and Mr. Allen[65] to examine the history of the first-fruits and tenths.
We thought that we had discovered that the Crown was empowered, and even
enjoined by law, to make a new valuation of them, and to appropriate
the amount of the revenue which would arise from such a measure to the
objects of Queen Anne’s Bounty. I moved a string of resolutions to that
purpose, but was discomfited by the production of a clause in an Act of
George I., which had, I believe, been originally introduced into the Bill
by some manœuvre or contrivance, and which certainly bore little or no
reference to the title thereof. It was discovered by the learned Bench
about twenty-four hours before I came down to the House; and as I had
communicated the substance and, I think, the form of my resolutions to
them, their policy was more conspicuous than their candour in withholding
this discovery from my notice till my speech was delivered and my motion
made.
In June Lord Grey moved an address on the state of the nation. The object
of the motion was to recapitulate the dangers of the country; to expose
the rashness of our policy, foreign and domestic; and to record the
public principles of himself and his friends by marking, on one hand,
the difference between the system he recommended and that pursued by the
Government, and on the other, a line of separation between himself and
those reformers who were for circumscribing the powers of Parliament as
well as altering fundamentally the basis of the representation. In all
parts of this address, even those which glanced at a moderate reform
of Parliament, Lord Grenville, though absent from illness, signified
his concurrence. I, who voted for the motion, had some slight objection
to parts of it, and entertained great doubt of the necessity or policy
of any such laboured declaration of our political creed. Lord Erskine
and the Duke of Norfolk courted popularity by expressing doubts on the
privilege question; but neither the one nor the other had the courage to
contend manfully with Lord Grey and resort to the only arguments by which
their opinions could be plausibly maintained. They therefore involved
themselves in generalities, or entangled the question in legal subtleties.
At the latter end of this Session Lord Lauderdale objected to a flagrant
job in favour of Mr. Walter Scott’s brother; Lord Melville defended
it on the score of rewarding poetical genius; and I, after ironically
congratulating Lord Melville on his tardy conversion to the beauties of
poetry, to which he had shown himself so insensible in the instance of
his countryman Burns, acquiesced in the propriety of rewarding Walter
Scott, but deprecated a job injurious to the public service in favour
of his brother. When I visited Scotland in the summer the irritable
bard would not deign to speak to me, and even closed his mouth when he
perceived me listening to the good stories he was telling at the other
end of the table at a club where I met him at Edinburgh.[66]
Both the theatres had been burnt down in the autumn of 1808 and the
spring of 1809.[67] Notwithstanding the losses of Mr. Kemble, which were
in some degree repaired by the Duke of Northumberland, who on this and
some other rare occasions capriciously belied his general character by an
act of useful generosity, Covent Garden Theatre was rebuilt and opened
in 1810. An attempt was made to raise the prices. An unusual number of
private boxes, and the introduction of an Italian singer on the stage,
rendered that innovation yet more unpalatable to the public. They thought
an undue advantage was taken of that entire monopoly which the hopeless
state of the Drury Lane Theatre concerns virtually conferred on Covent
Garden.
The taste for expensive exhibitions, the real or nominal change in the
value of money, and the increased salary of the actors, did indeed seem
to justify some advance in the price of admission. But the managers were
injudicious in their mode of proposing the innovation, of resisting the
clamours of the audience, and of yielding piecemeal to their demands.
Prejudice and hissing became clamour; clamour was soon exasperated into
riot; and riot, when headed by Mr. Clifford,[68] a Roman Catholic lawyer
of considerable name, seemed likely, in the apprehension of many, to
swell into political sedition, and become the prelude or instrument
of more mischief than disturbing a play or keeping down the price of
theatrical exhibitions.[69]
The apprehension was groundless; though it must be acknowledged that
the pretension of affixing a price to anything by popular clamour was
one of fearful example, and Mr. Clifford was a man capable, both from
temper and talents, of harbouring and executing very mischievous designs.
