Debate in the House of Commons on a Vote of Credit and the Support
of Portugal.--The German War.--Pitt’s Speech.--Colonel
Barré’s Reply to Mr. Pitt.--Lord Bute’s Ambition.--The Duke
of Newcastle’s Resignation.--Fox and the Duke of Devonshire.--
Ingratitude of the Clergy to Newcastle.--Unwise conduct of Lord
Bute.--He is declared First Lord of the Treasury.--Sir Francis
Dashwood, Chancellor of the Exchequer.--His unfitness for that
Office.--His general Character.--His establishment of a Society
of Young Travellers.
May 12th. The House of Commons debated on a vote of credit, and the
support of Portugal. Glover the poet pleaded against Portugal’s
claim to our assistance, from their many infractions of treaties,
from their cramping our trade, and from the impossibilities our
merchants had found of obtaining redress; a complaint that seemed to
bear hard on the late ministry: to which he added reflections on the
extravagance of the German war, which, contrary to the professions
of ministers, had grown from £200,000 to six or seven millions. Pitt
was offended, and corrected Glover, who threw his information on some
nameless merchants, by whom he had been told that their remonstrances
on the difficulties of the Portuguese trade had not been read by
the ministers. Wilkes censured the weakness and irresolution of the
ministry; their abandoning Belleisle, and neglecting to send over the
officers to Germany. It was even said, he affirmed, that they had been
humiliating themselves at the Court of Vienna. Legge more gently, and
Beckford with more rhodomontade, pressed the same accusations. The
latter was for invading Spain by sea; declared that the City suspected
the ministry of wavering, and demanded to have their _old minister_
again. Grenville answered finely, and compared the smallness of the
sum demanded, £300,000, with the expense in Germany. Belleisle had
cost more than what was now asked for Portugal. That Court knew how
we were embarrassed, and asked not more than she knew we could give.
What proof was there of irresolution? was not Martinico conquered? was
not the Havannah likely to follow? or did Beckford think that great
words, blustered in Parliament, constituted resolution? Fluctuating
reports were rather owing to stockjobbers than to fluctuation in the
measures of Government. He affirmed that not one step had been taken at
Vienna derogatory to any of our connections. We had only tried to feel
how they relished the family-compact among the Bourbons. But whether
the resolution was taken to recall our troops from Germany, or at all
events to go on, would it be prudent to declare which was to be the
measure?
Lord George Sackville was liberal in blaming the expense of the German
war, which he compared with that of Queen Anne; _the whole_ of which,
he maintained, except in 1711 and 1712, did not amount to what this
German war had cost alone, though we had then employed more British
and other troops than at present. Queen Anne’s war had never exceeded
eight millions, including garrisons, fleet, &c. The expense of 172,000
men from 1709 to 1711 had not gone beyond what one year had recently
cost in Germany. If there had not been new inventions for expense, we
should not now be ready to beg peace.
Pitt, in a very capital style, took up the cause of Portugal: he did
not stoop to that little hackneyed practice of party, opposing whatever
was the measure of the adversary. He had stood forth for general war,
and for reduction of the House of Bourbon. To advise still larger war
was constancy to the same plan; and it was still safer to advise it,
when he was no longer answerable for the event. To oppose vigorous
steps would have been more truly lending aid to the Court, who wanted
to get clear of the war.
As having been a public minister, he must not, he said, intrench
himself within his present private situation, but speak his opinion.
He should not wait for events, but speak boldly as a counsellor. If
he voted for this measure, it was giving the Crown his advice, as if
he was called to Council. He did think we ought to support Portugal,
both for commercial and political reasons. Portugal is in the immediate
predicament of nearness to us after Ireland and our Colonies. _It
assists, without draining us._ Assistance was a matter of justice due
from us to an oppressed, insulted ally. There had not been such an
infraction of treaties as would release us from the ties of treaties.
Should we sit with folded arms while the two branches of Bourbon, those
proudest of the proud, would exclude us from neutral ports? We must set
Portugal on its legs, not take it on our shoulders. He then expatiated
on the character of Carvalho, the prime minister of Portugal, his
inflexibility to danger, his intrepidity; and drew a picture that
might almost have passed for his own, as he seemed to mean it should.
