THE REGENCY CRISIS
Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair
That thou wilt needs invest thee with mine honours
Before the hour be ripe?
SHAKESPEARE, _Henry IV_, _Part II._
The line which bounded the royal prerogative, though in general
sufficiently clear, had not everywhere been drawn with accuracy and
distinctness.--MACAULAY.
The causes of insanity are generally obscure. In the case of George
III the disease cannot be traced to a progenitor, nor did it descend
to his issue, unless the moral perversity of his sons be regarded as
a form of mental obliquity. It is highly probable that the conduct
of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York produced in their father
a state of nervous tension conducive to, if not the actual cause of,
madness. No proof of this is possible; but having regard to the King’s
despotic temper, his love of plain living, and his horror of gambling
and debauchery, we may plausibly refer to a private cause the sudden
breakdown of a strong constitution at a time when public affairs had
become singularly calm.
Throughout the summer of 1788 he became steadily weaker. A stay at
Cheltenham was of no avail. Indeed, an enemy of that place tried to
assign the King’s malady solely to its waters. The King had to forego
the long walks and rides which had formerly tired out all his suite;
and in October he returned to Kew much aged and broken. Nevertheless
the indomitable will asserted itself in one curious detail. He always
remained standing during interviews with his Ministers; and he is
stated by George Rose to have kept on his feet for three hours and
forty minutes during a portentous interview with Pitt, which must have
strained his strength to the breaking point.[634] At the levee of 24th
October at St. James’s, he made a praiseworthy effort to appear well in
order “to stop further lies and any fall of the stocks.” But the effort
was too great, as Pitt perceived afterwards during a private interview.
Nevertheless, on the following day the King removed to Windsor. There
the decline in health continued, so that, after attending a hunt, he
exclaimed to Lady Effingham: “My dear Effy, you see me all at once an
old man.”[635] Even so he continued his correspondence with Pitt much
as usual, until on 5th November there came a sudden collapse.
Again we have to confess ignorance as to the final cause. Mrs.
Papendiek, wife of the royal barber, ascribes it to the King’s
annoyance at the endeavour of the Duke of York to introduce Turkish
military instruments into the band of the Guards. Rose mentions a
discussion with the Duke at dinner on the 5th, relative to a murder.
All, however, are agreed that the merest trifles had long sufficed to
make the King flurried and angry, as had frequently appeared during
the drives with the princesses. This peculiarity now suddenly rose to
the point where madness begins. It is even said that at that dinner
he without provocation suddenly rushed at the Prince of Wales, pinned
him to the wall, and dared him to contradict the King of England.
The Prince burst into tears, the Queen became hysterical, and it was
with some difficulty that the King was induced to retire to his room.
During that evening and night he raved incessantly, and the chief
physician, Sir George Baker, feared for his life. A curious incident
is mentioned by Mrs. Papendiek. She avers that on the following night
the King arose, took a candle, and went to look at the Queen as she
slept. She awoke in an agony of terror, whereupon he soothed her and
seemed to take comfort himself. We may doubt the authenticity of the
incident, as also the correctness of Mrs. Papendiek’s narrative when
she describes the offensive air of authority which the Prince of Wales
at once assumed, his demand of an interview with the Queen, even on
political affairs, and his striking the floor with his stick to express
displeasure.[636]
It is certain, however, that the behaviour of the Prince was far
from seemly. He took the direction of affairs in the palace with an
abruptness which caused the Queen much pain. “Nothing was done but by
his orders,” wrote Miss Burney; “the Queen interfered not in anything.
She lived entirely in her two new rooms, and spent the whole day in
patient sorrow and retirement with her daughters.” Worst of his acts,
perhaps, was the taking possession of the King’s papers, a proceeding
which his apologists pass over in discreet silence. Among those
documents, we may note, were several which proved that Pitt had not
seldom drafted the royal rebukes. In other respects the exultation
of the Prince at least wore the veil of decency, therein comparing
favourably with the joy coarsely expressed by his followers at Brooks’s
Club.[637]
Secret intrigues for assuring the triumph of the Whigs began at once.
It is significant that that veteran schemer, the Lord Chancellor,
Thurlow, proceeded to Windsor on 6th November, at the Prince’s command,
and dined and supped with him. The ostensible object of their meeting
was to consider the mode of treating His Majesty, who had been violent
during the night.[638] But the design of the Prince was to detach from
Pitt the highest legal authority in the land. To this he was instigated
by Captain Payne, Comptroller of his Household, who wrote to Sheridan
that Thurlow would probably take this opportunity of breaking with his
colleagues, if they proposed to restrict the powers of the Regent.[639]
Payne augured correctly. Thurlow had his scruples as to such a
betrayal; but they vanished at the suggestion that he should continue
in his high office under the forthcoming Whig Ministry.
This bargain implied the shelving of Lord Loughborough, who for five
years had attached himself to the Whigs in the hope of gaining the
woolsack. Had Fox been in England, it is unlikely that he would have
sanctioned this betrayal of a friend in order to gain over an enemy.
But, with Sheridan as go-between, and the Prince as sole arbiter,
the bargain was soon settled. Light has been thrown on these events
by the publication of the Duchess of Devonshire’s Diary. In it she
says: “He [Sheridan] cannot resist playing a sly game: he cannot
resist the pleasure of acting alone; and this, added to his natural
want of judgment and dislike of consultation frequently has made him
commit his friends and himself.”[640] Perhaps it was some sense of
the untrustworthiness of Sheridan which led Fox, in the midst of a
Continental tour with Mrs. Armstead, to return from Bologna at a speed
which proved to be detrimental to his health. After a journey of only
nine days, he arrived in London on the 24th. It was too late to stop
the bargain with Thurlow, and he at once informed Sheridan that he had
swallowed the bitter pill and felt the utmost possible uneasiness about
the whole matter.[641]
The Whigs now had a spy in the enemy’s citadel. At first Pitt was not
aware of the fact. The holding of several Cabinet meetings at Windsor,
for the purpose of sifting the medical evidence, enabled Thurlow to
hear everything and secretly to carry the news to the Prince. Moreover,
his grief on seeing the King--at a time when the Prince’s friends knew
him to be at his worst[642]--was so heartrending that some beholders
were reminded of the description of the player in “Hamlet”:
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit.
