A Census is Ordered.--Dissolution of Pitt's Administration.--Impeachment
of Lord Melville.--Introduction of Lord Ellenborough into the
Cabinet.--Abolition of the Slave-trade.--Mr. Windham's Compulsory
Training Bill.--Illness of the King, and Regency.--Recurrence to the
Precedent of 1788-'89.--Death of Mr. Perceval.--Lord Liverpool becomes
Prime-minister.--Question of Appointments in the Household.--Appointment
of a Prime-minister.
The Union with Ireland was the last great work of Pitt's first
administration, and a noble close to the legislation of the eighteenth
century. But the last months of the year were also signalized by another
enactment, which, though it cannot be said to have anything of a
character strictly entitled to the name of constitutional, nevertheless
established a practice so valuable as the foundation of a great part of
our domestic legislation, that it will, perhaps, hardly be considered
foreign to the scope and purpose of this volume to record its
commencement. In November, 1800, Mr. Abbott, the member for Helstone,
brought in a bill to take a census of the people of the United Kingdom,
pointing out not only the general importance of a knowledge of the
population of a country in its entire amount and its different classes
to every government, but also its special bearing on agriculture and on
the means requisite to provide subsistence for the people, on trade and
manufactures, and on our resources for war. Such a census as he proposed
had been more than once taken in Holland, Sweden, Spain, and even in the
United States, young as was their separate national existence; it had
been taken once--nearly fifty years previous--in Scotland; and something
like one had been furnished in England in the reign of Edward III. by a
subsidy roll, and in that of Elizabeth by diocesan returns furnished by
the Bishops to the Privy Council.[148] He farther argued for the
necessity of such a proceeding from the different notions entertained by
men of sanguine or desponding tempers as to the increase or diminution
of the population. "Some desponding men had asserted that the population
had decreased by a million and a half between the Revolution and Peace
of Paris, in 1763; others (of whom the speaker himself was one) believed
that, on the contrary, it had increased in that interval by two
millions." His motion was unanimously adopted by both Houses; and when
the census was taken, its real result furnished as strong a proof of its
usefulness as any of the mover's arguments, by the extent of the
prevailing miscalculations which it detected. For Mr. Abbott, who had
spared no pains to arrive at a correct estimate, while he mentioned that
some persons reckoned the population of England and Wales at 8,000,000,
pronounced that, according to other statements, formed on a more
extensive investigation, and, as it seemed to him, on a more correct
train of reasoning, the total number could not be less than 11,000,000.
In point of fact, excluding those employed in the army and navy, who
were nearly half a million, the number for England and Wales fell short
of nine millions.[149] It would be quite superfluous to dilate on the
value of the information thus supplied, without which, indeed, much of
our subsequent legislation on poor-laws, corn-laws, and all matters
relating to rating and taxation, would have been impracticable or the
merest guesswork.
As was mentioned in the preceding chapter, Pitt found himself unable to
fulfil the hopes which, in his negotiations with different parties in
Ireland, he had led the Roman Catholics to entertain of the removal of
their civil and political disabilities. So rigorous were those
restrictions, both in England and Ireland, that a Roman Catholic could
not serve even as a private in the militia; and a motion made in 1797 by
Mr. Wilberforce--a man who could certainly not be suspected of any
leaning to Roman Catholic doctrine--to render them admissible to that
service, though it was adopted in the House of Commons, was rejected by
the House of Lords. But Pitt, who on that occasion had supported
Wilberforce, did not confine his views to the removal of a single petty
disability, but proposed to put the whole body of Roman Catholics on a
footing of perfect equality with Protestants in respect of their
eligibility to every kind of office, with one or two exceptions. And
during the autumn of 1800 he was busily engaged in framing the details
of his measure, in order to submit it to his royal master in its
entirety, and so to avoid disquieting him with a repetition of
discussions on the subject, which he knew to be distasteful to him. For,
five years before, George III. had consulted the Chief-justice, Lord
Kenyon, and the Attorney-general, Sir John Scott (afterward Lord Eldon),
on the question whether some proposed concessions to Dissenters,
Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, did not "militate against the
coronation oath and many existing statutes;" and had received their
legal opinion that the tests enacted in the reign of Charles II.,
"though wise laws, and in policy not to be departed from, might be
repealed or altered without any breach of the coronation oath or Act of
Union" (with Scotland).[150] Their opinions on the point were the more
valuable, since they were notoriously opposed to their political
convictions, and might be supposed to have carried sufficient conviction
to the royal mind. But his Majesty's scruples were now, unfortunately,
revived by the Lord Chancellor, who, strange to say, was himself a
Presbyterian; and who treacherously availed himself of his knowledge of
what was in contemplation to anticipate the Prime-minister's intended
explanations to the King. He fully succeeded in his object of fixing the
King's resolution to refuse his assent to the contemplated concessions
(which, by a curious confusion of ideas, his Majesty even characterized
as "Jacobinical"[151]), though not in the object which he had still more
at heart, of inducing the King to regard him as the statesman in the
whole kingdom the most deserving of his confidence. The merits of the
question will be more appropriately examined hereafter. It is sufficient
to say here that Pitt, conceiving himself bound by personal honor as
well as by statesman-like duty to persevere in his intended measure, or
to retire from an office which no man is justified in holding unless he
can discharge its functions in accordance with his own judgment of what
is required by the best interests of the state, resigned his post, and
was succeeded by Mr. Addington.
Addington's ministry was made memorable by the formation of the Northern
Confederacy against us, and its immediate and total overthrow by
Nelson's cannon; and for the Peace of Amiens, severely criticised in
Parliament, as that of Utrecht and every subsequent treaty with a
similar object had been, but defensible both on grounds of domestic
policy, as well as on that of affording us a much-needed respite from
the strain of war; though it proved to be only a respite, and a feverish
one, since at the end of two years the war was renewed, to be waged with
greater fury than ever. But it was too short-lived for any
constitutional questions to arise in it. And when, in 1804, Pitt resumed
the government, his attention was too completely engrossed by the
diplomatic arrangements by which he hoped to unite all the nations east
of the Rhine in resistance to a power whose ever aggressive ambition was
a standing menace to every Continental kingdom, for him to be able to
spare time for the consideration of measures of domestic policy, except
such as were of a financial character. But, though his premature death
rendered his second administration shorter than even Addington's, it was
not wholly unproductive of questions of constitutional interest. It
witnessed a recurrence to that which cannot but be regarded as among the
most important privileges of the House of Commons, the right of
impeaching a minister for maladministration. A report of a commission
appointed for the investigation of the naval affairs of the kingdom had
revealed to Parliament a gross misapplication of the public money
committed by the Paymaster of the Navy. And, as that officer could not
have offended as he had done without either gross carelessness or
culpable connivance on the part of the Treasurer of the Navy, Lord
Melville, who had since been promoted to the post of First Lord of the
Admiralty, the House of Commons ordered his impeachment at the Bar of
the House of Lords; the vote being passed in 1805, during Pitt's
administration, though the trial did not take place till the year
following. In reality, the charge did not impugn Lord Melville's
personal honor, on which at first sight it appeared to press hardly, Mr.
