Seizure of Dr. Archibald Cameron, an emissary of the
Pretender--The King of France and his Mistresses--The famous
Marriage Bill--Charles Townshend and Henry Conway--Debates on the
Marriage Bill in the House of Commons--Ralph the Author--Debates
on the Marriage Bill in the Lords--Dissensions caused by it--The
Duke of Newcastle’s Conversations with Mr. Fox--Execution of
Dr. Cameron--Continuation of the troubles in Ireland--Seats in
Parliament offered to Government--The Jew Bill--Death of Mr.
Pelham.
About this time was taken in Scotland, Dr. Archibald Cameron,
a man excepted by the Act of Indemnity. Intelligence had been
received some time before of his intended journey to Britain,
with a commission from Prussia to offer arms to the disaffected
Highlanders, at the same time that ships were hiring in the north
to transport men. The fairness of Dr. Cameron’s character, compared
with the severity he met from a Government, most laudably mild to
its enemies, confirmed this report. That Prussia, who opened its
inhospitable arms to every British Rebel, should have tampered
in such a business was by no means improbable. That King hated
his uncle--but could a Protestant Potentate dip in designs for
restoring a Popish Government?--of what religion is policy? to
what sect is royal revenge bigoted? The Queen-dowager, though
sister of our King, was avowedly a Jacobite, by principle so--and
it was natural: what Prince but the single one who profits by the
principle can ever think it allowable to overturn sacred hereditary
right? It is the cause of sovereigns that their crimes should be
unpunishable. Two sloops were stationed to watch; yet Cameron
landed; and was taken with difficulty: an officer and ten men
pursued him: they divided--yet wherever they turned, they found
children posted, who ran swiftly and screamed to give notice. At
last they overtook a boy who had hurt his foot; and by him were
directed to a house in a wood; yet the Doctor was gone; but, on the
wood being surrounded, was taken.
By the very loyal, consequences equally threatening were feared
from a new amour of the King of France, who had taken a mistress
of Irish extraction, the daughter of a shoemaker, formerly a
life-guardsman: her name, Murphy, and of signal beauty. Madame
Pompadour was a friend to peace and England. This deviation in the
Monarch’s constancy was, however, of transitory duration. With
scarce complaisance, with no affection, he had for many years
confined himself to his homely, elderly, unattractive queen. All
the intrigues of a gallant Court, or of interested factions, had
not been able to undermine his conjugal regularity, for it was
no more. Accident threw him into the arms of Madame de Mailly, a
sensible woman, a fine figure, but very plain; he demanded not
beauty, and became as regular as with the Queen. To engage him
more, that is, to govern him, Madame de Mailly associated to their
suppers her sister, Madame de Vintimille, a woman of great wit,
but exceedingly ill-proportioned with beauty--a great oversight in
an ugly woman, who had dispossessed an ugly one. The coadjutrix
soon displaced her introductress; but died in labour; of poison,
as the state of intrigues would of course suppose. The Monarch
hankered about the same family, and took a third sister, who was
gloriously beautiful, and whom he created Duchesse de Chateauroux.
In the triumph of her concubinage, the King fell ill at Metz.
Fitz-James, Bishop of Soissons, attacked a frightened piety, which
was natural, and only subdued by constitution. The mistress was
not only discarded, but publicly affronted, the Monarch permitting
it; and the Queen, who was sent for, made a foolish triumphal
entry to thank the Lord for the recovery of the King’s soul and
body--but as soon as the latter was re-established, the Queen was
sent to her prayers, the Bishop to his diocese, and the Duchess
was recalled--but died suddenly. Though a jealous sister may be
supposed to dispatch a rival, can one believe that Bishops and
Confessors poison?
Madame Pompadour, the wife of a Fermier General, succeeded:
grace, beauty, address, art, ambition, all met in that charming
woman. She governed him more than he had ever been governed but
by Cardinal Fleury: she engaged in all politics, she gave life
and agreeableness to all; she amassed vast treasures herself, she
was the cause of squandering vast treasures, in varying scenes of
pleasure to divert the gloom of a temper which was verging nearer
to the age of devotion. The Clergy hated her, for she countenanced
the Parliament; the people imputed oppressions to her; the Dauphin,
who was a bigot, and who loved his mother, affected to shock her:
yet the King, who was the best father in the world, bore with great
mildness so unpleasant an attack on royal and parental authority.
The session of Parliament was languishing towards a conclusion,
when a Bill sent down from the Lords to the Commons, and which had
passed almost without notice through the former House, having been
carried by an hundred Lords against the Duke of Bedford and eleven
others, raised, or gave occasion to raise, extraordinary heats.
This was the famous _Marriage Bill_; an Act of such notoriety,
and on which so very much was said at the time, and on which so
much has been written since, that it would be almost impossible,
at least very wearisome, to particularize the Debates, and very
unnecessary to enter much into the state of the question. Some of
the most particular passages, such as tend to illustrate or explain
the characters, the politics, and the factions of the time, I
shall, according to my custom, succinctly touch.
The Bill had been originally moved by my Lord Bath, who, attending
a Scotch cause, was struck with the hardship of a matrimonial case,
in which a man, after a marriage of thirty years, was claimed by
another woman on a pre-contract. The Judges were ordered to frame a
Bill that should remedy so cruel a retrospect. They did; but drew
it so ill, and it was three times printed so inaccurately, that the
Chancellor was obliged to give it ample correction. Whether from
mere partiality to an ordinance thus become his own, or whether
in shaping a law, new views of power opened to a mind fond of
power, fond of dictating; so it was, that the Chancellor gave all
his attention to a statute into which he had breathed the very
spirit of aristocracy and insolent nobility. It was amazing, in a
country where liberty gives choice, where trade and money confer
equality, and where facility of marriage had always been supposed
to produce populousness,--it was amazing to see a law promulged,
that cramped inclination, that discountenanced matrimony, and that
seemed to annex as sacred privileges to birth, as could be devised
in the proudest, poorest little Italian principality; and as if
the artificer had been a Teutonic Margrave, not a little lawyer,
who had raised himself by his industry from the very lees of the
people; and who had matched his own blood with the great house of
_Kent_!
