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such circumstances, nothing could be more na- | upright designs? By what means? Inter tural than that the members should insist on dicting himself from the use of corrup influ being paid for their votes, should form them-ence, what motive was he to address to the Dodselves into combinations for the purpose of ingtons and Winningtons? raising the price of their votes, and should at strengthened by habit, to be laid asleep by a critical conjunctures extort large wages by few fine sentences about virtue and union? Was cupidity, threatening a strike. Thus the Whig ministers of George the First and George the Se-mirers, particularly among men of letters. It Absurd as this theory was, it had many adcond were compelled to reduce corruption to a system, and to practise it on a gigantic scale.

was now to be reduced to practice; and the re
foreseen, the most piteous and ridiculous of
sult was, as any man of sagacity must have
failures.

sion, appeared some signs which indicated the
On the very day of the young king's acces
approach of a great change.
which he made to his council was not submit
ted to the cabinet. It was drawn up by Bute,
The speech
and contained some expressions which might
be construed into reflections on the conduct of
affairs during the late reign.
Pitt remon

If we are right as to the cause of these abuses, we can scarcely be wrong as to the remedy. The remedy was surely not to deprive the House of Commons of its weight in the state. Such a course would undoubtedly have put an end to parliamentary corruption and to parliamentary factions: for, when votes cease to be of importance, they will cease to be bought, and when knaves can get nothing by combining, they will cease to combine. But to destroy corruption and faction by in-strated, and begged that these expressions migh troducing despotism, would have been to cure be softened down in the printed copy; but it bad by worse. The proper remedy evidently was not till after some hours of altercation was, to make the House of Commons respon- that Bute yielded; and, even after Bute had sible to the nation; and this was to be effected yielded, the king affected to hold out till the in two ways-first, by giving publicity to par- following afternoon. On the same day on liamentary proceedings, and thus placing which this singular contest took place, Bute every member on his trial before the tribunal was not only sworn of the privy council, but of public opinion; and secondly, by so reform-introduced into the cabinet. ing the constitution of the House, that no man should be able to sit in it who had not been returned by a respectable and independent body of constituents.

secretaries of state, in pursuance of a plan Soon after this, Lord Holdernesse, one of the concerted with the court, resigned the seals. place. A general election speedily followed, Bute was instantly appointed to the vacant and the new secretary entered parliament in as one of the sixteen representative peers of the only way in which he then could enter it, Scotland.*

Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke's disciples recommended a very different mode of treating the diseases of the state. that a vigorous use of the prerogative by a Their doctrine was, patriot king would at once break all factious combinations, and supersede the pretended necessity of bribing members of Parliament. The scarcely be doubted that they would have been Had the ministers been firmly united, it can king had only to resolve that he would be able to withstand the court. The parliamentmaster, that he would not be held in thraldomary influence of the Whig aristocracy, comby any set of men, that he would take for ministers any persons in whom he had confidence, without distinction of party, and that he would restrain his servants from influencing, by immoral means, either the constituent bodies or the representative body. This childish scheme proved that those who proposed it knew nothing of the nature of the evil with which they pretended to deal. The real cause of the prevalence of corruption and faction was, that a House of Commons, not accountable to the people, was more powerful than the king. Bolingbroke's remedy could be applied only by a king more powerful than the House of Commons. How was the patriot prince to govern in defiance of the body without whose consent he could not equip a sloop, keep a battalion under arms, send an embassy, or defray even the charges of his own household? Was he to dissolve the Parliament? And what was he likely to gain by appealing to Sudbury and Old Sarum against the venality of their representatives? Was he to send out privy seals? Was he to levy ship-money? boasted reform must commence in all probaIf so, this bility by civil war, and, if consummated, must be consummated by the establishment of absolute monarchy. Or was the patriot king to carry the House of Commons with him in his

