After studiously announcing his intentions of speaking, and repeating his
views and arguments and illustrations in private to friend and to foe,
he not unfrequently sat silent. When he did rise, it was often doubtful
which side he would espouse, what topics he would select, and whether he
would treat them with ability and eloquence or lapse into frothy, trite,
and unmeaning declamation, or entangle himself in some metaphysical
disquisition which he was quite unequal to unravel or expound. His
allusions were more classical than apposite, and his language that of a
polite scholar even to a fault. His wit was elaborate and far-fetched,
but well and neatly executed. He was sometimes illogical, and I have
known him pompous, empty, and unsatisfactory. Yet there was a smack,
a fancy of greatness in all he did: and though in his speeches, his
manners, and his actions he was very open to ridicule, those who smiled
and even laughed could not despise him.
He had tendered his resignation in January; it was not accepted till
March.[118] While he was yet nominally in office, and before the
restrictions on the Regency had expired, Mr. Perceval proposed the
Civil List and the regulation of the Household. The arrangement was
purposely complicated and infinitely more expensive to the country than
the circumstances justified, or than either the party who proposed or
the party who acquiesced in could sincerely approve. Mr. Tierney had
the honesty to say so, and perhaps had the shrewdness even then to
perceive what it now seems strange should have escaped the observation
of any man, that the sums granted for the Privy Purse and Household
were sufficient, not only to provide for the wants, but to purchase the
favour of the Prince Regent. Some semblance, however, of consistency and
honour was to be preserved. The Prince Regent was in a manner pledged, on
the expiration of the restrictions, to make some overture to the Whigs.
He was too well acquainted with the characters of the men with whom he
had to deal, and indeed too great an adept in that sort of game, not
to devise in a moment a method of making the offer, which secured its
rejection. He wrote the following letter to the Duke of York.[119]...
Lord Grey and Lord Grenville requested twenty-four hours to consult their
friends, and to consider of the answer to the overture contained in the
letter above recited from the Prince Regent to the Duke of York. Lord
Lansdowne, Lord Lauderdale, Mr. Ponsonby, and myself met them at Mr.
Thomas Grenville’s, when they produced a written paper, the composition
of Lord Grenville, which they proposed to transmit to the Duke of York.
The overture contained in the letter to the Duke of York was, as the
reader must have perceived, in substance, nothing more than an invitation
to Lord Grey and Lord Grenville and some others recommended by them,
to accept office with an Administration whose measures and system they
had uniformly and strenuously opposed, and whose persons and behaviour
the Prince Regent himself, only a year before, had indecently reviled
in every company and affected to resent in a manner full as warm as any
indignity, purely political, could justify.
The proposed answer was very decisive, but unnecessarily long. It was
unadvisedly explicit on every topic which had been artfully introduced
into the Prince Regent’s letter; in short, it was an elaborate manifesto
of the two Lords on all political questions on which they differed with
Ministers. It contained a sort of creed on the Spanish war, the Orders
in Council, the paper system, and the Roman Catholic claims, to which
none but their own friends, and not all of them, could implicitly have
subscribed. The Prince Regent’s letter was no doubt framed with a design
of provoking the two Lords to recapitulate opinions which the writer,
whoever he was, thought to be impracticable and knew to be unpopular.
The prospect of their accession to power had been contemplated with
some apprehension by those who felt zealous in the cause and gratified
by the glories of the Spanish war. Such persons had been confirmed in
their apprehensions, by the very injudicious language of some of Lord
Grenville’s connections, as well as by enemies[120] who studiously
repeated such language and industriously circulated the report that the
first consequence of their elevation to power would be the recall of
every British soldier from the Peninsula. The notion of resuming cash
payments was, at that time, to the full as unpopular. Speculators, who
profited by a system of improvident dishonesty and lavish expenditure,
affected to regard the principles of the Bullion Committee[121] as
purely chimerical, and the statesmen who espoused them as sacrificing the
national prosperity to the theories of political economists.