The abuse of pre-contracts had occasioned the demand of a
remedy--the physician immediately prescribed medicines for every
ailment to which the ceremony of marriage was or could be supposed
liable! Publication of banns was already an established ordinance,
but totally in disuse except amongst the inferior people, who did
not blush to obey the law. Persons of Quality, who proclaimed every
other step of their conjugation by the most public parade, were
ashamed to have the intention of it notified, and were constantly
married by special licence. Unsuitable matches in a country where
the passions are not impetuous, and where it is neither easy
nor customary to tyrannize the inclinations of children, were
by no means frequent: the most disproportioned alliances, those
contracted by age, by dowagers, were without the scope of this
Bill. Yet the new Act set out with a falsehood, declaiming against
clandestine marriages, as if they had been a frequent evil.
The greatest abuse were the temporary weddings clapped up in the
Fleet, and by one Keith,[229] who had constructed a very Bishopric
for revenue in Mayfair, by performing that charitable function for
a trifling sum, which the _poor_ successors of the Apostles are
seldom humble enough to perform out of duty. The new Bill enjoined
indispensable publication of banns, yet took away their validity,
if parents, nay, if even guardians, signified their dissent,
where the parties should be under age--a very novel power!--but
guardians are a limb of Chancery! The Archbishop’s licence was
indeed reserved to him. A more arbitrary spirit was still behind:
persons solemnizing marriages, without these previous steps, were
sentenced to transportation, and the marriage was to be effectually
null--so close did congenial law clip the wings of the prostrate
priesthood! And as if such rigour did not sufficiently describe
its fountain and its destination, it was expressly specified,
that where a mother or a guardian should be _non compos_, resort
might be had to the Chancellor himself for licence. Contracts and
pre-contracts, other flowers of ecclesiastic prerogative, were
to be totally invalid, and their obligations abolished: and the
gentle institution was wound up with the penalty of death for all
forgeries in breach of this statute of modern Draco. Quakers,
Jews, and the Royal Family had the only toleration.
May 14th.--The Bill came down to the Commons. Nugent took it to
pieces severely and sensibly, pointed out the impropriety of it
in a commercial nation, and the ill-nature and partiality of
the restrictions. He showed himself a great master of political
disquisitions, and it seemed that a desire of displaying that
learning was the sole cause of any opposition to the Bill. This was
all that passed material the first day, and the Bill was read on a
majority of 116 to 55.
21st.--A second adversary appeared against the Bill. This was
Charles Townshend, second son of my Lord Townshend, a young man
of unbounded ambition, of exceeding application, and, as it now
appeared, of abilities capable of satisfying that ambition, and of
not wanting that application: yet to such parts and such industry
he was fond of associating all the little arts and falsehoods that
always depreciate, though so often thought necessary by, a genius.
He had been an early favourite of Lord Halifax, and had already
distinguished himself on affairs of trade, and in drawing plans
and papers for that province; but not rising in proportion to his
ambition, he comforted himself with employing as many stratagems as
had ever been imputed to the most successful statesmen.
His figure was tall and advantageous, his action vehement, his
voice loud, his laugh louder. He had art enough to disguise
anything but his vanity. He spoke long and with much wit, and
drew a picture, with much humour at least, if not with much
humility, of himself and of his own situation, as the younger
son of a capricious father, who had already debarred him from
an advantageous match: “were new shackles to be forged to keep
young men of abilities from mounting to a level with their elder
brothers?” Nugent had not shone with more parts the preceding day;
Nugent on no day discovered less modesty. What will be their fates
I know not; but this Mr. Townshend and Mr. Conway seemed marked by
nature for leaders, perhaps for rivals in the Government of their
country. The quickness of genius is eminently with the first, and
a superiority of application; the propriety and amiableness of
character with the latter. One grasps at fortune, the other only
seems pleased to accept fortune when it advances to him. The one
foresees himself equal to everything, the other finds himself so
whenever he essays. Charles Townshend seems to have no passion but
ambition; Harry Conway not even to have that. The one is impetuous
and unsteady; the other, cool and determined. Conway is indolent,
but can be assiduous; Charles Townshend can only be indefatigable.
The latter would govern mankind for his own sake; the former, for
theirs.
The speeches hitherto had only been flourishes in the air: at last
the real enemy came forth, Mr. Fox; who neither spared the Bill nor
the author of it, as wherever he laid his finger, it was not wont
to be light. He was supported by Fazakerley and Sir William Yonge.
Mr. Pelham, the Attorney and Solicitor, Lord Hilsborough, Hampden,
and Lord Egmont, supported the Bill, and it was carried that day by
165 to 84.
On the 23rd and 25th, the House sat late each day on the Bill, Mr.
Fox attacking and Mr. Pelham defending with eager peevishness. The
former repeated his censures on the Chancellor, which old Horace
Walpole reproved; Nugent was absurd; and the measure growing
ministerial, the numbers against the Bill diminished.
28th.--The Committee sat till half an hour past three in the
morning, on the clause for annulling marriages that should be
contracted contrary to the inhibitions in the Bill. The Churchmen
acquiesced in the Legislature’s assuming this power in spirituals,
as they had done in the single case of the young King’s marriage
in the Regency Bill: but however commendable the moderation of the
Clergy might be, the Pontific power arrogated by the head of the
Law, and his obstinate persisting to enforce a statute, by no means
calculated or called for by general utility, was most indecent. The
Speaker argued with great weight against the clause; Wilbraham,
well for it. Mr. Fox, at one in the morning, spoke against it
for above an hour, and laid open the chicanery and jargon of the
Lawyers, the pride of their Mufti, and the arbitrary manner of
enforcing the Bill. A motion for adjournment was moved, but was
rejected by above 80 to 40 odd.
