesced in the change.

Fox had expected that his influence would secure to the Court the

cordial support of some eminent Whigs who were his personal friends,

particularly of the Duke of Cumberland and of the Duke of Devonshire.

He was disappointed, and soon found that, in addition to all his other

difficulties, he must reckon on the opposition of the ablest prince of

the blood, and of the great house of Cavendish.

But he had pledged himself to win the battle: and he was not a man to go

back. It was no time for squeamishness. Bute was made to comprehend that

the ministry could be saved only by practising the tactics of Walpole to

an extent at which Walpole himself would have stared. The Pay Office was

turned into a mart for votes. Hundreds of members were closeted there

with Fox, and, as there is too much reason to believe, departed carrying

with them the wages of infamy. It was affirmed by persons who had the

best opportunities of obtaining information, that twenty-five thousand

pounds were thus paid away in a single morning. The lowest bribe given,

it was said, was a bank-note for two hundred pounds.

Intimidation was joined with corruption. All ranks, from the highest to

the lowest, were to be taught that the King would be obeyed. The Lords

Lieutenants of several counties were dismissed. The Duke of Devonshire

was especially singled out as the victim by whose fate the magnates

of England were to take warning. His wealth, rank, and influence, his

stainless private character, and the constant attachment of his

family to the House of Hanover, did not secure him from gross personal

indignity. It was known that he disapproved of the course which the

Government had taken; and it was accordingly determined to humble the

Prince of the Whigs, as he had been nicknamed by the Princess Mother. He

went to the palace to pay his duty. “Tell him,” said the King to a page,

“I that I will not see him.” The page hesitated. “Go to him,” said the

King, “and tell him those very words.” The message was delivered.

The Duke tore off his gold key, and went away boiling with anger. His

relations who were in office instantly resigned. A few days later, the

King called for the list of Privy Councillors, and with his own hand

struck out the Duke’s name.

In this step there was at least courage, though little wisdom or good

nature. But, as nothing was too high for the revenge of the Court, so

also was nothing too low. A persecution, such as had never been

known before, and has never been known since, raged in every public

department. Great numbers of humble and laborious clerks were deprived

of their bread, not because they had neglected their duties, not because

they had taken an active part against the ministry, but merely because

they had owed their situations to the recommendation of some nobleman

or gentleman who was against the peace. The proscription extended to

tidewaiters, to gaugers, to doorkeepers. One poor man to whom a pension

had been given for his gallantry in a fight with smugglers, was deprived

of it because he had been befriended by the Duke of Grafton. An aged

widow, who, on account of her husband’s services in the navy, had, many

years before, been made housekeeper to a public office, was dismissed

from her situation, because it was imagined that she was distantly

connected by marriage with the Cavendish family. The public clamour, as

may well be supposed, grew daily louder and louder. But the louder

it grew, the more resolutely did Fox go on with the work which he had

begun. His old friends could not conceive what had possessed him. “I

could forgive,” said the Duke of Cumberland, “Fox’s political vagaries;

but I am quite confounded by his inhumanity. Surely he used to be the

best-natured of men.”

At last Fox went so far to take a legal opinion on the question, whether

the patents granted by George the Second were binding on George the

Third. It is said, that, if his colleagues had not flinched, he would at

once have turned out the Tellers of the Exchequer and Justices in Eyre.

Meanwhile the Parliament met. The ministers, more hated by the people

than ever, were secure of a majority, and they had also reason to hope

that they would have the advantage in the debates as well as in the

divisions; for Pitt was confined to his chamber by a severe attack of

gout. His friends moved to defer the consideration of the treaty till

he should be able to attend: but the motion was rejected. The great

day arrived. The discussion had lasted some time, when a loud huzza was

heard in Palace Yard. The noise came nearer and nearer, up the stairs,

through the lobby. The door opened, and from the midst of a shouting

multitude came forth Pitt, borne in the arms of his attendants. His face

was thin and ghastly, his limbs swathed in flannel, his crutch in his

hand. The bearers set him down within the bar. His friends instantly

surrounded him, and with their help he crawled to his seat near the

table. In this condition he spoke three hours and a half against the

peace. During that time he was repeatedly forced to sit down and to use

cordials. It may well be supposed that his voice was faint, that his

action was languid, and that his speech, though occasionally brilliant

and impressive, was feeble when compared with his best oratorical

performances. But those who remembered what he had done, and who saw

what he suffered, listened to him with emotions stronger than any that

mere eloquence can produce. He was unable to stay for the division, and

was carried away from the House amidst shouts as loud as those which had

announced his arrival.

