various parts of the country. Some classes, whose habits should have
taught them to reject any consolation drawn from the commission of
a horrible crime and should also have bespoken more sympathy for so
religious a man, could hardly conceal their delight at the prospect of
the removal of those worldly evils under which they were labouring. One
of the leading manufacturers of Birmingham, a strict Dissenter, who had
come up to London with petitions against the Orders in Council, lamented
to me, with a demure countenance and a subdued voice, the wickedness
of the times on which he had been cast, where, he said, as the coaches
arrived in various parts of the kingdom, the intelligence of the murder
of a fellow creature had been received with more exultation than horror,
and even in some places greeted with savage shouts of un-Christian joy.
“It is indeed disgusting; and yet,” added he, with an arch, puritanical
smile, “it proves the sad condition of the poor manufacturers, and it
cannot be denied that, in the present critical state of the question on
the Orders in Council, the finger of a benevolent Providence is visible
in this horrible event.”
The result, however, so confidently anticipated, would hardly have ensued
had the vigilance and perseverance of Mr. Brougham been relaxed. He
braved the censure of enemies and shocked the more timid and more gentle
of his friends, by resolutely insisting, without regard to the feelings
of individuals or the convenience of the Government, on the immediate
relinquishment of the Orders in Council, before Mr. Perceval was cold
in his grave or the arrangements for a new Ministry in any forwardness
at Court. To that wise and firm, but at the same time somewhat odious
conduct, the country is indebted for a revision of a system, unjust to
other nations and ruinous to itself. Mr. Perceval had too much spirit
to be intimidated, and too much bigotry to be convinced, by the clamour
or the sufferings of the people. Had he lived, he would, no doubt, have
persisted, at the peril of his own power, as well as of the prosperity of
the kingdom, in the injudicious and violent measures he had from zeal and
ignorance so hastily adopted.[134]
He was a man of principle, integrity, and courage; and though a bitter
persecutor of such political and religious principles as he without much
painful inquiry or dispassionate reflection disapproved, he was indulgent
to his friends and liberal of his money. In business he was diligent,
attentive, and distinct. It is true that even the eminent post he reached
never enabled him to soar to the higher regions of eloquence; but in
debate he was acute, judicious, and, above all, intrepid and ready. “He
is not,” said Mr. Grattan, “a ship-of-the-line, but he carries many guns,
is tight built, and is out in all weathers.” He had, indeed, the length,
but was said not to have the learning, belonging to his profession.
Prolixity was his great fault as a speaker; propensity to retaliation
and attack his chief error as a Minister in Parliament. His virtues and
his vices rendered him the most mischievous and dangerous man who had
guided our councils for a century. Nothing but a dread that my words may
be distorted into an attempt to palliate an atrocious crime makes me
hesitate in pronouncing his death (as in my conscience I think it) a very
fortunate event for the glory, happiness, and independence of my country.
More changes were expected from it than actually took place.
In returning from the House of Lords I met Lord Grey, and took that early
opportunity of expressing to him my sense of the importance of coming
to an understanding with Lord Moira, Lord Wellesley, and Mr. Canning,
before the Prince Regent had sent either to them or to us, and while we
could negotiate a junction on the footing of perfect equality without
the advantage on either side which an ostensible preference given by the
Court would confer. He was by no means averse to a junction with any
or all of them on honourable principles. He had no objection to speak
to Lord Moira; but he doubted whether that was a proper moment for any
negotiation with Mr. Canning, to whom I saw he retained much repugnance.
He was yet more decidedly averse to making the first overture to him or
to Lord Wellesley, from a notion of dignity to which I deferred, but
which appeared to me to be mistaken and misplaced. He enjoined me to
mention my notions to no one, and I obeyed him. Is it judging by the
event, to attribute our subsequent exclusion from office to the want of
such early understanding with the other public men then unemployed? Had
we caught up and harnessed beforehand all the Ministers at grass, the
Prince Regent could hardly have ventured in any conveyance but such as
we had to offer him. I am, indeed, satisfied that _his_ chief object
throughout was to prevent the admission of the Whigs to office. But if on
applying to Lord Wellesley or Lord Moira, he had found those two noblemen
in actual concert with the Whigs and bound in honour and inclined from
interest and principle to act with them, he could scarcely have framed a
proposal which would not have led either to a joint Administration, or to
a union of many separate powers in an Opposition too formidable for the
rump of Mr. Perceval’s Cabinet to encounter.