Whitbread himself, the member for Bedford, who was the chief promoter
and manager of the impeachment, admitting that he never imputed to Lord
Melville "any participation in the plunder of the public;" and, as Lord
Melville was acquitted on every one of the charges brought against him,
the case might have been passed over here with the barest mention of it,
were it not that Lord Campbell has pointed out the mode of procedure as
differing from that adopted in the great trial of Warren Hastings,
twenty years before; and, by reason of that difference, forming a model
for future proceedings of the same kind, if, unhappily, there should
ever be occasion given for a similar prosecution. The credit of the
difference Lord Campbell gives to the Chancellor, Lord Erskine, who,
"instead of allowing the House of Lords to sit to hear the case a few
days in a year, and, when sitting, being converted from a court of
justice into a theatre for rhetorical display, insisted that it should
sit, like every other criminal tribunal, _de die in diem_, till the
verdict was delivered. And he enforced both upon the managers of the
House of Commons and on the counsel for the defendant the wholesome
rules of procedure established for the detection of crime and the
protection of innocence."[152] It is well known that on the trial of
Hastings the managers of that impeachment, and most especially Burke,
claimed a right of giving evidence such as no court of law would have
admitted, and set up what they entitled "a usage of Parliament
independent of and contradistinguished from the common law."[153] But on
that occasion Lord Thurlow, then Chancellor, utterly denied the
existence of any such usage--a usage which, "in times of barbarism, when
to impeach a man was to ruin him by the strong hand of power, was quoted
in order to justify the most arbitrary proceedings." He instanced the
trial of Lord Stafford, as one which "was from beginning to end marked
by violence and injustice," and expressed a "hope that in these
enlightened days no man would be tried but by the law of the land." We
may fairly agree with Lord Campbell, that it is to be hoped that the
course adopted by Lord Erskine in this case has settled the principle
and mode of procedure for all future time; since certainly the
importance of an impeachment, both as to the state interests involved in
it, and the high position and authority of the defendant, ought to be
considered as reasons for adhering with the greatest closeness to the
strict rules of law, rather than for relaxing them in any particular.
But, as was natural, the public could spare little attention for
anything except the war, and the arrangements made by the minister for
engaging in it with effect; the interest which such a state of things
always kindles being in this instance greatly inflamed by Napoleon's
avowal of a design to invade the kingdom, though it is now known that
the preparations of which he made such a parade were merely a feint to
throw Austria off her guard.[154] During Addington's administration Pitt
had spoken warmly in favor of giving every possible encouragement to the
Volunteer movement, and also in support of a proposal made by an
independent member, Colonel Crawford, to fortify London; and one of his
first measures after his resumption of office was a measure, known as
the Additional Force Bill, to transfer a large portion of the militia to
the regular army. It was so purely a measure of detail, that it would
hardly have been necessary to mention it, had it not been for an
objection made to it by the Prime-minister's former colleague, Lord
Grenville, and for the reply with which that objection was encountered
by the Chief-justice, Lord Ellenborough; the former denouncing it as
unconstitutional, since, he declared, it tended to establish a large
standing army in time of peace; and Lord Ellenborough, on the other
hand, declaring the right of the crown to call out the whole population
in arms for the defence of the realm to be so "radical, essential, and
hitherto never questioned part of the royal prerogative, that, even in
such an age of adventurous propositions, he had not expected that any
lord would have ventured to question it."[155]
Pitt died in the beginning of 1806, and was succeeded by an
administration of which his great rival, Fox, was the guiding spirit
while he lived, though Lord Grenville was First Lord of the Treasury,
and, after Fox's death, which took place in September, the undisputed
Prime-minister. But the formation of the administration was not
completed without a step which was at once strongly denounced, not only
by the regular Opposition, but by several members of political
moderation, as a violation, if not of the letter, at least of the
spirit, of the constitution, the introduction of the Lord Chief-justice,
Lord Ellenborough, into the cabinet. It was notorious that he was
invited to a seat among that body as the representative of a small
party, the personal friends of Lord Sidmouth. For the ministry was
formed in some degree on the principle of a coalition; Lord Grenville
himself having been a colleague of Pitt throughout the greater part of
that statesman's first ministry, and as such having been always opposed
to Fox; while Lord Ellenborough had been Attorney-general in Addington's
administration, which avowedly only differed from Pitt on the single
subject of the Catholic question.
The appointment was at once made the subject of motions in both Houses
of Parliament. In the House of Lords, Lord Bristol, who brought the
question forward, denounced "this identification of a judge with the
executive government as injurious to the judicial character, subversive
of the liberty of the people, and having a direct and alarming tendency
to blend and amalgamate those great elementary principles of political
power which it is the very object of a free constitution to keep
separate and distinct." In the House of Commons, Mr. Canning took a
similar objection; and, though he admitted that a precedent for the act
might be found in the case of Lord Mansfield who, while Chief-justice,
had also been a cabinet minister in the administration of 1757, he
argued forcibly that that precedent turned against the ministry and the
present appointment, because Lord Mansfield himself had subsequently
admitted that "he had infringed the principles of the constitution by
acting as a cabinet minister and Chief-justice at the same time." Fox,
in reply, relied principally on two arguments. The first was, that "he
had never heard of such a thing as the cabinet council becoming the
subject of a debate in that House. He had never known of the exercise of
the King's prerogative in the appointment of his ministers being brought
into question on such grounds as had now been alleged." The second, that
"in point of fact there is nothing in the constitution that recognizes
any such institution as a cabinet council; that it is a body unknown to
the law, and one which has in no instance whatever been recognized by
Parliament." He farther urged that as Lord Ellenborough was a privy
councillor, and as the cabinet is only a select committee of the Privy
Council, he was, "in fact, as liable to be summoned to attend the
cabinet, as a privy councillor, as he was in his present situation."
