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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 as in reality. That coalition, which a few months before had
seemed all-powerful, had been dissolved. The retreat of Pitt had deprived the
Government of popularity. Newcastle 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 reference
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." Still the
old man clung with a desperate grasp to the wreck. Seldom, indeed, have
Christian meekness and Christian humility equaled the meekness and humility of
his patient and abject ambition. At length he was forced to understand that all
was over. He quitted that Court where he had held high office during forty-five
years, and hid his shame and regret among the cedars of Claremont. Bute became
First Lord of the Treasury.
The favorite had undoubtedly committed a great error. It is impossible to
imagine a tool better suited to his purposes than that which he thus threw away,
or rather put into the hands of his enemies. If Newcastle had been suffered to
play at being first minister, Bute might securely and quietly have enjoyed the
substance of power. The gradual introduction of Tories into all the departments
of the Government might have been effected without any violent clamor, if the
chief of the great Whig connection had been ostensibly at the head of affairs.
This was strongly represented to Bute by Lord Mansfield, a man who may justly be
called the father of modern Toryism, of Toryism modified to suit an order of
things under which the House of Commons is the most powerful body in the State.
The theories which had dazzled Bute could not impose on the fine intellect of
Mansfield. The temerity with which Bute provoked the hostility of powerful and
deeply rooted interests, was displeasing 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 of 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 imagined, except that he was a Tory, and had been a
Jacobite. The royal household was filled with men whose favorite toast, a few
years before, had been the King over the water. The relative position of the two
great national seats of learning was suddenly changed. The University of Oxford
had long been the chief seat of disaffection. In troubled times the High Street
had been lined with bayonets; the colleges had been searched by the King's
messengers. Grave doctors were in the habit of talking very Ciceronian treason
in the theatre; and the undergraduates 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 favored 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 honor, 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, honorable indeed and advantageous to our country, yet
less honorable and less 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 Walpole, and had seemed to be almost extinct at the close of the
reign of George the Second. It now revived in all its force. Many Whigs, it is
true, were still in office. The Duke of Bedford had signed the treaty with
France. The Duke of Devonshire, though much out of humor, still continued to be
Lord Chamberlain. Grenville, who led the House of Commons, and Fox, who still
enjoyed in silence the immense gains of the Pay Office, had always been regarded
as strong Whigs. But the bulk of the 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 favorite; and favorites have always
been odious in this country. No mere favorite had been at the head of the
Government since the dagger of Felton had 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 parliamentary 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 favor of the
sovereign. On the contrary, they owed the favor of the sovereign to their
eminence. Most of them, indeed, had first attracted the notice of the Court by
the capacity and vigor 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 sung 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 malignant 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 1745
had left painful and enduring traces. The tradesmen of Cornhill had been in
dread of seeing their tills and warehouses plundered by barelegged 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 quartering blocks on Kennington Common.
The favorite did not suffer the English to forget from what part of the island
he came. The cry of all the south was that the public offices, the army, the
navy, were filled with high-cheeked Drummonds and Erskines, Macdonalds and
Macgillivrays, who could not talk a Christian tongue, and some of whom had but
lately begun to wear Christian breeches. All the old jokes on hills without
trees, girls without stockings, men eating the food of horses, pails emptied
from the fourteenth story, were pointed against these lucky adventurers. To the
honor of the Scots it must be said, that their prudence and their pride
restrained them from retaliation. Like the princess in the Arabian tale, they
stopped their ears tight, and, unmoved by the shrillest notes of abuse, walked
on, without once looking round, straight towards the Golden Fountain.
Bute, who had always been considered as a man of taste and reading, affected,
from the moment of his elevation, the character of a Maecenas. If he expected to
conciliate the public by encouraging literature and art, he was grievously
mistaken. Indeed, none of the objects of his munificence, with the single
exception of Johnson, can be said to have been well selected; and the public,
not unnaturally, ascribed the selection of Johnson rather to the Doctor's
political prejudices than to his literary merits: for a wretched scribbler named
Shebbeare, who had nothing in common with Johnson except violent Jacobitism, and
who had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Revolution, was honored with a
mark of royal approbation, similar to that which was bestowed on the author of
the English Dictionary, and of the Vanity of Human Wishes. It was remarked that
Adam, a Scotchman, was the Court architect, and that Ramsay, a Scotchman, was
the Court painter, and was preferred to Reynolds. Mallet, a Scotchman, of no
high literary fame, and of infamous character, partook largely of the liberality
of the Government. John Home, a Scotchman, was rewarded for the tragedy of
Douglas, both with a pension and with a sinecure place. But, when the author of
the Bard, and of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, ventured to ask for a
Professorship, the emoluments of which he much needed, and for the duties of
which he was, in many respects, better qualified than any man living, he was
refused; and the post was bestowed on the pedagogue under whose care the
favorite's son-in-law, Sir James Lowther, had made such signal proficiency in
the graces and in the humane virtues.
