It was soon clear to Newcastle that Fox after all might not suffice, and
that Pitt must be again approached. The King, then in Hanover and beyond
Newcastle's control, was negotiating new treaties of subsidy on behalf
of his German dominions; one with Hesse-Cassel for a contingent of
12,000 men to act in defence of Hanover or Great Britain, the other with
Russia for an army of 40,000 men for the defence of Hanover. It was
terrible for the Duke to contemplate what Pitt might say and do with
regard to such unpopular and indefensible instruments. Moreover, Pitt
was now supported by the court, every day more and more important, of
Leicester House. It was probably Hardwicke, who as the moving brain of
the Cabinet saw the vital importance of securing Pitt, and who was, we
think, sincerely favourable to Pitt's pretensions, if only from hatred
of Fox, who suggested these negotiations; and it was his son Charles
Yorke who entered upon them. Yorke was to act as a skirmisher, to get in
touch with Pitt, and to report on the temper in which he found him. They
met on July 6 (1755), and talked over the abortive conference with
Walpole. Pitt declared that he had then waived the immediate bestowal of
the Secretaryship of State, but had asked not merely that Newcastle
should speak on his behalf before the King left for Hanover, and urge
that he was the proper person to lead the debates in the House of
Commons; but that Lady Yarmouth should also be interested in his cause,
so that she might use her influence with the King during their stay
abroad.
Of Newcastle himself he spoke with supreme disdain. It was a waste of
time to bring him assurances of friendship and confidence from
Newcastle. All that was over. He would never owe Newcastle a favour, he
would accept nothing as an obligation to Newcastle. This is not in
Yorke's account, because probably it would be shown to Newcastle. But it
comes authentically enough from Pitt's brother-in-law, James Grenville,
to Bubb. If Newcastle were really in earnest, he would say that he could
listen to no proposition but this: 'This is our policy; and the post of
Secretary of State, in which you shall support it, is destined for you.'
Yorke reported to his father, and Hardwicke saw Pitt on August 8 (1755),
with power to offer a seat in the Cabinet. After compliments, to use
Eastern language, which were usually the preface of such interviews, in
which both parties assured each other of high mutual esteem, which Pitt
went so far on this occasion as to declare for Newcastle, in strange
contrast with his language to Yorke, they came at once to the point.
Before he could take what was required, 'a clear, active, and cordial
part in support of the King's measures in the House of Commons,' Pitt
desired to know what those measures might be. Hardwicke at once
specified them. 'Twas all open and above board; the support of the
maritime and American war, in which we were going to be engaged, and the
defence of the King's German dominions, if attacked on account of the
English cause. The maritime and American war he came roundly into, tho'
very orderly, and allowed the principle and obligation of honour and
justice as to the other, but argued strongly as to the practicability of
it. That subsidiary treaties would not go down; the nation could not
hear' (obviously 'bear') them. That they were a connection and a chain,
and would end in a general plan for the Continent which the country
would (obviously 'could') not possibly support.' Then he went into
financial considerations. The maritime and American war would alone add
two millions a year to the National Debt, which could not bear an
addition of one million. He would treat Hanover like any other foreign
dependency of the British Crown; the worst that could happen was that it
should be occupied by the enemy for a time and restored at a peace, and
that then compensation might be given to the King. As to the subsidies,
Hessian and Russian, he asked questions but did not commit himself. But
he inquired, with peculiar emphasis, what others, such as Fox, Legge,
Lee, and Egmont, thought of them. At last he said he must consult his
friends, one of whom, Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was
about to visit. But why, asked Hardwicke, should he not see Newcastle
himself? 'With all my heart, if he would see me,' replied Pitt. To the
offer of a seat in the Cabinet he said neither yea nor nay, but he was,
thought Hardwicke, gratified by the overture.[282]
One cannot but note the strange contrast between Pitt's language about
Newcastle to Hardwicke and that which he had used to Yorke. 'He
expressed great regard for your Grace and me.' But this was the base
coinage in political use at that time, and Pitt had by this time become
a master of dissimulation. Fox hated Newcastle to the full as much as
did Pitt. In truth, every one seems to have secretly hated or despised
him, or both; a melancholy reward for an industrious ministerial
existence. But so great was his political influence that scarce any one
could afford to say so.
