Character of the times in the year 1757--Contest in France
between the Parliament and the Clergy--King of France
stabbed--Damiens the criminal--His torture and execution--Trial
of Admiral Byng--His sentence, and behaviour of the
Court-Martial--Remarks on his case--Two Highland Regiments
raised--Ordnance estimates--Guinea Lottery--Militia Bill.
A century had now passed since reason had begun to attain that
ascendant in the affairs of the world, to conduct which it had
been granted to man six thousand years ago. If religions and
governments were still domineered by prejudices, if creeds that
contradict logic, or tyrannies that enslave multitudes to the
caprice of one, were not yet exploded, novel absurdities at least
were not broached; or if propagated, produced neither persecutors
nor martyrs. Methodism made fools, but they did not arrive to be
saints; and the histories of past ages describing massacres and
murders, public executions of violence, and the more private though
not less horrid arts of poison and daggers, began to be regarded
almost as romances. Cæsar Borgia seemed little less fabulous than
Orlando; and whimsical tenures of manors were not more in disuse,
than sanguinary methods of preserving or acquiring empires. No
Prime Ministers perished on a scaffold, no heretics in the flames;
a Russian[73] Princess spared her competitor; even in Turkey the
bow-string had been relaxed--alas! frenzy revived in France the
credibility of assassination; guilt renewed in England machinations
of scarce a whiter dye.
The contests between the Parliament and the clergy about the Bull
_unigenitus_ were still carried on in France. The conduct of the
former was such a happy composition of good sense and temper, that
they neither deserted their duty under oppression, nor sought to
inflame the populace to support them against their oppressors. Even
the Clergy were blessed with more moderation than is usual in such
contentions; and, what was as lucky, had no able heads to direct
them. The Court of Rome, instead of profiting of these divisions,
had used its influence to compose them. Benedict the Fourteenth
then sat in the Apostolic Chair; a man in whom were united all
the amiable qualities of a Prince and a Pastor: he had too much
sense to govern the Church by words, too much goodness to rule his
dominions by force. Amid the pomp of Popery he laughed at form, and
by the mildness of his virtue made fanaticism, of whatever sect,
odious. Yet this venerable Pontiff, now sinking under the weight
of fourscore years, was at last surprised into, or perhaps never
knew that his name was used in, issuing a Bull to enforce, under
pain of damnation, the acceptance of the Bull _unigenitus_. Louis
the Fifteenth was persuaded to use that most solemn act of their
government, a Bed of Justice, to compel the Parliament to register
the Papal Ordinance. The greater part of the members preferred
resigning their employments. The King had taken this step in one
of those relapses into weakness which his constitution furnished,
rather than a want of understanding. The Dauphin was a far more
uniform bigot. It is related of him, that about a year before
this period, reading the life of Nero, he said, “_Ma foi, c’étoit
le plus grand scélérat du monde! il ne lui manquoit que d’être
Janseniste._” And he had even gone so far as to tell his father,
“that were he King, and the Pope should bid him lay down his Crown,
he would obey.” The King, with a tender shrewdness, said, “and if
he should bid you take mine from me, would you?”
The King not being constant in such steady obedience to the Clergy,
they had much aspersed him, and traduced his life and Government.
The partizans of the Parliament loved him as little; and when he
passed through Paris to hold his Bed of Justice, he was received
with sullen coldness. One woman alone crying, _Vive le Roi!_
was thrown down and trampled to death by the mob. In such a
disposition, it was almost extraordinary that no fanatic was found
to lift the arm of violence; a madman supplied the part, without
inviting Heaven to an association of murder.
January 5th.--Between five and six in the evening the King was
getting into his coach to go to Trianon. A man, who had lurked
about the colonnades for two days, pushed up to the coach, jostled
the Dauphin, and stabbed the King under the right arm with a long
knife; but the King having two thick coats, the blade did not
penetrate deep. The King was surprised, but thinking the man had
only pushed against him, said, “_Le coquin m’a donné un furieux
coup de poing_”--but putting his hand to his side and feeling
blood, he said, “_Il m’a blessé; qu’on le saississe, et qu’on ne
lui fasse point de mal_.” The King was carried to bed; the wound
proved neither mortal nor dangerous; but strong impressions, and
not easily to be eradicated, must have been made on a mind gloomy
and superstitious. The title of _Well-beloved_ could but faintly
balance the ideas of Henry the Third stabbed, of Henry the Fourth
stabbed, of enraged Jesuits, and an actual wound. Yet all the
satisfaction that the most minute investigation of circumstances
could give, and that tortures could wrest from the assassin, was
obtained.