Such at least was the judgement of the discerning few, who, with Fanny
Burney, saw more real grief in the dignified composure of Pitt after
that inevitably painful interview. Authority to “inspect” the royal
patient was entrusted to Thurlow, who thus stood at the fountain head
of knowledge. Yet these astute balancings and bargainings were marred
by the most trivial of accidents. After one of the Cabinet Councils
at Windsor, Ministers were about to return to town, when Thurlow’s
hat could not be found. Search was made for it in vain in the council
chamber, when at last a page came up to the assembled Ministers and
exclaimed with boyish frankness: “My Lord, I found it in the cabinet
of His Royal Highness.” The flush which spread over the Chancellor’s
wrinkled visage doubled the effect of the boy’s unconscious
home-thrust.[643]
The question of the Regency has often been discussed on abstract
constitutional grounds. Precedents were at once hunted up, namely,
those of the years, 1326, 1377, 1422, and 1455, the last being
considered on a par with the present case. But of course the whole
question turned primarily on the probability of the King’s recovery.
Here it should be noted that George III had been afflicted by a mental
malady for a few weeks in the year 1765, and that a Regency Bill was
drafted but the need for it vanished.[644] This fact was not widely
known, but it must have come to the knowledge of the Prince of Wales.
In view of the sound constitution and regular life of the King, there
were good grounds for hoping that he would a second time recover.
Nevertheless, the reports of Sir George Baker, on behalf of Dr. Warren
and the other physicians, as sent to Pitt, were at first discouraging.
As they have not before been published it will be well to cite them
here almost _in extenso_ from the Pitt Papers, No. 228. They are dated
from the Queen’s Lodge, Windsor:
_Nov. 6._ 9 o’clock:--Sir George Baker presents his comp^{ts} to
Mr. Pitt. He is very sorry to inform Mr. Pitt that the King’s
delirium has continued through the whole day. There seems to
be no prospect at present of a change either for the better or
worse. H.M. is now rather in a quiet state. _Nov. 8, 1788._ 8
o’clock:--The dose of James’s powder which the King had taken
before Mr. Pitt left Windsor produced a gentle perspiration but no
diminution of the delirium; a second dose taken six hours after
the first, is now operating in the same manner but with as little
effect upon the delirium. _Nov. 10, 1788._ 8 p.m.:--H.M. has but
little fever, is very incoherent, but without vehemence or bodily
efforts, though his strength appears to be very little impaired.
_Nov. 12, 1788_:--H.M. talked in a quiet but incoherent way the
whole night and is this morning just as he was yesterday. He has
eaten a very good breakfast. _Nov. 15, 1788._ 10 p.m.:--H.M. has
been deranged the whole day, in a quiet and apparently happy way
to himself. _Nov. 16._ 10 a.m.:--This morning his discourse was
consistent, but the principle upon which it went for the most part
founded in error. _Nov. 18_, 10 a.m.:--H.M. had a good night, but
the disorder remains unabated. _Nov. 21_:--H.M. has been ... more
than once under the influence of considerable irritation. _Nov.
22._ 10 a.m.:--H.M. is entirely deranged this morning in a quiet
good humoured way. _Nov. 22_:--H.M. shewed many marks of a deluded
imagination in the course of the day. In the evening he was more
consistent.
* * * * *
[A letter follows from the Queen, that she consents to the calling
in Dr. Addington.]
* * * * *
_Nov. 24, 1788_:--His Majesty passed the whole day in a perfectly
maniacal state.[645] _Nov. 25, 1788_:--His Majesty was not enraged
nor surprised at the strict regimen under which he was put at
5 o’clock this evening, but grew quieter and went to bed at 9
o’clock, and is now asleep.
From the outset Pitt viewed the case with grave concern, but by no
means hopelessly. This will appear from the following new letters
of Pitt, the former to Bishop Pretyman (Tomline), the latter to the
Marquis of Buckingham:
Sunday, _Nov. 10, [1788]_.[646]
MY DEAR BISHOP,
You will have heard enough already of the King’s illness to make
you very uneasy. The fact is that it has hitherto found little
relief from medicine, and, what is worst of all, it is attended
with a delirium the cause of which the physicians cannot clearly
ascertain. On the whole there is some room to apprehend the
disorder may produce danger to his life, but there is no immediate
symptom of danger at present. The effect more to be dreaded is on
the understanding. If this lasts beyond a certain time it will
produce the most difficult and delicate crisis imaginable in making
provision for the Government to go on. It must, however, be yet
some weeks before that can require decision, but the interval will
be a truly anxious one....
[Private.]
* * * * *
Downing Street, _Nov. 15, 1788_.[647]
MY DEAR LORD,
I have not half time [_sic_] to thank you sufficiently for your
very kind and affectionate letter, and for the communication thro’
Grenville. You will learn from him that our last accounts begin
to wear rather a more favourable aspect, tho’ there is not yet
ground for very confident hope. There is certainly now no danger to
his life, but the other alternative, which there was some danger
to apprehend, was, if possible, more distressing. It seems now
possible that a total recovery may take place, but even on the
best supposition there must still be a considerable interval of
anxiety....
