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It is not strange, therefore, that the sentiment of loyalty, a sentiment which
had lately seemed to be as much out of date as the belief in witches or the
practice of pilgrimage, should, from the day of his accession, have begun to
revive. The Tories in particular, who had always been inclined to King-worship,
and who had long felt with pain the want of an idol before whom they could bow
themselves down, were as joyful as the priests of Apis, when, after a long
interval, they had found a new calf to adore. It was soon clear that George the
Third was regarded by a portion of the nation with a very different feeling from
that which his two predecessors had inspired. They had been merely First
Magistrates, Doges, Stadtholders; he was emphatically a King, the anointed of
heaven, the breath of his people's nostrils. The years of the widowhood and
mourning of the Tory party were over. Dido had kept faith long enough to the
cold ashes of a former lord; she had at last found a comforter, and recognized
the vestiges of the old flame. The golden days of Harley would return. The
Somersets, the Lees, and the Wyndhams would again surround the throne. The
latitudinarian Prelates, who had not been ashamed to correspond with Doddridge
and to shake hands with Whiston, would be succeeded by divines of the temper of
South and Atterbury. The devotion which had been so signally shown to the House
of Stuart, which had been proof against defeats, confiscations, and
proscriptions, which perfidy, oppression, ingratitude, could not weary out, was
now transferred entire to the House of Brunswick. If George the Third would but
accept the homage of the Cavaliers, and High Churchmen, he should be to them all
that Charles the First and Charles the Second had been.
The Prince, whose accession was thus hailed by a great party long estranged from
his house, had received from nature a strong will, a firmness of temper to which
a harsher name might perhaps be given, and an understanding not, indeed, acute
or enlarged, but such as qualified him to be a good man of business. But his
character had not yet fully developed itself. He had been brought up in strict
seclusion. The detractors of the Princess Dowager of Wales affirmed that she had
kept her children from commerce with society, in order that she might hold an
undivided empire over their minds. She gave a very different explanation of her
conduct. She would gladly, she said, see her sons and daughters mix in the
world, if they could do so without risk to their morals. But the profligacy of
the people of quality alarmed her. The young men were all rakes; the young women
made love, instead of waiting till it was made to them. She could not bear to
expose those whom she loved best to the contaminating influence of such society.
The moral advantages of the system of education which formed the Duke of York,
the Duke of Cumberland, and the Queen of Denmark, may perhaps be questioned.
George the Third was indeed no libertine; but he brought to the throne a mind
only half open, and was for some time entirely under the influence of his mother
and of his Groom of the Stole, John Stuart, Earl of Bute.
The Earl of Bute was scarcely known, even by name, to the country which he was
soon to govern. He had indeed, a short time after he came of age, been chosen to
fill a vacancy, which, in the middle of a parliament, had taken place among the
Scotch representative peers. He had disobliged the Whig ministers by giving some
silent votes with the Tories, had consequently lost his seat at the next
dissolution, and had never been re-elected. Near twenty years had elapsed since
he had borne any part in politics. He had passed some of those years at his seat
in one of the Hebrides, and from that retirement he had emerged as one of the
household of Prince Frederic. Lord Bute, excluded from public life, had found
out many ways of amusing his leisure. He was a tolerable actor in private
theatricals, and was particularly successful in the part of Lothario. A handsome
leg, to which both painters and satirists took care to give prominence, was
among his chief qualifications for the stage. He devised quaint dresses for
masquerades. He dabbled in geometry, mechanics, and botany. He paid some
attention to antiquities and works of art, and was considered in his own circle
as a judge of painting, architecture, and poetry. It is said that his spelling
was incorrect. But though, in our time, incorrect spelling is justly considered
as a proof of sordid ignorance, it would be unjust to apply the same rule to
people who lived a century ago. The novel of Sir Charles Grandison was published
about the time at which Lord Bute made his appearance at Leicester House. Our
readers may perhaps remember the account which Charlotte Grandison gives of her
two lovers. One of them, a fashionable baronet who talks French and Italian
fluently, cannot write a line in his own language without some sin against
orthography; the other, who is represented as a most respectable specimen of the
young aristocracy, and something of a virtuoso, is described as spelling pretty
well for a lord. On the whole, the Earl of Bute might fairly be called a man of
cultivated mind. He was also a man of undoubted honor. But his understanding was
narrow, and his manners cold and haughty. His qualifications for the part of a
statesman were best described by Frederic, who often indulged in the unprincely
luxury of sneering at his dependants. "Bute," said his Royal Highness, "you are
the very man to be envoy at some small proud German court where there is nothing
to do."