Damiens, the criminal, appeared clearly to be mad. He had been
footman to several persons, had fled for a robbery, had returned
to Paris from a dark and restless habit of mind; and from some
preposterous avidity of horrid fame, and from one of those
wonderful contradictions of the human mind, a man aspired to renown
that had descended to theft. Yet in this dreadful complication of
guilt and frenzy, there was room for compassion. The unfortunate
wretch was sensible of the predominance of his black temperament;
and the very morning of the assassination, asked for a surgeon
to let him blood; and to the last gasp of being, persisted that
he should not have committed his crime, if he had been blooded.
What the miserable man suffered is not to be described. When first
seized, and carried into the Guard-chamber, the Garde-des-sceaux
and the Duc d’Ayen ordered the tongs to be heated, and pieces of
flesh torn from his legs, to make him declare his accomplices. The
industrious art used to preserve his life was not less than the
refinement of torture by which they meaned to take it away. The
inventions to form the bed on which he lay, (as the wounds on his
leg prevented his standing,) that his health might in no shape be
affected, equalled what a refining tyrant would have sought to
indulge his own luxury.
When carried to his dungeon, Damiens was wrapped up in mattresses,
lest despair might tempt him to dash his brains out--but his
madness was no longer precipitate. He even sported, horridly
sported, with indicating variety of innocent persons as his
accomplices; and sometimes, more harmlessly, with playing the fool
with his Judges. In no instance he sunk either under terror or
anguish. The very morning on which he was to endure “the question,”
when told of it, he said with the coolest intrepidity, “_La journée
sera rude_”--after it, insisted on wine with his water, saying,
“_Il faut ici de la force_.” And at the accomplishment of his
tragedy, studied and prolonged on the precedent of Ravaillac’s,
he supported all with unrelaxed firmness; and even unremitted
torture of four hours, which succeeded to his being two hours and
a half under the question, forced from him but some momentary
yells--a lamentable spectacle; and perhaps a blameable one. Too
severe pains cannot be used to eradicate the infernal crime of holy
assassination; but what punishments can prevent madness? Would not
one rather stifle under a feather bed, than draw out on the rack a
being infected with a frenzy of guilt and heroism?
King George ordered Mr. Pitt to send a compliment on the French
King’s escape, which was conveyed by the Spanish Minister, and was
handsomely received and answered.
The year opened in England in the same temper with which the last
had closed. Pitt was much confined; when he appeared at Council,
was haughty and visionary; so much, that after one of their
meetings, Lord Granville said, “Pitt used to call me madman, but
I never was half so mad as he is.” Legge had little power, and
was unsatisfied. The Duke of Devonshire preserved what he called
candour; that is, he listened with complaisance to Pitt’s secrets,
and to be impartial, repeated them to Fox. The Duke of Bedford
accepted Ireland; the Primate was come over to feel what would be
the future temper of that Government; and threw himself into great
court to the new Lord Lieutenant and his friends. Lord George
Sackville, to promote those views, seemed to incline to Fox, and
took every opportunity of showing how useful or troublesome he
could be.
In the mean time the trial of Admiral Byng proceeded, having
begun at the conclusion of the preceding year. At the same time
had been held a novel sort of Court of Justice. The Generals
Legonier, Huske, and Cholmondeley, had been appointed by the King
to examine the conduct of Lord Effingham, and the Colonels Stewart
and Cornwallis, who having been sent to join their regiments at
Minorca, gave their opinions with General Fowke at Gibraltar
against granting to Admiral Byng the force which he had been
ordered to take from thence. This inquiry was private, and a kind
of trial whether there ought to be a trial. The inquisitors made
a favourable report, and the officers in question were admitted to
Court as usual.