Would there be danger in this measure? he was a co-operator in it. If
you, as a maritime power, cannot protect Portugal, Genoa will next be
shut against you; and then the ports of Sardinia:--what! ports shut
against the first maritime power in the world! He then turned Glover
into ridicule; said he admired his poetry, but _quanto optimus omnium
poeta, tanto_--he would not, he said, go on. For the sum demanded, it
might easily be raised, or a million more: and he would give the same
opinion, whether the Duke of Newcastle continued minister, or should be
succeeded by Mr. Fox, as was generally said to be the intention. The
only difficulty was to find funds. It had been predicated for three
years that we could not raise more money; therefore it was plain we
could. Lord George should have put into the scale what our enemies had
lost; they had been losing, we acquiring. He hoped we should keep up
our officers and our marine, and not decrease the latter, as we had
done after the last peace. France had last year spent eight millions
in Germany. To outlast an enemy was worth perseverance. But we would
not distinguish between contracting our expenses and contracting our
operations. He paid great compliments to the officers of land and
sea, and pleaded earnestly against relinquishing Germany. It would be
turning loose an hundred and forty thousand French to overrun the Low
Countries and Portugal. If there was any odium from the German war, he
begged it might fall on him; though he had never seen a contractor, yet
he would not disculpate himself by censuring others; and he spoke in
mitigation of the blame thrown on the Treasury, owning he thought some
little might have been saved, but not suspecting them of dishonesty.
Yet, were an inquiry moved, he would second it; he would screen nobody.
After the King of Prussia had been so ill-treated on our account, would
we throw such a power out of our alliance, only to save three or four
hundred thousand pounds? But he thought he had heard the army was not
to be recalled--was transported to find Lord Granby was going to it.
Himself was the only man that agreed with the whole administration,
for he approved both of war in Germany and war in Portugal; and he
was so far from meditating opposition, that he should regard the man
who would revive parties as an enemy to his country. Himself had
contributed to annihilate _party_, but it had not been to pave the way
for _those who only intended to substitute one party to another_.[218]
Should the least cloud arise between London and Berlin, he prayed for
temper and reconciliation. He wished to move that the continuation
of the subsidy to Prussia might be added to the vote of credit; but
it did not become him to move for more than was asked by the King’s
servants: yet he wished the vote of credit had been greater, and knew
the Duke of Newcastle wished so too. He should rejoice to see the
session closed with the grant of a large sum of money, because England
could not well treat but at the head of all her force. Russia had
acceded to Prussia--how much wiser to give money to that monarch now,
when he is in a better situation, than, as you would do, if he were
still more distressed! Nay, that little teazing incident, Sweden, was
removed by dread of the Czar. Sweden is a free nation, _but factions
and a corrupted senate have lowered it from the great figure it made an
hundred years ago_. Act now, continued he, upon a great system, while
it is in your power! A million more would be a pittance to place you at
the head of Europe, and enable you to treat with efficacy and dignity.
Save it not in this last critical year! Give the million to the war
at large, and add three, four, or five hundred thousand pounds more
to Portugal; or avow to the House of Bourbon that you are not able to
treat at the head of your allies.
This speech, so artful, elevated, so much in character, and so
distressful to the Junto that were endeavouring to steal disgrace upon
themselves and their country in the face of the world, by setting up
one war against another, and dividing the attention of the public, till
impotence and mismanagement should render peace welcome,--this speech
did Colonel Barré attempt to answer; and did answer it, only in length.
He was sensible that he had disgusted mankind by his indecent brutality
to so great a statesman: his friends had told him that his invectives,
illiberal as they had been, were reckoned the produce of study; and
that he must shine in cool argument, lest he should be thought a bully
rather than an orator. If they apprehended this, the result of their
lessons was a proof that their apprehensions had not been ill-founded.
Nothing could be more cold and dull than Barré’s reply to Mr. Pitt.
It revenged the latter for the former insult. Calvert,[219] a mad
volunteer, who always spoke what he thought, and sometimes thought
justly, was so struck with Barré’s phlegmatic impropriety, that he
told the House it had put him in mind of a poet, who being at sea in a
tempest, and being missed while all hands were on deck, was found half
asleep in the cabin; and, being asked why he did not assist to save
the ship, replied, he was thinking how to describe the storm?[220] The
money was voted, and nothing more of consequence passed that session in
Parliament.