One Minister was now, however, to display a rare courage, and to oppose
both the King and his Minister on a critical point. In the middle of
August, after the conversation with Hardwicke, the treaty of subsidy
with Hesse-Cassel arrived for the necessary confirmations. When it came
before Legge as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he, no doubt with the
connivance of Pitt, flatly refused his signature. Newcastle had always
distrusted Legge, as, indeed, he distrusted everybody, and had given him
the seals of the Exchequer with great reluctance. He was now aghast. War
was imminent; the King would soon return with his pockets full of odious
treaties of subsidy; Fox was still a malcontent; Legge was in open
revolt; it was evident that he must face the formidable interview with
Pitt. So he expressed the necessary wish, though one may guess his
reluctance, and Pitt saw the Duke on September 2 (1755) for two hours
and a half. The record of this interview is contained in a long letter
from Newcastle to Hardwicke,[283] couched in the quavering notes of a
distracted Minister. It begins with a wail of despair, the reluctant
acknowledgment of the paramount importance of Pitt. 'I never sat down to
write to your lordship with more melancholy apprehensions for the
Publick than at present. I see nothing but confusion and it is beyond me
to point out a remedy.'
This was the result of Pitt's verbal refusal to join him, made by a
Minister who held the great mass of the House of Commons in the hollow
of his hand, who clung to office as to life, and yet, though he knew
Pitt was indispensable to its retention, would not once more, as in
1746, face his Sovereign and say so. Nothing can better illustrate the
trembling plank on which the Duke was content to walk, wavering and
helpless, depending only on Hardwicke's counsel and his own jobs. He did
not dare face the King, he was bullied by the disorderly chiefs in the
House of Commons, and he was always chaffering, but always afraid. So he
and his like are satisfied to bear the yoke for the semblance of power.
All began smoothly between Pitt and the Duke, all was apparently open,
friendly, and civil; but when Newcastle referred to the conversation
with Hardwicke, he was taken aback by finding that Pitt declared that
nothing had passed that was material. He thus compelled Newcastle to
recapitulate the points of policy, no doubt for purposes of comparison.
So the Duke had to state that the eve of the King's departure had been
too troubled to lay Pitt's claim before his Majesty; for an address
against the journey had been threatened in the House of Commons and
actually proposed in the House of Lords. But that when alarming events
had happened in America, Hardwicke and he had represented to the King
the urgent necessity of forming a system in the House of Commons, which
means, it may be presumed, abandoning the plan of conducting the House
without a leader, and of enlisting Pitt as an active Minister there.
That thereupon the King had graciously expressed his readiness to admit
Pitt to his Cabinet. Pitt received this offer coolly, and proceeded at
once to larger issues.
As to the King's voyage he spoke with unsparing candour. The King had
nearly ruined himself by his unpardonable departure to Hanover at such a
crisis. He should only have been allowed to go there over the dead
bodies of his people. 'A King abroad at this time, without one man about
him that has an English heart, and only returning to bring home a packet
of subsidies.'
Of course, he proceeded to say with scarcely disguised sarcasm, the
King's countenance was more to him than any other consideration. But if
it was expected that he should take an active and efficient part in
Parliament he must observe that a mere summons to the Cabinet would not
be sufficient. In his present office he could silently acquiesce in
ministerial measures. But activity could only be exercised in a
responsible situation.
Then he took a line which was clear, bold, and statesmanlike. The whole
machinery of the House of Commons was, he said, paralysed by the plan of
leaving it without a responsible Minister. That plan must be abandoned.
