to pledge myself, and such others as were willing to support me, to
some revision of the proceedings in cases of libel. The _ex officio_
informations[102] are indefensible in reason and very liable to abuse.
If the Whigs obtained the Ministry, I thought they might, and I was
sure they ought to, regulate and perhaps to suppress them, according
to the original intention at the Revolution of 1688. When parties,
however, are in office, though they may be sincerely determined never
to abuse, they are seldom disposed voluntarily to surrender or curtail
any of their powers, unless in a manner compelled to do so by recent
declarations in favour of such reforms. I wished so to compel them.
As I had sat in Cabinet with Lord Ellenborough,[103] and, though not
blind to his defects, enjoyed his conversation in private society, and
respected some talents and many virtues in his public character, I hoped
and laboured, in moving for a return of the _ex officio_ informations,
to avoid every topic or even phrase which could irritate his temper, so
sore on everything that distantly approached a reflection on the practice
of his Court. I failed in my endeavours. He treated me with intolerable
rudeness, which I was obliged to repel with equal asperity and, I think,
with much greater success.
We never afterwards had any altercation in public, and we both retained
a certain goodwill and respect for one another; but the language
which passed produced a degree of estrangement which, I believe, we
both lamented, but which we were both too proud to correct. He was a
man of an honest but violent temper, of profound rather than various
learning, of powerful but not persuasive eloquence, of strong but by no
means of enlarged understanding. If he was not quite so intrepid or so
inflexible as he would have had us believe, so neither was he so harsh
or ill-natured as he appeared. Sarcasms and invectives were always
on his lips; but they were the accidental effervescence of spleen,
impatience, or wit, not the sediments of malignity, from which his heart
was generally clear. One of his defects was a habit of complaining of the
insufficiency of his income and the narrowness of his circumstances. He
was never sparing of expense; and yet he has recently (I write in 1819)
left a considerable fortune, which proves his profits to have been not
only ample but splendid.
Lord Sidmouth, to ingratiate himself with the Church, had introduced a
bill to deprive Dissenting Ministers of their exemption from serving in
the Militia, unless they could procure a certificate from respectable
householders belonging to their congregation. On the first notice I
sounded the alarm on the hazard of meddling with the Toleration Act. The
appeal was heard, and his Lordship’s bill, which was held in abhorrence
by the Methodists, served only to display the numbers and improve the
organisation of that powerful sect. For some days no places were to
be had in the stage coaches and diligences of the kingdom; all were
occupied with petitions to Parliament against the measure proposed by
Lord Sidmouth. On the day fixed for the debate such innumerable petitions
were presented by Lord Grey, Lord Erskine, Lord Stanhope, myself, and
others, that not only the table was filled, but the House was filled with
parchment. The peers could hardly get to the doors, the avenues were so
crowded with men of grave deportment and puritanical aspect; when there,
they had almost equal difficulty in gaining their seats, for loads of
parchment encumbered and obstructed their way to them. Lord Sidmouth,
with a bad grace, was obliged to yield. In the result, religious liberty
was a gainer. To pacify the alarms which had been raised and the passions
which had been excited, several important concessions were successively
granted in subsequent Sessions to the various Protestant Dissenters of
England.
Many of their leading men came to thank me in person. All I requested
of them, in return, was to assist me in extending to any other class of
Dissenters the full enjoyment of their civil and political rights. They
promised they would do so; and when in 1812 and 1813 I claimed their
promise in favour of the Roman Catholic Dissenters, I found them as good
as their word.