Impatience of the unjust disabilities under which his sect labours
had reconciled him to violent opinions in politics; and unrestrained
habits of intemperance had inflamed the malignity of a disposition not
originally amiable, without impairing the very acute perceptions and
strong intellect with which Nature had endowed him. He was, however,
pacified by the submission of the managers, seemed to bear his triumph
meekly, and if he entertained any project of engrafting further designs
on the popularity to which he had raised himself, he did not live to
develop them. The drams, which were unable to extinguish his spirit or
drown his reason, undermined his bodily constitution, and brought him in
the middle of life and in possession of all his faculties to an untimely
grave soon after the unenviable distinction he had obtained.
If in the unprofitable career of such men moralists may find a warning
against the indulgence of sensual or malignant passions, legislators
and statesmen may learn the impolicy of converting by laws of exclusion
those faculties, which in the service of the State might improve the
happiness and raise the glory of the country, into engines of torment
to the possessors, and of mischief to the Commonwealth. This incident
(which was called O.P., or Old Prices) probably suggested to many minds
the necessity of another theatre, and thereby facilitated the completion
of an undertaking in which I was soon afterwards subordinately engaged,
_viz._, the rebuilding of Drury Lane Play-house, and procuring an Act of
Parliament to constitute the subscribers a Joint Stock Company for that
purpose.
At the close of this year, 1810, the disorder to which the King had
been frequently subject recurred with such violence as to incapacitate
him from discharging the functions of his situation, and ultimately to
become confirmed insanity without any hope of recovery. In preserving
some facts connected with his complaint, and in making some remarks on
his character, I trust to the reports of others rather than to my own
personal observation. My direct intercourse with George III. was very
slight, and chiefly confined to mere form and civility. He inherited from
his mother a scrofulous habit, which, when malignant, not unfrequently
terminates in madness. Such instances had, I believe, occurred in the
Saxe-Gotha family, from which Frederick, Prince of Wales, unfortunately
selected his consort.
There was a story current, that a disposition to lunacy was apprehended
in the King’s illness of 1765. Letters from the King soon afterwards,
speaking of medical injunctions to him to abstain from business,[70]
and a passage in Smollett’s _Continuation_, mysteriously worded and yet
more mysteriously cancelled in most but not all the copies, give, it is
said, some colour to the report. If his son’s account of his behaviour
in the riots of 1780 and at the dissolution of Lord North’s Ministry
can be credited, strong symptoms of derangement appeared on both those
occasions. He announced, on both, a design of retiring to Hanover.
Disgust at the scenes of 1780, and chagrin at the events of 1782, might
indeed, in both instances, rationally account for so hasty a resolution;
but the disproportionate earnestness about trifles, especially the
liveries of his servants when he should arrive in Germany (circumstances
which I have heard His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales describe
with more vivacity than filial grace), could hardly be reconciled with
the possession of a sound judgment. Throughout life his manner was
hurried, his conversation on indifferent subjects rapid and incoherent,
on persons detracting and malicious. When constrained to business he
was clear and decisive; but he often betrayed the narrowest prejudices
on things and that constitutional suspicion of mankind which is so
frequent a concomitant of a disordered understanding. Mr. Fox, in his
first interview with the King, remarked that he had a “very mad look in
his eyes.” They were without question singularly unsteady, through their
extreme short-sightedness, and the continued see-saw motion of his body
seemed to account for that defect. In the Coalition Administration his
conduct in Cabinet was one day so strange that on his leaving the room,
which he did with levity and abruptness, Lord John Cavendish observed,
“His Majesty is certainly wrong in the upper story.”[71]
In 1788 a positive derangement of intellect was discovered and
acknowledged. Since that period he had two very decided relapses, and
perhaps he was never afterwards entirely free from occasional aberrations
of mind, though they were sufficiently controlled to escape the notice
of the public and the interference of Ministers. The recollection of
his first illness and the dread of its return gave for some time great
ascendancy to those about him, and combined with his alarm at the
French Revolution to render him accommodating and even submissive to
Mr. Pitt for many years. But when the secession seemed to disband the
party whom he dreaded, George III. insensibly reverted to his early
habits of intrigue and duplicity, thwarted many little projects of his
ostensible Ministers, fortified subordinate agents in their hostility
to others, and finally drove his confidential servants to resign by a
passionate and obstinate resistance to a measure long in contemplation
and of great national importance.[72] No sooner had he released himself
from the constraint of Mr. Pitt’s Administration than a virulent attack
of his disorder occurred. The appointments necessary to complete the new
Ministry were suspended for some weeks in consequence of his incapacity,
and Lord Chancellor Rosslyn had the hardihood to make him sign a
Commission to pass the Brown Bread Bill while he was actually under the
control of keepers. His relapses afterwards were frequent. Lord Sidmouth
has more than once acknowledged to me, that the uncertainty of the King’s
health was his chief, if not only, motive for resigning in 1804, and not
facing the coalition of Fox, Pitt, and Grenville, which, had he remained
in office, would have speedily ensued.