The last argument was beneath the speaker to use, since not one of his
hearers was ignorant that no member of the Privy Council unconnected
with the government ever is summoned to the deliberations of the
cabinet; and though, as he correctly stated, "there is no legal record
of the members comprising any cabinet," it may safely be affirmed that
since July, 1714, when the Duke of Argyll and the Duke of Somerset
claimed admission to the deliberations of the ministers, on account of
the danger in which the Queen lay, though they admitted that they had
received no summons to attend,[156] there has been no instance of any
privy councillor attending without a summons; nor, except at the
accession of a new sovereign, of summonses being sent to any members of
the council except the actual ministers. The second argument was even
worse, as being still more sophistical. It might be true that no law nor
statute recognized the cabinet as a body distinct from the Privy
Council, but it was at least equally true that there was no one who was
ignorant of the distinction; that it was, in truth, one without which it
would be difficult to understand the organization or working of any
ministry. The indispensable function and privilege of a ministry is, to
deliberate in concert and in private on the measures to be taken for the
welfare of the state; but there could be little chance of concert, and
certainly none of privacy, if every one who has ever been sworn a member
of the Privy Council had a right to attend all its deliberations. Again,
to say that the King's prerogative, as exercised in the choice of his
advisers, is a thing so sacred that no abuse of it, or want of judgment
shown in its exercise, can warrant a complaint, is inconsistent with
every principle of constitutional government, and with every conceivable
idea of the privileges of Parliament. In fact, Parliament has claimed a
right to interfere in matters apparently touching more nearly the royal
prerogative, and it is only in the reign preceding the present reign
that hostile comments have been made in Parliament on the appointment of
a particular person as ambassador to a foreign power. Yet the post of
ambassador is one which might have been supposed to have been farther
removed from the supervision of Parliament than that of a minister, an
ambassador being in a special degree the personal representative of the
sovereign, and the sovereign therefore, having, it might be supposed, a
right to a most unfettered choice in such a matter.
Stripped of all technicalities, and even of all reference to the
manifest possibility of such a circumstance arising as that the
Chief-justice, if a member of a cabinet, may have a share in ordering
the institution of a prosecution which, as a judge, it may be his lot to
try, one consideration which is undeniable is, that a member of a
cabinet is of necessity, and by the very nature of his position in it, a
party man, and that it is of preeminent importance to the impartiality
of the judicial bench, and to the confidence of the people in the
purity, integrity, and freedom from political bias of their decisions,
that the judges should be exempt from all suspicion of party connection.
Lord Campbell even goes the length of saying, what was not urged on
either side of either House in these debates, that it was alleged by at
least one contemporary writer that Lord Mansfield's position in the
cabinet did perceptibly influence some of his views and measures
respecting the Press;[157] and, though in both Houses the ministry had a
majority on the question of the propriety of the appointment, he records
his own opinion[158] that "the argument was all on the losing side;" and
that Mr. Fox showed his consciousness that it was so by his "concession
that the Chief-justice should absent himself from the cabinet when the
expediency of commencing prosecutions for treason or sedition was to be
discussed." He adds, also, that "it is said that Lord Ellenborough
himself ere long changed his opinion, and, to his intimate friends,
expressed deep regret that he had ever been prevailed upon to enter the
cabinet."
But, if the composition of the cabinet of 1806 has in this respect been
generally condemned, on the other hand the annals of that ministry,
short-lived as it was, are marked by the enactment of one great measure
which has been stamped with universal approbation. It may, perhaps, be
said that the existence, promotion, discouragement, or suppression of a
branch of trade has no title to be regarded as a constitutional
question. But the course which the British Parliament, after a long
period of hesitation, has adopted respecting, not only the slave-trade,
but the employment of slave-labor in any part of the British dominions,
is so intimately connected with the great constitutional principle, that
every man, whatever be his race or nation or previous condition, whose
foot is once planted on British soil, is free from that moment, that it
cannot be accounted a digression to mention the subject here. To our
statesmen of Queen Anne's time traffic in slaves was so far from being
considered discreditable, that the ministry of that reign prided
themselves greatly on what was called the Assiento Treaty with Spain, by
which they secured for the British merchants and ship-owners the
privilege of supplying the West India Islands with several thousand
slaves a year. In 1748 the ministers of George II were equally jealous
of the credit of renewing it. It had even on one occasion been decided
in the Court of Common Pleas that an action of trover could be
maintained for a negro, "because negroes are heathens;" though
Chief-justice Holt scouted the idea of being bound by a precedent which
would put "a human being on the same footing as an ox or an ass," and
declared that "in England there was no such thing as a slave."
Subsequent decisions, however, of two Lord Chancellors--Lord Talbot and
Lord Hardwicke--were not wholly consistent with the doctrine thus laid
down by Holt; and the question could not be regarded as finally settled
till 1772, when a slave named Somersett was brought over to England from
Jamaica by his master, and on his arrival in the Thames claimed his
freedom, and under a writ of _habeas corpus_ had his claim allowed by
Lord Mansfield. The master's counsel contended that slavery was not a
condition unsanctioned by English law, for villeinage was slavery, and
no statute had ever abolished villeinage. But the Chief-justice, in the
first place, denied that villeinage had ever been slavery such as
existed in the West Indies; and, in the second place, he pronounced
that, whether it had been or not, it had, at all events, long ceased in
England, and could not be revived. "The air of England has long been too
pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it. Every man who
comes into England is entitled to the protection of English law."[159]
But this freedom was as yet held to be only co-extensive with these
islands. And for sixty years more our West India Islands continued to be
cultivated by the labor of slaves, some of whom were the offspring of
slaves previously employed, though by far the greater part were imported
yearly from the western coast of Africa. The supply from that country
seemed inexhaustible. The native chiefs in time of war gladly sold their
prisoners to the captains of British vessels; in time of peace they sold
them their own subjects; and, if at any time these modes of obtaining
slaves slackened, the captains would land at night, and, attacking the
villages on the coast sweep off the inhabitants on board their ships,
and at once set sail with their booty. The sufferings of these unhappy
captives in what was called the "middle passage"--the passage between
their native land and the West India Islands--were for a long time
unknown or disregarded, till, early in Pitt's first ministry, they
attracted the notice of some of our naval officers who were stationed in
the West Indies, and who, on their return to England, related the
horrors which they had witnessed or heard of--how, between decks too low
to admit of a full-grown man standing upright, the wretched victims,
chained to the sides of the ships, lay squeezed together in such
numbers, though the whole voyage was within the tropics, that, from the
overpowering heat and scantiness of food, it was estimated that
two-thirds of each cargo died on the passage. Most fortunately for the
credit of England, the fearful trade was brought under the notice of a
young member of Parliament singularly zealous in the cause of humanity
and religion, endowed with untiring industry and powerful eloquence, and
connected by the closest ties of personal intimacy with Mr. Pitt. To
hear of such a system of organized murder, as the British officers
described the slave-trade to be, was quite sufficient to induce Mr.
