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In this mind he set off for Hayes, and was admitted to Pitt's sick-room; for
Pitt would not leave his chamber, and would not communicate with any messenger
of inferior dignity. And now began a long series of errors on the part of the
illustrious statesman, errors which involved his country in difficulties and
distresses more serious even than those from which his genius had formerly
rescued her. His language was haughty, unreasonable, almost unintelligible. The
only thing which could be discerned through a cloud of vague and not very
gracious phrases, was that he would not at that moment take office. The truth,
we believe, was this. Lord Temple, who was Pitt's evil genius, had just formed a
new scheme of politics. Hatred of Bute and of the Princess had, it should seem,
taken entire possession of Temple's soul. He had quarreled with his brother
George, because George had been connected with Bute and the Princess. Now that
George appeared to be the enemy of Bute and of the Princess, Temple was eager to
bring about a general family reconciliation. The three brothers, as Temple,
Grenville, and Pitt, were popularly called, might make a ministry without
leaning for aid either on Bute or on the Whig connection. With such views,
Temple used all his influence to dissuade Pitt from acceding to the propositions
of the Duke of Cumberland. Pitt was not convinced. But Temple had an influence
over him such as no other person had ever possessed. They were very old friends,
very near relations. If Pitt's talents and fame had been useful to Temple,
Temple's purse had formerly, in times of great need, been useful to Pitt. They
had never been parted in politics. Twice they had come into the Cabinet
together; twice they had left it together. Pitt could not bear to think of
taking office without his chief ally. Yet he felt that he was doing wrong, that
he was throwing away a great opportunity of serving his country. The obscure and
unconciliatory style of the answers which he returned to the overtures of the
Duke of Cumberland, may be ascribed to the embarrassment and vexation of a mind
not at peace with itself. It is said that he mournfully exclaimed to Temple,
"Extinxti te meque, soror, populumque, patresque Sidonios, urbemque tuam."
The prediction was but too just.
Finding Pitt impracticable, the Duke of Cumberland advised the King to submit to
necessity, and to keep Grenville and the Bedfords. It was, indeed, not a time at
which offices could safely be left vacant. The unsettled state of the Government
had produced a general relaxation through all the departments of the public
service. Meetings, which at another time would have been harmless, now turned to
riots, and rapidly rose almost to the dignity of rebellions. The Houses of
Parliament were blockaded by the Spitalfields weavers. Bedford House was
assailed on all sides by a furious rabble, and was strongly garrisoned with
horse and foot. Some people attributed these disturbances to the friends of
Bute, and some to the friends of Wilkes. But, whatever might be the cause, the
effect was general insecurity. Under such circumstances the King had no choice.
With bitter feelings of mortification, he informed the ministers that he meant
to retain them.
They answered by demanding from him a promise on his royal word never more to
consult Lord Bute. The promise was given. They then demanded something more.
Lord Bute's brother, Mr. Mackenzie, held a lucrative office in Scotland. Mr.
Mackenzie must be dismissed. The King replied that the office had been given
under very peculiar circumstances, and that he had promised never to take it
away while he lived. Grenville was obstinate; and the King, with a very bad
grace, yielded.
The session of Parliament was over. The triumph of the ministers was complete.
The King was almost as much a prisoner as Charles the First had been when in the
Isle of Wight. Such were the fruits of the policy which, only a few months
before, was represented as having for ever secured the throne against the
dictation of insolent subjects.
His Majesty's natural resentment showed itself in every look and word. In his
extremity he looked wistfully towards that Whig connection, once the object of
his dread and hatred. The Duke of Devonshire, who had been treated with such
unjustifiable harshness, had lately died, and had been succeeded by his son, who
was still a boy. The King condescended to express his regret for what had
passed, and to invite the young Duke to Court. The noble youth came, attended by
his uncles, and was received with marked graciousness.
This and many other symptoms of the same kind irritated the ministers. They had
still in store for their sovereign an insult which would have provoked his
grandfather to kick them out of the room. Grenville and Bedford demanded an
audience of him, and read him a remonstrance of many pages, which they had drawn
up with great care. His Majesty was accused of breaking his word, and of
treating his advisers with gross unfairness. The Princess was mentioned in
language by no means eulogistic. Hints were thrown out that Bute's head was in
danger. The King was plainly told that he must not continue to show, as he had
done, that he disliked the situation in which he was placed, that he must frown
upon the Opposition, that he must carry it fair towards his ministers in public.