30th.--The Committee went upon the clause that gave unheard-of
power, in the first resort to parents and guardians, and then to
the Chancery, on the marriages of minors. Fox spoke with increasing
spirit against this clause too; and on Wilbraham’s having said, if
you have a sore leg, will you not try gentle remedies first? he
drew a most severe picture of the Chancellor, under the application
of the story of a Gentlewoman at Salisbury, who, having a sore leg,
sent for a Country Surgeon, who pronounced it must be cut off.
The Gentlewoman, unwilling to submit to the operation, sent for
another, more merciful, who said he could save her leg, without the
least operation. The Surgeons conferred: the ignorant one said, “I
know it might be saved, but I have given my opinion; my character
depends upon it, and we must carry it through”--the leg was cut
off. Charles Yorke, the Chancellor’s son, took this up with great
anger, and yet with preciseness, beginning with these words, “It is
new in Parliament, it is new in politics, it is new in ambition;”
and drew a lofty character of his father, and of the height to
which he had raised himself by his merit; concluding with telling
Fox, how imprudent it was to attack such authority, and assuring
him that he would feel it. Mr. Fox replied with repeating the
sententious words: “Is it new in Parliament to be conscientious? I
hope not! Is it new in politics? I am afraid it is! Is it new in
ambition? It certainly is, to attack such authority!” Mr. Pelham
answered him well. Mr. Fox once more replied, urging how cruel and
absurd it was to force the Bill down: that he knew he should not
be heard by above one-third of the House, but would speak so loud
that he would be heard out of the House. That from the beginning
to the end of the Bill, one only view had predominated, that of
pride and aristocracy. There was much of truth in this. At the very
beginning, on the Duke of Newcastle’s declining to vote in the
Bill, the Chancellor told Mr. Pelham, “I will be supported in this,
or I never will speak for you again.” As the Opposition had at that
time been inconsiderable, this breathed a little more than a mere
spirit of obstinacy, and foretold a Bill to be framed not without
an interested meaning: at least a legislator is uncommonly zealous
for the public good, who forgets the philosophy of his character to
drive on his honest ordinances by political menaces!
The next day the Committee finished without a division. Sir
Richard Lloyd, a Lawyer, who had spoken against the Bill, voted
for it afterwards, without assigning any reason for his change
of opinion. Captain Saunders, who had said that he would go
and vote against the Bill, for the sake of the sailors, having
once given forty of his crew leave to go on shore for an hour,
and all returned married, was compelled by Lord Anson, the
Chancellor’s son-in-law and his patron, to vote for it. Henley
and the Solicitor-General declaring of the same words, the one,
that they could not be made clearer; the other, that they were as
clear as the sun at noonday, though each gave a totally different
interpretation of them, were well ridiculed by Fox; as a serious
speech of Lord Egmont was with much humour and not a little
indecency by Nugent.
June 1.--The report was made of the Bill, and the House sat till
ten. On one clause only there was a division of 102 to 20.
2d.--A new anti-ministerial Paper appeared, called the Protester,
supported at the expense of the Duke of Bedford and Beckford, and
written by Ralph, a dull author, originally a poet, and satirized
in the Dunciad: retained, after his pen had been rejected by Sir
Robert Walpole, by Doddington and Waller; but much fitter to range
the obscure ideas of the latter, than to dress up the wit of the
former: from them, he devolved to the Prince of Wales in his second
opposition, and laboured long in a paper called the Remembrancer,
which was more than once emboldened above the undertaker’s
pitch, by Lord Egmont and others. Ralph’s own turn seemed to be
endeavouring to raise mobs by speculative ideas of government; from
whence his judgment at least may be calculated. But he had the good
fortune to be bought off from his last Journal, the Protester, for
the only Paper that he did not write in it.
4th.--The Marriage Bill was read for the last time. Charles
Townshend again opposed it with as much argument as before with
wit. Mr. Fox, with still more wit, ridiculed it for an hour and a
half. Notwithstanding the Chancellor’s obstinacy in maintaining it,
and the care he had bestowed upon it, it was still so incorrect
and so rigorous, that its very body-guards had been forced to
make or to submit to many amendments: these were inserted in Mr.
Fox’s copy in red ink: the Solicitor-General, who sat near him
as he was speaking, said, “How bloody it looks!” Fox took this
up with spirit, and said, “Yes, _but you cannot say I did it;
look what a rent the learned Casca made_, (this alluded to the
Attorney,) _through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed_!” (Mr.
Pelham)--however, he finished with earnest declarations of not
having designed to abuse the Chancellor, and with affirming that it
was scandalous to pass the Bill--but it was passed by 125 votes to
56.
6th.--The Bill being returned to the Lords, the amendments were
read. The Duke of Bedford, who began to attack the whole Bill, was
obstructed by the Chancellor, who would have confined him to the
mere amendments; but the Duke, appealing to the House whether he
might not argue against the face of the whole Bill as it now stood,
the Chancellor seemed to acquiesce; but the Duke, not finding any
disposition to support him, soon dropped the cause; objecting
chiefly to the last clause on not extending the act to Foreign
Countries. The Chancellor replied, that he was sorry the clause was
there; but the Bill was too good to be lost, and might have much
good engrafted on it hereafter.[230] Lord Sandys declared that he
would agree to all the amendments made by the House of Commons,
against any that should be offered by any body else. An absurd
declaration, founded on the design of proroguing the Parliament on
the morrow, which would leave no time for returning the Bill to
the Commons; and a plain indication of the indigested manner in
which a law of such importance was hurried on. On its being urged
that several women could not write, the Bishop of Oxford, with
a sophistry that would have distinguished him in _any_ church,
replied that the Clergyman might write to himself, and give it to
the woman, and she to him again, for that the Bill did not say,
that when she gave her consent in writing, it must be of her own
writing! Lord Bath said, the opposition had proceeded from faction
and party. The Duke of Bedford replied, that his opposition had
arisen from conscience, that he had not troubled himself about what
the House of Commons did; yet he had perceived that the Bill had
been crammed down both Houses.