Before the conclusion of the more solemn trial at Portsmouth, an
incident happened of an indecent kind, and served, as perhaps was
intended, to renew unfavourable sentiments of the Admiral. Among
numbers whose curiosity led them to attend the trial, were the
Scotch Earl of Morton and Lord Willoughby of Parham, both men of
very fair characters; the latter attached to Lord Hardwicke. Both
assiduously attended the examination of the witnesses against the
Admiral; both returned to London without hearing one word of his
defence; and as they forbore to speak their opinions, the mystery
of their silence, which could not be interpreted propitiously, and
the seeming candour, in men of reputation, of not being willing to
condemn, carried double condemnation. Yet as Mr. Byng proceeded
on his defence, these omens dispersed; and before the examination
of his witnesses was finished, the tide of report promised him an
honourable acquittal. On the 20th of January the trial was closed;
and nine days intervening between that and the sentence, and many
whispers getting wind of great altercations in the Court-Martial,
no doubt was entertained but that the contest lay between an entire
absolution, and the struggles of some, who wished to censure, when
it was impossible to condemn.
Before sentence was pronounced, an express was dispatched to the
Admiralty at London, to demand, whether the Court Martial were at
liberty to mitigate an Article of War on which they had doubts.
They were answered in the negative. It was the twelfth of the
Articles of War on which they had scruples. It was formerly left to
the discretion of the Court to inflict death or whatever punishment
they thought proper, on neglect of duty; but about three years
before this period the Articles had been new modelled; and to
strike the greater terror into the officers of the Fleet, who had
been thought too remiss, the softer alternative had been omitted.
From the most favourable construction (for the members of the
Court) of the present case, it was plain that the Court Martial,
who had demanded whether the law would not authorize them to
mitigate the rigour of the article, thought the Admiral by no means
deserved to be included in its utmost severity. This they must have
thought--they could not mean to inquire whether they might mitigate
what they did not desire to mitigate.
How the more moderate members of the Court obtained the
acquiescence of their brethren to this demand is surprising, for
Admiral Boscawen, who had the guard of the prisoner at Portsmouth,
and who was _not_ one of the Judges, but a Lord of the Admiralty,
seems by the event to have understood to a prophetic certainty
the constitution of the Court. Dining at Sir Edward Montagu’s
before the trial, and it being disputed what the issue of it would
be, Boscawen said bluntly, “Well, say what you will, _we_ shall
have a majority, and he will be condemned.” This the Duchess of
Manchester[74] repeated to Mrs. Osborn,[75] and offered to depose
in the most solemn manner.
Accordingly, January 29th, Mr. Byng was summoned to hear his
sentence. He went with that increase of animated tranquillity which
a man must feel who sees a period to his sufferings, and the rays
of truth and justice bursting in at last upon his innocence. His
Judges were so aware of the grounds he had for this presumption,
that they did permit a momentary notice to be given him, that the
sentence was unfavourable. A friend was ordered to prepare him--and
felt too much of the friend to give the hint sufficient edge; but
by too tenderly blunting the stroke, contributed to illustrate the
honour and firmness of the Admiral’s mind. He started, and cried,
“Why, they have not put a slur on me, have they?” fearing they
had censured him for cowardice. The bitterness of the sentence
being explained, and being satisfied that his courage was not
stigmatized, his countenance resumed its serenity, and he directly
went with the utmost composure to hear the law pronounced. For a
moment he had been alarmed with shame; death, exchanged for that,
was the next good to an acquittal.
I have spoken of Admiral Byng, not only as of a man who thought
himself innocent, but as of one marked for sacrifice by a set of
Ministers, who meant to divert on him the vengeance of a betrayed
and enraged nation. I have spoken, and shall speak of him as of a
man most unjustly and wickedly put to death; and as this was the
moment from which my opinion sprung, however lamentably confirmed
by the event, it is necessary in my own vindication to say a
few words, lest prejudice against the persecutors, or for the
persecuted, should be suspected of having influenced my narrative.