Grenville, a man of singularly calm and equable temperament (which
procured for him the Speakership of the House of Commons on the decease
of Cornwall early in the next year) waxed indignant as he described
to his brother the tactics of the Opposition. On 20th November he
declared: “The Opposition have been taking inconceivable pains to
spread the idea that his [the King’s] disorder is incurable. Nothing
can exceed Warren’s indiscretion on this subject.”[648] The conviction
gained ground that the Royal physicians were in league with the Prince;
and so high did feeling run that shouts were flung at them--“So much
the worse for you if he does not recover.” This exasperation of spirit
waxed apace as the jubilation of the Prince’s friends became insolently
patent. Indeed more terrible than the lunacy itself was the spectacle
of the intrigues to which it gave rise.
As the reports privately sent to Pitt by the physicians were far from
hopeless, he determined to await developments as long as possible
before taking any decided step. On 12th November he proposed to the
Prince of Wales that Parliament, instead of meeting in the following
week, should be adjourned for a fortnight, to which there came a ready
assent.[649] On the 17th he asked leave to inform the Prince of what
he proposed to do on the meeting of Parliament, but an interview was
not accorded. Eight days later the Prince inquired whether he had any
proposal to make, but was answered by a polite negative. The uneasy
truce between them evidently neared its end.
In his resolve to sift to the bottom the nature of the disease and the
probability of a cure, Pitt advised the calling in of his father’s
doctor, Addington, and he carried his point. On the 28th and 29th
the Prime Minister himself saw the Monarch, who was pleased to see
him, referred to questions discussed at their last interview, and
showed incoherence chiefly in wandering incessantly from one topic
to another,[650] a characteristic of the converse of polite Society,
which, if judged severely, would warrant the consignment to Bedlam of
half of its most cherished talkers.
All observers are agreed that the King conversed quite rationally at
times, as was also the case in the attack of 1804.[651] Pitt therefore
resolved to do nothing which would distress the King in the event
of his recovery. This it was which led him to decline all idea of a
coalition with the Whigs, and to insist on restricting the authority of
the Regent in regard to personal matters on which the King laid stress.
The removal of the monarch to Kew House seems to have been the wish of
the Prince as well as of the Cabinet; and it took place without mishap
on 29th November.
* * * * *
Six days later Parliament re-assembled, and rarely has it had to face
problems so novel and delicate. In contrast with other nations, England
had been singularly free from the perplexities attendant on a Regency;
but now she had to face them in an acute form. The monarch was not
unpopular, and his heir was distrusted. Yet it was indisputable that,
as Regent, he could choose his own Ministers; and his hatred of Pitt
implied the dismissal of that Minister and the triumph of Sheridan,
Fox, and the roystering set at Brooks’s. Pitt felt little doubt on this
point and calmly prepared to resume his practice at the Bar. The sequel
must have been a sharp conflict between the Prince’s friends and the
nation; so that the fateful year 1789 would have seen the growth of a
political crisis, less complex than that of France, it is true, but
fully as serious as that from which the nation was saved by his timely
decease in the summer of the year 1830. All this was at stake, and
much more. For who shall measure the worth to the nation of the frugal
and virtuous life of George III, and who can count up the moral losses
inflicted on the national life by his son in his brief ascendancy?
The King’s physicians having been examined by the Privy Council on 3rd
December, their evidence was laid before Parliament on the following
day. While differing at many points, they agreed that recovery was
possible or even probable, but they could not assign a limit of time.
Adopting a suggestion of Fox, Pitt moved for the appointment of a
Committee of the House for the examination of the physicians. It
comprised twenty-one members selected from two lists suggested by the
Ministry and the Opposition. The reading out of the final list led to
a singular scene. Not much comment was made on the twenty names, but
before reading out the last name, Pitt paused for a moment. At once
the Opposition raised cries of “Burke.” Still Pitt remained silent.
The cries were renewed more loudly. He then very quietly proposed
Lord Gower. Burke threw himself back in his seat, crossed his arms
violently, and kicked his heels with evident discomposure.[652] The
annoyance of the great Irishman was natural, as Pitt had evidently
prepared to inflict the slight. The Upper House appointed a similar
committee.
The report based on this inquiry was presented by Pitt to the House
of Commons on the 10th. It comprised the evidence, not only of the
royal physicians, but also of an outsider, the Rev. Dr. Francis Willis
who, during twenty-eight years had supervised some 900 cases of lunacy
at his residence near Boston. Everyone admitted his success in this
trying work, which may be ascribed to the influence of a commanding
personality, and the firm and judicious treatment which he substituted
for the frequently violent methods then in vogue. He at once pronounced
the case far from hopeless; and, if we may trust the stories told of
the King and his new physician, there was even at the outset very much
of method in the madness. Thus, on being informed that Willis was
a clergyman, the patient remarked that he could not approve of his
taking to the practice of medicine. This drew from Willis the remark
that Christ went about healing the sick, whereupon the retort at once
followed--“Yes; but I never heard that he had £700 a year for doing
so.” The acuteness of the King’s faculties also appears in his remark
that a letter which he had written to the Queen would not reach her, as
his recent missive to the Duke of York had not been answered. Thereupon
Willis offered to take it himself, and caused great joy to the sufferer
by bringing back an affectionate letter in reply.
Yet the King soon felt the domination of his will. This appeared
when the royal patient refused to go to bed. As the King petulantly
resisted, Willis raised his voice in commanding tones which ensured
complete submission. The trust which Willis reposed in the King led
him to lengths that were sharply censured. When the sufferer expressed
a desire to shave himself and complained that a razor and even a knife
had been withheld from him, Willis at once replied that he was sure
His Majesty had too strong a sense of what he owed to God and man to
make an improper use of it. He therefore brought a razor, and kept the
monarch under his eye until the growth of five weeks was removed. This
tactful treatment speedily wrought a marked change. Willis was far more
sanguine than the other attendants.[653] In his evidence before the
Committee on 9th December, he stated that the irritation was already
subsiding, and that nine-tenths of his patients who had been similarly
afflicted recovered, generally within three months from their first
seizure.[654]
Willis’s words aroused the liveliest hopes. In vain did the Prince’s
party and the physicians scoff at the assurance of the “quack” or
“interloper.” The Queen and the nation believed in Willis; and his
report greatly strengthened Pitt’s hands in dealing with the Regency.