Parliament this year showed an inclination to discountenance flogging
in the Army. A clause to substitute at discretion imprisonment for that
degrading and cruel punishment was introduced into the Mutiny Bill. This
tardy and imperfect triumph of mercy over cruelty and of reason over
habit and prejudice was in a very great degree owing to the zealous and
disinterested exertions, though occasionally ill-timed, of Sir Francis
Burdett. He had, at all times, the great merit of feeling with sincerity
and expressing without fear great indignation and horror of all personal
cruelty and oppression. This and a sweetness of temper and manner were
his best, perhaps his only good, qualities in public life. In political
intercourse with individuals or parties he was, chiefly from facility,
little to be relied upon. His opinions, whenever they were intelligible,
were equally repugnant to reason and subversive of all free or, at
least, of all Parliamentary Government. He hated the Whigs and the
Revolution as much as the abuses in our representation, and more than any
prerogatives of the Crown; and would have reduced the functions of the
House of Commons, even if modelled to his theory of excellence, to the
two functions of granting money to the Crown and occasionally impeaching
a Minister for corrupt or illegal practices.
The remainder of the Session was chiefly occupied with discussions on the
state of our circulation and questions relating to paper and bullion.
The merit of Mr. Horner in the investigation of this intricate subject,
and still more in his honest, zealous, and firm maintenance of those
principles which he was satisfied were sound, can hardly be appreciated,
now that the prejudices he had to contend with have expired, and the
truths he combated for have proved victorious upon experience and are
generally admitted as incontrovertible and even obvious.[104] So far was
this from being the case at the time, that his doctrines were deemed
theoretical and visionary, and his conduct impracticable, hazardous to
the country, and ruinous to himself. He seemed to sacrifice the fairest
objects of ambition, and to incur at the outset of his public life the
private enmity of large bodies of men and great unpopularity with the
public, by a patient, diligent, and determined inquiry into matters
which, little attractive in their nature, led him, as he well knew, to
conclusions unpalatable to powerful individuals as well as to the Bank
and the Government. He foresaw that his opinions on this subject must
lose him the seat in Parliament which he then held.
Such was the repugnance felt at that time to doctrines now universally
approved, that I was assured by Lord Lansdowne that the borough of Calne
would hardly have chosen the Chairman of the Bullion Committee for their
representative, even if he had been supported by that recommendation to
which on all other occasions they have uniformly deferred. The dread of
the consequences of fair dealing and honesty, or rather the persuasion of
the convenience of paying for everything in fluctuating and depreciated
paper, was not confined to the vulgar. All the supporters of the war,
and some who, without approving its origin, profited by the spirit of
speculation to which its continuance gave occasion, were for preserving a
hazardous and dishonest system which, according to the fashionable jargon
of that day, afforded “such facilities to the operations of the State.”
Lord King,[105] who thoroughly understood the whole subject of exchanges
and currency, devised a method by no means ill calculated to defeat
the system and disconcert its supporters. He determined to enforce
the strict letter of his leases, and call for the payment of rent in
the lawful coin of the kingdom. Injudiciously for his object, he sent
a circular to that purpose to his tenants, while Parliament was yet
sitting. The question was thus brought in the first instance before a
tribunal competent to make or alter the law, instead of one which had no
authority but to enforce it. Lord Stanhope, by some accident, obtained
very early intelligence of this proceeding. He was a zealous promoter of
the paper system, with views very different from those entertained or
professed by its other advocates. He was the first to call the attention
of Parliament to the consequences of Lord King’s demand on his tenants.
The bill he presented to the House of Lords, without actually declaring
banknotes legal tender, deprived the creditor, to whom they were offered
in payment, of all legal remedy whatever. The measure, though entirely
altered in form, received in substance the sanction of Parliament. Had
Lord King postponed his circular a few weeks longer, either two prices
would have been established in the markets, all the facilities, as they
were called, annihilated, or the Parliament would have been called upon
to interfere in the matter, in a case where no political object could
have been imputed to those who exacted their rights.
[Illustration: _Peter, Lord King_
_J. Hoppner, R.A. Pinx._
_Emery Walker Ph. Sc._]
Lord Chesterfield, a man of very large landed property, blindly attached
to the politics of the Court, but living in some measure in retirement
from it, was on the point of issuing a similar demand on his tenantry,
when Lord King’s operations brought the subject before the public. Lord
Stanhope, who had panegyrised the system of _assignats_ in France, very
consistently liked the banknotes in England; and when I told him that he
expected them to have the same effect in England, he whispered, with a
suppressed chuckle, in my ear: “And if they take property from the drones
and give it to the bees, where, my dear _Citoyen_, is the great harm of
that?” He had also invented an ingenious device for preventing forgeries.