In 1806 the King was kept on his good behaviour by his fears of a
Ministry which he had considered as hostile to him and favourable to his
son. He confined himself strictly to business, and indeed his intercourse
with all of us was so rare that it could not be difficult for him to
suppress any morbid delusion during the few hours, which once in the
course of a fortnight he allotted to audiences of the members of his
Cabinet. The gentleman who conducted his correspondence was Colonel
Taylor,[73] a man of discretion and judgment, who had many obvious and
possibly some secret (though not dishonourable) motives for concealing
any infirmity of the kind. For myself, in my last, and indeed only,
audience, when I delivered up the Privy Seal, His Majesty was so hurried
that I felt it a relief to quit the room. I will not say that his
conversation denoted madness, but certainly the subsequent insanity of
any man, who had spoken in the way and with the gestures he then did,
could never have surprised me.
In the autumn of 1810 the approaching death of Princess Amelia deeply
afflicted him. That affliction was followed by a paroxysm which
terminated in confirmed insanity. It was an affecting coincidence, that
the dawn of his reviving reason in 1788 had been marked by the strong
emotions of natural affection at the accidental sight of the very
daughter whose illness occasioned this last and fatal relapse. She was
said to be his favourite child; but he had much tenderness for all his
daughters, as well [as] for the Duke of York, and perhaps the Duke of
Cambridge: he had little, if any, for his other children. In the early
part of his reign he had shown himself harsh, unkind, and vindictive to
his brothers. He was cold, jealous, and unjust to the Prince of Wales in
his childhood; distant and suspicious ever afterwards.
In general his virtues were not of an engaging nor his endowments of a
dazzling character. He had a bad opinion of mankind, a contracted but
by no means a feeble view of every subject. With a nature so little
attractive, without one brilliant qualification, and during a reign
marked by disasters, how did he contrive to win the affections of many
and popularity with the great mass of his subjects? After due allowance
be made for the childish love of Princes so prevalent in England, and
the systematic policy of the demagogues in vilifying Parliament rather
than the Crown, other causes must still be sought for to explain so
extraordinary a phenomenon. He said indeed himself, with as much contempt
for the public, but with more point, than was usual in his conversation:
“I have been the most unpopular and most popular King in England; but
I owed the first to my Minister, Lord Bute, and I owe the second to
my son, the Prince of Wales.” But there were other reasons. He was a
regular, decorous, church-going family man. The practice of the austerer
virtues was not to be imputed in him to any coldness of constitution. He
was of an amorous complexion, and many involuntary avowals made during
his derangements proved that his fidelity never arose from any blind
partiality to the personal charms of the Queen, but from a sense of duty
and propriety.[74] Whatever be the moral value of such self-denial, the
people of England were then, and, I believe, still are, disposed to pay
it full as much homage as it deserves in persons whose high stations
render it of difficult attainment and wholesome example.