Scandal represented the Groom of the Stole as the favored lover of the Princess
Dowager. He was undoubtedly her confidential friend. The influence which the two
united exercised over the mind of the King was for a time unbounded. The
Princess, a woman and a foreigner, was not likely to be a judicious adviser
about affairs of State. The Earl could scarcely be said to have served even a
noviciate in politics. His notions of government had been acquired in the
society which had been in the habit of assembling round Frederic at Kew and
Leicester House. That society consisted principally of Tories, who had been
reconciled to the House of Hanover by the civility with which the Prince had
treated them, and by the hope of obtaining high preferment when he should come
to the throne. Their political creed was a peculiar modification of Toryism. It
was the creed neither of the Tories of the seventeenth nor of the Tories of the
nineteenth century. It was the creed, not of Filmer and Sacheverell, not of
Perceval and Eldon, but of the sect of which Bolingbroke may be considered as
the chief doctor. This sect deserves commendation for having pointed out and
justly reprobated some great abuses which sprang up during the long domination
of the Whigs. But it is far easier to point out and reprobate abuses than to
propose beneficial reforms: and the reforms which Bolingbroke proposed would
either have been utterly inefficient, or would have produced much more mischief
than they would have removed.
The Revolution had saved the nation from one class of evils, but had at the same
time--such is the imperfection of all things human--engendered or aggravated
another class of evils which required new remedies. Liberty and property were
secure from the attacks of prerogative. Conscience was respected. No government
ventured to infringe any of the rights solemnly recognized by the instrument
which had called William and Mary to the throne. But it cannot be denied that,
under the new system, the public interests and the public morals were seriously
endangered by corruption and faction. During the long struggle against the
Stuarts, the chief object of the most enlightened statesmen had been to
strengthen the House of Commons, The struggle was over; the victory was won; the
House of Commons was supreme in the State; and all the vices which had till then
been latent in the representative system were rapidly developed by prosperity
and power. Scarcely had the executive government become really responsible to
the House of Commons, when it began to appear that the House of Commons was not
really responsible to the nation. Many of the constituent bodies were under the
absolute control of individuals; many were notoriously at the command of the
highest bidder. The debates were not published. It was very seldom known out of
doors how a gentleman had voted. Thus, while the ministry was accountable to the
Parliament, the majority of the Parliament was accountable to nobody. In such
circumstances, nothing could be more natural than that the members should insist
on being paid for their votes, should form themselves into combinations for the
purpose of raising the price of their votes, and should at critical conjunctures
extort large wages by threatening a strike. Thus the Whig ministers of George
the First and George the Second were compelled to reduce corruption to a system,
and to practice it on a gigantic scale.
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 introducing despotism would have been to cure bad by worse. The proper remedy
evidently was, to make the House of Commons responsible to the nation; and this
was to be effected in two ways; first, by giving publicity to parliamentary
proceedings, and thus placing every member on his trial before the tribunal of
public opinion; and secondly, by so reforming 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.
Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke's disciples recommended a very different mode of
treating the diseases of the State. Their doctrine was that a vigorous use of
the prerogative by a patriot King would at once break all factious combinations,
and supersede the pretended necessity of bribing members of Parliament. The King
had only to resolve that he would be master, that he would not be held in
thraldom by 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? If so, this boasted reform must commence in all
probability 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 upright designs? By what means? Interdicting himself
from the use of corrupt influence, what motive was he to address to the
Dodingtons and Winningtons? Was cupidity, strengthened by habit, to be laid
asleep by a few fine sentences about virtue and union?
Absurd as this theory was, it had many admirers, particularly among men of
letters. It was now to be reduced to practice; and the result was, as any man of
sagacity must have foreseen, the most piteous and ridiculous of failures.
On the very day of the young King's accession, appeared some signs which
indicated the approach of a great change. The speech which he made to his
Council was not submitted to the Cabinet. It was drawn up by Bute, and contained
some expressions which might be construed into reflections on the conduct of
affairs during the late reign. Pitt remonstrated, and begged that these
expressions might be softened down in the printed copy; but it was not till
after some hours of altercation that Bute yielded; and even after Bute had
yielded, the King affected to hold out till the following afternoon. On the same
day on which this singular contest took place, Bute was not only sworn of the
Privy Council, but introduced into the Cabinet.