The House could not perform its proper functions without a responsible
Minister, even though a subordinate one, who should have access to the
Sovereign and to the royal confidence. For that purpose the leader or
agent must have a responsible office of _advice_ as well as of
_execution_. 'That was the distinction he made throughout his whole
conversation. He would support the measures which he himself had
advised, but would not like a lawyer talk from a brief. That it was
better plainly to tell me so at first.'
This surely was no inordinate claim from indisputably the first member
of the House of Commons, whom the King had kept at bay for so many
years, and to keep whom still in subjection every possible manoeuvre,
childish or cunning, was being adopted. 'Why,' said he bluntly to
Newcastle, 'cannot you bring yourself to part with some of your sole
power?' This of course produced voluble asseverations from the Duke.
Sole power! What an idea! He had no conception of what Pitt could mean.
He was in his present place, not by his own choice, far from it! but by
the King's command, and, though he was devoted to the King, he would
retire to-morrow if he was distasteful to the House of Commons. (This
was a safe promise, for, as we have seen, the House of Commons was with
but few exceptions at his absolute disposal.) Pitt replied that he
himself had no objections to a Peer as First Lord of the Treasury, but
there must be men of ability and responsibility in the House of Commons,
a Secretary of State and a Chancellor of the Exchequer, that they must
be sufficiently supported, and they must have access to the Crown, not a
nominal, but an habitual, free, familiar access. In speaking of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer he burst out into so enthusiastic a eulogy
of Legge, 'the child, and deservedly the favourite child of the Whigs,'
that Newcastle suspected that all this was concerted between his
rebellious Chancellor of the Exchequer and his insubordinate Paymaster.
Pitt and the Duke next proceeded to analyse their own expressions; a
task which the statesmen of that day seem to have avoided, to our
detriment, as much as possible. Newcastle had spoken of the proposed
seat in the Cabinet as a designation. 'What did this mean?' asked Pitt.
'Did it mean the seals of Secretary of State, though not immediately?'
The Duke was obliged to shuffle out, for in truth he had no power to
promise any such thing. Designation only meant that the seat in the
Cabinet would design him as the King's man of confidence. 'Then the
Secretaryship of State is not intended,' was the fierce rejoinder. The
Duke replied that he was not authorised to offer more than a seat in the
Cabinet. If, rejoined Pitt, 'the Secretaryships of State are to remain
as they are, there is an end of any question of my giving active support
to the Government in the House of Commons.'
They had arrived at an impassable barrier, Pitt would take nothing but
the seals which the King would not give him, and Newcastle was
determined not to force on another crisis with the King on account of
Pitt; whom, in truth, he dreaded little less as a colleague than as a
foe. So they turned to matters of public policy, 'and then,' writes the
hapless Minister, 'nothing can equal my astonishment and concern.' He
tried Pitt first with the Hessian Treaty, and then with the Russian. For
the Hessian Treaty the Duke characteristically urged every reason but
the true one, and for the Russian that it was the fruit of four years of
negotiation, and that it would seem strange to drop it now. But Pitt was
obdurate. He would be no party to a system of subsidies. If the Duke of
Devonshire attacked the Hessian subsidy in the House of Lords, as was
his intention, Pitt would echo the attack in the House of Commons. If
the Russian Treaty were dropped he might acquiesce in the Hessian from
regard for the King; as, for the same reason, he would always speak with
the utmost respect of Hanover. But no consideration would make him
support both, or a system of subsidies. It was his regard for the King,
presumably, which impelled him to make a further suggestion, which
Newcastle did not venture to transmit even to Hardwicke. Out of the
fifteen millions sterling that the King was said to have saved why,
asked Pitt, should he not give Hesse 100,000_l._, and Russia
150,000_l._, to be out of these bad bargains? Newcastle was driven to
his usual resource of the Chancellor, and suggested a conference with
him in the ensuing week. Pitt agreed to this with, we may presume, a
shrug of the shoulders.