In their first sketch of an answer the two Lords fell into the snare
prepared for them. They avowed all these opinions so unpalatable to the
public, and they enforced them in an authoritative tone little calculated
to soothe or to convince. In the views insinuated about the Spanish
alliance and war, I for one could not have concurred. The unqualified
declaration of their principles respecting both our currency and trade,
though perfectly sound, seemed highly unreasonable; and the authoritative
tone in which they announced their views would have exposed them to the
censure of exacting an implicit compliance with all their opinions from
the Court and the public, at a time when both were avowedly desirous of
softening down differences, for the purpose of forming what is called
a strong, but often proves to be a very weak, Administration. Lord
Lansdowne, with his usual judgment, perceived the impolicy of so copious
a manifesto, and, with more than his usual energy, urged the necessity of
shortening the letter and confining the grounds of refusal to that which
formed the most obvious and insurmountable bar to a coalition between
Mr. Perceval and the Whigs, _viz._, their opposite views of the Roman
Catholic question and the system of government in Ireland. Accordingly
the following answer was drawn up and afterwards delivered by Lords Grey
and Grenville to the Duke of York....[122]
The Duke of York took minutes of the conversation which occurred on the
two Lords delivering this answer in writing to him. He very candidly
submitted those minutes to their inspection, and they made such
explanations and comments on the Duke’s report of what they said, as
precluded the possibility of a misunderstanding. The Duke contended that
the letter was not an overture to them to form a part of Mr. Perceval’s
Administration, or even to coalesce with that gentleman as Minister, but
to concur in forming a new Administration on a broad basis; and he urged,
as a proof of his view of the subject, that he had been selected to
convey the communication, in order that the person so employed might not
be designated as the head of the new Administration. These distinctions,
immaterial in themselves, were set aside by Lord Grey observing that
the answer given was to the written statement which they had seen, and
if it should appear to the Prince Regent that they had misunderstood
the meaning of that paper, he might rectify the mistake. In the
meanwhile they adhered to their answer. Here ended the negotiation. Lord
Castlereagh was in a few days appointed Secretary of State in the place
of Lord Wellesley.[123]
The answer of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, and the tone and temper in
which it was conveyed, were very generally approved of. Many no doubt
rejoiced at so open a breach between them and the Prince Regent, and none
probably more than His Royal Highness himself. Yet friend and foe, Whig
and Tory, directly or indirectly acknowledged that to such an overture
no other answer could have been given with honour. The form was yet more
unobjectionable. The language, however, of the party, and possibly of
some of the leaders, was not perhaps equally irreproachable and certainly
not equally judicious. In conversations, speeches, and publications there
was much personal asperity and some indecorous satire and invective.
Those who had early opportunities of studying the character of the Prince
should have known that personal slights were more deeply felt and more
certainly resented by him than real indignities, injuries, or ill-usage.
His more recent acquaintances had sagacity enough to discover that secret
very soon, and dexterity enough to act upon it. They bore tales of much
that was said, and of more that was never said, to his disparagement
by the principal characters in Opposition. Studiously directing his
attention to the numberless lampoons that appeared, they affixed to each
whatever name it was most their interest to render obnoxious. I knew more
than one instance of persons passing at Carlton House for the authors
or instigators of the very epigrams or paragraphs they had deprecated,
lamented, and condemned. Lord Grey unquestionably felt great indignation.
Ever open, artless, and impetuous, he could not stop to conceal it.
The coarse and unmannerly phrases imputed to him were, indeed, never
uttered; but his unguarded exposure of the Prince Regent’s duplicity in
all companies, and his severe animadversion in the House of Lords on the
defection of Lord Cholmondeley and the few insignificant sycophants who
followed him, sank deep in the Royal mind. The new Court was henceforward
_to the full as intent as the old one_ on excluding the Whigs from all
office, favour, or power.