The more we know of the motives that influenced votes in Parliament
the more we see that they turned on the opinions of the doctors. The
desertion of the Duke of Queensberry to the Prince’s party was due to
a long conversation which he had at Windsor with the pessimistic Dr.
Warren.[655]
The conduct of the Prime Minister was cautious and tentative. On
10th December, after presenting the medical evidence, he moved the
appointment of a committee to investigate precedents. At once Fox
started to his feet and poured forth a vehement remonstrance. What need
was there for such an inquiry? It was merely a pretext for delay. The
heir-apparent was of mature age and capacity. He had as clear a right
to take the reins of government and to exercise the sovereign power
during the King’s illness as he would have in case of death. Parliament
had only to determine when he had the right to exercise it; and as
short a time as possible should elapse before the Prince assumed the
sovereignty.
Here, as so often, Fox marred his case by his impetuosity. Pitt
watched him narrowly, and remarked exultantly to his neighbour: “I’ll
_un-Whig_ the gentleman for the rest of his life.” With eyes flashing
defiance, he denounced his assertions of the right of the Prince to
assume the Regency as a breach of the constitution, implying as they
did that the House could not even deliberate on the question. They must
therefore in the first place assert their own rights.
Fox at once rose, not to soften, but to emphasize his previous
statements. He questioned whether Parliament had the power of
legislating at all until the royal power were made good. Now that
the King had been admitted to be incapable, their assembly was a
Convention, not a Parliament. He next asserted that the Regency
belonged of right to the Prince of Wales during the civil death of
the King; and “that it could not be more legally his by the ordinary
and natural demise of the Crown.” This was tantamount to saying that
English law recognized lunacy as death, in which case an heir could at
once possess the property of a lunatic father, and a wife be divorced
from an insane husband. Of course this is not so.[656] Fox concluded
by asserting that, if Parliament arrogated to itself the power of
nominating the Regent, it would act “contrary to the spirit of the
constitution and would be guilty of treason.”
Pitt, on the contrary, affirmed that the Prince had no such claim to
the Regency as would supersede the right of either House to deliberate
on the subject. He even ventured on the startling assertion that apart
from the decision of Parliament “the Prince of Wales had no more right
(speaking of strict right) to assume the government than any other
individual subject of the country.”[657] This phrase is generally
quoted without the qualifying clause, which materially alters it.
Pitt surely did not mean to deny the priority of the claim of the
Prince, but rather to affirm the supreme authority of Parliament; the
statement, however was undeniably over-strained. In the main he carried
the House with him. In vain did Burke declaim against Pitt, styling
him a self-constituted competitor with the Prince. “Burke is Folly
personified,” wrote Sir William Young on 22nd December, “but shaking
his cap and bells under the laurel of genius.”[658] The sense of the
House was clearly with the Prime Minister, and the committee of inquiry
was appointed.
At the outset, then, Fox and his friends strained their contentions to
breaking-point. In a technical sense their arguments could be justified
by reference to the dead past; but they were out of touch with the
living present. Fox himself had admitted that no precedent could be
found for this problem. A practical statesman would therefore have
sought to adapt the English constitution (which is a growing organism,
not a body of rigid rules) to the needs of the present crisis. By his
eager declarations he left this course open for Pitt to take; and
that great parliamentarian took it with masterly power. He resolved
to base his case on the decisions arrived at in the Revolution of a
century earlier which had affirmed the ascendancy of Parliament in all
questions relating to a vacancy in the Crown or a disputed succession.
Men said that he was becoming a Republican, and Fox a Tory.[659]
Fortunately he had to do with singularly indiscreet opponents. After
Fox had prejudiced the Prince’s cause, Sheridan rushed in to mar its
prospects still further. In the debate of 12th December he ventured to
remind Pitt of the danger of provoking the assertion of the Prince’s
claim to the Regency. Never did Sheridan’s hatred of Pitt betray him
into a more disastrous blunder.[660] His adversary at once turned it to
account:
I have now [he said] an additional reason for asserting the
authority of the House and defining the boundaries of “Right,”
when the deliberative faculties of Parliament are invaded and an
indecent menace is thrown out to awe and influence our proceedings.
In the discussion of the question I trust the House will do its
duty in spite of any threat that may be thrown out. Men who feel
their native freedom will not submit to a threat, however high the
authority from which it may come.[661]
We must here pause in order to notice the allegations of Mr. Lecky
against Pitt. That distinguished historian asserted that the conduct of
the Prime Minister towards the Prince “was from the first as haughty
and unconciliatory as possible”; he claims that the plan of a Regency
should have been submitted to the Prince before it was laid before
Parliament; further, that, in defiance of the expressed wish of
the Prince, “Pitt insisted on bringing the question of the Prince’s
right to a formal issue and obtaining a vote denying it.”[662] It is
difficult to see on what grounds this indictment rests. Surely it was
the duty of the Privy Council and Parliament first to hear the medical
evidence and to decide whether the need for the Regency existed. That
was the purport of the debate of 10th December, the details of which
prove conclusively that it was Fox who first, and in a most defiant
way, brought up the question of the Prince’s right to assume the
Regency. Pitt, in a temperate and non-committal speech, had moved
for a “Committee of Inquiry,” whereupon the Whig leader flung down
the gauntlet for the Prince; and two days later Sheridan uttered his
threat.[663] Their auditors must have inferred that they acted with the
sanction of Carlton House. In any case, the Prince’s friends, not Pitt,
provoked the conflict. When the glove was twice cast down, the Prime
Minister could do nothing else but take it up and insist on having
that question disposed of; otherwise Parliament might as well have
dissolved outright. We may admit, however, that the intemperate conduct
of Fox and Sheridan led Pitt to assert the authority of Parliament with
somewhat more stringency than the case warranted.