Neither in truth expected anything from such a meeting, for the pleas
and the powers had both been exhausted. Newcastle realised this, and
ends his remarkable record of the conversation with a despairing glance
at his own prospects. What was he to do? There were as usual three
courses to pursue. The first, which he should infinitely prefer, would
be his own retirement. This is a common cant of ministers, and with
Newcastle it was more than usually insincere. Fox, he said, might
succeed him at the Treasury, and Pitt for a session at any rate would
have to acquiesce. The second would be for Newcastle, remaining First
Minister, to throw himself into the arms of the Pitt group, with Pitt
as Secretary of State and Legge at the Exchequer. But the King would
never hear of this. Newcastle puts it significantly thus: 'Whether this
is in any shape practicable, I leave to your Lordship and all who know
the King to determine.' The third course was the one adopted, 'to accept
Mr. Fox's proposal, made by my Lord Granville,' the first allusion that
we have to this particular negotiation. Fox was to be the real,
efficient, and trusted leader of the House of Commons. But there must be
conditions. Cumberland, the patron of Fox, must give his support, so
must Devonshire and Hartington. There must be a new Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and Fox must act cordially with the person whom the King
might appoint to that office. Murray, and indeed every one, must put
their shoulders to the wheel and exert themselves on behalf of the
Administration. Lastly, it might be necessary to take in the venal but
inevitable Bubb.
Hardwicke answered Newcastle's report without a moment's delay, in a
shrewd letter.[284] His first remark was that Pitt had taken much higher
ground with the Duke than with him, perhaps because the bad news from
the Ohio had made the Paymaster deem himself more valuable and
necessary. He doubted whether the praises of Legge were sincere; they
were probably intended to indicate a closer connection between them than
really existed. But Hardwicke went straight to the two main points. The
first was the general principle that the King must have a recognised
Minister, what he called oddly enough 'a Minister with the King' in the
House of Commons. The other question was whether Pitt should be
Secretary of State.
As to the first, if the Minister is to be subordinate, that is, not the
Premier, he sees no great harm in it. 'For I have long been convinced,'
continues the sagacious man, 'that whoever your Grace shall make use of
as your first man and man of confidence in the House of Commons, you
will find it necessary, if he be a man of reputation and ability
accompanied with the ambition naturally incident to such a character, I
say under those circumstances, your Grace will find it necessary to
invest him with more power than, from the beginning, you thought fit to
impart either to Mr. Legge or Sir Thomas Robinson.'
From this we may gather that the Chancellor had never believed in the
plan of a leaderless House of Commons. How indeed could he, as a man of
sense, much more as a man of rare capacity? Such a plan could only be
deemed possible by an alien King and a mountebank Minister. As to the
personal point, Hardwicke is not less acute. Pitt, he declares, has
stiffened his demand since their interview. Pitt, he is convinced,
intended to draw from the Duke a promise that it should be made a point
with the King that he should be made Secretary of State within a given
time; and so, when he failed in this, he proceeded to discuss measures
in a more peremptory tone than he would otherwise have employed.
'Now,' says Hardwicke, 'this comes to a point which you and I have often
discussed together. Whether you can think it right or bring yourself to
declare to him that you really wish him in the Secretary's office, and
will in earnest recommend him to the King on that foot.'
This inestimable sentence throws a flood of light on Newcastle's
professions to Pitt, and on the reality of the efforts that Newcastle
had employed to soften the King. It is clear, we think, from this secret
utterance that Newcastle had been sincere in neither case.
Hardwicke urges that the Duke should close with Pitt. He thinks that if
Newcastle were loyally to give this assurance Pitt 'would close and take
his active part immediately.' Without this he is sure that Pitt believes
'that the intention is to have the use of his talents without gratifying
his ambition.' In writing this Hardwicke of course knew, as Newcastle
knew, that Pitt's apprehension was well founded. 'My poor opinion,'
continues the Chancellor, 'is that without it all further meetings and
pourparlers with this gentleman will be vain. Your heart can only
dictate to you whether you should do it or not.'[285] Justly distrusting
the Duke's heart, the Chancellor proceeds to appeal to his instincts. He
discards, of course, the idea of Newcastle's resignation. A friend,
consulted on such a point, rarely deems it decent to do otherwise;
certainly no confidant of Newcastle's could have done so and retained
his intimacy.