Wilberforce to resolve to devote himself to its suppression. He laid the
case in all its horrors before his friend the Prime-minister, a man as
ready as himself to grapple with and extinguish all proved abuses; and
Pitt at once promised him all the support which he could give. It was no
easy task that he had taken on himself. A year or two before, Burke had
applied himself to frame some regulations which he hoped might gradually
remove the evil; but, little as he was moved by considerations of
popularity or daunted by difficulty, he had abandoned the attempt, as
one which would meet with a resistance too powerful to be overcome.
Wilberforce was not a bolder man than Burke, but he had no other object
to divide his attention, and, therefore, to this one he devoted all his
faculties and energies, enlisting supporters in every quarter, seeking
even the co-operation of the French government, and opening a
correspondence with the French Secretary of State, M. Montmorin, a
statesman of great capacity, and, what was far rarer in France, of
incorruptible honesty. M. Montmorin, however, though alive to the
cruelty of the traffic, was unable to promise him any aid, alleging the
fears of the French planters that its abolition "would ruin the French
islands. He said that it was one of those subjects upon which the
interests of men and their sentiments were so much at variance, that it
was difficult to learn what was practicable."[160]
Wilberforce had already found that the English merchants were still less
manageable. Pitt had entered so fully into his views, that in 1788 he
himself moved and carried a resolution pledging the House of Commons to
take the slave-trade into consideration in the next session. And another
friend of the cause, Sir W. Dobben, brought in a bill to diminish the
horrors of the middle passage by proportioning the number of slaves who
might be conveyed in one ship to the tonnage of the vessel. But those
concerned in the West India trade rose up in arms against even so
moderate a measure, and one so clearly demanded by the most ordinary
humanity as this. The Liverpool merchants declared that the absence of
restrictions on the slave-trade had been the chief cause of the
prosperity and opulence of their town, and obtained leave to be heard by
counsel against the bill. But Fox united with Pitt on this subject, and
the bill was carried. But this was all the practical success which the
efforts of the "Abolitionists," as they began to be called, achieved for
many years. And even that was not won without extreme difficulty; Lord
Chancellor Thurlow opposing it with great vehemence in the House of
Lords, as the fruit of a "five days' fit of philanthropy which had just
sprung up," and pointing to the conduct of the French government, which,
as he asserted, had offered premiums to encourage the trade, as an
example that we should do well to follow. It was even said that he had
contrived to incline the King himself to the same view; to have
persuaded him that the trade was indispensable to the prosperity of our
manufacturers, and, in the Chancellor's words, "that it was his royal
duty to show some humanity to the whites as well as to the negroes." And
more than once, when bills to limit or wholly suppress the trade had
been passed by the Commons, the same mischievous influence defeated them
in the Lords. The last years of Pitt's first administration were too
fully occupied with the affairs of Ireland, negotiations with foreign
powers, and the great war with France, to enable him to keep pace with
his friend's zeal on the subject. But in his second administration,
occupied though he was with a recurrence of the same causes, he found
time to prepare and issue an Order in Council prohibiting the
importation of slaves into our fresh colonial acquisitions, and the
employment of British ships to supply the Dutch, French, and Spanish
islands.
And this Order in Council paved the way for the total abolition. One of
the earliest proceedings of the new ministry was the introduction by the
Attorney-general, Sir Arthur Pigott, of a bill to extend and make it
perpetual; to forbid "the importation of African negroes by British
ships into the colonies conquered by or ceded to us in war; or into the
colonies of any neutral state in the West Indies. For at present every
state that had colonies in America or the West Indies, and that was not
actually at war with us, availed itself of the opportunity of British
shipping to carry on the trade." It was resisted as vehemently as any
former measure with the same object, and partly on the new ground that
it would in no degree stop the trade or diminish the sufferings of the
Africans, but would merely rob our ship-owners of their profits to
enrich the Americans. Mr. Rose, the member for Christchurch, who
advanced this argument, had been a friend of Pitt; yet, though he quoted
an instance of a single vessel having buried one hundred and fifty-two
slaves on one voyage, he was not ashamed to deprecate the bill, on the
plea that "the manufacturers of Manchester, Stockport, and Paisley would
be going about naked and starving, and thus, by attending to a supposed
claim for relief from a distant quarter, we should give existence to
much more severe distress at home." The bill, however, was carried in
both Houses, and received the royal assent. And Fox, who supported it
warmly in his speech on the third reading (one of the last speeches
which he ever addressed to the House), invited Wilberforce to regard it
as a stepping-stone to the total abolition of the trade, and as an
encouragement to renew his motion for that object; and, though he could
not promise him the support of the government as a government, he "could
answer for himself and many of his friends who held the highest and most
dignified stations in the other House of Parliament. They still felt the
question of the total abolition as one involving the dearest interests
of humanity, and as one which, should they be successful in effecting
it, would entail more true glory upon their administration, and more
honor upon their country, than any other transaction in which they could
be engaged."
Mr. Fox did not live to see the opening of another session; but, when
that time came, the position which he had taken up, that the measure of
which he had thus promoted the passing was an encouragement to do more,
was adopted to its full extent by the chief of his colleagues, Lord
Grenville, who, in February, 1807, himself brought forward a motion for
the entire abolition of the trade. Though he was Prime-minister, he
could not introduce it as a government measure, since two of his
colleagues--Lord Sidmouth, the President of the Council, and Mr.