To the contention, that the Prince ought first to have been consulted
on the proposed measure, I may reply that such a course would have
implied his right to dictate his terms to Parliament; and that was the
very question which Pitt wished to probe by the Committee of Inquiry.
Further, the historian’s assertion, that Pitt laid the Regency plan
before Parliament before submitting it to the Prince, is disproved by
the contents of Pitt’s letter of 15th December, published in full by
Bishop Tomline.[664] In it the Prime Minister expressed his regret that
his words and intentions had been misrepresented to His Royal Highness;
for on several occasions he had offered to wait on him but had received
an answer that he (the Prince) had no instructions for him. He denied
the accuracy of the report that he was about on the morrow to submit
to Parliament his plan for the Regency. His motion merely affirmed the
right of Parliament to deliberate on the present emergency; but the
course of the recent debate had compelled him to outline his ideas.
They were these: that the Regency should be vested in the Prince,
with the power of freely choosing his Ministers, unrestrained by any
Council. He had declined, and begged still to decline, to detail the
other powers, because the House might reject his opinions as to its
right to deliberate on the present crisis. If he gained its approval,
he would be honoured by the Prince’s permission to state to him the
opinions which, after due inquiry, Ministers were able to form on the
further proposals that might be submitted to Parliament.
Was this language “arrogant” and “unconciliatory”? Could a Minister
show more tact in seeking to harmonize the functions of the monarchy
and of Parliament? Far from bringing his scheme cut and dried before
Parliament and then foisting it upon the Prince, Pitt was compelled by
the attack of Fox to outline his plan in Parliament, but he stated his
views to the Prince courteously, and at the earliest opportunity. The
only other possible alternative was to allow the Prince to take the
matter into his own hands and override the powers of Parliament. It is
also noteworthy that not until the next day (16th December) did Pitt
move three Resolutions on the subject, and these were of a preliminary
character, affirming the right and duty of Parliament to take steps for
meeting the present emergency.[665]
It should further be noted that the declaration of the Prince of Wales
of his wish not to press his right was not made until the debate of
15th December in the House of Lords. The Duke of York, in a very
tactful speech, said that his brother “understood too well the sacred
principles which seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of Great
Britain ever to assume or exercise any power, be his claim what it
might, not derived from the will of the people, expressed by their
representatives and their Lordships in Parliament assembled.”[666] If
Fox and Sheridan had treated the question in this way, there would
have been no dispute. On the other hand the Prince does not seem to
have sent a reply to the Prime Minister’s missive; and his discourtesy
probably led to the discontinuance of further communications from Pitt
until that of 30th December, soon to be noticed.
The debates in the House of Lords were generally of small interest. But
that of 15th December was memorable, not only for the tactful speech
of the Duke of York noticed above, but also for the astute balancings
of Thurlow. By the middle of December that political Blondin had seen
the need of retracing his steps. As has already appeared, Fox strongly
disapproved of shelving Loughborough in order to win Thurlow; and the
clamour of the Whig peer, added to the arguments of Fox, led the Prince
of Wales to retract his promise to the Chancellor. Even this, perhaps,
would not have turned him had he not come to believe that Warren was
wrong and Willis was right. Discerning a balance of gain in favour of
fidelity to the King, he played that part with an emotion peculiarly
affecting in so rugged a nature. His shaggy eyebrows rose and fell with
great solemnity, as he deprecated these discussions on the “right” of
this or that member of the constitution. They should await the inquiry
into the precedents of the case. Meanwhile their duty was to preserve
the dignities of the monarch intact until he should recover. Feelings
of loyalty and gratitude imposed that duty, and particularly on
himself, the recipient of so many benefits, “which whenever I forget,
may God forget me.”[667] Two men who listened to that climax expressed
their feelings with diverse emphasis. Pitt, who knew all but the latest
developments of the Thurlow-Sheridan intrigue, exclaimed, “Oh! the
rascal.” In Wilkes a sense of humour, unclouded by disgust, prompted
the witticism: “Forget you! He’ll see you damned first.”
On 30th December, that is, seven days before the preliminary proposals
for a Regency came before the House of Commons, Pitt drafted his
suggestions in a most deferential letter to the Prince of Wales. In
brief they were as follows. Ministers desired that the Prince should
be empowered to exercise the royal authority, the care of the King
and the control of his household being, however, vested in the Queen.
The Regent, also, could not assign the King’s property, grant any
office beyond His Majesty’s pleasure, or bestow any peerage except
on the King’s children after attaining their majority--restrictions
which merely registered the belief that the King’s illness was only
temporary. At this time (the dawn of 1789) there were clear signs to
this effect; and Willis drew up a report laying stress on his partial
recovery; but, on his pressing Warren to sign it, the Whig practitioner
refused.
Thus opened the most fateful of all years of modern history. The
Whigs, the erstwhile guardians of popular freedom and the rights of
Parliament, were straining every nerve to prove the King hopelessly
insane, to foist upon the English people a hated Prince with
unrestrained powers, as if Parliament had no voice in the matter,
and to discredit the Prime Minister by representing his conduct as
unconstitutional, and his letter to the Prince as insolent.
The best brains of the party were also concentrated on the task
of inventing for the Prince a telling and dignified rejoinder.