He several times interrupted the reading, by declaring that he had ceased to
hold any communication with Bute. But the ministers, disregarding his denial,
went on; and the King listened in silence, almost choked by rage. When they
ceased to read, he merely made a gesture expressive of his wish to be left
alone. He afterwards owned that he thought he should have gone into a fit.
Driven to despair, he again had recourse to the Duke of Cumberland; and the Duke
of Cumberland again had recourse to Pitt. Pitt was really desirous to undertake
the direction of affairs, and owned, with many dutiful expressions, that the
terms offered by the King were all that any subject could desire. But Temple was
impracticable; and Pitt, with great regret, declared that he could not, without
the concurrence of his brother-in-law, undertake the administration.
The Duke now saw only one way of delivering his nephew. An administration must
be formed of the Whigs in opposition, without Pitt's help. The difficulties
seemed almost insuperable. Death and desertion had grievously thinned the ranks
of the party lately supreme in the State. Those among whom the Duke's choice lay
might be divided into two classes, men too old for important offices, and men
who had never been in any important office before. The Cabinet must be composed
of broken invalids or of raw recruits.
This was an evil, yet not an unmixed evil. If the new Whig statesmen had little
experience in business and debate, they were, on the other hand, pure from the
taint of that political immorality which had deeply infected their predecessors.
Long prosperity had corrupted that great party which had expelled the Stuarts,
limited the prerogatives of the Crown, and curbed the intolerance of the
Hierarchy. Adversity had already produced a salutary effect. On the day of the
accession of George the Third, the ascendancy of the Whig party terminated; and
on that day the purification of the Whig party began. The rising chiefs of that
party were men of a very different sort from Sandys and Winnington, from Sir
William Yonge and Henry Fox. They were men worthy to have charged by the side of
Hampden at Chalgrove, or to have exchanged the last embrace with Russell on the
scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. They carried into politics the same high
principles of virtue which regulated their private dealings, nor would they
stoop to promote even the noblest and most salutary ends by means which honor
and probity condemn. Such men were Lord John Cavendish, Sir George Savile, and
others whom we hold in honor as the second founders of the Whig party, as the
restorers of its pristine health and energy after half a century of degeneracy.
The chief of this respectable band was the Marquess of Rockingham, a man of
splendid fortune, excellent sense, and stainless character. He was indeed
nervous to such a degree that, to the very close of his life, he never rose
without great reluctance and embarrassment to address the House of Lords.
But, though not a great orator, he had in a high degree some of the qualities of
a statesman. He chose his friends well; and he had, in an extraordinary degree,
the art of attaching them to him by ties of the most honorable kind. The
cheerful fidelity with which they adhered to him through many years of almost
hopeless opposition was less admirable than the disinterestedness and delicacy
which they showed when he rose to power.
We are inclined to think that the use and the abuse of party cannot be better
illustrated than by a parallel between two powerful connections of that time,
the Rockinghams and the Bedfords. The Rockingham party was, in our view, exactly
what a party should be. It consisted of men bound together by common opinions,
by common public objects, by mutual esteem. That they desired to obtain, by
honest and constitutional means, the direction of affairs, they openly avowed.
But, though often invited to accept the honors and emoluments of office, they
steadily refused to do so on any conditions inconsistent with their principles.
The Bedford party, as a party, had, as far as we can discover, no principle
whatever. Rigby and Sandwich wanted public money, and thought that they should
fetch a higher price jointly than singly. They therefore acted in concert, and
prevailed on a much more important and a much better man than themselves to act
with them.
It was to Rockingham that the Duke of Cumberland now had recourse. The Marquess
consented to take the Treasury. Newcastle, so long the recognized chief of the
Whigs, could not well be excluded from the ministry. He was appointed Keeper of
the Privy Seal. A very honest clear-headed country gentleman, of the name of
Dowdeswell, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. General Conway, who had served
under the Duke of Cumberland, and was strongly attached to his royal highness,
was made Secretary of State, with the lead in the House of Commons. A great Whig
nobleman, in the prime of manhood, from whom much was at that time expected,
Augustus, Duke of Grafton, was the other Secretary.
The oldest man living could remember no Government so weak in oratorical talents
and in official experience. The general opinion was, that the ministers might
hold office during the recess, but that the first day of debate in Parliament
would be the last day of their power. Charles Townshend was asked what he
thought of the new administration. "It is," said be, "mere lutestring; pretty
summer wear. It will never do for the winter."