He always delighted in the application of science to any political
purposes. The hopes of that experiment being adopted very possibly
inflamed his zeal in support of a paper currency.
The Prince Regent (whether from real ignorance of the question, from
dread of unpopularity, or, as is most probable, from an incipient
disposition to court his Ministers and detach himself from Opposition,
I know not) disliked the prospect of any resumption of cash payments.
Though originally averse to the Spanish expeditions and perhaps to the
cause of the insurgents, who mixed too much of the froth, at least,
if not of the essence, of liberty in their productions to make them
palatable to princely appetites, he grew by degrees interested in the
war from the successes in Portugal and from the discussion of military
details and promotions, always delightful to Royal ears.
This growing inclination to prosecute the war with vigour tended,
no doubt, to reconcile him to his Ministers in preference to their
opponents, though it failed to secure his support of Lord Wellesley in
his breach with his colleagues on that very subject. His conduct on
two affairs of less importance foreboded an approaching alteration in
his feelings towards public men, by indicating a disposition in him to
accommodate differences with those who were now his official Ministers,
but whom he had hitherto termed and thought his personal enemies. The
first was the Berkeley Peerage; the other, the claim of Mr. Palmer for
remuneration for the invention of mail coaches.
The Prince of Wales had taken a strong interest in establishing the
validity of Lord Berkeley’s marriage; he had even promised him, before
his death, to indemnify his son for any unfavourable decision which might
occur, by conferring an earldom upon him whenever it should be in his
power.[106] When, however, the claim was heard, though he and the other
Royal Princes had been eager in the cause even to indecency, he gradually
became colder and colder; when it terminated in a decision[107] against
the marriage, he either did not venture or did not choose to renew any
promise to the lady or the young man. He was, however, fully justified,
perhaps he was really determined, by the detection of falsehoods in Lady
Berkeley’s testimony and the undeniable exposure of the badness of the
case.
Such could not be his motive for withdrawing all his usual countenance
and promised support from Mr. Palmer. The claim of that gentleman,
containing an implied censure of Mr. Pitt, was always bitterly resisted
by that Minister’s adherents; but the Prince of Wales had warmly espoused
it, and had been active and eager in instigating Colonel Palmer to
prosecute it.[108] The claim itself, if not strictly and literally
just, was in my judgment irresistible on the honour and policy of the
country.[109]
The shrewd in our party left Parliament in the summer of 1811 with
more apprehensions of the Prince Regent’s designs than confidence in
his late professions. If his resolution to exclude the Whigs from
office was not actually taken before the Session was closed, I have
good reason to believe that even then, or very shortly afterwards, he
harboured a project of dividing them, and forming a Ministry composed
indiscriminately of various parties in Parliament. There were reports,
very soon after the Prorogation, of a rupture between the Prince Regent
and Mr. Perceval, and of an endeavour on the part of the Prince to form
a Ministry through Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning. I know not what, nor
indeed that anything, passed.
There were, however, symptoms of a disposition in the Court to feel the
pulse of individuals in all parties. Mr. Sheridan during the recess saw
me frequently, and questioned me much whether the Duke of Bedford,
myself, and any old Foxite would be disposed to accept of high office in
a Government, in the formation of which Lord Grey and Lord Grenville were
not chiefly consulted. I discouraged all such projects. I cannot tell
how far they were suggestions of his own or concerted with the Prince
Regent. I told him explicitly that unless Lord Grey or Lord Grenville, as
the heads of our party, or Mr. Ponsonby, as leader of it in the House of
Commons, were sent to in the first instance, any offer to bring in the
Whigs would appear insidious; that I for one, and probably all men of
weight who professed attachment to the principles of Mr. Fox, would have
nothing to do with it in that shape. We could not and would not separate
from Lord Grenville, after his consistent and honourable conduct. Lord
Grey or our leader in the House of Commons were the only other channels
through which any offer could with propriety be conveyed to the party.