bined with the genius, the virtue, and the fame of Pitt, would have been irresistible. But there had been in the cabinet of George the Second latent jealousies and enmities, which now began to show themselves. Pitt had been estranged from his old ally Legge, the chancellor of the exchequer. Some of the ministers were envious of Pitt's popularity; others were, not altogether without cause, disgusted by his imperious and haughty demeanour; others, again, were honestly op posed to some parts of his policy. They admitted that he had found the country in the depths of humiliation, and had raised it to the height of glory; they admitted that he had conducted the war with energy, ability, and splendid success. the drain on the resources of the state was But they began to hint that unexampled, and that the public debt was increasing with a speed at which Montague or Godolphin would have stood aghast. Some of the acquisitions made by our fleets and armies were, it was acknowledged, profitable the Second was dead, a courtier might venas well as honourable; but, now that George

In the reign of Anne, the House of Lords had re

This re

solved that, under the 23d article of Union, no Scotch
solution was not annulled till the year 1782.

peer could be created a peer of Great Britain.

ture to ask why England was to become a party in a dispute between two German powers. What was it to her whether the house of Hapsburg or the honse of Brandenburg ruled in Silesia? Why were the best English regiments fighting on the Maine? Why were the Prussian battalions paid with English gold? The great minister seemed to think it beneath him to calculate the price of victory. As long as the Tower guns were fired, as the streets were illuminated, as French banners were carried in triumph through the streets of London, it was to him matter of indifference to what extent the public burdens were augmented. Nay, he seemed to glory in the magnitude of these sacrifices, which the people, fascinated by his eloquence and success, had too readily made, and would long and bitterly regret. There was no check on waste or embezzlement. Our commissaries returned from the camp of Prince Ferdinand to buy boroughs, to rear palaces, to rival the magnificence of the old aristocracy of the realm. Already had we borrowed, in four years of war, more than he most skilful and economical government would pay in forty years of peace. But the prospect of peace was as remote as ever. It could not be doubted that France, smarting and prostrate, would consent to fair terms of accommodation; but this was not what Pitt wanted. War had made him powerful and popular with war, all that was brightest in his life was associated: for war, his talents were peculiarly fitted. He had at length begun to love war for its own sake, and was more disposed to quarrel with neutrals than to make peace with enemies.

posed to be intimately acquainted with the whole fiscal system of the country. He had paid especial attention to the law of Parlia ment, and was so learned in all things relating to the privileges and orders of the House of Commons, that those who loved him least pronounced him the only person competent to succeed Onslow in the Chair. His speeches were generally instructive, and sometimes, from the gravity and earnestness with which he spoke, even impressive; but never bril liant, and generally tedious. Indeed, even when he was at the head of affairs, he sometimes found it difficult to obtain the ear of the House. In disposition as well as in intellect, he differed widely from his brother-in-law. Pitt was utterly regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch out his hand to take it; and, when it came, he threw it away with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonions. Pitt was a man of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive; Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general applause, compared Grenville, in a time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit whom Ovid described looking down on the stately temples and wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able to refrain from weeping because she could find nothing at which to weep. Such a man was not likely to be popular. But to unpopularity Grenville opposed a dogged determination, which sometimes forced even those who

Such were the views of the Duke of Bedford and of the Earl of Hardwicke; but no member of the government held these opinions so strongly as George Grenville, the treasurer of the navy. George Grenville was brother-in-hated him to respect him. law of Pitt, and had always been reckoned one of Pitt's personal and political friends. But it is difficult to conceive two men of talents and integrity more utterly unlike each other. Pitt, as his sister often said, knew nothing accurately except Spenser's Fairy Queen. He had never applied himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. He was a wretched financier. He never became familiar even with the rules of that House of which he was the brightest ornament. He had never studied public law as a system; and was, indeed, so ignorant of the whole subject, that George the Second, on one occasion, complained bitterly that a man who had never read Vattel should presume to undertake the direction of foreign affairs. But these defects were more than redeemed by high and rare gifts; by a strange power of inspiring great masses of men with confidence and affection; by an eloquence which not only delighted the ear, but stirred the blood and brought tears into the eyes; by originality in devising plans; by vigour in executing them. Grenville, on the other hand, was by Lature and habit a man of details. He had Deen bred a lawyer; and he had brought the industry and acuteness of the Temple into official and parliamentary life. He was sup

It was natural that Pitt and Grenville, being such as they were, should take very different views of the situation of affairs. Pitt could see nothing but the trophies; Grenville could see nothing but the bill. Pitt boasted that England was victorious at once in America, in India, and in Germany-the umpire of the Continent the mistress of the sea. Grenville cast up the subsidies, sighed over the army extraordina ries, and groaned in spirit to think that the nation had borrowed eight millions in ong year.