At this conjuncture Lord Rockingham had the wisdom to discern the value, and
secure the aid, of an ally, who, to eloquence surpassing the eloquence of Pitt,
and to industry which shamed the industry of Grenville, united an amplitude of
comprehension to which neither Pitt nor Grenville could lay claim. A young
Irishman had, some time before, come over to push his fortune in London. He had
written much for the booksellers; but he was best known by a little treatise, in
which the style and reasoning of Bolingbroke were mimicked with exquisite skill,
and by a theory, of more ingenuity than soundness, touching the pleasures which
we receive from the objects of taste He had also attained a high reputation as a
talker, and was regarded by the men of letters who supped together at the Turk's
Head as the only match in conversation for Dr. Johnson. He now became private
secretary to Lord Rockingham, and was brought into Parliament by his patron's
influence. These arrangements, indeed, were not made without some difficulty.
The Duke of Newcastle, who was always meddling and chattering, adjured the First
Lord of the Treasury to be on his guard against this adventurer, whose real name
was O'Bourke, and whom his Grace knew to be a wild Irishman, a Jacobite, a
Papist, a concealed Jesuit. Lord Rockingham treated the calumny as it deserved;
and the Whig party was strengthened and adorned by the accession of Edmund
Burke.
The party, indeed, stood in need of accessions; for it sustained about this time
an almost irreparable loss. The Duke of Cumberland had formed the Government,
and was its main support. His exalted rank and great name in some degree
balanced the fame of Pitt. As mediator between the Whigs and the Court, he held
a place which no other person could fill. The strength of his character supplied
that which was the chief defect of the new ministry. Conway, in particular, who,
with excellent intentions and respectable talents, was the most dependent and
irresolute of human beings, drew from the counsels of that masculine mind a
determination not his own. Before the meeting of Parliament the Duke suddenly
died. His death was generally regarded as the signal of great troubles, and on
this account, as well as from respect for his personal qualities, was greatly
lamented. It was remarked that the mourning in London was the most general ever
known, and was both deeper and longer than the Gazette had prescribed.
In the meantime, every mail from America brought alarming tidings. The crop
which Grenville had sown his successors had now to reap, The colonies were in a
state bordering on rebellion. The stamps were burned. The revenue officers were
tarred and feathered. All traffic between the discontented provinces and the
mother country was interrupted. The Exchange of London was in dismay. Half the
firms of Bristol and Liverpool were threatened with bankruptcy. In Leeds,
Manchester, Nottingham, it was said that three artisans out of every ten had
been turned adrift. Civil war seemed to be at hand; and it could not be doubted
that, if once the British nation were divided against itself, France and Spain
would soon take part in the quarrel.
Three courses were open to the ministers. The first was to enforce the Stamp Act
by the sword. This was the course on which the King, and Grenville, whom the
King hated beyond all living men, were alike bent. The natures of both were
arbitrary and stubborn. They resembled each other so much that they could never
be friends; but they resembled each other also so much that they saw almost all
important practical questions in the same point of view. Neither of them would
bear to be governed by the other; but they were perfectly agreed as to the best
way of governing the people.
Another course was that which Pitt recommended. He held that the British
Parliament was not constitutionally competent to pass a law for taxing the
colonies. He therefore considered the Stamp Act as a nullity, as a document of
no more validity than Charles's writ of ship-money, or James's proclamation
dispensing with the penal laws. This doctrine seems to us, we must own, to be
altogether untenable.
Between these extreme courses lay a third way. The opinion of the most judicious
and temperate statesmen of those times was that the British constitution had set
no limit whatever to the legislative power of the British King, Lords, and
Commons, over the whole British Empire. Parliament, they held, was legally
competent to tax America, as Parliament was legally competent to commit any
other act of folly or wickedness, to confiscate the property of all the
merchants in Lombard Street, or to attaint any man in the kingdom of high
treason, without examining witnesses against him, or hearing him in his own
defense. The most atrocious act of confiscation or of attainder is just as valid
an act as the Toleration Act or the Habeas Corpus Act. But from acts of
confiscation and acts of attainder lawgivers are bound, by every obligation of
morality, systematically to refrain. In the same manner ought the British
legislature to refrain from taxing the American colonies. The Stamp Act was
indefensible, not because it was beyond the constitutional competence of
Parliament, but because it was unjust and impolitic, sterile of revenue, and
fertile of discontents. These sound doctrines were adopted by Lord Rockingham
and his colleagues, and were, during a long course of years, inculcated by
Burke, in orations, some of which will last as long as the English language.