Soon after this Lord Holdernesse, one of the Secretaries of State, in pursuance
of a plan concerted with the Court, resigned the seals. Bute was instantly
appointed to the vacant place.
A general election speedily followed, and the new Secretary entered Parliament
in the only way in which he then could enter it, as one of the sixteen
representative peers of Scotland.1
Had the ministers been firmly united it can scarcely be doubted that they would
have been able to withstand the Court. The parliamentary influence of the Whig
aristocracy, combined 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 demeanor. Others, again,
were honestly opposed 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; but they began to hint that the drain on the resources of the
State was 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 as well as
honorable; but, now that George the Second was dead, a courtier might venture 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 House of Brandenburg
ruled in Silesia? Why were the best English regiments fighting on the Main? 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 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
those 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 the 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.
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-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 vigor in executing them.
Grenville, on the other hand, was by nature and habit a man of details. He had
been bred a lawyer; and he had brought the industry and acuteness of the Temple
into official and parliamentary life. He was supposed to be intimately
acquainted with the whole fiscal system of the country. He had paid especial
attention to the law of Parliament, 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 brilliant, 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 parsimonious. 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 stem, 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 him, 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 hated him to respect him.
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 extraordinaries, and groaned in spirit to think that the nation had
borrowed eight millions in one year.
With a ministry thus divided it was not difficult 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 a 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, and 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 ascendancy, 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.
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 favorite urged him to accept some substantial mark of royal gratitude. Would
he like to be appointed governor of Canada? A salary of five thousand pounds 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 same Gazette which announced the retirement of the Secretary of
State announced also that, in consideration of his great public services, his
wife had been created a peeress in her own right, and that a pension of three
thousand pounds a year, for three lives, had been bestowed on himself. It was
doubtless thought that the rewards and honors 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. Addresses 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. He was scarcely
noticed. All eyes were fixed on the fallen minister; all acclamations directed
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 with the footmen,
and even kissed the horses. Cries of "No Bute!" "No Newcastle salmon!" were
mingled with the shouts of "Pitt for ever!" When Pitt entered Guildhall, he was
welcomed by loud huzzas and clapping of hands, in which the very magistrates of
the city joined. Lord Bute, in the meantime, 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 bodyguard of
boxers.
Many persons blamed the conduct of Pitt on this occasion as disrespectful to the
King. Indeed, Pitt himself 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.
The events which immediately followed Pitt's retirement raised his fame higher
than 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.
The session of Parliament which followed Pitt's retirement passed over without
any violent storm. Lord Bute took on himself the most prominent part in the
House of Lords. He had become Secretary of State, and indeed Prime Minister,
without having once opened 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 practiced in debate, he might have become an impressive
speaker.
In the Commons, George Grenville had been entrusted with the lead. The task was
not, as yet, a very difficult one for Pitt did not think fit to raise the
standard of opposition. His speeches at this time were distinguished, not only
by that eloquence in which he excelled all his rivals, but also by a temperance
and a modesty which had too often been wanting to his character. When war was
declared against Spain, he justly laid claim to the merit of having foreseen
what had at length become manifest to all, but he carefully abstained from
arrogant and acrimonious expressions; and this abstinence was the more honorable
to him, because his temper, never very placid, was now severely tried, both by
gout and calumny. The courtiers had adopted a mode of warfare, which was soon
turned with far more formidable effect against themselves. Half the inhabitants
of the Grub Street garrets paid their milk scores, and got their shirts out of
pawn, by abusing Pitt. His German war, his subsidies, his pension, his wife's
peerage, were shin of beef and gin, blankets and baskets of small coal, to the
starving poetasters of the Fleet. Even in the House of Commons, he was, on one
occasion during this session, assailed with an insolence and malice which called
forth the indignation of men of all parties; but he endured the outrage with
majestic patience. In his younger days he had been but too prompt to retaliate
on those who attacked 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 people; forget everything but
the public. I set 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.
1 In the reign of Anne, the House of Lords had resolved that,
under the 23rd article of Union, no Scotch peer could be created a peer of Great
Britain. This resolution was not annulled till the year 1782.
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