Lord Grey and Lord Grenville had been sent for and actually employed last
year. None but Mr. Ponsonby, with a view of confirming his authority in
the House of Commons and consulting him in the first instance on the
practicability of conducting the business in that assembly, could now
be sent for, without the appearance or indeed the reality of an affront
to the two Lords, whom the Prince Regent had so recently acknowledged
as the heads of the party and the men to whom, on a change, he intended
to entrust the management of public affairs. If, therefore, the Prince
Regent intended to form an Administration of his old friends the Whigs,
he would send directly to one of these three persons. Should he send for
any other member of the party, it would obviously indicate a design of
weakening the party he affected to favour. Such was the substance of my
answer in more than one conversation which Mr. Sheridan had sought with
me.[110]
The Regent, or those immediately about him, had frequent conversations
on similar topics with Mr. Adam. Their art, or Mr. Adam’s own sanguine
nature, completely cajoled him. He was satisfied that an entire change at
the expiration of the restrictions was intended. He diligently laboured
to impress that conviction upon us all: first, from sincerely believing
and wishing it himself, and, secondly, with a view, which always led
him too far, of surmounting the difficulty immediately before him, and
getting the pecuniary arrangements connected with the Regency passed with
little opposition in the ensuing Session of Parliament.
General Fox[111] died in the summer of 1811. He was a kind, affectionate,
and reasonable man, without brilliant talents or extraordinary
attainments, and with very bounded ambition; he had opinions on public
matters more favourable to freedom than is common in his profession,
and a stronger mind than his friends, or perhaps he himself, ever
suspected. His professional habits were formed in the school of Sir
Guy Carleton[112] and Lord Cornwallis, men who, whatever were their
military merits, deserve to be remembered as the first in our army who
systematically disclaimed for themselves and discountenanced in others
all jobs and embezzlement.
I had at this time no intelligence of the war or of foreign negotiations
but such as Gazettes, Parliamentary papers, and common Journals supply.
I therefore abstain from relating the events in Spain, and the changes
which were gradually taking place in the politics of Russia during
the summer and autumn of 1811. I did, indeed, my utmost in private
correspondence with Spaniards to soften that jealousy which was
naturally, but unwisely and unjustly, felt at our interference.[113]
In the meanwhile the retreat of Massena, though admirably conducted by
that General and by Ney, had justified the foresight and relieved the
embarrassments of Lord Wellington. Our prospects in the Peninsula were
improved. The forced exclusion of all British manufactures from the rest
of Europe (the _Continental System_, as it was called), imposed on Russia
by intimidation and by the ascendancy which Napoleon fondly imagined he
had personally acquired over Alexander, was so much at variance with
the interests both of nations and individuals, that even where the
Governments were cordially subservient to the views of France, they found
it impracticable to maintain so unnatural a policy. Alexander, who had
not had the courage to support the interests of his Empire against the
pretensions of France, began to discover that even “Autocracy” itself
would not enable him to execute treaties which he had been base enough to
sign against the obvious policy, wishes, and murmurs of his subjects.
The Russians themselves felt the ignominy of submitting to the dictates
of a foreign power, though willingly enforced by their Czar, when they
discovered that an obedience to those dictates would prevent the sale of
their produce and involve the proprietors of land in distress and ruin.
It is singular that while the successful war in Spain and the rupture
between Russia and France—the two great sources of the subsequent
triumph over Napoleon—were opening themselves in 1811, the only English
Minister from whose sagacity either of them in any degree flowed
was gradually separating himself from his colleagues. This was Lord
Wellesley.[114] As Ambassador and Secretary of State he had given to
the councils of Spain and to our military exertions some statesmanlike
consistency of design. He had also, with no little dexterity, and (as I
have been assured) without consulting his colleagues, detached General
Bernadotte, then Crown Prince of Sweden, from his connection with
France;[115] he thereby ensured the co-operation of a power which might
have intimidated Russia from hostilities with Napoleon, and which did in
fact ultimately determine Alexander, when wavering and even yielding,
to persevere in resistance to the invaders. Some of his other projects,
such as a negotiation for peace with the Police Minister Fouché, and a
foolish scheme of rescuing King Ferdinand from his captivity by means
of an adventurer called Kolli,[116] were not equally fortunate or well
conceived.