As to relying on Pitt and Legge, he agrees that nothing but the pressure
of necessity could make the King adopt this course. Of course he does
not say that the Duke could at any moment bring about this pressure,
though that no doubt was the case. Newcastle, by his Parliamentary
influence, could always produce a deadlock, as was soon to be proved.
But Newcastle could, thinks Hardwicke, have Pitt without Legge. If Pitt
had the seals he would not insist on Legge.
The third course is that urged by Granville: to take Fox on Granville's
conditions, which we may safely presume to have been those afterwards
adopted. Hardwicke insinuates objections. Fox has the strong protection
of Cumberland and the personal inclination of the King, but his election
will be profoundly distasteful to Leicester House. Pitt, on the other
hand, has 'no support at Court, and the personal disinclination of the
King. He must therefore probably depend, at least for a good while, upon
those who bring him thither.' Then comes the sentence about Fox and
Leicester House which conveys a hint that Pitt, on the contrary, is well
there. It is impossible to be more adroit. Hardwicke knew that Newcastle
was fully aware that he hated Fox, and so put his objections in this
indirect and skilful way. He failed, probably because Newcastle felt
that to accept Fox would at any rate not necessitate a critical struggle
with the King, and that Fox himself was more malleable.
Of all strange confidants it was Bubb whom Pitt, on leaving Newcastle,
proceeded to take into his inmost counsels. There are always parasites
of this kind in politics, universally mistrusted, and yet constantly
taken into confidence on grounds of convenience. Always sympathetic,
always warm, always ready to betray at the first symptom of personal
advantage, they are nevertheless useful parts of the political machine,
and not so contemptible as might appear. They profess little, they
deceive nobody except for a fleeting moment, and they are employed,
with full knowledge of their character, to sound others and report the
result, to suggest from their own base experience, to bring statesmen
into relation with necessary people, and do the work with which
statesmen will not soil their hands. But they are perilous and slippery
agents, they attract in the warmth of the moment excessive confidence,
and while these indiscretions are still ringing in their ears they are
already in the tents of the enemy. Still, such as they are, they will
always exist, and always be utilised, for they are part of the fatality
of politics.
So to Bubb Pitt betook himself on the day after that on which he had
seen Newcastle, and gave a spirited account of the interview. He then
spoke fully of his relations with Fox, in which really lay the key to
the situation. He wished well to Mr. Fox, he did not complain of him,
but he could not act with him; they could not co-operate because they
were not on the same ground. Fox was not independent (_sui juris_), but
he was. He had been ready during the last session to go all lengths
against the Duke of Newcastle; but when it came to the pinch Fox always
failed him (under the constraint, it may be presumed, of the Duke of
Cumberland). _Fox had risen on his shoulders_;[286] he did not blame him
for it. Fox had taken the smooth part, and left him the brunt; he did
not complain. Fox, too, lived with his greatest enemies, Carteret,
Stone, and Murray. And Newcastle had told him that Fox had recently
offered himself to his Grace. Bubb declared that this was false, to his
knowledge. Pitt replied that no one knew better than himself how great a
liar Newcastle could be, and that if Fox denied this he should readily
take his word against the Duke's. But all that he had recapitulated
showed how impossible it was for two men to act together who stood on so
different a footing as Fox and himself.
Bubb now scented business of the kind to which he himself was addicted,
and broke in with, 'As we who are to unite in this attack _are to part
no more_,'[287] it would be proper to think what was to be held out to
the confederates if they succeeded.
Pitt declined to enter into this premature traffic, 'it would look too
like a faction, there was no country in it'; but expressed himself, in
the fashion of the day, with warmth and confidence as to Bubb himself.
He thought Bubb of the greatest consequence; nothing was too good for
such a man; no one was more listened to in the House and in the country.