With a ministry thus divided, it was not dif ficult for Bute to deal. Legge was the first who fell. He had given offence to the young king in the late reign, by refusing to support creature of Bute at a Hampshire election. He was now not only turned out, but in the closet, when he delivered up his seal of office, was treated with gross incivility.

Pitt, who did not love Legge, saw this event with indifference. But the danger was now fast approaching himself. Charles the Third of Spain had early conceived a deadly hatred of England. Twenty years before, when he was King of the Two Sicilies, he had been eager to join the coalition against Maria Theresa. But an English fleet had suddenly appeared in the Bay of Naples. An English

captain had landed, had proceeded to the palace, had laid a watch on the table, and had told his majesty that, within an hour, a treaty of neutrality must be signed, or a bombardment would commence. The treaty was signed; the squadron sailed out of the bay twenty-four hours after it had sailed in; and from that day the ruling passion of the humbled prince was aversion to the English name. He was at length in a situation in which he might hope to gratify that passion. He had recently become King of Spain and the Indies. He saw, with envy and apprehension, the triumphs of our navy, and the rapid extension of our colonial empire. He was a Bourbon, and sympathized with the distress of the house from which he sprang. He was a Spaniard; and no Spaniard could bear to see Gibraltar and Minorca in the possession of a foreign power. Impelled by such feelings, Charles concluded a secret treaty with France. By this treaty, known as the Family Compact, the two powers bound themselves, not in express words, but by the clearest implication, to make war on England in common. Spain postponed the declaration of hostilities only till her fleet, laden with the treasures of America, should have arrived.

The existence of the treaty could not be kept a secret from Pitt. He acted as a man of his capacity and energy might be expected to act. He at once proposed to declare war against Spain, and to intercept the American fleet. He had determined, it is said, to attack without delay both Havanna and the Philippines.

His wise and resolute counsel was rejected. Bute was foremost in opposing it, and was supported by almost the whole cabinet. Some of the ministers doubted, or affected to doubt, the correctness of Pitt's intelligence; some shrank from the responsibility of advising a course so bold and decided as that which he proposed; some were weary of his ascendency, and were glad to be rid of him on any pretext. One only of his colleagues agreed with him, his brother-in-law, Earl Temple.

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his wife had been created a peeress in her own right, and a pension of three thousand pounds a-year, for three lives, had been bestowed on himself. It was doubtless thought that the rewards and honours conferred on the great minister would have a conciliatory effect on the public mind. Perhaps, too, it was thought that his popularity, which had partly arisen from the contempt which he had always shown for money, would be damaged by a pension; and, indeed, a crowd of libels instantly appeared, in which he was accused of having sold his country. Many of his true friends thought that he would have best consulted the dignity of his character by refusing to accept any pecuniary reward from the court. Nevertheless, the general opinion of his talents, virtues, and services remained unaltered. dresses were presented to him from several large towns. London showed its admiration and affection in a still more marked manner. Soon after his resignation came the Lord Mayor's day. The king and the royal family dined at Guildhall. Pitt was one of the guests. The young sovereign, seated by his bride in his state coach, received a remarkable lesson. on the fallen minister; all acclamations directed He was scarcely noticed. All eyes were fixed to him. The streets, the balconies, the chimney-tops, burst into a roar of delight as his chariot passed by. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs from the windows. The common people clung to the wheels, shook hands Cries of "No Bute!" "No Newcastle salmon!" with the footmen, and even kissed the horses. When Pitt entered Guildhall, he was welcomed were mingled with the shouts of "Pitt for ever!" by loud huzzas and clapping of hands, in which the very magistrates of the city joined. Lord Bute, in the mean time, was hooted and pelted through Cheapside, and would, it was thought, have been in some danger, if he had not taken the precaution of surrounding his carriage with a strong body-guard of boxers. Many persons disrespectful to the king. Indeed, Pitt himself blamed the conduct of Pitt on this occasion as afterwards owned that he had done wrong. He was led into this error, as he was afterwards led into more serious errors, by the influence of his turbulent and mischievous brother-in-law, Temple.