Although the offences of Lord Grey, owing to the high station he filled
in the eyes of men, were more important, and, owing to early personal
jealousies between him and the Prince of Wales, were less easily
pardoned than those of others, such indiscretions were not confined
to him. We all incurred the guilt, if not the odium, of charging His
Royal Highness with ingratitude and perfidy. We all encouraged every
species of satire against him and his mistress. He retorted in language
to the full as unmeasured, and in assertions much more unfounded. He
drove Lord Lauderdale to the necessity, first, of remonstrating with
him, and afterwards, of absenting himself, by bursting forth suddenly,
intemperately, and violently against his political friends—a scene
rendered memorable by having excited the tears of the young Princess
Charlotte, who was present, and yet more so by those tears becoming the
subject of Lord Byron’s verse.[124]
That extraordinary young man had satirised and ridiculed me, in common
with many others, in his _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, under a
very erroneous impression that I had written or caused to be written
the criticism on his first publication in the _Edinburgh Review_[125];
whereas it was from that printed _Review_ that I first learnt the
existence of the poems, or indeed of the author, whose title I had
thought was extinct. My friend Mr. Rogers knew this circumstance; he
asked me if I objected to his repeating it to Lord Byron. I answered:
“Far from it, provided he repeated it as he had heard it from me, a fact
related in accidental conversation, and not a message or explanation sent
from me to Lord Byron.” Mr. Rogers soon afterwards informed me that Lord
Byron wished to speak in Parliament against the Frame-breaking Bill,
and that he was anxious to learn the forms and to consult some peer
in Opposition. Mr. Rogers asked me if I would allow him to introduce
me to the young poet. I willingly and warmly acquiesced, gave him
what assistance I could, and received from him a very handsome and
well-written letter. His speech was full of fancy, wit, and invective,
but not exempt from affectation nor well reasoned, nor at all suited
to our common notions of Parliamentary eloquence. His fastidious and
artificial taste and his over-irritable temper would, I think, have
prevented him from ever excelling in Parliament.
This accidental intercourse about his first speech led to our
acquaintance and even friendly familiarity, which was never interrupted.
I have mentioned it because everything relating to him excites curiosity;
and the uniformly courteous, I might almost say grateful, manner in
which he acknowledged and returned my trifling services, amounting to
little more than ordinary civility, shows a sensibility and kindness for
imaginary favours in one who was unhappily too often suspected, with
reason, of an extreme susceptibility to slight, and even imaginary,
injuries. His speech and his verses on Princess Charlotte’s tears fixed
his politics, and he was[126] upon system invariably attached to the
party and principles of the Whigs. Mr. Rogers himself, on the unexpected
conduct of the Prince Regent, put one of the many witty epigrams he is
in the habit of uttering into verse, and the lines found their way into
the newspapers. Another poet, Mr. Moore, with more party zeal and Irish
humour than worldly prudence, parodied the Prince Regent’s letter to the
Duke of York. His friend, Lord Moira, approved of the conduct of Lord
Grey and Lord Grenville in declining the overture; he even drew out an
answer, which he wished them to adopt and communicated to me for that
purpose. It required, indeed, some further explanation; but it insisted,
even in a more authoritative tone than the paper they sent, on the
impossibility of their _entering into the Cabinet_ of a Ministry whose
measures they had uniformly _reprobated_.
The two Irish brothers Lord Donoughmore and Lord Hutchinson kept no
measures with the Court. The Regent was so exasperated at their language,
that he affected to lament that he was not a private man and able to call
one of them at least to account for a personal affront. Perhaps a more
accurate knowledge of that family’s proficiency in pistols might, on
reflection, reconcile His Royal Highness to the privations of his exalted
station.
The unfortunate breach between the Roman Catholics of Ireland and their
able supporter Lord Grenville, effected by the machinations of Dr.
Milner,[127] who had shamelessly disavowed him, had rendered it necessary
to place the petitions of that body in other hands. Lord Grey, I
believed, had declined them some time before; and when I was sounded on
the subject I told them that, if offered, I should not refuse them; but
that for my sake, and still more for their own, I wished them to deliver
their petitions to some one less connected with Lord Grenville and more
disposed to approve of, as well as not to combat, their objections to the
veto[128] and to the restrictions, which topic would not improbably be
introduced into the debate.