Political philosophy, law, and wit, came to his aid in the form of
Burke, Loughborough, and Sheridan. Or, rather, the first two drafted
the reply, which Sheridan then touched up. The brilliant Irishman
pronounced the effusion of his sager compatriot “all fire and tow,”
and that of the jurist “all ice and snow.” Fox, it seems, was to have
revised the result; but the charms of Devonshire House on New Year’s
Day detained “Sherry” far into the night; and the document, hastily
copied by Mrs. Sheridan, was hurried off to Carlton House without the
promised recension at Holland House or Brooks’s Club. Fox was furious
at this neglect, and called his friend names which the latter preferred
not to repeat to the Duchess.[668]
Such was this famous concoction. Connoisseurs, unaware of the facts,
have confidently pronounced it the mellow vintage of Burke. Indeed, it
is probable that the body of it may be his, while the bouquet may be
Sheridan’s and the dregs Loughborough’s; but, the personal ingredients
being unknown, it is useless to attempt a qualitative analysis. One
thing alone is certain, that the Prince wrote not a word of it, but
merely signed the fair copy when made out by Mrs. Sheridan. Thereupon
the expectant Junto planned its public tapping, as an appetizing
foretaste of the political wisdom of the new _régime_, Pitt meanwhile
being dubbed a Republican and an insidious weakener of the executive
power.
In more ways than one the situation was piquant. The _volte face_ of
parties was odd enough. Pitt seemed about to impair the strength of the
hereditary principle and to exalt the power of Parliament; while the
Whigs, who vehemently assailed the kingly prerogative in 1784, now as
ardently belauded it in the person of the Prince. This contradiction
extended even to details. Amidst all his appeals to precedents
respecting a Regency, Pitt must in reality have resolved to discard
them; and all research into the customs of the then almost absolute
monarchy must have strengthened the case of those who scolded him for
resorting to this device. But, in truth, all these inconsistencies
vanish when we remember that the questions at issue were primarily
medical and personal. Pitt’s whole policy was therefore one of delay.
Owing to the death of the Speaker, Cornwall, and the subsequent
election of William Grenville as his successor, the debates on the
Regency were not resumed until 6th January; and ten more days elapsed
before other preliminary questions were disposed of and the ministerial
proposals were laid before the House. They were in substance the
same as those submitted to the Prince on 30th December, except that
a Council was now suggested for the purpose of assisting the Queen
in the guardianship of the King and the regulation of the royal
household.[669] It would be tedious to follow the course of the very
lengthy debates which ensued. Ministers carried the Resolutions in both
Houses; and the Prince somewhat grudgingly consented to act as Regent
on the terms now proposed.
At the end of January Ministers proposed to legalize the proceedings
of Parliament by the issue of letters patent under the Great Seal.
A Commission was also appointed for the purpose of giving the royal
assent and affixing the Seal to measures passed by the two Houses.[670]
In spite of a vehement protest by Burke, that he worshipped the gods
of our glorious constitution, but would never bow down to Priapus
(Thurlow), these proposals were carried. Not until 5th February were
preliminaries disposed of; and Pitt then produced his Regency Bill. As
it happened, the Opposition marred its own prospects by these dilatory
tactics; for in a fortnight’s time it was known that the need for the
Bill had vanished.
The importance of these debates centres in the treatment of a very
complex question by the two great rivals, Pitt and Fox. The conduct
of the former has been sufficiently outlined. It remains to say a few
words on that of Fox. Few of his speeches are more ingenious than
those on the Regency. As a forcible handling of a weak case they have
few equals. But the House of Commons is rarely won over by a dazzling
display of “tongue-fencing.” It demands to see the applicability
of arguments to the needs of the time. This has been its peculiar
excellence. Its deliberations are rarely lit up with the radiance of
immortal truths; but they are suffused with the comforting glow of
the domestic hearth. Fox forgot this. In contrast with the accepted
Whig doctrine, he put forth claims which, if pressed to their natural
conclusion, would have implied the restoration of monarchy of the
pre-Revolution type. If it was true that the Prince of Wales could
demand the Regency as a right, or even as a “legal claim,” free from
all restrictions, how much more could the King govern independently of
Parliament? A Regent is to a King what the moon is to the sun--a merely
borrowed and temporary splendour. Apart, then, from an inconsistency of
conduct highly damaging to a statesman, Fox committed the mistake of
pledging himself to a scheme of government which was not only obsolete
but unworkable.
Those who plod through the wearisome debates on the Regency must be
conscious of an air of unreality. The references on both sides of the
House to the cases of Edward VI or Henry VI were, after all, illusory;
for in those times the powers of Parliament were ill defined. The
nearest parallel to the present case was supplied by the events of
1688; and though pedants might appeal to certain forms observed by the
Convention of that year, the significance of those events undoubtedly
lay in the assertion of the supremacy of Parliament in all cases of a
temporary lapse of the royal power. The argument for the supremacy of
Parliament in all doubtful cases acquired redoubled strength from the
Act of Settlement of 1701, which set aside hereditary right in favour
of the House of Brunswick.
The arguments of Fox as to the inherent right of the Prince of Wales to
the Regency must therefore be pronounced archaically interesting but
inconclusive for any member of the reigning dynasty. The fact that they
were adopted by the Irish Parliament adds nothing to their force; for
that body was known to act more from corrupt motives or from opposition
to George III and his Lord-Lieutenant, the Marquis of Buckingham, than
from monarchical zeal.[671]
The divisions in the Parliament at Westminster were also much
influenced by similar considerations. The numbers of those who went
over to the Prince’s side were surprisingly large. Among the Peers, the
cases of the Marquis of Lothian and the Duke of Queensberry attracted
especial notice, as they had received many benefits from the King. Of
those helped on by Pitt, Lord Malmesbury and Gerald Hamilton (commonly
known as “Single-Speech” Hamilton) were the worst defaulters. The
former, after calling on Pitt to assure him of his devotion, suddenly
“ratted” to the Prince and sent a very lame letter of excuse. To this
Pitt replied that he had certainly misunderstood every expression in
their late interview, and begged his Lordship to act in any way he
thought fit without troubling to send an apology.[672] Malmesbury
sought to appease his friend Carmarthen by offering to call and discuss
things in the old way; but, if he had lost his esteem, he would prefer
to retire and feed goats on a mountain “out of the reach of d--d Kings
and d--d Regents.”[673] What Carmarthen thought of the defaulters
appeared in his witty reply to someone who asked how it came about
that Fox had let the cat out of the bag so soon--“To catch the rats, I
suppose.”