The Prince Regent began by directing Lord Liverpool to communicate with
Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning on the means of strengthening the existing
Administration, by associating to it persons who agreed most nearly and
generally in the principles on which it had been conducted; but though
he disclaimed all principles of exclusion, he authorised no proposal
to persons connected with Opposition. This endeavour failed.[135] Mr.
Canning, who waived all personal objections to Lord Castlereagh as
Lord Castlereagh had also done to him, thought, however, that his
personal and public character would incur a loss and the Government
derive no strength, from his accession to a Ministry which resisted all
consideration of the Catholic question after he had declared himself
anxious to press that measure on Parliament and the public.
Lord Wellesley yet more pointedly declined any association with the
Ministry, while their opinions on the laws affecting Roman Catholics
remained unchanged. He apprehended too great a difference of sentiment
on the conduct and management of the Peninsular war subsisted between
him and Mr. Perceval’s colleagues, to render any renewal of connection
with them in office advantageous to the public or acceptable to himself.
He suggested at the end of his letter the propriety, necessity, and
practicability of the admission of some of the Whigs into office;
manifestly implying that the want of authority on that head was one
of his objections to the commission of Lord Liverpool from the Prince
Regent.[136]
Lord Wellesley was on this, and throughout the correspondence that
ensued, more conciliatory to the Whigs than Mr. Canning. He was
evidently more disposed to act with a party with whom he had never been
connected, than with those from whom he had recently separated with some
avowed, and more concealed, asperity and contempt. These feelings of
animosity were considerably inflamed by the polemical tone he assumed
in his correspondence, and yet more by the indecent haste with which he
published his letters and answers. Lord Liverpool assured me that he read
the letter to him of May 21, printed in the newspaper called the _Times_,
before he had received, or at least before he had broken the seal of,
the original. The scheme for strengthening the old Ministry being thus
defeated, the opinion that it could not maintain itself grew more general.
Mr. Stuart Wortley,[137] a friend of Mr. Canning, though related to Lady
Liverpool, moved the House of Commons on May 21 to address the Regent
to, “form an efficient Administration.” Such motions, in substance
and intention interfering in the choice of Ministers by the executive
Government and always offensive to a Court, have been often negatived,
when made by Whigs, as unconstitutional encroachments on the prerogative.
Small middle parties and detached place-hunters, being factions who
derive great advantage from an unlimited and uncontrolled choice of
servants in the Crown, are almost invariably foremost in resisting them.
On this occasion, however, the address to that purpose was moved by a
Tory country gentleman, and was supported by Mr. Canning. The Whigs
concurred with it, and it was carried by a majority of four. Ministers
were compelled to tender their resignation, and the Prince Regent
constrained to make some demonstration of an effort to supply their place.
If I were to attempt to thread the labyrinth of his intrigues and
devices, my readers would be perplexed with the intricacy and weary
of the length of the narrative. Some prominent facts are quite
sufficient to detect the nature of the design, which was, to elude the
wishes of the House of Commons, to preserve as nearly as possible the
Administration then in power, to divide or to degrade any public men who
had contributed to discomfit Mr. Perceval’s remaining colleagues, and
to exclude all the Whigs, but more especially Lord Grey, from all share
of power. To compass these ends, his first artifice was to authorise
Lord Wellesley _to ascertain the views and dispositions of all parties
with regard to certain principles, previously to the formation of any
plans of Administration_, and _then_ to lay before him a plan for an
Administration adapted to the crisis of affairs, but _not directly to
form any Ministry_.[138]
The principles laid down by Lord Wellesley were,[139] first, that the
Roman Catholic disabilities should be immediately considered with a view
to a conciliatory adjustment; secondly, that the Peninsular war should be
prosecuted with adequate vigour. He submitted them himself to Lord Grey;
and Mr. Canning offered them at his suggestion to Lord Liverpool, because
his recent discussions with that Minister had produced so much ill blood
that the intervention of a third person was deemed by Lord Wellesley to
be more judicious and acceptable. But Lord Liverpool, in his own name
and that of all his colleagues except Lord Melville, drily declined
the proposal of becoming members of any Administration formed by Lord
Wellesley, and thought, after all that had passed with his Lordship, that
it was unnecessary to enter into any discussion of the principles he had
submitted to them. Lord Melville answered in a separate memorandum. He
was not less peremptory in his personal objections to Lord Wellesley, but
to the principles he had suggested he felt none.