They pitched on Lord Donoughmore, the representative of that Protestant
family which had first and most uniformly espoused their cause, and one
who at the time of the Union and at the formation of Lord Fitzwilliam’s
Administration had been, as I believe, the channel of communication
between them and the Government. He accepted the commission of pleading
their cause in Parliament with cheerfulness, and he executed it with
considerable ability. If in judgment there was some deficiency, there
was an abundant supply of that which Irishmen and Roman Catholics
value more—spirit and even violence. His personalities to the Regent
and to Lady Hertford were somewhat too coarse for our English palates;
but his excuse of so great a breach of decorum was this. He had been
twice the channel to convey direct or implicit promises which had been
violated, and to excite expectations which had been disappointed. Had he
submitted a third time, without open and unqualified hostility to those
who had deceived him, he thought his own honour might be questioned by
his countrymen. He preferred deserving the reproach of rudeness and
indelicacy to incurring even the suspicion of duplicity and treachery.
Whatever be the value of such an apology, the Irish Catholics so far
justified his speculations that they warmly applauded his vehemence and
personality, and in _an evil hour for themselves_ embodied the most
offensive passages of his speech into resolutions at their various
meetings throughout Ireland. Some years afterwards their writers in
Ireland most falsely attributed this conduct to the instigation of their
Parliamentary friends in England. I believe that neither Lord Grey,
Lord Grenville, Lord Lansdowne, myself, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Grattan, Mr.
Tierney, Mr. Canning, nor any one active Member of Parliament, had the
slightest intimation of their intention to propose such intemperate
resolutions; I am sure that we one and all lamented and condemned them
when adopted.
Even those among us who were most indignant at the conduct of the Prince
Regent felt that it was not good policy in the Roman Catholics to express
their sense of it too warmly, much less in the coarse, revolting,
and scurrilously personal libel. In the Commons Mr. Grattan was more
temperate as well as more eloquent, but not much more successful. The
majorities of both Houses, though not very great, and weakened by the
loss of Lord Wellesley and his few adherents, showed that in the opinion
of politicians the Prince Regent had joined the Anti-Catholic faction,
or that Mr. Perceval had contrived to fix himself permanently in power.
He seemed, indeed, determined to exact a yet stronger proof of the
attachment of his followers, by insisting on their adherence to the
Orders in Council,[129] which were involving us in hostilities with
North America, ruining our commerce, and impoverishing our manufacturers
in a way that excited universal distress and clamour, and threatened to
produce defalcation in our revenue and insurrection in the country.
But this infatuated course of policy was suddenly arrested by one of
those unforeseen events which, springing from small, private, and
unconnected causes, have, in their consequences, the greatest effect on
the fate of nations and [the] happiness of mankind. A madman of the name
of Bellingham had been, or thought he had been, aggrieved by some of our
public agents abroad. He was full of resentment at the supposed injury,
and yet more at the neglect with which his importunate remonstrances had
been treated by persons in power and their respective offices in England.
If his own account is to be trusted, he devoted some person in high rank
and office as an atonement for his wrongs; but was nearly indifferent on
whom answering that description his vengeance might fall. He pitched on
Mr. Perceval the Prime Minister, or Lord Granville Leveson,[130] who was
Ambassador in Russia at the time certain claims in indemnification of
losses sustained by him at Archangel had been presented without effect to
the Russian and English Governments, without any positive personal enmity
to either of those individuals. He determined, however, to sacrifice the
first of the two who should come within his reach. Accordingly, with
this view, he took his stand on May 11, 1812, in the lobby of the House
of Commons, of which both were members, with two small loaded pistols in
his pocket; he sat patiently near the door till Mr. Perceval made his
appearance, and then, approaching him without gesticulation or violence,
shot him through the heart. His victim staggered and fell, exclaiming, “I
am murdered,” or, “The villain has murdered me,” or words to that effect,
and never spoke more.