Both Houses thus complaisant and submissive, there wanted but the
office of prime minister to glut the Favourite’s ambition: and
no wonder that he, who had dared to strike the name of the first
monarch in military glory in Europe from the list of Great Britain’s
pensioners, only to gratify the feminine piques of the backstairs; and
who had ventured successfully to remove Mr. Pitt from the command of
that country which he had saved, restored, exalted;--no wonder such a
Phaëton should drive over a ridiculous old dotard, who had ever been
in everybody’s way, and whose feeble hands were still struggling for
power, when the most he ought to have expected, was, that his flattery
and obsequiousness might have moved charity to leave him an appearance
of credit. It was absurd for him to stay in place; insolent to attempt
to stay there by force, and impudent to pretend to patriotism when
driven out with contempt. Against his will he was preserved from having
a share in the infamy of the ensuing peace.
May 14th, the Duke[221] acquainted the King that he would resign, who
answered coldly, “Then, my Lord, I must fill up your place as well as I
can.” Still Newcastle lingered; and, as he owned afterwards to the Duke
of Cumberland, his friends had laboured to prevent the fatal blow. Lord
Mansfield, he said, had _pleaded_ with Lord Bute for above an hour, and
could not extract from him a wish that the Duke should continue in the
Treasury. Fox asked Lord Mansfield if this was true? He replied, “Not
an hour, for I soon saw it was to no purpose.”
Thus disgraced, and disgracing himself, on the 26th the Duke of
Newcastle resigned: and he, who had begun the world with heading
mobs against the ministers of Queen Anne; who had braved the
Heir-apparent[222] of the new family, and forced himself upon him as
godfather to his son; who had recovered that Prince’s favour, and
preserved power under him at the expense of every minister whom that
Prince preferred; and who had been a victorious rival of another
Prince of Wales;[223] was now buffeted from a fourth Court[224] by a
very suitable competitor, and was reduced in his tottering old age to
have recourse to those mobs and that popularity which had raised him
fifty years before; and as almost the individual crisis was revolved,
with a scandalous treaty and a new prospect of arbitrary power, it
looked as if Newcastle thought himself young again, because the times
of his youth were returned, and he was obliged to act with boys!
Such pains, however, had been taken to disjoint his faction, that
his exit from power was by no means attended with consolatory
circumstances. The Duke of Devonshire would not resign, though he
declared he would seldom or never go to council. Fox had warned him
not to be too hasty in embarking in a party in which Pitt must be a
principal actor; and remembering his Grace how large a share Pitt had
had in planting the Tories at Court, and that, speaking of Legge, Pitt
had said, “I will have no more ear for Whig grievances.” The rest of
Newcastle’s friends were as little disposed to follow him: but that he
might taste the full mortification of being deserted by those whom he
had most obliged, whom he had most courted and most patronized, the
clergy gave the most conspicuous example of ingratitude. For thirty
years Newcastle had had the almost sole disposal of ecclesiastic
preferments, and consequently had raised numbers of men from penury
and the meanest birth to the highest honours and amplest incomes in
their profession. At this very period there were not three bishops
on the bench who did not owe their mitres to him. His first levée
after his fall was attended but by one bishop,[225] Cornwallis of
Lichfield; who being a man of quality, and by his birth entitled to
expect a greater rise, did but reflect the more shame on those who owed
everything to favour, and scarce one of them anything to abilities.
The conduct of Lord Bute was not more wise than that of Newcastle.
Instead of sheltering himself under that old man’s name from whatever
danger there might be in making peace, the Earl was driving together
all those whom he ought to have kept divided, and really seemed jealous
lest himself should not have the whole odium of sacrificing the glories
and conquests of the war; an infatuation that so far excuses him, as he
must have thought he did a service to his country in restoring peace:
but what must his understanding have been if he could think that peace
would be a benefit, let the terms be what they would? He supposed,
too, that Newcastle, having in opposition to Pitt declared for peace,
could not retract, and be against the peace. This was not knowing
Newcastle or mankind. The situation, too, was materially changed: the
weight of Russia was transferred from the hostile to the friendly
scale; Martinico was fallen; and Europe could scarce amass the symptom
of a fleet. A mind less versatile than Newcastle’s could not want
arguments against a precipitate treaty. Yet was it not Newcastle,
nor a scandalous treaty that shook the Favourite’s power. It was his
ignorance of the world; it was a head unadapted to government, and
rendered still less proper for it by morose and recluse pride, and a
heart that was not formed to bear up a weak head, that made him embark
imprudently, and retreat as unadvisedly.