At last the Chancellor--not, as he has been represented,[231] in
the figure of _Public Wisdom speaking_, but with all the acrimony
of wounded pride, of detected ambition, and insolent authority.
He read his speech; not that he had written it to guard himself
from indecency; or that he had feared to forget his thread of
argument in the heat of personality: he did not deign an argument,
he did not attempt to defend a Bill so criticized. He seemed only
to have methodized his malice, and noted down the passages where
he was to resent, where to threaten. He introduced himself with
just allowing conscience and candour to the Duke of Bedford; but
what he had to complain of had passed without those walls, and in
another place. That, as to the young man, (Charles Townshend,)
youth and parts require beauty and riches, flesh and blood inspire
such thoughts, and therefore he excused him--but men of riper
years and graver had opposed; that the first, (the Speaker,) was
a good, well-meaning man, but had been abused by words--that
another, (Fox,) dark, gloomy, and insidious genius, who was an
engine of personality and faction, had been making connexions,
and trying to form a party, but his designs had been seen through
and defeated. That in this country you must govern by force or
by law; it was easy to know that person’s principles, which were
to govern by arbitrary force. That the King speaks through the
Seals, and is represented by the Chancellor and the Judges in the
Courts where the Majesty of the King resides; that such attacks
on the Chancellor and the Law was flying in the face of the King:
that this behaviour was not liked: that it had been taken up with
dignity,[232] and that the incendiary had been properly reproved;
that this was not the way to popularity or favour; and that he
could take upon him to say, that person knows so by this time;
a beam of light had broken in upon him; but, concluded he, I
despise his scurrility, as much as his adulation and retraction.
This _Philippic_ over, the Bill passed. Lord Granville, who had
threatened to oppose it, did not attend.
The prorogation of the Parliament prevented any farther open
war. Mr. Fox seemed wantonly and unnecessarily to have insulted
the Chancellor, and had even manifested some fear at having done
so. Indeed, he who had always been rash and resolute, now first
discovered some symptoms of irresolution; and the time advanced
but too fast, when the provocation offered to Yorke, and the
suspicion of his want of a determined spirit, were of essential
detriment to him. He could not but feel the Chancellor’s haughty
scorn of the atonement he had offered; yet, though he let slip both
sentences of resentment and indications of an ambition that began
to aspire higher, he soon yielded to a silent pacification. Mr.
Pelham affected to be rather ignorant of the heights to which the
rupture had openly been carried; and on the King’s being told, that
Mr. Fox’s behaviour had been concerted with the Duke of Bedford,
Mr. Pelham protested to Fox, that he had assured the King that
the latter, on some proposal of union about elections from that
Duke, had refused any such connexion while he should remain in the
King’s service. For the storm between Fox and the Chancellor, Mr.
Pelham said it would blow over, “Yet neither of you,” said he to
the former, “will forgive.” Mr. Fox, in return, who gave no credit
to this affected candour, reproached him in strong terms with
the Chancellor’s (and by necessary implication, with the Duke of
Newcastle’s) treachery to Sir Robert Walpole.
The Duke’s conversation on this occasion with Mr. Fox was
remarkable. “The Chancellor meaned me,” said he, “by arbitrary
force.” Mr. Fox thought not. “Why,” said the Duke, “do you think
that he imagines you would govern by an Army without me?” “Sir,”
said Fox, “how will the King act on what has happened?” “The King,”
replied the Duke, “would part with you, or even with me, to satisfy
them: but if you can maintain yourself for six months, he will
like you the better for what has passed, for he thinks you a man,
and he knows none of the rest have the spirit of a mouse.” Mr. Fox
said, “If they turn me out, I shall not acquit Mr. Pelham, nor
shall I spare him. Let him raise up Murray; Mr. Pelham knows he
has betrayed him, but is willing to forget it. I know he fears me
still more; he has often told me I was like Mr. Pulteney. It may be
vanity, but if I am stronger than Murray, I am ten times stronger
than Mr. Pelham.” “Mr. Pelham,” replied the Duke, “has neither
candour, honour, nor sincerity. Fox, how do you think I have been
entertaining myself this morning? It was poor pleasure, but I had
no better. The Duke of Newcastle asked me how I would have the
warrant for Cranborn[233] drawn. I thanked him, but heard Mr.
Pelham was uneasy that I had not thanked him; so to-day I met them
together, and thanked the Duke of Newcastle again, and only asked
t’other when he went to Esher.” The Duke concluded with advising
Fox to speak to the King, and not let him brood on it: “He will
talk on the Bill,” said the Duke: “let him; and you, who could not
be convinced in the House, be convinced by him.”
The King was civil to Fox at his next levee: afterwards in
his closet Mr. Fox beginning to say, “Sir, last Wednesday the
Chancellor”--the King interrupted, “Oh! sir, I believe you had
given him cause; it is now pretty even.” Mr. Fox said, “Sir,
I shall only beg to be heard as to there being any faction or
intrigue in my behaviour: I give you my honour it is not true.”