The King had, however, virtues of a higher order, great decision and
consistency and courage, both personal and political. He adhered firmly
to the principles of government that he approved, and he was steady in
the protection of those who supported him in them. He never lost sight of
his objects; and could he have found Ministers as firm or as obstinate
as himself, he would never have surrendered a measure, as he certainly
never changed an opinion. He said, indeed, to every American Minister
who was accredited to him, “I was the last man in England to acknowledge
your independence, and I will be the last to disturb it”; but if he ever
repented of his conduct, it was in submitting to that peace, not in
fomenting and persisting so long in the war. “As to the question,” says
he, in a letter to Mr. Fox, of August, 1783, “whether I wish to receive a
Minister from America, I certainly can never express its being agreeable
to me; indeed, I should think it wisest for both parties to have only
agents who can settle any matter of commerce; but so far I cannot help
adding, that I shall ever have a bad opinion of any Englishman who would
accept being an accredited Minister for that revolted State, which
certainly for years cannot establish a stable Government.”[75]
He not only cherished obstinacy in himself, but admired and inculcated
it in others. In spite of his vaunted Christianity, he despised a man
who was not irreconcilable in his enmities as well as constant in his
friendships, and he exacted not only consistent conduct but an adherence
to the prejudices of education and family. This persuasion, combining
with a propensity common to all old men, led him in the latter end of his
life to estimate individuals by his recollection of the characters of
their fathers rather than by observation on theirs. He himself rigidly
conformed to the rule he expected in others. The absurd German notions
of birth, imbibed in childhood, recurred with double force upon his mind
in his old age. By them he regulated his sense of duty and his opinion
of men. He fortified his morbid prejudices against Roman Catholics by
a reference to the Protestant maxims of his House. He judged of the
fitness for high station by rank rather than by talent, and he hailed the
appointment of two Archbishops,[76] whom from their connections he called
_gentlemen_, as a triumph for the Church and a consolation to himself.
Descent from an early enemy or obscurity of birth were in his eyes such
offences, that, with the exception of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Addington, he
was seldom prevailed upon to pardon either, even in persons who were
subservient or necessary to his views.
His conduct with respect to Hanover was irreproachable. He never diverted
the revenue of that country to any personal or British object; he never
sacrificed any British treasure or English objects to Hanoverian policy;
he never converted his distinct authority as Elector into the means of
thwarting an obnoxious Minister at home, or enforcing wishes which as
King of England he was compelled to conceal. His behaviour to Sir James
Craufurd and other Englishmen, who had broken their parole and escaped
from France, reflects much honour upon him; as Napoleon had furnished
examples of a less scrupulous policy, and the violence of the times, as
well as the temper of his Ministers, would have enabled him to follow
them without reproach or animadversion. “If a gentleman,” he observed,
“had derived indulgence from a promise, even to usurped authority, he was
bound in honour to abide by it, however illegal the original detention
or the conditions might be.” George III. adhered to this principle, and
would never receive any officer or English traveller who had violated it.
These are the two best traits I knew of him, and for that reason I have
faithfully recorded them.[77]
To sum up his character: he was a man of principle, honest and anxious in
forming his rule of action, sagacious in the application and steady in
the observance of it; but then his views were narrow and mischievous,
his judgments warped, and his feelings illiberal. His distrust of mankind
made him deem insincerity necessary and justifiable. He practised
dissimulation, and in some few instances simulation likewise, without
scruple. If he had the heart of a courageous and the talents of a
dexterous or shrewd man, he wanted the enlarged understanding which
constitutes wisdom, as well as all elevation and refinement of sentiment
which shed so much lustre on rank. He was, too, a stranger to every
generous affection which renders a Prince either amiable or benevolent.
There was nothing great, nothing kind, nothing open, nothing graceful in
his character or manners.
Those who look to the objects for which Governments are instituted must
pronounce him an inglorious, if not a pernicious, sovereign of a free
country; but more (and I fear they are not few) who contemplate the
preservation and perhaps the extension of the monarchical branch of our
Constitution more as the end than the means of public administration,
will, with some justice, regard George III. as a sensible man, and an
able, useful, and fortunate Prince.
INTRODUCTION TO BOOK THE SECOND
The shock occasioned by the death of Princess Amelia, which occurred in
November, 1810, put an end to any hopes that may have existed of George
III.’s recovery. His intellect, already failing under the weight of
years, finally gave way, and it became necessary to appoint a Regent to
carry on the business of the country. The physicians still gave hopes
of ultimate recovery, and the Bill which Mr. Perceval presented to the
House of Commons was based on this supposition. The functions of the
Crown were to be placed temporarily in the hands of the Prince of Wales,
but subject to restrictions which would materially limit the scope of
his powers. The Prince consulted Lords Grey and Grenville in January,
1811, as to the written protest he was preparing for presentation to Mr.