I can appeal to God that I never spoke to Mr. Byng in my life, nor
had the most distant acquaintance with any one of his family. The
man I never saw but in the street, or in the House of Commons, and
there I thought his carriage haughty and disgusting. From report,
I had formed a mean opinion of his understanding; and from the
clamours of the world, I was carried away with the multitude in
believing he had not done his duty; and in thinking his behaviour
under _his_ circumstances weak and arrogant. I never interested
myself enough about him to inquire whether this opinion was well
or ill founded. When his pamphlet appeared, I read it, and found
he had been cruelly and scandalously treated. I knew enough not
to wonder at this conduct in _some_ of his persecutors--yet it
concerned not me; and I thought no more about it till the sentence,
and the behaviour of his Judges which accompanied it, struck me
with astonishment! I could not conceive, how men could acquit
honourably and condemn to death with the same breath! How men
could feel so much, and be so insensible at the same instant; and
from the prejudice of education which had told me that the law of
England understood that its ministers of Justice should always be
Counsel _for_ the prisoner, I could not comprehend how the members
of the Court-Martial came to think that a small corner of a law
ought to preponderate for rigour, against a whole body of the same
law which they understood directed them to mercy; and I was still
more startled to hear men urge that their consciences were bound
by an oath, which their consciences told them would lead them to
murder. Lest this should be thought a declamatory paraphrase, I
will insert both the sentence and the letter of the Court-Martial;
and will appeal to impartial posterity, whether I have exaggerated,
whether it was necessary for me, or whether it was possible for me
to exaggerate, the horrid absurdity of this proceeding. Supplements
indeed there were made to it!
“At a Court-Martial, assembled on board his Majesty’s ship St.
George, in Portsmouth harbour, upon the 28th of December, 1756,
and held everyday afterwards (Sundays excepted), till the 27th of
January inclusive--
Present,
Thomas Smith, Esq., Vice-Admiral of the Red, President;
Francis Holburne, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the Red;
Harry Norris, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the White;
Thomas Brodrick, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the Blue;
Captains, Charles Holmes, Francis Geary,
William Boys, John Moore,
John Simcoe, James Douglas,
John Bentley, Hon. Augustus Keppel.
Peter Denis,
The Court, pursuant to an order from the Lords Commissioners of
the Admiralty to Vice-Admiral Smith, dated December 14, 1756,
proceeded to inquire into the conduct of the Hon. John Byng,
Admiral of the Blue squadron of his Majesty’s Fleet, and to
try him upon a charge, that during the engagement between his
Majesty’s Fleet, under his command, and the Fleet of the French
King, on the 20th of May last, he did withdraw or keep back, and
did not do his utmost to take, seize, and destroy, the ships
of the French King, which it was his duty to have engaged, and
to assist such of his Majesty’s ships as were engaged in fight
with the French ships, which it was his duty to have assisted;
and for that he did not do his utmost to relieve St. Philip’s
Castle, in his Majesty’s island of Minorca, then besieged by the
forces of the French King, but acted contrary to, and in breach
of, his Majesty’s command; and having heard the evidence and the
prisoner’s defence, and very maturely and thoroughly considered
the same, they are unanimously of opinion, that he did not do his
utmost to relieve St. Philip’s Castle, and also that during the
engagement between his Majesty’s Fleet under his command and the
Fleet of the French King on the 20th of May last, he did not do
his utmost to take, seize, and destroy, the ships of the French
King, which it was his duty to have engaged, and to assist such
of his Majesty’s ships as were engaged, in fight with the French
ships, which it was his duty to have assisted; and do therefore
unanimously agree that he falls under part of the twelfth article
of an Act of Parliament of the twenty-second year of his present
Majesty, for amending, explaining, and reducing into one Act of
Parliament the laws relating to the government of his Majesty’s
ships, vessels, and forces by sea; and as that article positively
prescribes death, without any alternative left to the discretion
of the Court, under any variation of circumstances, the Court do
therefore hereby unanimously adjudge the said Admiral John Byng
to be shot to death, at such time, and on board such ship, as the
Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty shall direct.
“But as it appears by the evidence of Lord Robert Bertie,
Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, Captain Gardiner, and other officers
of the ship, who were near the person of the Admiral, that they
did not perceive any backwardness in him during the action, or
any marks of fear or confusion, either from his countenance or
behaviour, but that he seemed to give his orders coolly and
distinctly, and did not seem wanting in personal courage, and
from other circumstances, the Court do not believe that his
misconduct arose either from cowardice or disaffection, and do
therefore unanimously think it their duty, most earnestly to
recommend him as a proper object of mercy.”
The sentence was accompanied by the following earnest
representation:--
“To the right honourable the Lords Commissioners for executing
the office of Lord High Admiral of Great Britain, &c.