The answer of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, adopted after due
deliberation with their friends, Lords Lansdowne and Lauderdale, Messrs.
Ponsonby, Tierney, and myself, was in substance as follows: an assurance
of a disposition to give effect to the late vote of the House of Commons
by the abandonment of every personal object; an unqualified promise
of supporting any proposal made by any Ministers for the conciliatory
adjustment of the Roman Catholic claims, with a warm compliment to Lord
Wellesley for his powerful exertions in that cause; and a cautious
postponement of all opinion on the more or less vigorous prosecution of
the Peninsular war, as a question not of principle but of policy, to be
regulated by temporary and fluctuating circumstances on which out of
office it was impossible for them to pronounce. To this, however, was
added an expression of doubt how far any increase of expenditure was
practicable.
This paper, justly denominated by Mr. Ponsonby a “safe” answer, and as
justly considered by Lord Wellesley as a favourable and conciliatory
one, was delivered to the Prince Regent on May 24. On receiving it,
and _before he had read it_, he exclaimed, “_What! a refusal?_” After
reading it, and on being told by Lord Wellesley that it was satisfactory
in that stage of the business, he gave him no authority to proceed,
but professed to take time to consider of it. He employed that time in
devising arguments to distort the answer into a refusal, in calumniating
Lord Grey, in attempts to detach Mr. Canning from Lord Wellesley or to
prevail on both to join the old Ministry, and in alarming Lord Liverpool
and the Duke of York with the prospect of his rage at the Whigs and
his vexation at his embarrassments terminating in madness. During this
period of anger and intrigue, in which he frequently saw Mr. Sheridan,
he urged the old Ministry to stand their ground and brave the House of
Commons; and he pressed Lord Moira to form an Administration, without
apprising Lord Wellesley—whose commission, however, he maintained, was
only suspended and not concluded. Lord Moira prudently declined; but
when the circumstance reached Lord Wellesley it confirmed the suspicions
he had begun to harbour of the Regent’s insincerity, and furnished him
with fresh motives for exacting, when subsequently employed by His Royal
Highness, some more specific power and instructions than he had hitherto
obtained. Displeased at discovering that the old Ministers, on the plea
of retaining _pro tempore_ their offices, had long and frequent audiences
of the Prince Regent, he and Lord Moira offered to hold the seals of
office till some Administration should be formed. That offer was not
accepted.
[Illustration: _Charles, 2nd Earl Grey_
_T. Phillips, R.A. Pinx. 1812._
_Emery Walker Ph. Sc._]
In the meanwhile Lord Moira extracted from Lord Grey an explanation,
or rather an accurate statement, of what he had said in the House of
Lords on the disappointment of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, with the
friendly view of satisfying the Prince that no personal affront to him
had been offered or intended on that occasion.
The firmness of Lord Wellesley, the intervention of Lord Moira, and the
opinion of others, especially the Duke of York and Lord Egremont[140]
(the latter of whom avowed much political dislike to the two Lords, yet
concurred in representing the services of both as essentially necessary
to the country), at length prevailed on His Royal Highness with a bad
grace to authorise Lord Wellesley to enter on a negotiation not only
with Lord Grenville, but with Lord Grey, to whom he had chiefly taken an
exception. In yielding, however, to this advice, he contrived to clog
his offer with conditions, which he had the sagacity to foresee that
the prudence or the high spirit of those with whom he negotiated would
instantly reject. He did not direct Lord Wellesley to discuss measures
and arrangements with the two Lords, but he directed him to annex as
a condition and to stipulate that Lord Moira, Lord Erskine, and Mr.