Windham, the Secretary of State for the Colonies--opposed it; though the
former professed a desire to see the trade abolished, but would have
preferred to attain that end by imposing such a tax on every slave
imported as should render the trade unprofitable. He had another
obstacle also to encounter, in the vehement opposition of some of the
princes of the royal family, the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex more
especially, who were known to be canvassing against the bill, and were
generally understood, in so doing, to be acting in accordance with the
views of their elder brothers. But he was confident that by this time
the feeling of the whole country was with him on the subject. He was
resolved to rest his case on its justice, and therefore consented that
the House should hear counsel on the subject, though he resisted their
demand to be allowed to call witnesses. Accordingly, counsel were heard
for the whole body of West India planters, and for those of one or two
separate islands, such as Jamaica and Trinidad; for the Liverpool
merchants, and even for the trustees of the Liverpool Docks. But some of
their reasonings he even turned against themselves, refusing for a
moment to admit "that the profits obtained by robbery could be urged as
an argument for the continuance of robbery." He denounced the trade as
"the most criminal that any country could be engaged in," and as one
that led to other crimes in the treatment of the slaves after they
reached the West Indies. He instanced "three most horrible and dreadful
murders of slaves" that had been committed in Barbadoes, and quoted the
report of Lord Seaforth, governor of the island, who, on investigation,
had found that by the law of the colony the punishment affixed to such
murders was a fine of eleven pounds. He was opposed by the Duke of
Clarence, who directed his remarks chiefly to a defence of the general
humanity of the planters; and by Lord Westmoreland, who, in a speech of
singular intemperance, denounced the principle of the measure, as one
after the passing of which "no property could be rendered safe which
could fall within the power of the Legislature." He even made it an
argument against the bill that its principle, if carried to its
legitimate logical end, must tend to the abolition of slavery as well as
of the slave-trade. He objected especially to the assertion in the
preamble that the trade was "contrary to justice and humanity,"
declaring that those words were only inserted in the hope that by them
"foreign powers might be humbugged into a concurrence with the
abolition," and wound up his harangue by a declaration that, though he
should "see the Presbyterian and the prelate, the Methodist and
pew-preacher, the Jacobin and the murderer, unite in support of it, he
would still raise his voice against it." It must have been more painful
to the minister to be opposed by so distinguished an officer as Lord St.
Vincent, who resisted the bill chiefly on the ground that "its effect
would be to transfer British capital to other countries, which would not
be disposed to abandon so productive a trade," and declared that he
could only account for Lord Grenville's advocacy of it "by supposing
that some Obi man had cast his spell upon him." But the case was too
strong for any arguments to prevail which were based solely on the
profits of a trade which no one pretended to justify. The bill passed
the Lords by a majority of nearly three to one; in the House of Commons,
where the opposition was much feebler, by one infinitely larger;[161]
and, by a somewhat remarkable coincidence, it received the royal assent
on the same day on which Lord Grenville announced to his brother peers
that his administration was at an end.
Even before the abolition had thus become law, the member for
Northumberland, Earl Percy, endeavored to give practical effect to Lord
Westmoreland's view, that emancipation of the slaves was its inevitable
corollary, by moving for leave to bring in a bill for the gradual
abolition of slavery in the British settlements of the West Indies. But
he was opposed by Lord Howick,[162] though he had been among the earnest
advocates of abolition, partly for the sake of the negroes themselves,
and partly on the ground that the Legislature had no "right to interfere
with the property of the colonists;" little foreseeing that the measure
which he now opposed was reserved for his own administration, and that
its accomplishment would be one of its chief titles to the respectful
recollection of posterity. And, as the House was presently counted out,
the discussion would not have been worth recording, were it not for the
opportunity which it gave of displaying the practical and moderate
wisdom of Wilberforce himself, who joined in the opposition to Lord
Percy's motion. "The enemies of abolition had," he said, "always
confounded abolition with emancipation. He and his friends had always
distinguished between them; and not only abstained from proposing
emancipation, but were ready to reject it when proposed by others. How
much soever he looked forward with anxious expectation to the period
when the negroes might with safety be liberated, he knew too well the
effect which the long continuance of abject slavery produced upon the
human mind to think of their immediate emancipation, a measure which at
the present moment would be injurious both to them and to the colonies.
He and those who acted with him were satisfied with having gained an
object which was safely attainable."
And they had reason to be satisfied. For the good work thus done was not
limited by the extent of the British dominions, vast as they are. The
example of the homage thus paid by the Parliament and the nation to
justice and humanity was contagious; the principle on which the bill was
founded and was carried being such that, for mere shame, foreign
countries could hardly persist in maintaining a traffic which those who
had derived the greatest profit from it had on such grounds renounced;
though our ministers did not trust to their spontaneous sympathies, but
made the abolition of the traffic by our various allies, or those who
wished to become so, a constant object of diplomatic negotiations, even
purchasing the co-operation of some by important concessions, in one
instance by the payment of a large sum of money. The conferences and
congresses which took place on the re-establishment of peace gave them
great facilities for pressing their views on the different governments.
And Lord Liverpool's instructions to Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of
Wellington, as plenipotentiaries of our government,[163] show the keen
interest which he took in the matter, and the skilful manner in which he
sought to avail himself of the predominant influence which the exertions
and triumphs of this country had given her with every foreign cabinet.
Though Portugal was an ally to whom we regarded ourselves as bound by
special ties, as well as by the great benefits we had conferred on her,
yet, as she clung with the greatest pertinacity to the trade, he did not
scruple to endeavor to put a constraint upon her which should compel her
submission, and instructed Lord Castlereagh "to induce the Congress to
take the best means in their power to enforce it by the adoption of a
law, on the part of the several states, to exclude the colonial produce
of those countries who should refuse to comply with this system of
abolition."
And exertions so resolutely put forward were so successful, that the
trade was avowedly proscribed by every European nation, though
unquestionably it was still carried on by stealth by merchants and
ship-owners of more than one country--not, if the suspicions of our
statesmen were well founded, without some connivance on the part of
their governments. Nor were our efforts in the cause the fitful display
of impulsive excitement. We have continued them and widened their sphere
as occasions have presented themselves, exerting a successful influence
even over unchristian and semi-civilized governments, of which an
instance has very recently been furnished, in the assurances given by
the Khedive of Egypt to our minister residing at his court, that he is
taking vigorous measures to suppress the slave-trade, which is still
carried on in the interior of Africa; and that we may believe his
promise that he will not relax his exertions till it is extinguished, at
least in the region on the north of the equator.