Lord Bute, on the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle, was immediately
declared First Lord of the Treasury. George Grenville succeeded him as
Secretary of State, and Sir Francis Dashwood was made his Chancellor of
the Exchequer; a system that all the lustre of the Favourite’s power
could not guard from being ridiculous, though to himself mankind bowed
with obsequious devotion. Grenville was ignorant of foreign affairs,
and, though capable of out-talking the whole corps diplomatique, had no
address, no manner, no insinuation, and had, least of all, the faculty
of listening. The Favourite himself had never been in a single office
of business, but for the few months that he had held the seals: of the
revenue he was in perfect ignorance, knew nothing of figures, and was
a stranger to those Magi to the east of Temple-Bar, who, though they
flock to a new star, expect to be talked to in a more intelligible
language than that of inspiration. When a Lord Treasurer or a First
Lord of the Treasury is not master of his own province, it suffices if
the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man of business, and capable of
conducting the revenue, of planning supplies, and of executing the
mechanic duties of that high post. But in the new dispensation it was
difficult to say which was the worst suited to his office, the minister
or his substitute. While the former shrouded his ignorance from vulgar
eyes, and dropped but now and then from a cloud an oracular sentence;
the deputy, with the familiarity and phrase of a fish-wife, introduced
the humours of Wapping behind the veil of the Treasury. He had a
coarse, blunt manner of speaking, that, looking like honesty, inclined
men to hold his common sense in higher esteem than it deserved; but,
having neither knowledge[226] nor dignity, his style, when he was to
act as minister, appeared naked, vulgar, and irreverent to an assembly
that expects to be informed, and that generally chooses to reprehend,
not to be reprehended. When a statesman ventures to be familiar, he
must captivate his audience by uncommon graces, or win their good-will
by a humane pleasantry that seems to flow from the heart, and to be
the effusion of universal benevolence. This was the secret as well as
character of Henry the Fourth of France: even the semblance of it stood
his grandson, our Charles the Second, in signal stead, and veiled his
unfeeling heart, and selfish and remorseless insensibility.
Men were puzzled to guess at the motive of so improper a choice as
this of Sir Francis Dashwood. The banner of religion was displayed at
Court, and yet all the centurions were culled from the most profligate
societies. Sir Francis had long been known by his singularities and
some humour. In his early youth, accoutred like Charles the Twelfth,
he had travelled to Russia in hopes of captivating the Czarina; but
neither the character nor dress of Charles were well imagined to catch
a _woman’s_ heart. In Italy, Sir Francis had given in to the most
open profaneness; and, at his return, had assembled a society[227]
of Young Travellers, to which a taste for the arts and antiquity, or
merely having travelled, were the recommendatory ingredients. Their
pictures were drawn, ornamented with symbols and devices; and the
founder, in the habit of St. Francis, and with a chalice in his hand,
was represented at his devotions before a statue of the Venus of
Medicis, a stream of glory beaming on him from behind her lower hand.
These pictures were long exhibited in their club-room at a tavern
in Palace Yard; but of later years Saint Francis had instituted a
more select order. He and some chosen friends had hired the ruins of
Medmenham Abbey, near Marlow, and refitted it in a conventual style.
Thither at stated seasons they adjourned; had each their cell, a proper
habit, a monastic name, and a refectory in common--besides a chapel,
the decorations of which may well be supposed to have contained the
quintessence of their mysteries, since it was impenetrable to any
but the initiated. Whatever their doctrines were, their practice was
rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they
almost publicly sacrificed. The old Lord Melcomb was one of the
brotherhood. Yet their follies would have escaped the eye of the
public, if Lord Bute from this seminary of piety and wisdom had not
selected a Chancellor of the Exchequer. But politics had no sooner
infused themselves amongst these rosy anchorites, than dissensions
were kindled, and a false brother arose, who divulged the arcana, and
exposed the good Prior, in order to ridicule him as Minister of the
Finances. But, of this, more hereafter.