Pitt and Temple resigned their offices. To Pitt the young king behaved at parting in the most gracious manner. Pitt, who, proud and fiery everywhere else, was always meek and humble in the closet, was moved even to tears. The king and the favourite urged him to accept some substantial mark of royal gratitude. Would he like to be appointed governor of Canada? A salary of £5000 a-year should be annexed to the office. Residence would not be required. It was true that the governor of Canada, as the law then stood, could not be a member of the House of Commons. But a bill should be brought in, authorizing Pitt to hold his government together with a seat in Parliament, and in the preamble should be set forth his claims to the gratitude of his country. Pitt answered, with all delicacy, that his anxieties were rather for his wife and family than for himself, and that nothing would be so acceptable to him as a mark of royal goodness, which might be beneficial to those who were dearest to him. The hint was taken. The Pitt's retirement passed over without any vioThe session of Parliament which followed same gazette which announced the retirement lent storm. Lord Bute took on himself the of the secretary of state, announced also, that, most prominent part in the House of Lords. in consideration of his great public services, He had become secretary of state, and indeed

Pitt's retirement raised his fame higher than The events which immediately followed ever. War with Spain proved to be, as he had predicted, inevitable. News came from the West Indies that Martinique had been taken by an expedition which he had sent forth. Havanna fell; and it was known that he had planned an attack on Havanna. Manilla capitulated; and it was believed that he had meditated a blow against Manilla. The American fleet, which he had proposed to intercept, had unloaded an immense cargo of bullion in the haven of Cadiz, before Bute could be convinced that the court of Madrid really entertained hostile intentions.

prime minister, without having once opened as in reality. That coalition, which a few his lips in public except as an actor. There was, therefore, no small curiosity to know how he would acquit himself. Members of the House of Commons crowded the bar of the Lords, and covered the steps of the throne. It was generally expected that the orator would break down; but his most malicious hearers were forced to own that he had made a better figure than they expected. They, indeed, ridiculed his action as theatrical, and his style as tumid. They were especially amused by the long pauses which, not from hesitation but from affectation, he made at all the emphatic words, and Charles Townshend cried out, "Minute guns!" The general opinion however was, that if Bute had been early practised in debate, he might have become an impressive speaker.