Individuals, as a rule, are slow to take warning from the experience of
others; slower, perhaps, to follow their example in well-doing. Nations
are slower still. When such an example is followed, still more when it
is adopted by a general imitation, it will usually be found not only
that the good is of a very unusual standard of excellence, but that he
or they who have set the example are endowed with a force of character
that predisposes others to submit to their influence. And credit of this
kind England may fairly claim for the general abolition of the
slave-trade; for the condemnation and abolition of the slave-trade had
this distinguishing feature, that the idea of such a policy was of
exclusively British origin. No nation had ever before conceived the
notion that to make a man a slave was a crime. On the contrary, there
were not wanting those who, from the recognition of such a condition in
the Bible, argued that it was a divine institution. And they who
denounced it, and labored for its suppression, had not only inveterate
prejudice and long custom to contend with, but found arrayed against
them many of the strongest passions that animate mankind. The natural
desire for gain united merchants, ship-owners, and planters in unanimous
resistance to a measure calculated to cut off from them one large source
of profit. Patriotism, which, however misguided, was sincere and free
from all taint of personal covetousness, induced many, who wore wholly
unconnected either with commerce or with the West Indies, to look with
disfavor on a change which not only imperilled the interests of such
important bodies of men, but which they were assured by those concerned,
must render the future cultivation of estates in the West Indies
impracticable; while such a result would not only ruin those valuable
colonies, but would also extinguish that great nursery for our navy
which was furnished by the vessels at present engaged in the West India
trade. To disregard such substantial considerations to risk a loss of
revenue, a diminution of our colonial greatness, and a weakening of our
maritime power, even while engaged in a formidable war, under no other
pressure but that of a respect for humanity and justice, was certainly a
homage to those virtues, and also an act of self-denying courage, of
which the previous history of the world had furnished no similar
example; and it is one of which, in one point of view, the nation may be
more justly proud than of the achievements of its wisest statesmen, or
the exploits of its most invincible warriors. For it was the act of the
nation itself. No previous sentiment of the people paved the way for
Pitt's triumphs in finance, for Nelson's or Wellington's victories by
sea and land; but the slave-trade could never have been abolished by any
parliamentary leader, had not the nation as a whole become convinced of
its wickedness, and, when once so convinced, resolved to brave
everything rather than persist in it. The merit of having impressed it
with this conviction belongs to Mr. Wilberforce, whose untiring,
unswerving devotion of brilliant eloquence and practical ability to the
one holy object, and whose ultimate success, give him a just claim to be
reckoned among the great men of a generation than which the world has
seen none more prolific of every kind of greatness. But the nation
itself is also entitled to no slight credit for having so rapidly
appreciated the force of his teaching, and for having encouraged its
representatives to listen to his voice, by the knowledge that by
adopting his measures they would be carrying out the wish and
determination of the whole people.
A measure for the strengthening of the army, introduced by the Secretary
of State for War, Mr. Windham, though not one of perpetual force, since
it required to be renewed every year, claims a brief mention, from the
extent to which one of its clauses trenched on the freedom of the
subject, by making every man of military age (from sixteen years
old[164] to forty) liable to be compelled to submit to military training
for a certain period of each year. "Nothing," to quote the Secretary's
words, "was to exempt any man from the general training but his becoming
a volunteer at his own expense, the advantage of which would be that he
could train himself if he chose, and fight, if occasion required it, in
the corps to which he should belong, instead of being liable to fall in
among the regulars.... As out of the immense mass of the population some
selection must be made, those called on to be trained were to be
selected by lot, and he would have the people divided into three
classes, between the ages of sixteen and forty: the first class to
comprehend all from sixteen to twenty-four; the second, those between
twenty-four and thirty-two; and the third, all from thirty-two to forty.
The number of days for training he proposed to limit to twenty-six, with
an allowance of a shilling a day for each man." The result aimed at by
this part of his measure was the creation of a force different from and
unconnected with the militia; and he did not conceal his hope that the
military habits which it would implant in a large portion of the
population would lead many of those thus about to be trained to enlist
in the regular army. To the militia itself he paid a high but not
undeserved compliment, declaring it "for home service certainly equal to
any part of our regular forces, with the single exception that it had
never seen actual service." But the militia could not be called on to
serve out of the kingdom; and his object was to increase the force
available for foreign service--"to see the great mass of the population
of the country so far trained as to be able to recruit immediately
whatever losses the regular army might sustain in action." As yet, the
number of men yearly obtained by recruiting fell far short of the
requirements of the service. Wellington had not yet begun that career of
victory which created a national enthusiasm for war, and filled our
ranks with willing soldiers. And another clause of the same bill was
framed in the hope of making the service more acceptable to the
peasantry, by limiting the time for which recruits were to be enlisted,
and entering men, at first, in the infantry for seven years, or in the
cavalry (as that branch of the service required a longer apprenticeship)
for ten; then allowing them the option of renewing their engagement for
two periods--in the infantry of seven years each, in the cavalry of six
and five, with increased pay during each of the two periods, and a small
pension for life, if the soldier retired after the second period; and
"the full allowance of Chelsea," which was to be farther raised to a
shilling a day, for those who elected to serve the whole twenty-one
years. This principle the present reign has seen carried to a much
greater extent, but the change is too recent for even the most
experienced officers to be agreed on its effects. And it is only because
of this recent extension of it that this clause is mentioned here. But
the enactment of a law of compulsory service was clearly an inroad on
the great constitutional right of every man to choose his own
employment. At the same time, it is equally clear that it was only such
an inroad as under the circumstances, was fully justifiable. It is true
that all danger of French invasion had passed away with Trafalgar; but
the kingdom was still engaged in a gigantic war, and the necessity of
the case--always the supreme law--was so little denied by the
Opposition, that their objections to the bill were directed entirely
against the clause for limited enlistment, and not against that which
abridged the subject's liberty, by compelling him to learn to serve his
country in war.
The reign of George III., which had now lasted fifty years, was drawing
practically to a close. The excitement caused by the ministerial changes
in 1801 had already brought on one relapse, though fortunately a very
brief one, of the King's malady of 1788; and in the autumn of 1810 the
death of the daughter who was supposed to be his especial favorite, the
Princess Amelia, produced a recurrence of it, which, though at first the
physicians entertained more sanguine hopes of his speedy recovery than
on any former occasion, he never shook off. More than one change of
ministry had recently taken place. In 1807 Lord Grenville had been
compelled, as Pitt had been in 1801, to choose between yielding his
opinions on the Catholic question or resigning his office, and had
chosen the latter alternative. He had been succeeded for two years by
the Duke of Portland; but in 1809 that nobleman had also retired, and
had been succeeded by his Attorney-general, Mr. Perceval, the only
practising barrister who had ever been so promoted. And he now being
Prime-minister, and, as such, forced to make arrangements for carrying
on the government during the illness of his sovereign, naturally
regarded the course pursued in 1789 as the precedent to be followed.