The whole scene and many of the circumstances recalled the assassination
of the Duke of Buckingham by Felton, and in nothing did it resemble it
more than in the cool composure of the assassin, who, I think, resumed
his seat, but certainly made no effort to escape. On making inquiry after
“the villain,” when the agitation had subsided, he surrendered himself
without a struggle. On the spot, on the first examination, and on the
trial, he avowed the deed; and though he called himself an unfortunate
man, he seemed neither to repent nor to feel much anxiety to vindicate
his motives or to avoid the consequences of his crime.
I was talking to Lord Spencer in the House of Lords, when we heard either
the report of pistols or the scream of horror which the perpetration of
the crime had excited. I recollect exclaiming, “What is that?” and being
told, after a short interval, that it was a madman who thought himself
the Duke of Norfolk and frequently molested the Courts of Justice with
his pretensions. It was not long, however, before a figure, pale and
breathless, rushed into the House, and, leaning on the bar, repeated
twice or thrice, “He is murdered; I saw him dead.” “Who?” “Where are we
to go to assist?” was reiterated from many present; and some minutes,
I think, elapsed before we actually learnt that it was Mr. Perceval who
was killed. The consternation was great; the appearance of most present
ghastly. I remember I wondered to myself whether my face was as much
altered as those of the persons around me—a thought which proves (as
what indeed does not?) the accuracy and truth of the observation of
Shakespeare on our feelings.
Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest?
is an exclamation of one of his characters, on hearing in a large company
of the violent death of the Duke of Clarence.[131]
The peers were coming in very fast, and I think we took some precautions
to inform Lord Arden[132] of the event. All expressed horror; some few
seemed to ponder on the changes likely to ensue; and more were manifestly
apprehensive that the crime was connected with extensive designs, and
the result of conspiracies which the state of the country rendered by no
means improbable. The House of Commons had adjourned. The House of Lords
has been censured and ridiculed for not doing so too; perhaps it was the
best course. Yet to quit the spot on the report of a crime committed
within the precincts of Parliament, without inquiry into the fact or
comment upon it, seemed to many peers, and among them, I own, to me, an
unnatural and undignified and almost a dastardly proceeding. We had,
therefore, the fact deposed to at the bar; but when we had resolved to
ground some proceeding thereupon, it must be acknowledged that we found
some difficulty in devising any in form and substance unobjectionable. We
passed an address unanimously to the Prince Regent, praying him little
more than to enforce the laws. Lord Radnor wrote and Lord Chancellor
moved it. Most of the peers present accompanied it to Carlton House. It
is to be observed that the Lords were not aware of the character and
condition of the assassin. They who blame our proceeding should reflect
what would have been their own impression, and what the inferences in the
public, had the murder turned out to be a part of any extensive design,
and the two Houses, on the perpetration of it, had dispersed themselves,
without daring to express their sense of the outrage or a determination
to investigate the causes of it.
The Old Bailey Sessions were sitting, and the assassin was brought to
immediate trial. He applied for delay to bring witnesses from a distance
in proof of his insanity. He was denied that indulgence, condemned on the
15th, and executed on May 18, within one week of the perpetration of the
murder. Such hurry was by many thought harsh and illegal, and by more
injudicious and improper. Insanity, or at least insanity of a certain
sort, by the law of England exempts the accused from a verdict of guilty.
The wisdom of such mercy may reasonably be questioned; but whatever
the law wisely or unwisely admits to be a vindication of the act, the
accused should be allowed full opportunity of proving in his defence. It
was, therefore, shrewdly suspected that there was more dread of a Prime
Minister’s murderer escaping than reverence for the forms of law in the
refusal to postpone the trial. Whether from this consideration, from the
distress of the times, from the acrimonious spirit of Mr. Perceval’s
politics, or from that composed courage in the sufferer, which in spite
of reason seldom fails to conciliate favour even for a criminal, certain
it is, that among the crowds who thronged to the execution of Bellingham
more commiseration was shown for the culprit than for his victim. Women
were struck with his fine and manly person. Strange tales of his amorous
complexion, whispered abroad, did not weaken that favourable impression.
They were currently repeated at this day,[133] and I am sorry to
acknowledge that at the distance of some years the name of Bellingham was
far from unpopular in London.