“We, the underwritten, the President and Members of the
Court-Martial assembled for the trial of Admiral Byng, believe it
unnecessary to inform your Lordships, that in the whole course
of this long trial, we have done our utmost endeavour to come at
truth, and to do the strictest justice to our country, and the
prisoner; but we cannot help laying the distresses of our minds
before your Lordships on this occasion, in finding ourselves
under a necessity of condemning a man to death, from the great
severity of the twelfth Article of War, part of which he falls
under, and which admits of no mitigation, even if the crime
should be committed by an error in judgment only; and therefore,
for our own consciences sakes, as well as in justice to the
prisoner, we pray your Lordships, in the most earnest manner, to
recommend him to his Majesty’s clemency.
“We are, my Lords, &c. &c.”
Signed by the whole Court.
From this sentence and this letter, it appears that Mr. Byng was
acquitted, in the fullest manner, of cowardice, by men who (to say
the best of them) were too scrupulous to acquit of a crime of which
they thought him guilty, when they imagined it was their duty to
condemn him for another crime, of which, it seems, they did not
think him guilty. For thus unbiassed posterity will undoubtedly
judge of those men. If there was any meaning in their strange
procedure, it must have been this:--They thought the Admiral guilty
of an error in judgment; and as from an error in judgment he had
not performed all they supposed he might have done, they held him
to blame--and then, believing that the Article of War intended to
inflict death on all kinds of blame, they considered under what
chapter of blame to rank Mr. Byng’s error. _Disaffection_ it was
not, _cowardice_ it was not; the Article named but a third species,
and that being _neglect_, these honest men agreed that a want of
judgment was nearest related to _neglect_, and for that condemned
him.
This reasoning, I presume, is the best defence that could be made
for these expounders of naval law. An anecdote, much asserted at
the time, belongs to this part of the proceeding. When the severer
part of the Court (the steady part of Admiral Boscawen’s foretold
majority) found great difficulty to wring from their associates
acquiescence in condemnation, they are said to have seduced the
latter by promising on their part, if Mr. Byng was condemned, to
sign so favourable a representation of his case, that it should be
impossible but he must be pardoned. If anything could excuse men
for condemning a person whom they thought innocent, it would be
this, because there is nothing more uncommon, I might almost say,
more unheard of, than the execution of a criminal, when his Judge
strongly recommends him to mercy. If this bargain for blood was
suggested by the return of the Courier who was dispatched by the
Court-Martial for illumination--but I will not make surmises--the
late Ministers had sufficiently barricaded the gates of mercy when
they engaged the King in that promise to the city of London; and
whoever will read the inhuman letters of their tool, Cleland, the
Secretary of the Admiralty, will be a competent judge of what mercy
Mr. Byng had to expect after condemnation.
The first flame lighted by this extraordinary sentence was the
dissatisfaction it occasioned in the Navy, when they found such
a construction of the twelfth Article, as made it capital for an
officer to want, what he could not command, judgment. Admiral West
threatened to resign if it was not altered. But they who had power
to enforce execution on such an interpretation, took care not
to consent to any correction. With what face could they put the
Admiral to death, if they owned that the Article on which he was
condemned wanted amendment?
Before I proceed to the consequences of this affair, I will say a
few words, as I promised, on the engagement itself; though with
regard to the fate of Mr. Byng, I think it ceased from this moment
to be any part of the question. If he was guilty of any fault, his
most conscientious Judges thought it so small an one, that they
did not hesitate to censure the law itself for blending it with
capital crimes: and it will appear as fully that the duration of it
was as short, as the nature of it was light; not extending beyond
very few minutes. Had he been guilty of all that cowardice which
had first been charged on him, and of which he was so honourably
acquitted, it would still have been a notorious violation of the
custom of England, (and the common law itself is scarce more than
custom,) to put him to death after such earnest recommendation of
his Judges--Judges under no influence of the favourable sort!