Accordingly, on the 20th of December he proposed for the adoption of the
House of Commons the same resolutions which Pitt had carried twenty-two
years before--that the King was prevented by indisposition from
attending to public business; that it was the duty of Parliament to
provide means for supplying the defect of the personal exercise of the
royal authority, and its duty also to determine the mode in which the
royal assent to the measures necessary could be signified. And he also
followed Pitt's example in expressing by letter to the Prince of Wales
his conviction that his Royal Highness was a person most proper to be
appointed Regent, and explaining at the same time the restrictions which
seemed proper to be imposed on his immediate exercise of the complete
sovereign authority; though the advanced age at which the King had now
arrived made it reasonable that those restrictions should now be limited
to a single year. The Prince, on his part, showed that time had in no
degree abated his repugnance to those restrictions, and he answered the
minister's letter by referring him to that which he had addressed to
Pitt on the same subject in 1788. And he induced all his brothers to
address to Perceval a formal protest against "the establishment of a
restricted Regency," which they proceeded to describe as perfectly
unconstitutional, as being contrary to and subversive of the principles
which seated their family upon the throne of this realm.[165]
Perceval, however, with Pitt's example before him, had no doubt of the
course which it was his duty to pursue; and the Opposition also, for the
most part, followed the tactics of 1789; the line of argument now
adopted by each party being so nearly identical with that employed on
the former occasion, that it is needless to recapitulate the topics on
which the different speakers insisted; though it is worth remarking that
Lord Holland, who, as the nephew of Fox, thought it incumbent on him to
follow his uncle's guidance, did on one point practically depart from
it. As his uncle had done, he denied the right of the Houses to impose
any restrictions on the Prince's exercise of the royal authority; but,
at the same time, he consented to put what may be called a moral
limitation on that exercise, by adding to an amendment which he proposed
to the resolution proposed by the minister an expression of "the farther
opinion of the House that it will be expedient to abstain from the
exercise of all such powers as the immediate exigencies of the state
shall not call into action, until Parliament shall have passed a bill or
bills for the future care of his Majesty's royal person during his
Majesty's present indisposition."
It is remarkable that the leaders of the Opposition were in a great
degree stimulated in the line they took by the very same hopes which had
animated Fox and his followers in 1789--the expectation that the
Regent's first act would be to discard the existing ministry, and to
place them in office. But again they were disappointed in their
anticipations, of the realization of which they had made so sure that
they had taken no pains to keep them secret. They even betrayed their
mortification to the world when the Prince's intentions on the subject
of the administration became known by the violence of their language in
Parliament, some of their party denouncing the employment of the Great
Seal to give the royal assent to the bill as "fraud and forgery." Nor,
indeed, could the Regent himself, even while expressing his intention to
make no change in the administration, lest "any act of his might in the
smallest degree have the effect of interfering with the progress of his
sovereign's recovery," suppress an expression of dissatisfaction at the
recent arrangements, which he considered had placed him in "a situation
of unexampled embarrassment," and had created "a state of affairs ill
calculated, as he feared, to sustain the interests of the United Kingdom
in this awful and perilous crisis, and most difficult to be reconciled
to the general principles of the British constitution."[166] There were
at this time general and apparently well-founded hopes of the King's
recovery. For at intervals during the whole of January the
Prime-minister had interviews with his Majesty; and, on the very day on
which the bill became law, the King himself mentioned it to Lord Eldon,
the Chancellor, and said that he acquiesced in it from perfect
confidence in the advice of his physicians, and on the sound judgment
and personal attachment of his ministers.
For the present, therefore, no change was made in the administration;
but when, in the spring of the following year, Mr. Perceval was
murdered, the necessity for a new arrangement which this strange and
calamitous atrocity forced upon the Regent--who by this time had come
into possession of his full authority--led to his making offers of the
conduct of affairs to more than one prominent statesman, all of them, as
is somewhat remarkable, being peers. And, though the proposals
eventually came to nothing, and the negotiations terminated in the
re-establishment of the former ministry, with Lord Liverpool at its
head, yet some of the causes to which their failure was publicly or
generally attributed seem desirable to be recorded, because the first,
and that most openly avowed, bears a not very distant resemblance to the
complication which baffled Sir Robert Peel's endeavors to form an
administration in 1839; and another corresponds precisely to a proposal
which, in 1827, the Regent--then King George IV.--did himself make to
the Duke of Wellington. It is unnecessary to dwell on the singular
manner in which the Regent first professed to give his confidence to
Lord Wellesley, then transferred it to Lord Moira,[167] and then to a
certain extent included Lord Grey and Lord Grenville in it. Nor would it
be profitable to discuss the correctness or incorrectness of the
suspicion expressed by Mr. Moore, in his "Life of Sheridan"--who was
evidently at this time as fully in the Regent's confidence as any one
else--that "at the bottom of all these evolutions of negotiation there
was anything but a sincere wish, that the object to which they related
should be accomplished."[168] The reason avowed by Lord Grey and Lord
Grenville for refusing a share in the projected administration was the
refusal of Lord Moira, who had been employed by the Prince to treat with
them on the subject, to allow them to make a power of removing the
officers at present filling "the great offices of the household"[169] an
express condition of their acceptance of ministerial office. They
affirmed that a "liberty to make new appointments" to these offices had
usually been given on every change of administration. But Lord Moira,
while admitting that "the Prince had laid no restriction on him in that
respect," declared that "it would be impossible for him to concur in
making the exercise of this power positive and indispensable in the
formation of the administration, because he should deem it on public
grounds peculiarly objectionable." Such an answer certainly gives a
great color to Moore's suspicion, since it is hardly possible to
conceive that Lord Moira took on himself the responsibility of giving it
without a previous knowledge that it would be approved by his royal
master. In a constitutional point of view, there can, it will probably
be felt, be no doubt that the two lords had a right to the liberty they
required. And the very men concerned, the great officers of the
household, were evidently of the same opinion, since the chief, Lord
Yarmouth, informed Sheridan that they intended to resign, in order that
he might communicate that intention to Lord Grey; and Sheridan, who
concealed the intelligence from Lord Grey, can hardly be supposed, any
more than Lord Moira, to have acted in a manner which he did not expect
to be agreeable to the Prince. But, in Canning's opinion, this question
of the household was only the ostensible pretext, and not the real
cause, of those two lords rejecting the Regent's offers; the real cause
being, as he believed, that the Prince himself had already named Lord
Wellesley as Prime-minister, and that they were resolved to insist on
the right of the Whig party to dictate on that point to the Regent,[170]
just as, in 1782, Fox had endeavored to force the Duke of Portland on
the King, when his Majesty preferred Lord Shelburne. As has been
intimated in a former page, it will be seen hereafter that in 1839 a
similar claim to be allowed to remove some of the ladies of the royal
household, and the rejection of that claim by the sovereign, prevented
Sir R. Peel from forming an administration. And, as that transaction was
discussed at some length in Parliament, it will afford a better
opportunity for examining the principle on which the claim and practice
(for of the practice there is no doubt) rest. For the present it is
sufficient to point out the resemblance between the cases.