months before had seemed all-powerful, had been dissolved. The retreat of Pitt had deprived the government of popularity. New castle had exulted in the fall of the illustrious colleague whom he envied and dreaded, and had not foreseen that his own doom was at hand. He still tried to flatter himself that he was at the head of the government; but insults heaped on insults at length undeceived him. Places which had always been considered as in his gift, were bestowed without any refer ence to him. His expostulations only called forth significant hints that it was time for him to retire. One day he pressed on Bute the claims of a Whig prelate to the archbishopric of York. "If your grace thinks so highly of him," answered Bute, "I wonder that you did not promote him when you had the power." In the Commons, George Grenville had been Still the old man clung with a desperate grasp intrusted with the lead. The task was not, as to the wreck. Seldom, indeed, have Christian yet, a very difficult one: for Pitt did not think meekness and Christian humility equalled the fit to raise the standard of opposition. His meekness and humility of his patient and abspeeches at this time were distinguished, not ject ambition. At length he was forced to unonly by that eloquence in which he excelled derstand that all was over. He quitted that all his rivals, but also by a temperance and a court where he had held high office during fortymodesty which had too often been wanting to five years, and hid his shame and regret among his character. When war was declared the cedars of Claremont. Bute became first against Spain, he justly laid claim to the merit | lord of the treasury. of having foreseen what had at length become The favourite had undoubtedly committed a manifest to all, but he carefully abstained great error. It is impossible to imagine a tool from arrogant and acrimonious expressions; better suited to his purposes than that which and this abstinence was the more honourable he thus threw away, or rather put into the to him, because his temper, never very placid, hands of his enemies. If Newcastle had been was now severely tried, both by gout and by suffered to play at being first minister, Bute calumny. The courtiers had adopted a mode might securely and quietly have enjoyed the of warfare, which was soon turned with far substance of power. The gradual introduction more formidable effect against themselves. of Tories into all the departments of the goHalf the inhabitants of the Grub Street garrets vernment might have been effected without paid their milk-scores, and got their shirts out any violent clamour, if the chief of the great of pawn, by abusing Pitt. His German war, Whig connection had been ostensibly at the his subsidies, his pension, his wife's peerage, head of affairs. This was strongly represented were shin of beef and gin, blankets and baskets to Bute by Lord Mansfield, a man who may of small coal, to the starving poetasters of the justly be called the father of modern Toryism, Fleet. Even in the House of Commons, he of Toryism modified to suit an order of things was, on one occasion during this session, as- under which the House of Commons is the sailed with an insolence and malice which most powerful body in the state. The theories called forth the indignation of men of all par- which had dazzled Bute could not impose on ties; but he endured the outrage with majestic the fine intellect of Mansfield. The temerity patience. In his younger days he had been with which Bute provoked the hostility of but too prompt to retaliate on those who at-powerful and deeply-rooted interests, was distacked him; but now, conscious of his great services, and of the space which he filled in the eyes of all mankind, he would not stoop to personal squabbles. "This is no season," he said, in the debate on the Spanish war, "for altercation and recrimination. A day has arrived when every Englishman should stand forth for his country. Arm the whole; be one Deople; forget every thing but the public. I Bet you the example. Harassed by slanderers, sinking under pain and disease, for the public I forget both my wrongs and my infirmities!" On a general review of his life, we are inclined to think that his genius and virtue never shone with so pure an effulgence as during the session of 1762.

The session drew towards the close; and Bute, emboldened by the acquiescence of the Houses, resolved to strike another great blow, and to become first minister in name as well

pleasing to Mansfield's cold and timid nature. Expostulation, however, was vain. Bute was impatient of advice, drunk with success, eager to be, in show as well as in reality, the head of the government. He had engaged in an undertaking, in which a screen was absolutely necessary to his success, and even to his safety. He found an excellent screen ready in the very place where it was most needed; and he rudely pushed it away.

And now the new system f government came into full operation. For the first time since the accession of the house of Hanover, the Tory party was in the ascendant. The prime minister himself was a Tory. Lord Egremont, who had succeeded Pitt as secretary of state, was a Tory, and the son of a Tory. Sir Francis Dashwood, a man of slender parts, of small experience, and of notoriously immoral character, was made chancellor of the

exchequer, for no reason that could be ima- | Walpole, and had seemed to be almost extinct gined, except that he was a Tory and had been at the close of the reign of George the Second. a Jacobite. The royal household was filled It now revived in all its force. Many Whigs, with men whose favourite toast, a few years it is true, were still in office. The Duke of before, had been the "King over the water." Bedford had signed the treaty with France. The The relative position of the two great national Duke of Devonshire, though much out of huseats of learning was suddenly changed. The mour, still continued to be Lord-chamberlain. University of Oxford had long been the chief Grenville, who led the House of Commons, and seat of disaffection. In troubled times, the Fox, who still enjoyed in silence the immense High Street had been lined with bayonets; the gains of the Pay-Office, had always been recolleges had been searched by the king's mes-garded as strong Whigs. But the bulk of the sengers. Grave doctors were in the habit of talking very Ciceronian treason in the theatre; and the under-graduates drank bumpers to Jacobite toasts, and chanted Jacobite airs. Of four successive Chancellors of the University, one had notoriously been in the Pretender's service; the other three were fully believed to be in secret correspondence with the exiled family. Cambridge had therefore been especially favoured by the Hanoverian princes, and had shown herself grateful for their patronage. George the First had enriched her library; George the Second had contributed munificently to her senate-house. Bishoprics and deaneries were showered on her children. Her Chancellor was Newcastle, the chief of the Whig aristocracy; her High-Steward was Hardwicke, the Whig head of the law. Both her burgesses had held office under the Whig ministry. Times had now changed. The University of Cambridge was received at St. James's with comparative coldness. The answers to the addresses of Oxford were all graciousness and warmth.