A large majority approved the peace. The exultation of the Court was

boundless. “Now,” exclaimed the Princess Mother, “my son is really

King.” The young sovereign spoke of himself as freed from the bondage in

which his grandfather had been held. On one point, it was announced,

his mind was unalterably made up. Under no circumstances whatever should

those Whig grandees, who had enslaved his predecessors and endeavoured

to enslave himself, be restored to power.

This vaunting was premature. The real strength of the favourite was

by no means proportioned to the number of votes which he had, on

one particular division, been able to command. He was soon again in

difficulties. The most important part of his budget was a tax on cider.

This measure was opposed, not only by those who were generally hostile

to his administration, but also by many of his supporters. The name of

excise had always been hateful to the Tories. One of the chief crimes of

Walpole in their eyes, had been his partiality for this mode of raising

money. The Tory Johnson had in his Dictionary given so scurrilous a

definition of the word Excise, that the Commissioners of Excise had

seriously thought of prosecuting him. The counties which the new impost

particularly affected had always been Tory counties. It was the boast of

John Philips, the poet of the English vintage, that the Cider-land had

ever been faithful to the throne, and that all the pruning-hooks of her

thousand orchards had been beaten into swords for the service of the

ill-fated Stuarts. The effect of Bute’s fiscal scheme was to produce an

union between the gentry and yeomanry of the Cider-land and the Whigs

of the capital. Herefordshire and Worcestershire were in a flame. The

city of London, though not so directly interested, was, if possible,

still more excited. The debates on this question irreparably damaged the

Government. Dashwood’s financial statement had been confused and

absurd beyond belief, and had been received by the House with roars of

laughter. He had sense enough to be conscious of his unfitness for the

high situation which he held, and exclaimed in a comical fit of despair,

“What shall I do? The boys will point at me in the street and cry,

‘There goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever was.’”

George Grenville came to the rescue, and spoke strongly on his favourite

theme, the profusion with which the late war had been carried on. That

profusion, he said, had made taxes necessary. He called on the gentlemen

opposite to him to say where they would have a tax laid, and dwelt

on this topic with his usual prolixity. “Let them tell me where,” he

repeated in a monotonous and somewhat fretful tone. “I say, sir, let

them tell me where. I repeat it, sir; I am entitled to say to them,

Tell me where.” Unluckily for him, Pitt had come down to the House that

night, and had been bitterly provoked by the reflections thrown on the

war. He revenged himself by murmuring in a whine resembling Grenville’s,

a line of a well-known song, “Gentle Shepherd, tell me where.” “If,”

cried Grenville, “gentlemen are to be treated in this way--.” Pitt,

as was his fashion, when he meant to mark extreme contempt, rose

deliberately, made his bow, and walked out of the House, leaving his

brother-in-law in convulsions of rage, and everybody else in convulsions

of laughter. It was long before Grenville lost the nickname of the

Gentle Shepherd.

But the ministry had vexations still more serious to endure. The hatred

which the Tories and Scots bore to Fox was implacable. In a moment of

extreme peril, they had consented to put themselves under his guidance.

But the aversion with which they regarded him broke forth as soon as the

crisis seemed to be over. Some of them attacked him about the accounts

of the Pay Office. Some of them rudely interrupted him when speaking, by

laughter and ironical cheers. He was naturally desirous to escape from

so disagreeable a situation, and demanded the peerage which had been

promised as the reward of his services.

It was clear that there must be some change in the composition of the

ministry. But scarcely any, even of those who, from their situation,

might be supposed to be in all the secrets of the Government,

anticipated what really took place. To the amazement of the Parliament

and the nation, it was suddenly announced that Bute had resigned.

Twenty different explanations of this strange step were suggested. Some

attributed it to profound design, and some to sudden panic. Some said

that the lampoons of the Opposition had driven the Earl from the field;

some that he had taken office only in order to bring the war to a close,

and had always meant to retire when that object had been accomplished.

He publicly assigned ill health as his reason for quitting business,

and privately complained that he was not cordially seconded by his

colleagues, and that Lord Mansfield, in particular, whom he had himself

brought into the Cabinet, gave him no support in the House of Peers.