But it is remarkable that, unwarrantable as the pretension of the Whig
leaders was to dictate to the Regent to whom he should confide the lead
of the government (if, indeed, Canning be correct in his opinion), yet
it was not one to which the Regent felt any repugnance, since, in 1827,
when Lord Liverpool's illness again left the Treasury vacant, he, being
then on the throne as George IV., proposed to the Duke of Wellington to
desire the remaining members of the administration themselves to select
a chief under whom they would be willing to continue in his service; but
the Duke told him that the plan of allowing them to choose their own
leader would be most derogatory to his position; that the choice of the
Prime-minister was an act which ought to be entirely his own, for that,
in fact under the British constitution, it was the only personal act of
government which the King of Great Britain had to perform.[171] Though
not generally a great authority on constitutional points, we apprehend
that the Duke was clearly correct in this view, which, indeed, has been
so invariably carried out in practice, that the King's suggestion would
not have deserved mention had it not been a king's. So far from it
belonging to any individual subject or to any party to name the
Prime-minister, to do so is even beyond the province of the Parliament.
Parliament decides whether it will give its confidence to an
administration of one party or the other; but not only has no vote ever
been given on the question whether one member of the dominant party be
fitter or not than another to be its head, but we do not remember a
single instance of any member of either House expressing an opinion on
the subject in his place in Parliament. To do so would be felt by every
member of experience to be an infringement on the prerogative of his
sovereign; and it may be added that a contrary practice would certainly
open the door to intrigue, or, what would be equally bad, a suspicion of
intrigue, and would thus inevitably diminish the weight which even the
Opposition desire to see a Prime-minister possess both in Parliament and
in the country.
Notes:
[Footnote 148: It is somewhat remarkable that Lord Macaulay, in his
endeavors to estimate the population in 1685, takes no notice of any of
these details mentioned by Mr. Abbott.]
[Footnote 149: The details of this census of 1801 are given in a note in
the preceding chapter (see page 185), from which it appears that the
entire population of the United Kingdom was in that year 16,395,870. Sir
A. Alison, in different chapters of the second part of his "History of
Europe," gives returns of subsequent censuses, from the last of which
(c. lvi., s. 34, note), it appears that in 1851 the population amounted
to 27,511,862. an increase of 11,116,792 in half a century.]
[Footnote 150: "Lives of the Chief-justices," by Lord Campbell, iii.,
87, life of Lord Kenyon.]
[Footnote 151: "What is this," said George III. to Mr. Dundas, "which
this young lord (Castlereagh) has brought over, which they are going to
throw at my head? The most Jacobinical thing I ever heard of! I shall
reckon any man my personal enemy who proposes any such measure."--_Life
of Pitt_, iii., 274.]
[Footnote 152: "Lives of the Chancellors," c. clxxxiv., life of Lord
Erskine.]
[Footnote 153: "Lives of the Chancellors," c. clix., life of Lord
Thurlow.]
[Footnote 154: See "Memoires de M. de Metternich," ii., 156.]
[Footnote 155: "Lives of the Chief-justices," iii., 175.]
[Footnote 156: Lord Stanhope, "History of England," i., 133.]
[Footnote 157: "Lives of the Chief-justices," ii., 451. He is quoting H.
Walpole.]
[Footnote 158: Ibid., iii., 187.]
[Footnote 159: Campbell's "Lives of the Chief-justices," II., 139, life
of Chief-justice Holt; and p. 418, life of Lord Mansfield.]
[Footnote 160: "Life of Wilberforce," i., 158.]
[Footnote 161: The division in the Lords was 100 to 36; in the Commons,
283 to 16.]
[Footnote 162: Afterward the Earl Grey of 1831.]
[Footnote 163: See especially his "Letters to Lord Castlereagh," p. 814;
and "Life of Lord Liverpool," i., 512; ii., 35, 49, 127.]
[Footnote 164: Lord Colchester's "Diary," ii., 49, dated April 3, 1806,
says eighteen years. But Mr. Windham's speech, as reported in the
"Parliamentary History," second series, vi., 685, says sixteen years;
and as he divides the ages into three classes, the two latter of which,
from twenty-four to thirty-two, and from thirty-two to forty, are of
eight years each, it is probable that the younger class was of the same
duration, i.e., from sixteen to twenty-four.]
[Footnote 165: Lord Colchester's "Diary," ii., 300.]
[Footnote 166: See "Diary of Lord Colchester" (Speaker at the time), c.
xxxvi., p. 316. He gives the whole of the Prince's letter to Perceval
(which had been composed by Sheridan), and of Perceval's reply. The
Regency Bill became law February 5, 1811.]
[Footnote 167: A letter of Lord Wellesley to Lord Grey, June 4 (given by
Pearce, "Life of Lord Wellesley," iii., 270), shows that Lord Moira had
been in communication with Lord Grey and Lord Grenville before Lord
Wellesley had given up the idea of forming a ministry. And though Lord
Grey in his reply (p. 272) expresses his conviction that Lord Moira's
letter was not "an authorized communication," but only "a private
communication," it is clear that it could not have been written without
the privity of the Regent.]
[Footnote 168: "Life of Sheridan," ii., 425.]
[Footnote 169: Pearce's "Life of Lord Wellesley," iii., 276. All the
letters which passed between Lord Grey, Lord Grenville, Lord Moira, and
Lord Wellesley himself are given at full length by Mr. Pearce in that
chapter.]
[Footnote 170: Stapleton's "George Canning and his Times," p. 202.]
[Footnote 171: Mr. Stapleton affirms that his Royal Highness actually
did adopt this plan on this occasion: "His Royal Highness adopted the
unprecedented course of commanding his servants to elect the
First-minister. Their choice fell on Lord Liverpool."--_George Canning
and his Times_, p. 208. Mr. Stapleton, however, gives no authority for
this assertion, and he was probably mistaken, since Lord Liverpool's
papers afford no corroboration of it, but rather tend to disprove it.]