He wished to be connected with Bubb in the strictest sense politically,
as he already was by marriage.[288]
Bubb demurely records these confidences, and was left happy; glad to
find, as he writes, that he should receive such support in an opposition
which, on patriotic and conscientious grounds, he must have pursued even
had he stood alone.[289]
Once more we have to deplore the hapless destinies of political alliance
and of Parliamentary twins, united in bonds of principle, who are to
part no more. This conversation took place on September 3 (1755). On
November 20 Pitt was dismissed, because of his adherence to the
virtuous course which Bubb had resolved to pursue without flinching,
even if isolated, with or without Pitt. Bubb records the removal in a
terse entry of his diary, and the next, not less terse, records his
acceptance of a lucrative post tendered by Newcastle. History has to
note some such incidents, but we know of none so cynically and
complacently narrated by the renegade himself.
Hardwicke made one last desperate effort to move Pitt, but without
success. He writes to Newcastle on September 15 (1755): 'I have had a
long conversation with the _gentleman_ your Grace knows, but with little
effect. I talked very fully and strongly to him upon every part of the
case, both as to _persons_ and _measures_. He made great professions of
his regard and firm attachment to your Grace and me, but adhered to his
_negative_. He puts that negative upon two things: His objections to the
two treaties of subsidy ... his other objection arose from _Mr. F._,
with whom he declared he could not act.'[290]
On this scene, coming more and more into prominence as the King became
older, and as the Prince of Wales, or rather Bute and his clique, waxed
bolder, appears the mysterious and elusive influence of Leicester House.
It is difficult to trace or measure this combination, except in the
naked fact of an old King and a young heir, nor is it easy to trace the
connection of Pitt with this party. Every movement in Leicester House
was jealously watched by the politicians, much as a late Sultan is said
to have tracked the movements of the least menial of his dethroned and
secluded predecessor. We read of the Princess being stirred to wrath by
her father-in-law's project of marrying her son to the daughter,
supposed to be active and ambitious, of a woman she detested. Then there
is the suspicion that the Heir Apparent was surrounded by persons who
were more or less Jacobite; Bute himself having, it was presumed,
Jacobite leanings. But the King at once desisted with rare good sense
from any idea of the projected marriage, though no doubt it would have
given him pleasure. And the danger of an Hanoverian sovereign becoming a
Jacobite under any influence seems too fantastic for a pantomime. The
real apprehension was no doubt that Leicester House might shake off the
domination and destroy the long monopoly of the Whigs, as indeed it
eventually did. And certainly Leicester House, with the throne full in
view, was becoming more and more inclined to assert itself. Human nature
and family relations had, as usual in such cases, much to do with the
matter. The Hanoverian Kings did not love their heirs apparent. George
the First hated his, but he had no other son to love, and indeed little
capacity for loving, except mistresses who found favour with no one
else. George the Second hated his with a peculiar hatred, and was thus
able to devote what fatherly affection he had to give to his second son,
the Duke of Cumberland. These parental preferences, however justifiable,
do not tend to affection between sons. And so there was no love lost
between Prince Frederick and his family on the one side, and Duke
William on the other. These feelings, as is usually the case, survived,
when Frederick died, with increasing intensity between the widow and her
brother-in-law. She saw him on the right hand of the King, enjoying all
his confidence, as was natural, and herself and her bashful son of no
account; so that a new jealousy was added to the original rancour.
Understanding these facts, we are able to follow the course of Pitt. Fox
was essentially the Duke of Cumberland's man, and so by the force of
circumstances Pitt became allied, but not at this moment closely allied,
to Leicester House. He had been a friend and servant of the dead Prince
of Wales, then had quarrelled with him, but the original brand was not
altogether effaced. Now he was the one champion whom the faction of the
late Heir Apparent could adopt; and so the politicians began to see
behind Pitt the influence of the coming King, his mother, and their
favourite. Thus, when Newcastle had to make the option between Fox and
Pitt, it was not merely the choice between two rival orators, but
between two rival Courts, the Old and the New. We may be sure that no
element in this business was more essentially present to the Minister's
mind.