Mansfield was, indeed, far too sagacious not to perceive that Bute’s

situation was one of great peril and far too timorous to thrust himself

into peril for the sake of another. The probability, however, is that

Bute’s conduct on this occasion, like the conduct of most men on most

occasions, was determined by mixed motives. We suspect that he was sick

of office; for this is a feeling much more common among ministers than

persons who see public life from a distance are disposed to believe;

and nothing could be more natural than that this feeling should take

possession of the mind of Bute. In general, a statesman climbs by slow

degrees. Many laborious years elapse before he reaches the topmost

pinnacle of preferment. In the earlier part of his career, therefore, he

is constantly lured on by seeing something above him. During his ascent

he gradually becomes inured to the annoyances which belong to a life

of ambition. By the time that he has attained the highest point, he has

become patient of labour and callous to abuse. He is kept constant to

his vocation, in spite of all its discomforts, at first by hope, and

at last by habit. It was not so with Bute. His whole public life lasted

little more than two years. On the day on which he became a politician

he became a cabinet minister. In a few months he was, both in name and

in show, chief of the administration. Greater than he had been he could

not be. If what he already possessed was vanity and vexation of spirit,

no delusion remained to entice him onward. He had been cloyed with the

pleasures of ambition before he had been seasoned to its pains. His

habits had not been such as were likely to fortify his mind against

obloquy and public hatred. He had reached his forty-eighth year in

dignified ease, without knowing, by personal experience, what it was

to be ridiculed and slandered. All at once, without any previous

initiation, he had found himself exposed to such a storm of invective

and satire as had never burst on the head of any statesman. The

emoluments of office were now nothing to him; for he had just succeeded

to a princely property by the death of his father-in-law. All the

honours which could be bestowed on him he had already secured. He had

obtained the Garter for himself, and a British peerage for his son.

He seems also to have imagined that by quitting the Treasury he should

escape from danger and abuse without really resigning power, and should

still be able to exercise in private supreme influence over the royal

mind.

Whatever may have been his motives, he retired. Fox at the same time

took refuge in the House of Lords; and George Grenville became First

Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

We believe that those who made this arrangement fully intended that

Grenville should be a mere puppet in the hands of Bute; for Grenville

was as yet very imperfectly known even to those who had observed him

long. He passed for a mere official drudge; and he had all the industry,

the minute accuracy, the formality, the tediousness, which belong to

the character. But he had other qualities which had not yet shown

themselves, devouring ambition, dauntless courage, self-confidence

amounting to presumption, and a temper which could not endure

opposition. He was not disposed to be anybody’s tool; and he had no

attachment, political or personal, to Bute. The two men had, indeed,

nothing in common, except a strong propensity towards harsh and

unpopular courses. Their principles were fundamentally different. Bute

was a Tory. Grenville would have been very angry with any person

who should have denied his claim to be a Whig. He was more prone to

tyrannical measures than Bute; but he loved tyranny only when disguised

under the forms of constitutional liberty. He mixed up, after a

fashion then not very unusual, the theories of the republicans of the

seventeenth century with the technical maxims of English law, and thus

succeeded in combining anarchical speculation with arbitrary practice.

The voice of the people was the voice of God; but the only legitimate

organ through which the voice of the people could be uttered was the

Parliament. All power was from the people; but to the Parliament the

whole power of the people had been delegated. No Oxonian divine had

ever, even in the years which immediately followed the Restoration,

demanded for the King so abject, so unreasoning a homage, as Grenville,

on what he considered as the purest Whig principles, demanded for the

Parliament. As he wished to see the Parliament despotic over the nation,

so he wished to see it also despotic over the Court. In his view the

Prime Minister, possessed of the confidence of the House of Commons,

ought to be mayor of the Palace. The King was a mere Childeric or

Chilperic, who well might think himself lucky in being permitted to

enjoy such handsome apartments at Saint James’s, and so fine a park at

Windsor.

Thus the opinions of Bute and those of Grenville were diametrically

opposed. Nor was there any private friendship between the two statesmen.

Grenville’s nature was not forgiving; and he well remembered how, a few

months before, he had been compelled to yield the lead of the House of

Commons to Fox.

We are inclined to think, on the whole, that the worst administration

which has governed England since the Revolution was that of George

Grenville. His public acts may be classed under two heads, outrages on

the liberty of the people, and outrages on the dignity of the Crown.