“The moment you give me your honour,” replied the King, “I believe
you; but I must tell you, as I am no liar, that you have been
much suspected.” He then repeated to him accusations of such low
caballing, of balls given at Holland House to the Duchess of
Bedford, to which Mr. Pelham’s daughters had not been invited, of
persons who were disagreeable to the Pelhams being invited; in
short, accusations of such feminine and peevish trifles, that if
Mr. Pelham was not the whisperer of them, and the Chancellor was,
the latter had certainly very tender sensations, when they could
extend themselves to the dancing disgusts of his friend’s wife
and daughters! Mr. Fox answered these cursorily, disclaimed any
political connexions with the Bedfords, and repeated with emphasis,
“Such intrigues, Sir, would be worse in me, while in your service,
than in any man living, as nobody blamed such intrigues in those
who undermined Sir Robert Walpole so much as I.” This dialogue
ended so well, that Mr. Fox asked for a little place for one of his
dependents, and obtained it.
7th.--Dr. Archibald Cameron suffered death at Tyburn. He had been
forced into the Rebellion by his brother Lochiel, whom he had tried
to confine, to prevent his engaging in it: not that Lochiel had
taken arms voluntarily: he was a man of great parts, but could
not resist the desperate honour which he thought the Pretender
did him, in throwing himself into his arms, and demanding his
sword and interest.[234] The Doctor, who was a man of learning
and very valuable humanity, which he had displayed in endeavours
to civilize that part of a barbarous country, and in offices of
benevolence to the soldiers employed on the Highland roads, and to
the mine-adventurers established at Strontean, was torn from these
sweet duties, from his profession, from a beloved and large family,
and attended his rash brother at Prestonpans and Falkirk, escaped
with him, and was appointed physician to Lochiel’s regiment in the
French service. He ventured back, was taken as mentioned above, and
underwent a forced death with as much composure as a philosopher
could affect at dying a natural one.
During the course of the summer the troubles in Ireland increased.
Lord Kildare returned thither towards the end of June, after having
presented a Memorial to the King against the administration of the
Duke of Dorset, and the ascendant of the Primate. Nothing could be
worse drawn: he was too weak to compose better, and too obstinate
to submit to any correction. No facts were alleged against the
Lord Lieutenant, nor any crime pretended in the Primate but that
he was a Churchman. Yet these no accusations, he told the King he
would return to prove whenever he should be required, and would
answer that the Irish House of Commons would stand by him. He had
no experience; nor knew that many men will say with party heat what
they will not support with party steadiness. Lord Holderness, by
the King’s command, wrote to the Chancellor of Ireland, telling
him, that the King had sent the Duke of Dorset to govern them,
because he had pleased them so much formerly, and because he had
the good of Ireland so much at heart: that his Majesty wondered at
any man taking upon himself to answer for a nation; and that he
expected that all who loved him would support the Lord Lieutenant:
that his Majesty permitted this letter to be communicated to
Lord Kildare, to anybody. Thus the absurdity of the Memorial was
balanced by the haughtiness of the mandate. Lord Kildare had
transfused into a State Manifesto the most licentious topics of
party libels: the English Ministers adopted, in the King’s answer,
the most exalted diction of French prerogative.
Whatever might be the temper in Ireland, the increasing servility
in England encouraged such a spirit in the Court. Mr. Pelham,
who went to Scarborough this summer for his health, received the
extravagant and unprecedented compliment of being desired to
recommend a member to that borough, which happened to be vacant.
The people of Bristol proceeded so far as to offer the same
nomination to the King himself on this occasion: riots had happened
there on the erection of new turnpikes; a citizen knocked down
one of the rioters, and another stabbed him. The jury brought
it in wilful murder in the first. The Attorney-General moved in
the King’s Bench to reverse the judgment. This so pleased both
parties in that city (the condemned person being a chief Tory),
that they acknowledged it by this offer, so repugnant to all ideas
of freedom of elections. What followed was only ridiculous. The
King recommended Nugent: the Bristol men begged to be excused,
as Nugent had been the principal promoter[235] of the Bill for a
General Naturalization.
Some little time before the Irish Parliament met, the Speaker’s
friends gave out, that the Primate had made acknowledgments to him
of his concern for the confusion that was likely to follow, that he
would meddle no more with the House of Commons, but would give all
his interest and influence there to the Speaker: that the latter
had replied, the Primate had such underhand ways, and had deceived
him so often, that he could not trust him; and for his influence he
despised it. All this passed by the intervention of Luke Gardiner,
who, on the Primate’s party denying it, being called on, avowed the
message. However, as it was decent for the Speaker to act candour
and contrition too, he went to the Duke of Dorset, and told him,
that he had got a majority in the House of Commons, and that they
were determined to omit in the Address to the King the usual thanks
for sending his Grace; and that if his Grace would acquiesce in
that omission, they would make the rest of the session easy to him.
The Duke, as hardhearted as the Speaker had been to the Primate,
would by no means give his own consent to being stigmatized. An
hour before he went to open the Parliament, the Speaker returned
and acquainted him that he had prevailed on his friends to suffer
the usual Address--and it was made.
The English Parliament, which opened on the 15th of November, was
employed till the end of the year in an affair which showed how
much the age, enlightened as it is called, was still enslaved to
the grossest and most vulgar prejudices. The year before an Act
had passed for naturalizing Jews. It had passed almost without
observation, Sir John Barnard and Lord Egmont having merely given
a languid opposition to it, in order to reingratiate themselves
with the mobs of London and Westminster. The Bishops had honestly
concurred in removing such absurd distinctions, as stigmatized
and shackled a body of the most loyal, commercial, and wealthy
subjects of the kingdom. A new general election was approaching;
some obscure men, who perhaps wanted the necessary sums for
purchasing seats, or the topics of party to raise clamour, had
fastened on this Jew Bill; and in a few months the whole nation
found itself inflamed with a Christian zeal, which was thought
happily extinguished with the ashes of Queen Anne and Sacheverel.
