I have much lamented that, during the very interesting period of
November and December, of 1784, I did not keep a regular journal
of the transactions of those months, in which I am supposed to
have borne so principal a share. Many of the minuter springs
which guided those operations have slipped my memory, from the
multiplicity of them, and from the rapidity with which they
crowded upon each other during the latter busy days, ending with
the formation of the new Ministry on the 21st of December, 1784.
It will, however, be necessary for me to take this narrative
from an earlier period, necessarily connected with it--I mean
the formation of the Government known by the name of the
Coalition Ministry.
I was in Ireland during that period, and was not uninformed,
authentically, of the disposition on the part of Lord North to
have supported the Ministry of Lord Shelburne upon terms of
provision for his friends, very short of those which he
afterwards claimed and extorted from Mr. Fox. It was clearly
known to Lord Shelburne, that no official arrangement was
proposed by Lord North for himself; and, to say truth, those of
his friends for whom he wished provision to be made, were at
least as unexceptionable as many, I may even add as most of
those whom Lord Shelburne had collected from the two former
Administrations. The infatuation, however, which pervaded the
whole of his Government, operated most forcibly in this
instance. The affectation of holding the ostensible language of
Mr. Pitt, in 1759, is only mentioned to show the ridiculous
vanity of the Minister who, unsupported by public success, or by
the parliamentary knowledge and man[oe]uvre of a Duke of
Newcastle, not only held it, but acted upon it, professing, in
his own words, to "know nothing of the management of a House of
Commons, and to throw himself upon the people alone for
support." This farce operated as it might be expected; and
although the negotiation between Lord North and Mr. Fox was
matter of perfect notoriety for several weeks, those moments
were suffered to pass away without any attempt to avail himself
of the various difficulties which presented themselves, at the
different periods of that discussion, till, at the very eve of
the ratification of it, Mr. Pitt was employed by his Lordship to
open propositions, through Mr. Fox, to that party. This was
rejected _in toto_; and the events which followed the meeting of
Parliament, are too well known to make a detail of them
necessary.
Before I proceed I wish to add, that although I have treated the
vanity and personal arrogance of Lord Shelburne as it deserves,
yet I will do him justice in acknowledging his merit, as one of
the quickest and most indefatigable Ministers that this country
ever saw. Many of his public measures were the result of a great
and an informed mind, assisted by a firm and manly vigour. And I
must ever think the Peace, attended with all its collateral
considerations, the most meritorious and happiest event for a
kingdom exhausted of men and of credit. I was not pledged in the
slightest degree to the measure; for, by my absence in Ireland,
and my little connection with his Lordship, I was enabled to
judge of it with coolness and impartiality; and from the
knowledge of the various difficulties attending it, I am
convinced that better terms could not be obtained, and that the
further prosecution of the war was impracticable, even if the
combination against us allowed the hope of success. This
testimony I have wished to bear, though it is not immediately
connected with my purpose.
Upon the resignation of Lord Shelburne, His Majesty was placed
in a situation in which, through the various events of his
reign, he never had yet found himself. The man[oe]uvres which he
tried, at different periods of the six weeks during which this
country was left literally without a Government, are well known.
Perhaps nothing can paint the situation of his mind so truly, as
a letter which he wrote to me on the 1st of April: this was an
answer to one which I thought it necessary to address to him
from Ireland, after receiving from him a message and a general
detail of his situation, through Mr. W. Grenville, to whom he
opened himself very confidentially upon the general state of the
kingdom.
Upon my return to England, I was honoured with every public
attention from His Majesty, who ostensibly held a language upon
my subject, calculated to raise in the strongest degree the
jealousy of his servants. In the audience which I asked, as a
matter of course, after being presented at his levée, he
recapitulated all the transactions of that period, with the
strongest encomium upon Mr. Pitt, and with much apparent
acrimony hinted at Lord Shelburne, whom he stated to have
abandoned a situation which was tenable, and particularly so
after the popular resentment had been roused. This was naturally
attended with strong expressions of resentment and disgust of
his Ministers, and of personal abhorrence of Lord North, whom he
charged with treachery and ingratitude of the blackest nature.