The watchwords of the new government were prerogative and purity. The sovereign was no longer to be a puppet in the hands of any subject, or of any combination of subjects. George the Third would not be forced to take ministers whom he disliked, as his grandfather had been forced to take Pitt. George the Third would not be forced to part with any whom he delighted to honour, as his grandfather had been forced to part with Carteret. At the same time, the system of bribery which had grown up during the late reigns was to cease. It was ostentatiously proclaimed that, since the accession of the young king, neither constituents nor representatives had been bought with the secret service money. To free Britain from corruption and oligarchical cabals, to detach her from continental connections; to bring the bloody and expensive war with France and Spain to a close, such were the specious objects which Bute professed to procure.

Some of these objects he attained. England withdrew, at the cost of a deep stain on her faith, from her German connections. The war with France and Spain was terminated by a peace, honourable indeed and advantageous to our country, yet less honourable indeed and advantageous than might have been expected from a long and almost unbroken series of victories, by land and sea, in every part of the world. But the only effect of Bute's domestic administration was to make faction wilder and corruption fouler than ever.

The mutual animosity of the Whig and Tory parties had begun to languish after the fall of

party throughout the country regarded the new minister with abhorrence. There was, indeed, no want of popular themes for invective against his character. He was a favourite; and favourites have always been odious in this country. No mere favourite had been at the head of the government, since the dagger of Felton reached the heart of the Duke of Buckingham. After that event, the most arbitrary and the most frivolous of the Stuarts had felt the necessity of confiding the chief direction of affairs to men who had given some proof of parliamen tary or official talent. Strafford, Falkland, Clarendon, Clifford, Shaftesbury, Lauderdale, Danby, Temple, Halifax, Rochester, Sunderland, whatever their faults might be, were all men of acknowledged ability. They did not owe their eminence merely to the favour of the sovereign. On the contrary, they owed the favour of the sovereign to their eminence. Most of them, indeed, had first attracted the notice of the court by the capacity and vigour which they had shown in opposition. The Revolution seemed to have for ever secured the state against the domination of a Carr or a Villiers. Now, however, the personal regard of the king had at once raised a man who had seen nothing of public business, who had never opened his lips in Parliament, over the heads of a crowd of eminent orators, financiers, diplomatists. From a private gentleman, this fortunate minion had at once been turned into a secretary of state. He had made his maiden speech when at the head of the administration. The vulgar resorted to a simple explanation of the phenomenon, and the coarsest ribaldry against the Princess Mother was scrawled on every wall and in every alley.

This was not all. The spirit of party, roused by impolitic provocation from its long sleep, roused in turn a still fiercer and more malig nant fury, the spirit of national animosity. The grudge of Whig against Tory was mingled with the grudge of Englishman against Scot. The two sections of the great British people had not yet been indissolubly blended together. The events of 1715 and of 1744 had left painful and enduring traces. The tradesmen of Cornhill had been in dread of seeing their tills and warehouses plundered by bare-legged mountaineers from the Grampians. They still recollected that Black Friday, when the news came that the rebels were at Derby, when all the shops in the city were closed, and when the Bank of England began to pay in sixpences. The Scots, on the other hand, remembered, with natural resentment, the severity with which the insurgents had been chastised, the military outrages, the humiliating laws, the heads fixed on Temple Bar, the fires and quar

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