Indeed, this holy spirit seized none but the populace and the
very lowest of the Clergy: yet all these grew suddenly so zealous
for the honour of the prophecies that foretell calamity and
eternal dispersion to the Jews, that they seemed to fear lest the
completion of them should be defeated by Act of Parliament: and
there wanted nothing to their ardour but to petition both Houses
to enact the accomplishment. The little Curates preached against
the Bishops for deserting the interests of the Gospel; and Aldermen
grew drunk at county clubs in the cause of Jesus Christ, as they
had used to do for the sake of King James. Yet to this senseless
clamour did the Ministry give way; and to secure tranquillity to
their elections, submitted to repeal the Bill.
It is worth while to recapitulate some instances of the
capriciousness of the times. An inglorious peace had been made,
and the first hostages imposed that ever this country gave: not
a murmur followed. The Regency Bill, with the tremendous clause
of _præmunire_, had been passed without occasioning a pamphlet.
The Marriage Bill, that bane of society, that golden grate that
separates the nobility from the plebeians, had not excited a
complaint from the latter. A trifling Bill, that opened some
inconsiderable advantages to a corps of men, with whom we live,
traffic, converse, could alarm the whole nation--it did more: a
cabal of Ministers, who had insulted their master with impunity,
who had betrayed every ally and party with success, and who had
crammed down every Bill that was calculated for their own power,
yielded to transitory noise, and submitted to fight under the
banners of prophecy, in order to carry a few more members in
another Parliament.
I shall be very brief on the Debates that attended this repeal;
the topic was foolish, the chief speakers not considerable, the
events not memorable.
On the very day the Houses met, the Duke of Newcastle moved
to repeal the Bill, which, he said, had only been a point of
_political policy_. The Bishop of Oxford undertook the apology
of his Bench, and (though in a manner too ironic) defended them
well, for having given way to a Bill, which they had considered
only in a political light, had never much liked, and were glad
to have repealed, to quiet the minds of good people. Drummond
of St. Asaph, sensibly and in a more manly style, urged that
the Bishops could not have opposed the Bill without indulging a
spirit of persecution, abhorrent from the spirit of the Gospel.
Lord Temple, with his accustomed warmth, opposed the repeal, grew
zealous for the honour of a Ministry which he wanted to censure,
and protested against the Legislature listening to clamour, which
was less intended to serve the Protestant Religion, than to wound
the Protestant Succession. Loved he did the Liberty of the Press,
yet thought the abuse in the Daily Papers ought to be noticed. He
had never listened to popular clamour, nor always thought that the
voice of the people was the voice of God. That the approaching
general election had given foundation to this uproar, and therefore
should not have wondered at a repeal being consented to by the
other House, but for the Lords to consent, would be subscribing
to the accusation. Lord Temple was still more violent on the
second reading; pronounced the clamour disaffection clothed in
superstition, and a detestable high-church spirit: trembled lest
the Plantation Act should be repealed; trembled lest fires should
be rekindled in Smithfield to burn Jews; shuddered at our exceeding
the heinous days of Charles the Second, who, though he oppressed
Presbyterians, encouraged Jews. That to give way to this spirit,
would invite persecution against the Presbyterians. For him, he
acted on the principles on which he had been bred, had lived, and
would die. The Chancellor replied to him with temper, and defended
the measure of a free government giving way. That the longer
Bills of Naturalization existed, the more difficult they grow to
repeal, as they have been hanging out invitation to Foreigners to
accept the advantages of them: was earnest against any thought of
repealing the Plantation Act, which had subsisted thirteen years,
and allows seven years for settling: that as Jews are chiefly
concerned in remittances, it would undo our colonies to repeal
Bills made in favour of that people.
On the 21st, the Duke of Bedford said he had been against the
Bill, and was now against the repeal, which was an effect of the
imbecility of the Administration. Lord Temple again spoke against
it, and well. Lord Granville with humour turned the whole into
ridicule; said he remembered many religious Bills in which religion
had nothing to do; they were made or repealed from clamour. When
the Schism Bill passed, Lord Harcourt, then _not_ Chancellor was
for it; afterwards against it, and then pleaded, that it was only
a Bill to make school-mistresses take the Sacrament three times
a year, and what was that to Government? The Uniformity Bill was
rejected after being carried so high by party, that it was not
regarded whether a man was for peace or for war, but whether he was
for or against that Bill. That it had been afterwards brought in
by the Whigs to gain a single Lord, Lord Nottingham; that when it
was objected that a persecuting Bill was surely paying dear for one
man, a grave Whig Lord replied, “It is true; but let our friends
be persecuted sometimes, or they will not think they want us.”
That undictated by religion as those Bills were, or the clamour
against them, they breathed the very essence of it, compared to
this Jew Bill, which, with its clamour, was the nothingness of a
nothing. Lord Temple commended the Bench, but feared there might
be Toryism lurking in some corner of it; and then painted the
Bishop of London, who, he said, he had heard, was disposed to a
repeal even of the Plantation Act. He would not suffer Jews even
in that diocese[236] of his--he did not know whether he ought
strictly to call it his diocese: the Plantations were subjected to
his Lordship’s pastoral jurisdiction; but perhaps he had not taken
out his patent; it might cost fourscore or an hundred pounds! He
talked again of disaffection, and said he had been raking into the
London Evening Post, that Augæan stable of filth and calumny--thus
was Lord Temple at once a zealous Whig, and scandalized at
libels! Whigs have not generally disliked libels, nor had he,
but it was when he was less Whig. The Bishop of Oxford answered
for his brother of London, and denied that he was averse to the
Plantation Act. The Chancellor said, that the only imbecility of
the Administration was in tolerating such libels; that the liberty
of the Press could not give liberty to print what a man may not
write; that what a man could not justify to do, he could not
justify to print; that he thought the libels on this Bill ought to
be prosecuted; that the Lords and Commons might trust themselves
with looking into the licence of the Press.