The quintessence of the engagement, as shortly as I can state
it, I take to have been this:--After the signal for charging was
made, the Captain of the Intrepid bore down in a wrong direction,
by which she was exposed to be raked by the enemy. Admiral West,
who commanded that division, followed the same direction, rather
than decline the engagement. This was brave: he was not the
Commander-in-Chief. Mr. Byng, who was, perceived the disadvantage
of this manœuvre; yet he, too, bore down, but more slowly. In his
course, the Princess Louisa and the Trident lay in his way, and he
was obliged to disengage himself from them first, and then crowded
all the sail he could. As the French had engaged in earnest, and
had not suffered, he could not have the least suspicion that they
would give over so abruptly; but while he was involved with his
own ships, they had prepared to retreat, and had already left him
at such a distance, that he thought it in vain to follow them that
night. Afterwards, on a review of his fleet, he found so much
damage done to what was before deplorable, expected so little to be
able to raise the siege, and what in my opinion he dreaded with
most reason, and which was equally the object of his orders, feared
so much for Gibraltar, that he determined to retire thither, and
had the concurrence of Admiral West.
I have said that one part of the Admiral’s defence does not appear
to be well reasoned; I mean, his belief that though he had beaten
the French, he should not have saved the island. General Blakeney,
too, deposed at the trial, that if the whole detachment ordered
from Gibraltar had been landed at the time the Fleet appeared
off Mahon, it would have been insignificant: an opinion, in my
judgment, as wrong as the Admiral’s. At last the fortress fell from
want of hands--what had they suffered? a reinforcement would have
prolonged the siege, as the defeat of the French Fleet might have
starved the besiegers, if in either case a new squadron had been
sent from England. To conclude all their efforts insufficient,
both the Admiral and General must have believed that the English
Ministry would have continued as remiss and culpable as they _had_
been.
With regard to the sentence, the essence of it turns on the very
few minutes in which the Admiral neglected to make all possible
sail--and for _that_ he died! I, however, shocked at the severity
of his fate, am still impartial; and with the truth that becomes
an historian, from the most respectable down to so trifling a
writer as myself, shall fairly declare all I know and observed:
and difficult it would be for any man to have watched with more
industry of attention even the most minute circumstance of this
dark affair from the instant the sentence was made public. From
that unremitted observation I formed this opinion:--Mr. Byng, by
nature a vain man, by birth the son of a hero, was full of his
own glory, and apprehensive of forfeiting any portion of what had
descended on him. He went, conscious of the bad condition of his
ships and men, to dispute that theatre with the French, on which
his father had shone over the Spaniards; and he went persuaded
that he should find a superior enemy. He dreaded forfeiting the
reputation of forty years of brave service; he looked on Minorca as
lost, and thought it could not be imputed to him. He had sagacity
enough (without his strict orders) to comprehend, that if Gibraltar
followed St. Philip’s, which he knew would be the case if he was
defeated, that loss would be charged on him: and after all, to
mislead him, he had the addition of believing that he had satisfied
his duty by obliging the French to retire. This seems to have been
the man:--He was, if I may be allowed the expression, a coward of
his glory, not of his life; with regard to that, poor man! he had
an opportunity of showing he was a hero.
It is not to boast any sagacity, and yet perhaps it required some
extent of it to exceed Mr. Byng’s enemies in discovering a fault
which escaped their acuteness--but I did remark an instance that
was never observed nor charged on him, in which he was undoubtedly
guilty. In the course of the inquiry into the loss of Minorca,
(to be mentioned hereafter,) a letter from the Admiral was read
carelessly in a very thin Committee, which confirmed what the
Ministry did charge him with--delay; and fully explanatory of that
vain-glory which I have described as characteristic of the man. In
that letter he told the Admiralty, that though their orders were
so pressing, and the wind was fair, he did presume to stay for
final orders--slightly he hinted, and seemingly without connecting
it with his delay, that he thought he should have the rank of
Commander-in-Chief.
When this letter was produced, the Admiral was dead; new objects
had engaged the minds of men; and this is not a nation where any
impressions engrave themselves deeply. If I have mentioned it now,
it was to demonstrate my own impartial veracity: and yet, though
the delay was blameable, no consequences flowed from it. If he had
lingered, it had been but for a day or two: he had arrived in time
to fight the French, and could but have fought them, arriving a
day or two sooner. Dispatched so late as he was, he never could
have reached Minorca early enough to disturb their landing. This
reasoning, therefore, is mere speculation, and not intended to
absolve or condemn the Admiral, the justice of whose fate, I again
declare, in my opinion by no means depended on the innocence or
criminality of his behaviour: the iniquity of his suffering on such
a sentence, and after such a recommendation of his Judges, gave the
tone to his catastrophe.