The pamphlet literature that sprang up at this crisis is highly
interesting. The hacks employed by the Opposition persistently accused
Pitt of aiming at dictatorial power--a theme on which they richly
embroidered, despite the well-known fact that he was preparing to
resume his position as a barrister. It is somewhat significant that,
while the nation warmly supported Pitt, he was bitterly assailed by
Grub Street and Soho. Anonymous writers confidently foretold his
ascendancy and the ruin of England. “A few years, perhaps, and our
boasted commonwealth may be numbered among the governments that
cover the earth--the awful ruins of edifices once consecrated to the
rights and happiness of the human kind.”[674] A “Private Citizen”
urged the drawing up of an address to the Prince begging him to take
the full regal power as a “simple and obvious mode of restoring the
constitutional government to its full vigour.”[675] A flurried patriot
declared that he knew of “but one alarming Regency, which is that of
ambitious Ministers voting themselves in power.”[676] Another citizen,
surely of Jacobite tendencies, proved that no power in the universe
could appoint a Regent; for he assumed that office solely by hereditary
right. As for “Regent Ministers,” they would every day prostitute the
dignity of the Crown in the animosities of debate, and the state of
England would soon be worse than that of Poland.[677] Similar in tone
is an “Address to those Citizens who had resisted the Claim of the
late House of Commons to nominate the Ministers of the Crown.” The
writer asserts that only sophistry can deny that the sole question now
is whether Pitt and his colleagues shall be invested with the regal
authority with unlimited powers and for an indefinite period.[678]
These insinuations harmonize with those which Buckingham found in
circulation at Dublin; that the King had long been insane, but Pitt
had concealed the fact in order to govern without control; and that
the plan of a restricted Regency was the outcome of the same lust for
power.[679]
The falsity of these charges is obvious. Whether the Regency were
a right or a trust, the Prince of Wales in the middle of February
was about to become Regent; and if he chose to risk a conflict
with Parliament he might at once dismiss Pitt and summon Fox to his
counsels. On this all-important question there were no restrictions
whatsoever. The restrictions solely concerned the relations between the
Regent and the King, with two exceptions. These were the entrusting the
Great Seal to a Commission, and the forbidding the Regent to create
Peers except among the royal family; and here the aim obviously was to
prevent the Prince obstructing legislation and swamping the House of
Lords with his own nominees.
That the Prince did not dismiss Pitt was due, not to the lack of legal
power to do so, but to the opportune recovery of the King. As appears
by the reports of Dr. Willis, his health steadily improved throughout
February. It is clear that Fox, who was drinking the waters at Bath,
disbelieved the official bulletins on this subject and looked forward
to a lease of power; for he wrote to Fitzpatrick on 17th February
in terms of jubilation at the decision of the Irish Parliament, and
added: “I hope by this time all idea of the Prince or any of us taking
action in consequence of the good reports of the King are at an end:
if they are not, do all you can to crush them.... I rather think, as
you do, that Warren has been frightened. I am sure, if what I hear is
true, that he has not behaved well.... Let me know by the return of
the post on what day the Regency is like to commence.”[680] From this
it is obvious that the pessimism of Dr. Warren was not uninfluenced by
political considerations.
The Prince was either better informed or more cautious than his
favourite. On that same day a bulletin appeared announcing the King’s
convalescence. The signatories included Dr. Warren, who speedily fell
into disgrace with the Prince’s friends. On the 19th, at the request of
the King, Thurlow had an interview with him and informed him of what
had happened during his illness. We may be sure that the Chancellor’s
narrative illustrated that power of language to conceal thought which
Talleyrand held to be its choicest function. Thurlow, on his return to
town, moved the adjournment of the debate on the Regency Bill, which
proved to be the beginning of the end of that measure.
A still severer test of the King’s powers was afforded by his
interview four days later with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of
York. The Queen was present the whole time, and political topics
were of course avoided. Grenville asserts that after that interview
the Princes drove straight to Mrs. Armstead’s house in Park Street in
hopes of finding Fox there and informing him of the King’s condition.
Certain it is that, according to Willis’s report to Pitt, “the Princes
expressed great astonishment and satisfaction to Colonel Digby after
their interview with the King, remarking only one or two trifling
circumstances in which they thought His Majesty was not perfectly
right. The King has been perfectly composed since, and his anxiety
to see Mr. Pitt increases to that degree that probably Mr. Pitt will
receive a message to that purport to-morrow morning.”[681] Accordingly
Pitt saw his sovereign on the 24th, and found him calm and dignified,
without the slightest sign of flurry or disorder of mind. He spoke
of his illness as a thing entirely past, and with tears in his eyes
thanked all those who had stood by him. Even his emotion did not
derange his faculties or mar his equanimity.[682]
Meanwhile at Westminster the Opposition sought to vie with their
rivals in expressions of loyal joy at the King’s recovery. Viscount
Stormont and other deserters to the Prince’s side hastened to avow
their satisfaction; and the Duke of York displayed some skill in
depicting the heartfelt joy which filled his heart and that of his
royal brother--sentiments which they further proceeded to illustrate
by plunging into a round of orgies.[683] In the Commons Fox sought
decently to draw a veil over the disappointment of his partisans.
The Providence which watches over the affairs of mortals sometimes
wills that the _dénouement_ of a problem shall come with dramatic
effect. It was so now. The recovery of the King occurred in the very
week to which the Prince’s friends were eagerly looking forward as the
time of entry into his enchanted palace.[684] Their chagrin, at the
very moment when the paeans of triumph were on their lips, recalls
the thrilling scene in “Paradise Lost,” where the fiends are about to
acclaim Satan at the end of the recital of his triumph over mankind,
and raise their throats for the shout of victory, when, lo, the sound
dies away in
A dismal universal hiss
issuing from thousands of forms suddenly become serpentine.[685]
Such (if we may compare small things with great) was the swift change
from exultation to disgust which came over the Prince’s friends.