Canning should be members of the Cabinet;[141] and that to a Ministry so
constituted they should recommend a certain number of members limited by
previous arrangement or order from His Royal Highness.
Lord Wellesley, in delivering this proposal, intimated that Lord Melville
should also be invited to a seat in the new Cabinet; that the Great Seal
should be offered to Sir William Grant;[142] and that the Prince Regent
would be gratified at Lord Eldon, though deprived of the Seal, being
still retained in the Cabinet. To this proposal a refusal was drawn
up by Lord Grenville and Lord Grey, and cordially approved of by all
their leading friends in both Houses of Parliament. The grounds of their
objections were strongly but respectfully stated to be a conviction that
the plan was formed on a principle of disunion, that the proceeding was
in itself novel and inconvenient, and the tendency of it would be to
establish in the Cabinet itself a system of counteraction inconsistent
with the prosecution of any uniform or beneficial course of policy.
On June 3 Lord Wellesley reported the failure of his negotiations, and
recommended that some further explanations should be given; but he was
informed by the Prince Regent that his powers had now ceased, and his
commission was withdrawn. Lord Wellesley lost no time in informing the
public, through the House of Lords, that his commission had been revoked;
and in the course of his speech lamented that, “personal animosities,
dreadful personal animosities,” had stood in the way of any advantageous
and amicable arrangement. This strong phrase was applied by the public
to the Prince Regent’s prejudices against Lord Grey; but when both
Lord Moira and Lord Grenville acquitted Lord Wellesley of having meant
any imputation on the Prince, and Lord Boringdon ascribed it, in Lord
Wellesley’s absence, very awkwardly to inadvertence, the spirited little
Marquis returned to the House, and, not satisfied with disclaiming
the false meaning annexed in his words, declared explicitly that they
studiously intended to stigmatise, and did, in truth, accurately
describe, the feelings and conduct of the old Ministers towards him. A
warm altercation ensued, in which Lord Wellesley expressed his scorn of
his late colleagues in language which, if they had not then the wit to
repel or confute, they afterwards showed they had the memory to retain
and the disposition not easily to forgive.[143] Lord Moira, satisfied
that all the above negotiations had failed from a misunderstanding, was
still desirous to rectify it. With that view he sought opportunities of
conversing, and wrote one or two notes to Lords Grey and Grenville, who
civilly but distinctly declined pursuing the subject by unauthorised
discussions. He was then furnished with full powers, and had an interview
with the two Lords at his house in St. James’s Place on June 6, 1812.
To that interview it must be acknowledged that the two Lords went but
ill prepared to bring matters to an amicable issue, and with some
inclination, from a prospect of fresh and reviving embarrassments, to
seize any plausible pretence for declining the proffered boon. Even
had they been otherwise able to form an Administration, they had, from
delicacy or from indolence, neglected to come to any agreement between
themselves on some of the most important points connected with such
arrangements. The Regent did not conceal his personal dislike to Lord
Grey. To have selected him for the Treasury—an office which he never
held, and which would have brought him more than any other into personal
intercourse with the Regent—would certainly have provoked the indignation
of the Court, and might, with some plausibility, be construed into an
insult on the feelings of the Prince Regent. On the other hand, Lord
Grenville had no disposition to surrender his auditorship, and our
Parliamentary friends had still less to approve of his retaining it with
the Treasury.[144] No third plan had been devised. Lord Moira had not,
like Lord Wellesley, avowed a determination not to accept the Treasury.
There were, indeed, circumstances, arising from the embarrassed state
of his private affairs and his too compliant temper, which would have
disqualified him for that office; but they were in their nature not very
easy to be urged to him, and no plan not liable to inconvenience could be
suggested in lieu of one, which, but for the objections alluded to, so
obviously presented itself.