The winter came; the Parliament met; and the state of the colonies instantly
became the subject of fierce contention. Pitt, whose health had been somewhat
restored by the waters of Bath, reappeared in the House of Commons, and, with
ardent and pathetic eloquence, not only condemned the Stamp Act, but applauded
the resistance of Massachusetts and Virginia, and vehemently maintained, in
defiance, we must say, of all reason and of all authority, that, according to
the British constitution, the supreme legislative power does not include the
power to tax. The language of Grenville, on the other hand, was such as
Strafford might have used at the council-table of Charles the First, when news
came of the resistance to the liturgy at Edinburgh. The colonists were traitors;
those who excused them were little better. Frigates, mortars, bayonets, sabres,
were the proper remedies for such distempers.
The ministers occupied an intermediate position; they proposed to declare that
the legislative authority of the British Parliament over the whole Empire was in
all cases supreme; and they proposed, at the same time, to repeal the Stamp Act.
To the former measure Pitt objected; but it was carried with scarcely a
dissentient voice. The repeal of the Stamp Act Pitt strongly supported; but
against the Government was arrayed a formidable assemblage of opponents.
Grenville and the Bedfords were furious. Temple, who had now allied himself
closely with his brother, and separated himself from Pitt, was no despicable
enemy. This, however, was not the worst. The ministry was without its natural
strength. It had to struggle, not only against its avowed enemies, but against
the insidious hostility of the King, and of a set of persons who, about this
time, began to be designated as the King's friends.
The character of this faction has been drawn by Burke with even more than his
usual force and vivacity. Those who know how strongly, through his whole life,
his judgment was biased by his passions, may not unnaturally suspect that he has
left us rather a caricature than a likeness; and yet there is scarcely, in the
whole portrait, a single touch of which the fidelity is not proved by facts of
unquestionable authenticity.
The public generally regarded the King's friends as a body of which Bute was the
directing soul. It was to no purpose that the Earl professed to have done with
politics, that he absented himself year after year from the levee and the
drawing-room, that he went to the north, that he went to Rome. The notion that,
in some inexplicable manner, he dictated all the measures of the Court, was
fixed in the minds, not only of the multitude, but of some who had good
opportunities of obtaining information, and who ought to have been superior to
vulgar prejudices. Our own belief is that these suspicions were unfounded, and
that he ceased to have any communication with the King on political matters some
time before the dismissal of George Grenville. The supposition of Bute's
influence is, indeed, by no means necessary to explain the phenomena. The King,
in 1765, was no longer the ignorant and inexperienced boy who had, in 1760, been
managed by his mother and his Groom of the Stole. He had, during several years,
observed the struggles of parties, and conferred daily on high questions of
State with able and experienced politicians. His way of life had developed his
understanding and character. He was now no longer a puppet, but had very decided
opinions both of men and things. Nothing could be more natural than that he
should have high notions of his own prerogatives, should be impatient of
opposition and should wish all public men to be detached from each other and
dependent on himself alone; nor could anything be more natural than that, in the
state in which the political world then was, he should find instruments fit for
his purposes.
Thus sprang into existence and into note a reptile species of politicians never
before and never since known in our country. These men disclaimed all political
ties, except those which bound them to the throne. They were willing to coalesce
with any party, to abandon any party, to undermine any party, to assault any
party, at a moment's notice. To them, all administrations, and all oppositions
were the same. They regarded Bute, Grenville, Rockingham, Pitt, without one
sentiment either of predilection or of aversion. They were the King's friends.
It is to be observed that this friendship implied no personal intimacy. These
people had never lived with their master as Dodington at one time lived with his
father, or as Sheridan afterwards lived with his son. They never hunted with him
in the morning, or played cards with him in the evening, never shared his mutton
or walked with him among his turnips. Only one or two of them ever saw his face,
except on public days. The whole band, however, always had early and accurate
information as to his personal inclinations. These people were never high in the
administration. They were generally to be found in places of much emolument,
little labor, and no responsibility; and these places they continued to occupy
securely while the Cabinet was six or seven times reconstructed. Their peculiar
business was not to support the Ministry against the Opposition, but to support
the King against the Ministry. Whenever his Majesty was induced to give a
reluctant assent to the introduction of some bill which his constitutional
advisers regarded as necessary, his friends in the House of Commons were sure to
speak against it, to vote against it, to throw in its way every obstruction
compatible with the forms of Parliament. If his Majesty found it necessary to
admit into his closet a Secretary of State or a First Lord of the Treasury whom
he disliked, his friends were sure to miss no opportunity of thwarting and
humbling the obnoxious minister. In return for these services, the King covered
them with his protection. It was to no purpose that his responsible servants
complained to him that they were daily betrayed and impeded by men who were
eating the bread of the Government He sometimes justified the offenders,
sometimes excused them, sometimes owned that they were to blame, but said that
he must take time to consider whether he could part with them. He never would
turn them out; and, while everything else in the State was constantly changing,
these sycophants seemed to have a life estate in their offices.