22d.--On the third reading of the Bill, Lord Temple made a very bad
obscure speech; tried to answer Lord Granville; tried to encourage
the Tories to continue the clamour; tried to excuse his invective
on the Bishop of London; but succeeded in none of those points, and
the repeal passed.
In Ireland, the new parties from personalities turned to matters
of government. A Bill had been prepared to enable them to dispose
of an overplus of the Revenue for the benefit of the kingdom;
and it was specified in the preamble that it was with the King’s
consent. The Opposition refused to admit this preamble: the Castle
were afraid to proceed to a division, and suppressed the preamble,
but sent over the Bill, depending on the English Ministry not
suffering such a diminution of the prerogative. The next day, on a
trifling question about some words relating to Neville Jones, the
Castle stood a division, and had a majority, though but of three
votes. As the parties were so equally balanced, the animosities did
not flag, but proceeded to great extremities, both in the English
manner of abuse, and in the Irish of duels.
27th.--Lord Temple, after having mysteriously summoned the Lords
to an affair, as he told them, of great importance, moved to
have the Judges asked, if Jews could purchase land, and whether
it would legally descend to their children. The Chancellor, Lord
Cholmondeley, Lord Granville, and the Duke of Argyle opposing the
Motion, and nobody supporting it, Lord Temple gave it up.
The same day the repeal was agitated in the other House; Northey
proposed to have the words in the preamble, _have taken occasion to
raise clamour_, altered to _have raised clamour_. He was seconded
by Prowse, Lord Egmont, and Admiral Vernon. On the other side
Nugent, Sir W. Yonge, Sir Richard Lloyd, Mr. Pelham, old Horace
Walpole, and Mr. Pitt, who was just come abroad again after a year
of sullen illness, defended the words and the repeal, and it passed
by a majority of 150 to 60.
28th.--Letters came from Ireland with an account of the first
Parliamentary victory obtained there by the Opposition over
the Court. Neville Jones had been voted guilty of abuse in his
office[237] by 124 to 116. The strangers in the gallery of the
House huzzaed; the city was crowded by the triumphant mob. Lord
Kildare, the popular hero, was an hour passing to his own house at
eleven at night.
Dec. 4th.--A call of the House being appointed, Lord Harley and Sir
James Dashwood moved for a repeal of the Plantation Act. Martin,
the West Indian, opposed the Motion in a speech of wit. He said,
this Act had been made thirteen years ago; had occasioned no
clamour then, nor since. Foreigners would begin to think that there
was no combustible matter left in England but these poor miserable
Jews. One hundred and eighty-five have taken the benefit of the
Act. He had been so idle, he said, as to read all the pamphlets
and papers on the late Act, and must pronounce that no subject ever
occasioned the spilling so much nonsense. That America can only be
peopled by Foreigners, unless you would drain your own country,
over and above those valuable colonists, the transported.
Sir Roger Newdigate spoke for the last moved repeal. Nugent
ridiculed it, and said, that if once the principle was admitted,
there would be no stopping. Why have 130 Jews been naturalized
in Jamaica, and none in Barbadoes? because three parts of the
former are desert, and no part of the latter. Would you drive
them out of the desert? Spanish Jews are the most proper, because
they can best support the climate. That noble pirate, the Knight
of Malta, says, Make perpetual war with perpetual enemies: so
says the Inquisition--imitate them--and you will only lose your
Mediterranean trade. Then break with those who league with the
enemies of your religion, as Spain does with Denmark[238]--but no;
you have done what you meaned to do; stop here: a Christian knows
no perpetual enmity. The most prosperous, happy man here has the
best chance for the next world. They who made this clamour, now
smile with us; if we gave way, would laugh at us.
Sir John Barnard made a short, bad speech, and went away. Mr.
Pelham said, to repeal the Plantation Act would be to tell the
people, We will repeal this law, not because it has, but because
it ought to have made you uneasy. But it would be too serious to
pay such attention even to clamour: who part with their wealth,
part with their strength. Such a repeal would revive the principle
of the Church, which has had such pernicious effects--but no
encouragement must be given to that spirit, though it has been
laboured by some who can only figure in a hot contest, and who
can thunder out their ecclesiastic anathemas, but have nothing to
say when they come to preach on morality. Pitt carried this still
further; and though he did not act like, yet he affected to speak
with the same spirit of Whiggism as his friend, Lord Temple. He
had not expected, he said, that this would be the first return
to Parliament for their condescension in repealing the late act.
Here the stand must be made, or _venit summa dies_! we should have
a Church spirit revived. He believed the late clamour was only a
little election art, which was given way to genteelly; that the
other Bill was not a toleration of, but a preference given to,
Jews over other sects. That his maxim was, never to do more for
the Church than it now enjoys: that now you would except the Jews
in the opposite extreme. It is the Jew to-day, it would be the
Presbyterian to-morrow: we should be sure to have a septennial
Church clamour. That we are not now to be influenced by old laws
enacted before the Reformation: our ancestors would have said,
“A Lollard has no right to inherit lands.” But we do not fear
indulging Jews; they will never be great purchasers of land; they
love money, and trade with it to better advantage. This silly
effort of old prejudices was baffled by 208 to 88. Not that even
eighty-eight men were actuated by such monkish principles; some
were obliged to espouse them to secure their approaching elections.
The heats in Ireland increased with the success of the Opposition.
The Speaker was adored by the mob; they worshipped him under the
name of _Roger_. They made bonfires of reproach before the door
of the Primate: they stopped coaches, and made them declare for
England or Ireland. The Hackney Chairmen distinguished their
patriotism by refusing to carry any fare to the Castle. A Dr.