These difficulties, together with Lord Grey’s distrust of the Regent
and Lord Grenville’s concealed, but not unreasonable, discontent with
our parliamentary friends, indisposed both those Lords to any amicable
termination of the negotiation. When, therefore, at the outset, Lord
Moira refused to acquiesce in any removal of the great officers of the
Household, or even to recognise the propriety of vesting any power of
removing them in the Cabinet, they peremptorily declined accepting office
with any such restriction; though Lord Moira was at great pains to assure
them that the stipulation was entirely his own, and did not come from the
Prince Regent.
The two Lords, no doubt, thought such a condition a less indelicate
and more plausible ground of rupture, than others which they foresaw
must arise in discussing the detail of arrangements. Unquestionably, as
a ground of rejection, it had some advantages; it covered weaknesses
in their own party, it screened them from the imputation of personal
jealousies of those with whom they were to act; but, on the other hand,
it did not expose the insincerity of the Court so manifestly as further
progress in the negotiation might have done, and, like all pretexts
contrived to keep out of sight the real motives of action, it rendered
their conduct somewhat unintelligible to the public. They had, indeed,
the satisfaction to find it approved by their House of Commons friends,
with the exception of Mr. Whitbread, and by all their chief supporters
in the Lords without one dissentient voice. Lord Darlington,[145] who
had originally joined the Whigs through the influence of Carlton House,
declared that had they acted otherwise they would have lost his support.
Even Lord Erskine, who had endeavoured to render them more compliant,
joined our meeting of June 7 at Lord Grenville’s, with an assurance that
he would contribute to form no middle or neutral Administration, but
“die in the political connection in which he had hitherto lived.” To
this gallant determination, the conduct of Lord Moira, which afterwards
reached my ears, may possibly have contributed. He had a few hours before
informed Lord Erskine that in the Administration he was then projecting
he intended to offer him the Presidentship, and not the Seals, which he
destined to Sir William Grant. With an equal want of dexterity he had,
about the same time, called on Lord Eldon to apprise him, as an old
private friend, that he had no intention of offering him anything in his
new Administration.
When Lord Wellesley had made some progress in his negotiations with the
Whig Lords, and when he thought his project, though in its actual shape
declined, might be so modified as to lead to an accommodation, the Prince
Regent first suspended and then cancelled his powers. When Lord Moira
had entirely failed in his negotiation and peremptorily rejected the
principles on which alone the two Whig Lords would enter upon treaty,
His Royal Highness continued his powers, and left him at liberty to form
a Ministry of which he was quite satisfied the two obnoxious Lords would
not be a part. Lord Moira was, indeed, sanguine. He hoped to form a
Ministry, even though the Whigs refused to co-operate with him, without
having recourse to the late Ministers, whom he continued to term “those
fellows.” His first step was to offer Mr. Canning a seat in the Cabinet
and a share in the arrangements for filling it. Mr. Canning, with certain
conditions and reserves, accepted the offer. Lord Moira then commissioned
Mr. Canning to persuade Lord Liverpool (a prominent Member of the late
Cabinet, and consequently one of the “fellows” described by Lord Moira)
to accede to his Ministry, which was nevertheless to be formed on a
principle favourable to Catholic Emancipation.
This proposal Lord Liverpool naturally declined. He added that he had
neither by word nor deed counteracted the object of the veto of [the]
House of Commons for a new Ministry; and he somewhat carefully qualified
his opinion on the Catholic question by observing that, although he
should always vote against the measure, he was not precluded from
supporting or even acting with a Ministry favourable to some further
concessions to the Roman Catholics provided he, in other respects,
concurred in their general politics. Lord Moira was not discouraged by
Lord Liverpool’s refusal. He consulted Mr. Sheridan, but he offered him
no seat in the Cabinet; he sent up express for Mr. Whitbread, entertained
some strange hopes of that gentleman taking office, and gave him in
return yet stranger, of Government espousing the cause of Parliamentary
reform.