It was well known to the King's friends that, though his Majesty had consented
to the repeal of the Stamp Act, he had consented with a very bad grace, and that
though he had eagerly welcomed the Whigs, when, in his extreme need and at his
earnest entreaty, they had undertaken to free him from an insupportable yoke, he
had by no means got over his early prejudices against his deliverers. The
ministers soon found that, while they were encountered in front by the whole
force of a strong Opposition, their rear was assailed by a large body of those
whom they had regarded as auxiliaries.
Nevertheless, Lord Rockingham and his adherents went on resolutely with the bill
for repealing the Stamp Act. They had on their side all the manufacturing and
commercial interests of the realm. In the debates the Government was powerfully
supported. Two great orators and statesmen, belonging to two different
generations, repeatedly put forth all their powers in defense of the bill. The
House of Commons heard Pitt for the last time, and Burke for the first time, and
was in doubt to which of them the palm of eloquence should be assigned. It was
indeed a splendid sunset and a splendid dawn.
For a time the event seemed doubtful. In several divisions the ministers were
hard pressed. On one occasion, not less than twelve of the King's friends, all
men in office, voted against the Government. It was to no purpose that Lord
Rockingham remonstrated with the King. His Majesty confessed that there was
ground for complaint, but hoped that gentle means would bring the mutineers to a
better mind. If they persisted in their misconduct, he would dismiss them.
At length the decisive day arrived. The gallery, the lobby, the Court of
Requests, the staircases, were crowded with merchants from all the great ports
of the island. The debate lasted till long after midnight. On the division the
ministers had a great majority. The dread of civil war, and the outcry of all
the trading towns of the kingdom, had been too strong for the combined strength
of the Court and the Opposition.
It was in the first dim twilight of a February morning that the doors were
thrown open, and that the chiefs of the hostile parties showed themselves to the
multitude. Conway was received with loud applause. But, when Pitt appeared, all
eyes were fixed on him alone. All hats were in the air. Loud and long huzzas
accompanied him to his chair, and a train of admirers escorted him all the way
to his home. Then came forth Grenville. As soon as he was recognized, a storm of
hisses and curses broke forth. He turned fiercely on the crowd, and caught one
by the throat. The bystanders were in great alarm. If a scuffle began, none
could say how it might end. Fortunately the person who had been collared only
said, "If I may not hiss, sir, I hope I may laugh," and laughed in Grenville's
face.
The majority had been so decisive, that all the opponents of the Ministry, save
one, were disposed to let the bill pass without any further contention. But
solicitation and expostulation were thrown away on Grenville. His indomitable
spirit rose up stronger and stronger under the load of public hatred. He fought
out the battle obstinately to the end. On the last reading he had a sharp
altercation with his brother-in-law, the last of their many sharp altercations.
Pitt thundered in his loftiest tones against the man who had wished to dip the
ermine of a British King in the blood of the British people. Grenville replied
with his wonted intrepidity and asperity. "If the tax," he said, "were still to
be laid on, I would lay it on. For the evils which it may produce my accuser is
answerable. His profusion made it necessary. His declarations against the
constitutional powers of Kings, Lords, and Commons, have made it doubly
necessary. I do not envy him the huzza. I glory in the hiss. If it were to be
done again, I would do it."
The repeal of the Stamp Act was the chief measure of Lord Rockingham's
Government. But that Government is entitled to the praise of having put a stop
to two oppressive practices, which, in Wilkes's case, had attracted the notice
and excited the just indignation of the public. The House of Commons was induced
by the ministers to pass a resolution condemning the use of general warrants,
and another resolution condemning the seizure of papers in cases of libel.
It must be added, to the lasting honor of Lord Rockingham, that his
administration was the first which, during a long course of years, had the
courage and the virtue to refrain from bribing members of Parliament. His
enemies accused him and his friends of weakness, of haughtiness, of party
spirit; but calumny itself never dared to couple his name with corruption.
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