He repeated that, to such a Ministry he never would give his
confidence, and that he would take the first moment for
dismissing them. He then stated the proposition made to him by
the Duke of Portland, for the annual allowance of £100,000 to
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. I gave to him, very much
at length, my opinion of such a measure, and of the certain
consequences of it: in all which, as may reasonably be supposed,
His Majesty ran before me, and stated with strong disgust the
manner in which it was opened to him--as a thing _decided_, and
even drawn up in the shape of a message, to which his signature
was desired as a matter of course, to be brought before
Parliament the next day. His Majesty declared himself to be
decided to resist this attempt, and to push the consequences to
their full extent, and to try the spirit of the Parliament and
of the people upon it. I thought it my duty to offer to him my
humble advice to go on with his Ministers, if possible, in order
to throw upon them the ratification of the Peace, which they
professed to intend to ameliorate, and to give them scope for
those mountains of reform, which would inevitably come very
short of the expectations of the public. From these public
measures, and from their probable dissension, I thought that His
Majesty might look forward to a change of his Ministers in the
autumn; and that, as the last resource, a dissolution of this
Parliament, chosen by Lord North and occasionally filled by Mr.
Fox, might offer him the means of getting rid of the chains
which pressed upon him. To all this he assented; but declared
his intention to resist, at all events and hazards, the
proposition for this enormous allowance to His Royal Highness,
of whose conduct he spoke with much dissatisfaction. He asked,
what he might look to if upon this refusal the Ministry should
resign: and I observed, that, not having had the opportunity of
consulting my friends, I could only answer that their
resignation was a proposition widely differing from their
dismissal, and that I did not see the impossibility of accepting
his Administration in such a contingency, provided the supplies
and public bills were passed, so as to enable us to prorogue the
Parliament. To all this he assented, and declared his intention
of endeavouring to gain time, that the business of Parliament
might go on; and agreed with me that such a resignation was
improbable, and that it would be advisable not to dismiss them,
unless some very particular opportunity presented itself.
1785.
The Breach Between the Marquis of Buckingham and Mr. Thomas Grenville.
Mr. Pitt's Government was now reaping all the advantages of peace and
security. The lull that followed the termination of the American War and
the dispersion of the Coalition, enabled the Minister to consolidate his
power and develop his plans. Lord North, who had the misfortune not long
afterwards to lose his eyesight, was receding from the arena on which he
had acted so remarkable a part during the preceding fourteen years; and
Mr. Fox and his adherents, returning again to their own natural orbit,
were vindicating their integrity and consistency in the maintenance of a
constitutional Opposition. Faction, weakened and dismembered, had fallen
before the genius of Mr. Pitt.
The principal measure in the Cabinet in 1785 was a Bill for the reform
of the representation in Parliament, by which Mr. Pitt proposed to
transfer the franchises of thirty-six boroughs to counties and
unrepresented towns. A clause in this Bill, for giving pecuniary
compensation to the disfranchised boroughs, was fatal to its reception.
Mr. Fox laid down the maxim, that the franchise was not a property, but
a trust: the House adopted that view of the question, and the Bill was
lost. But Mr. Pitt, nevertheless, discharged his pledge to the public by
thus initiating the principle of parliamentary reform.
The Marquis of Buckingham still continued a passive spectator of public
events, and the correspondence of this period possesses consequently
little political interest. We learn by a letter from his brother, Mr. W.
W. Grenville, that he had placed his proxy in the hands of Lord
Camelford, who was so embarrassed by the responsibility, that he took
counsel with Lord Sydney and Mr. Grenville as to the course he should
follow in reference to a particular vote. Mr. Grenville, exercising his
usual good sense and practical judgment, strongly recommended his
Lordship to withdraw his proxy altogether, rather than to have it
exposed to the chance of compromising his opinions.
The unhappy difference between the Marquis of Buckingham and his
brother, Mr. Thomas Grenville, was not yet adjusted; and time seems only
to have widened a breach which both deplored, and were equally anxious
to remove. The proud feelings of the Marquis, wounded by the injustice
with which he conceived he had been treated, were peculiarly sensitive
to every act on the part of his friends that departed in the slightest
degree from the line he had marked out for himself. Perhaps he expected
from them more in this respect than the obligations of public life could
be reasonably expected to concede; in this instance, at least, he
appears to have exaggerated into a personal wrong a vote which was given
on pure and independent grounds, without a suspicion that it was open to
so injurious an interpretation. Mr. Thomas Grenville's letter on this
painful subject is an honourable testimony alike to his integrity and
his affection.