All this seems petty but essential; but all was petty then, as is proved
by the mere fact of Newcastle being at the head of the Ministry and
master of the House of Commons; and it is all essential to the reader
who would understand the history of those times, because the
complication of these byways and intrigues is so extreme. There was the
King with Lady Yarmouth and Cumberland; there were Newcastle and
Hardwicke, with the House of Commons at their feet, and anxious to
remain at their feet if that were possible; there was the influence of
Cumberland apart from the King, and represented by Fox; there was
Bedford, powerful from his property and connections, with a clique
hungry for office; there was Pitt with his Grenville relations, who were
ready to give him their support, but not less ready to withdraw it if
something better should offer. And around and below these was the great
shifting mass of politicians by profession and cupidity, the
parliamentary Zoroastrians, who worshipped the rising sun, when they
could discern it; the sun which should shed upon them office, salary,
and titles; striving, sweating, cringing, as Bubb, the most shameless of
them all, emphasises in capital letters, 'AND ALL FOR QUARTER-DAY.' It
was through this scene of confusion and intrigue that Pitt had to thread
his way, not very scrupulously; for he had always lived in this society,
had lost whatever thin illusions he had ever possessed, and followed the
clues which his experience had taught him to prize. He played the game.
[Sidenote: Nov. 13, 1755.]
The meeting of Parliament took place two months afterwards and that
period was spent by Newcastle and Hardwicke in arranging to discard Pitt
and Legge, and to lean on Cumberland and Fox. Newcastle did not yield to
Fox without reluctance, for it was, in Pitt's words, parting with some
of his sole power. In his helplessness and despair he even offered to
cede his place to Granville, who as Carteret had been his most detested
bugbear, but who had now subsided into a quiescent President of the
Council. Granville refused with a laugh, and preferred to conduct the
negotiation with Fox. Fox had to him the merit of keeping out Pitt,
whose former denunciations he had neither forgotten nor forgiven. So he
had first endeavoured to inspire Murray to face, and now Fox to
supplant Pitt. With a flash of his old diplomacy he was able to bring
together the two mistrustful parties, on terms which Newcastle had
curtly refused in the first insolence of his power, but which now, at
the instance of Hardwicke as we have seen, he had to concede. The insane
plan of a leaderless House of Commons, left like sheep on a barren moor,
owned by an absentee Duke secluded in the Treasury, was to be abandoned.
Fox was to be Secretary of State, leader of the House of Commons in name
and in fact, and what was far more than either, he was authorised to
announce that he represented the full influence of the King in the House
'to help or to hurt.' When the two shepherds, the old and the new,
burning with mutual hatred and distrust, met to ratify the conditions,
Fox suggested sardonically that it would be best that this should be the
last time on which they should meet to agree, that there should be a
final settlement, or none at all, meaning that it should be honest and
complete. Newcastle, no doubt with a wry face, agreed. 'Then,' said Fox,
'it shall be so'; though indeed it was not. Fox stipulated for the
admission or promotion of five persons, the only memorable ones of whom
were George Selwyn, whose lovable and humorous personality has survived
that of many more eminent contemporaries, and Hamilton, who is the only
man, except the less-known Hawkins, who is remembered by a single
speech. Chesterfield, on hearing of the reconstitution of the Ministry,
observed with his habitual shrewdness that Newcastle had turned out
everybody else and had now turned himself out. Fox at once repented of
his adhesion, for Stone, Newcastle's confidant, informed him that had he
not joined them the Ministry would have instantly resigned.[291] But
now he had to content himself with negotiating through Rigby with the
Bedford group, which he hoped to bring into office for the purpose of
wrecking the administration.
Robinson made less than no difficulties in accommodating himself to the
new pretensions. He only yearned to return to the Great Wardrobe of
which he had been Master. And so with a pension of 2000_l._ a year,
fixed upon luckless Ireland, he vanishes into space, with the natural
remark that he had never looked on his seven children with so much
satisfaction as on the completion of these domestic arrangements.