Andrews of the Castle-faction, reproaching a Mr. Lambert at the
door of the House of Commons, with forfeiting a promise of bringing
him into Parliament, and proceeding to a challenge, Lambert said,
“I will first go into the House, and vote against that rascal
Neville Jones.” Dr. Andrews repeating the insult, Lambert went
in and complained, and Andrews was ordered into custody; Carter,
Master of the Rolls, saying, “What, would that man force himself
into a seat here! and for what? only to prostitute his vote to a
man,[239] the known enemy of this country! I need not name him, you
all know whom I mean.” Malone’s brother, a rising young man, on
Lord George’s imputing the prosecution of Neville Jones to the rage
of party, said, “He did not believe there subsisted any such thing;
but if there did, it was more laudable than threats, bribes, and
promises, which that Noble Lord had used to procure a majority.”
The accusation was not groundless; Sir James Hamilton, a very
indigent member, refused an offer from the Castle of 2000_l._ and
200_l._ per annum for life. Satires and claret were successful arms
even against corruption! The Money Bill was sent back from England,
with the preamble re-instated, but was rejected in Ireland by a
majority of five.
1754.
The new year began with orders sent to Ireland to prorogue the
Parliament, and to disgrace the most obnoxious, at the discretion
of the Lord-Lieutenant; but the Duke was moderate. He contented
himself with obtaining an adjournment for three weeks, and with
displacing Carter, the Master of the Rolls; Malone, Prime Serjeant,
(a convert from Popery), Dilks, Quarter-Master and Barrack-Master
General; and with stopping the pension of Bellingham Boyle,
Register of the Prerogative Court, and a near relation of the
Speaker. Andrew Stone was inclined to temporize, but Murray
counselled, and drove on measures of authority.
February 7th.--Sir John Barnard, on the view of the approaching
elections, and their concomitant perjury, moved to repeal the
Bribery Oath; and was seconded by Sir William Yonge. But the
consideration that the repeal would avow permission of bribery
prevailed over the certainty of bribery heightened by perjury, and
the Motion was rejected without a division. In the other House, the
next day, the Bishop of Worcester had as little success in another
moral attempt: he moved for reformation and a fast--in vain.
19th.--There was a Debate on the Bill for subjecting to military
law the troops going to the East Indies; but it passed on a
division of 245 to 50.
March 4th.--The Duke of Bedford offered a Bill to postpone
the activity of the Marriage Bill, till it should be maturely
considered and amended. The Chancellor opposed it dictatorially;
and it was rejected by 56 Lords to 10.
* * * * *
These were the last occurrences in the life of that fortunate
Minister, Henry Pelham, who had surmounted every difficulty, but
the unhappiness of his own temper. The fullness of his power had
only contributed to heighten his peevishness. He supplied the
deficiencies of genius by affected virtue; he had removed superiors
by treachery, and those of whom he was jealous, by pretexting, or
administering to the jealousies of his brother: but the little arts
by which he had circumvented greater objects, were not applicable
even to his own little passions. He enjoyed the plenitude of his
Ministry but a short time, and that short period was a scene of
fretfulness. He had made a journey to Scarborough in the summer for
scorbutic complaints, but receiving little benefit from a short
stay, and being banqueted much on the road, he returned with his
blood more disordered. It produced a dangerous boil, which was once
thought cured; but he relapsed on the third of March, and died on
the sixth, aged near sixty-one.
It would be superfluous to add much to the character already given
of him in the former part of these memoirs. Thus much may be said
with propriety: his abilities, I mean, parliamentary, and his
eloquence cleared up, and shone with much greater force, after his
power was established. He laid aside his doubling plausibility,
which had at once raised and depreciated him, and assumed a spirit
and authority that became him well. Considering how much he had
made it a point to be Minister, and how much his partizans had
proclaimed him the only man worthy of being Minister, he ought to
have conferred greater benefits on his country. He had reduced
interest, and a part of the National Debt; these were his services.
He had raised the name of the King, but he had wounded his
authority. He concluded an ignominious peace; but the circumstances
of the times made it be thought, and perhaps it was, desirable. The
desertion of the King in the height of a Rebellion, from jealousy
of a man with whom he soon after associated against some of the
very men who had deserted with him, will be a lasting blot on his
name--let it be remembered as long, that, though he first taught or
experienced universal servility in Englishmen, yet he lived without
abusing his power, and died poor.
FOOTNOTES:
[229] Being deprived of this income, Keith swore he would be
revenged of the Bishops--that he would buy a piece of ground and
outbury them.
[230] Yet no amendment was ever made in it, and all its clauses and
faults supported by the utmost rigour of the power of Chancery.
[231] An expression of Lord Lyttleton on Lord Hardwicke.
[232] Meaning by his son, Charles Yorke.
[233] The King had just given Cranborn Lodge in Windsor Forest to
the Duke.
[234]
“Il marche en philosophe, où l’honneur le conduit,
Condamne les combats, plaint son maître, et le suit.”
_Henriade._
[235] Vide Appendix.
[236] The plantations are reckoned in the diocese of London.
[237] [He was consequently dismissed, and, with an allusion to
his profession of architect, said, with much good humour and
pleasantry, “So, after all, I shall not be Inigo, but _Out I go_,
Jones.”]--E.
[238] For making a league with the Algerines.
[239] Lord George Sackville.
1754.
Plus on étudie le monde, plus on y découvre le ridicule.
_La Bruyere._
Les exemples du passé touchent sans comparaison plus les hommes
que ceux de leur siècle. Nous nous accoutumons à ce que nous
voyons; et je ne sçai si le consulat du Cheval de Caligula nous
auroit autant surpris que nous nous l’imaginons.--_Card. de Retz._