Perceval; but already signs of disagreement began to appear between the
Regent and the party with whom he had habitually acted. A suggestion for
the reinstatement of the Duke of York as Commander-in-Chief received
scant encouragement from the two Lords; while the fact of its prompt
and favourable reception by the Ministers went far to reconcile the
Prince to his new advisers. The retention of the latter in office was
all-important to the Queen, and every ounce of influence which she
possessed over her son was thrown into the balance on their behalf.
Assisted by the doctors, she represented the state of the King’s health
as entirely dependent on the actions of the Regent. Certain it is that
the fear of in any way jeopardising the precarious existence of his
father weighed heavily with the Prince, when the time arrived (February
1, 1812) for the expiration of the restrictions.
In Spain Wellington’s policy of masterly inaction had fulfilled its
purpose during the winter of 1810. It was impossible for Massena to
maintain his position in Portugal owing to the lack of local supplies,
and the English were able to resume the offensive after the arrival of
reinforcements from home. Some success was obtained by the French armies
in the south, where Soult captured Seville, laid siege to Cadiz, and
commenced his march northwards. He was checked, however, by the success
of General Graham over the besiegers of Cadiz, and returned to resume
the blockade of that town. The victories of Fuentes d’Onoro and Albuera
maintained the superiority of the English in the field; but owing to the
junction of Soult and Marmont (who had taken over Massena’s command)
during the autumn of 1811, it was not until early in 1812 that Wellington
was able to capture the fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, and
secure his base in Portugal from the possibility of attack.
In the north Napoleon was making vast preparations for bringing the
Czar to his senses, and revenging himself on him for the defection of
Russia from his commercial system—that favourite scheme of the French
Emperor for humbling the pride of Great Britain by injuring her commerce.
Prussia, now under the guidance of Count Hardenberg, maintained a
vacillating policy, and finally, through fear of standing alone, was
forced into a treaty with France whereby she was to furnish troops to
further Napoleon’s schemes. Austria was also driven to conclude a hollow
treaty of the same kind, and Russia was thus left alone to resist the
attack of the all-conquering despot.
Much suffering and misery were rife among the lower classes in England
during the winter of 1811. Trade was at its lowest ebb. The effects of
Napoleon’s decrees against English commerce and the Orders in Council,
issued by the Cabinet as a means of retaliation, fell heavily on the
manufacturing districts. The United States, furious at the interference
with their carrying trade, forbade all commercial transactions with
England or France; and though the English Cabinet took steps to meet
their views by exempting them from the operation of the measure, the
American Government declared war in 1812. The Orders in Council were
repealed, through the efforts of Mr. Brougham, soon after Mr. Perceval’s
death; but the news reached the United States too late to prevent the
conflict.
Lord Wellesley resigned his office of Foreign Secretary in February,
1812. The Prince Regent renewed his negotiations with the Whig party,
communicating with Lords Grey and Grenville by means of the Duke of York.
No result was arrived at, and Lord Castlereagh was appointed to succeed
Lord Wellesley. The whole question of the government of the country was,
however, shortly reopened. On May 11 Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister,
was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham,
a ruined merchant, of whose sanity there was great doubt. The Prince
Regent was now forced to decide finally to which party he would give
his confidence. Lord Holland gives a detailed account of the intrigues
and negotiations which took place at this time. Enough to mention here
that after communications with all parties, in which Lords Liverpool,
Wellesley, and Moira successively took a prominent part, the Prince
retained the Tory party in power, and gave Lord Liverpool full powers to
form an Administration on the same basis as that which had carried on the
business of the country up to the time of Mr. Perceval’s death.
BOOK THE SECOND
1810 TO JUNE, 1812
N.B.—Written in 1818, 1819, 1820, 1821. Transcribed in 1824.