Shortly before the critical day, the 19th, they had declared that,
were the Regent in power only for twelve hours, he would make a clean
sweep of all official appointments. Indeed, from the outset, he and his
followers had let it be known that no mercy would be shown to the Pitt
Administration and its officials.[686] There is a manifest absurdity in
the assertion of Sir Gilbert Elliot, that Ministers and their adherents
looked on the Prince’s following “as a prey to be hunted down and
destroyed without mercy.”[687] Up to the 19th of February this phrase
aptly described the aim of their rivals. So early as 13th December
1788 Sheridan informed the Marquis of Buckingham that the Prince
intended to dissolve Parliament both at Westminster and Dublin; for the
Opposition “could not go on with the old one in England; and the choice
of a new one in Ireland would give them a lasting advantage, _which
is true_.”[688] The large powers of patronage entrusted to the Regent
would have influenced very many votes at the General Election, just as
the prospect of princely rewards caused many place-hunters to change
sides in the two Houses.
The lavishness of this form of bribery appears in a letter written
by Sydney to Cornwallis about 20th February, wherein he asserts
that the following promotions in the army were all but officially
announced. Four Field-Marshals, thirty-one Generals, twenty
Lieutenant-Generals, twelve Major-Generals, besides many Colonels and
lower grades; also ten new Aides-de-camp--almost all for political
reasons. It was further known that Portland would be Prime Minister;
Stormont and Fox, Secretaries of State; Loughborough, Chancellor;
Sandwich or Fitzwilliam, First Lord of the Admiralty;[689] Spencer,
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Northumberland, Master-General of the
Ordnance; Fitzpatrick, Secretary at War; Sheridan, President of the
Board of Control.[690] We may note here that Northumberland and Lord
Rawdon (afterwards the Earl of Moira) with some followers had formed a
group standing somewhat apart, but acting with the Prince’s friends on
consideration of gaining office. They were called the Armed Neutrality;
and their proceedings bore no small resemblance to a political auction,
in which the Prince of Wales knocked down offices at discretion.[691]
The abrupt ending to these intrigues and bargains brought intense
relief to every patriot. Independent observers, like Cartwright and
Wyvill, had felt deep concern at the prospect of the rule of the
Prince and Fox. “I very much fear,” wrote the former to Wilberforce,
“that the King’s present derangement is likely to produce other
derangements not for the public benefit. I hope we are not to be sold
to the Coalition faction.” Wyvill also wrote to Wilberforce: “Cabal
I doubt not is labouring under his [Fox’s] direction to overturn the
present Government, while you and the other firm friends of Mr. Pitt
are making equal exertions to prevent a change of men and measures.
I think the general opinion is that the Prince has acted like a rash
young man, that he is capable of being led into dangerous measures, and
that men whom the nation greatly distrusts have all his confidence and
esteem.”[692]
Public opinion was, however, influenced by something more definite than
distrust of the Prince and his favourites. By this time the nation
confided entirely in the good sense and disinterestedness of Pitt. The
Marquis of Buckingham expressed the general opinion when he called
Pitt “the honestest Minister he ever saw.”[693] Those qualities never
shone more brightly than during the perplexing problem of the Regency.
If he trammelled the Prince, it was in order to assert the supremacy
of Parliament, and to prevent personal changes at Windsor which would
probably have brought about a return of the King’s malady. For himself,
he prepared quietly and with dignity to resume his practice at the Bar.
Had the recovery of George III been delayed another week, the Minister
would have been found once more at Lincoln’s Inn, looking on with his
wonted serenity at the wholesale changes in the official world brought
about by the vindictiveness of his rivals. So near was England then to
the verge of a political crisis which would have embattled the nation
against a Government foisted upon it by an unscrupulous Prince and a
greedy faction.
Fortunately the crisis was averted; and, thanks to the wise measures
taken by Pitt, the recovery of the royal patient was not interrupted
by the sight of new faces around him at Kew and Windsor. Long and
laboured explanations were afterwards offered to the King by the Prince
of Wales, in which he had the effrontery to refer to the pain caused
him when he “saw Her Majesty set up by designing men as the head of
a system” which was “a device of private ambition.”[694] After this
he never was trusted or fully forgiven either by the King or Queen.
Their confidence and that of the nation was heartily accorded to the
Minister whose conduct had been as loyal and consistent as that of
Laurentius in Pitt’s early dramatic effort. Friends pointed to his
simple and earnest regard for the public welfare throughout the whole
dispute. By those qualities he peacefully solved a tangled problem and
bound together the King and the people in a union of hearts such as had
not been known since the accession of the House of Brunswick. On the
evening of the day when George III resumed his regal functions, London
was ablaze with illuminations which extended from Hampstead to Clapham
and Tooting.[695] The joy of all classes of the people brimmed over
once more at the Thanksgiving Service held at St. Paul’s Cathedral on
23rd April, when the demonstrations of loyalty were such as to move
the King to an outburst of emotion. The part played by Pitt was not
forgotten. With difficulty he escaped from the importunities of his
admirers, who had to content themselves with dragging his carriage
back to his residence in Downing Street. Outwardly, this day marks the
zenith of his career. True, he was to win one more diplomatic triumph
over the House of Bourbon, the importance of which has been strangely
under-rated. But already there was arising on the horizon a cloud,
albeit small as a man’s hand, which was destined to overcloud the sky
and deluge the earth. Only ten days after the Thanksgiving Service at
St. Paul’s there assembled at Versailles the States-General of France,
whose actions, helped on by the folly of the French princes, led to the
subversion of that august monarchy. By so short an interval did the
constitutional crisis in Great Britain precede a convulsion which was
destined to overturn nearly every Government in the civilized world.