But whatever were the merits or the blemishes of his designs abroad, he
was at this time meditating a line of policy at home which would have
led to great changes in office—to a renewal of his connection with Mr.
Canning, and not improbably to a union between him and the Whigs in power
under the Prince Regent. He had more genius than prudence, more spirit
than principle, and manifestly despised his colleagues as much as they
dreaded him. Unlike most English politicians, he was rather a statesman
than a man of business, and more capable of doing extraordinary things
well than conducting ordinary transactions with safety or propriety.
He was reported to have ingratiated himself during the summer with the
Prince Regent, and with the exception of an unqualified zeal in the
prosecution of the Spanish war, the natural growth of his early interest
in that contest, and of his connection with Lord Wellington, his opinions
on public questions seemed to smooth the way to a coalition with those
to whom His Royal Highness was expected to entrust the management of his
affairs.[117] When, however, he tendered his resignation early in 1812,
he discovered that an inclination to Whigs or to liberal policy was no
strong recommendation to the Prince Regent. He learnt with yet more
chagrin that his brother would not hazard a rupture with the Ministers,
even in support of the remonstrances which he (Lord Wellesley) had made,
if not at his instigation, at least on his behalf, for further succours
and supplies. I know not whether to blame or to commend him. A commander
on service is not lightly to lend himself to party in a struggle for
power at home. He may, nay, he must, prefer serving under those to whom
he is chiefly bound by affection and gratitude and those with whom he
cordially agrees and co-operates; but he must not make a national cause
subservient to their views of ambition at home, unless he thinks their
possession of power not only useful, but indispensably necessary, to its
maintenance and its success.
Lord Wellington, therefore, on the turn of fortune in Spain, did right
not to sacrifice his own station and growing fame and the national
interest to the object of securing or replacing his brother in power,
even though that brother should have forfeited it by his zealous
exertions to minister to his glory abroad. Who shall blame him for not
hesitating between such important public considerations and his own
private affections? Possibly, however, Lord Wellesley, and certainly
his adherents, were hurt that so little was done by Lord Wellington to
avert the necessity of so painful an option. They significantly remarked
that the sacrifice was made with so very good a grace, as not only to
answer the calls of duty, but to suppress every symptom of pain or
reluctance in performing it. Lord Wellesley, to whose partiality and
affection his brother had been indebted for his promotion, fame, and
success, would have acquired, said his friends, if placed in a similar
predicament, the same praise of heroic duty, but it would have cost him
much more to obtain it. Whether such insinuations were well founded or
not, it is certain that after that period a coolness between the brothers
ensued, and it must be acknowledged that subsequent transactions will
not exonerate Lord Wellington of the charges of indifference or want of
feeling by proving such defects to be quite foreign to his character.
Lord Wellesley treated Mr. Perceval and the other Ministers with manifest
scorn and contempt. In a subsequent altercation between him and Lord
Harrowby in the House of Lords, respecting the differences in Cabinet
while he remained among them, his superiority in wit, spirit, vigour,
and eloquence was most decisive. Yet when, on Lord Boringdon’s motion
for an efficient Administration, he was expected to vindicate his own
motives and conduct, and to explain at large his views of domestic and
foreign policy, though he had come down with mighty ostentation, dressed
and decorated, as his usage was, for the delivery of a great speech,
his nerves failed him entirely, and he allowed the question to go to
a division without uttering one word. So universal was the persuasion
that he was, on that day, to outdo himself, and so positive was the
expectation of his speaking, that some one, on the Chancellor’s return
from the House, asked, without the ceremony of a previous inquiry whether
he had spoken or not, “What was the style of Lord Wellesley’s speech?” “I
think in that of Tacitus,” replied Lord Eldon.