I must interrupt the sequel of his story to relate a few preceding
and intervening passages.
Two battalions, each composed of a thousand Highlanders, were
raised for the service of America; the command given to the brother
of Lord Eglinton, and to the Master of Lovat, the son of the famous
old chieftain, who had suffered on Tower-hill after the late
Rebellion. The young man had been forced into the same cause by his
father, had been attainted and pardoned, but was never permitted
to go into the Highlands; and though he received a pension from
the Crown, he was allowed nothing from his paternal estate. His
jurisdiction too had been abolished with the rest. This man was now
selected by the Duke of Argyle, who told the Government, that under
no other person the clan of Frazers would enlist. Stanley, formerly
connected with Pitt, now attached to the Duke of Newcastle, under
whose Ministry he was a candidate for the Admiralty, took severe
notice of this measure in a very good speech, and roundly charged
it on Pitt’s flattery to the Duke of Argyle. He expressed great
dissatisfaction on the admission of disaffected Highlanders into
the Army, said if Frazer had any experience, he had learned
it in Rebellion; spared not the Scotch, and yet said, his was
not prejudice, nor did he contract notions of any country by
walking through the streets of it. This glanced at Pitt’s former
declamation against Oxford. Stanley was ungracious in his manner,
but had sense and knowledge, heightened with much oddness, and
supported by great personal courage. Lord George Sackville defended
the measure, and asked why rank should not be allowed to these
extemporaneous officers, as it had been to the Colonels of the new
regiments in the late Rebellion? This slip was taken up by Lord
Granby, who said he was sorry to hear Rebels compared to Lords who
had taken up arms to crush the Rebellion. Fox, not to be outstriped
in homage to Argyle, justified the measure on the necessity of it.
January 19th.--The estimate of the Ordnance was read. The
extravagant expense of the late camp at Byfleet, where the Duke of
Marlborough had played with the image of war, was disguised and
lumped under various services. Charles Townshend moved to have the
articles separated, that the truth might be known.
21st.--Mr. Legge opened part of the supplies, of which one
ingredient was a Guinea Lottery, the scheme of a visionary Jew,
who long pestered the public with his reveries. The plan failed.
Legge ostentatiously subscribed for a thousand tickets, and engaged
his chief, the Duke of Devonshire, to do the same: but Legge took
care privately to vend his own number, and was no loser. Beckford
proposed new kinds of taxes on tea and salt, which were not
accepted. Mr. Pitt, in the meantime, was confined. The patience and
complaisance of the Tories were remarkable, who, notwithstanding
the instructions which they had instructed their constituents to
send them for speedy inquiries into the late mismanagement, revered
the sick bed of the gouty Minister, and presumed to tap no inquiry
in his absence. What accession of dignity to him? what reflection
on the capacity or integrity of his associates, who were not
deemed qualified to scrutinize without him the conduct of their
predecessors!
26th.--The Militia Bill was again offered to the House. Mr. Conway
opened in a very able manner another plan of his own for raising
a Militia from the capital towns. Mr. Fox supported it. Charles
Townshend broke out into a vehemence of passion, on Fox’s saying
that the former Bill ought to be altered to make it palatable
to the Lords, whom Townshend handled very roughly. Lord George
Sackville opposed him, but took care not to show more partiality to
Mr. Conway, whose plan he disapproved. The consideration of the
two schemes was deferred till the Committee.
Charles, at the instigation of George Townshend, continued to
sift the estimate of the Ordnance. They found that the Duke of
Marlborough had charged his own pay at ten shillings a day. No
master of the Ordnance had received so much, except Duc Schomberg,
who had no regiment. The great Duke of Marlborough, the late Duke
of Argyle, the Duke of Montagu, three men sufficiently attentive
to their interest, had touched but four shillings. The Townshends
clamoured on this, and the Duke of Marlborough refunded all that he
had received above four shillings a day.
FOOTNOTES:
[73] The Czarina Elizabeth, who only confined the Princess Anne of
Mecklenberg.
[74] Wife of Sir Edward Montagu.
[75] Sister of Admiral Byng.