Thus, the First Lord of the Treasury was detested by many as a Tory, by many as
a favorite, and by many as a Scot. All the hatred which flowed from these
various sources soon mingled, and was directed in one torrent of obloquy against
the treaty of peace. The Duke of Bedford, who had negotiated that treaty, was
hooted through the streets. Bute was attacked in his chair, and was with
difficulty rescued by a troop of the guards. He could hardly walk the streets in
safety without disguising himself. A gentleman who died not many years ago used
to say that he once recognized the favorite Earl in the piazza of Covent Garden,
muffled in a large coat, and with a hat and wig drawn down over his brows. His
lordship's established type with the mob was a jack-boot, a wretched pun on his
Christian name and title. A jack-boot, generally accompanied by a petticoat, was
sometimes fastened on a gallows, and sometimes committed to the flames. Libels
on the Court, exceeding in audacity and rancor any that had been published for
many years, now appeared daily both in prose and verse. Wilkes, with lively
insolence, compared the mother of George the Third to the mother of Edward the
Third, and the Scotch minister to the gentle Mortimer. Churchill, with all the
energy of hatred, deplored the fate of his country invaded by a new race of
savages, more cruel and ravenous than the Picts or the Danes, the poor, proud
children of Leprosy and Hunger. It is a slight circumstance, but deserves to be
recorded, that in this year pamphleteers first ventured to print at length the
names of the great men whom they lampooned. George the Second had always been
the K--. His ministers had been Sir R-- W--, Mr. P--, and the Duke of N--. But
the libelers of George the Third, of the Princess Mother, and of Lord Bute did
not give quarter to a single vowel.
It was supposed that Lord Temple secretly encouraged the most scurrilous
assailants of the Government. In truth, those who knew his habits tracked him as
men track a mole. It was his nature to grub underground. Whenever a heap of dirt
was flung up it might well be suspected that he was at work in some foul crooked
labyrinth below. Pitt turned away from the filthy work of opposition, with the
same scorn with which he had turned away from the filthy work of government. He
had the magnanimity to proclaim everywhere the disgust which he felt at the
insults offered by his own adherents to the Scottish nation, and missed no
opportunity of extolling the courage and fidelity which the Highland regiments
had displayed through the whole war. But, though he disdained to use any but
lawful and honorable weapons, it was well known that his fair blows were likely
to be far more formidable than the privy thrusts of his brother-in-law's
stiletto.
Bute's heart began to fail him. The Houses were about to meet. The treaty would
instantly be the subject of discussion. It was probable that Pitt, the great
Whig connection, and the multitude, would all be on the same side. The favorite
had professed to hold in abhorrence those means by which preceding ministers had
kept the House of Commons in good humor. He now began to think that he had been
too scrupulous. His Utopian visions were at an end. It was necessary, not only
to bribe, but to bribe more shamelessly and flagitiously than his predecessors,
in order to make up for lost time. A majority must be secured, no matter by what
means. Could Grenville do this? Would he do it? His firmness and ability had not
yet been tried in any perilous crisis. He had been generally regarded as a
humble follower of his brother Temple, and of his brother-in-law Pitt, and was
supposed, though with little reason, to be still favorably inclined towards
them. Other aid must be called in. And where was other aid to be found?
There was one man, whose sharp and manly logic had often in debate been found a
match for the lofty and impassioned rhetoric of Pitt, whose talents for jobbing
were not inferior to his talents for debate, whose dauntless spirit shrank from
no difficulty or danger, and who was as little troubled with scruples as with
fears. Henry Fox, or nobody, could weather the storm which was about to burst.
Yet was he a person to whom the Court, even in that extremity, was unwilling to
have recourse. He had always been regarded as a Whig of the Whigs. He had been
the friend and disciple of Walpole. He had long been connected by close ties
with William Duke of Cumberland. By the Tories he was more hated than any man
living. So strong was their aversion to him that when, in the late reign, he had
attempted to form a party against the Duke of Newcastle, they had thrown all
their weight into Newcastle's scale. By the Scots, Fox was abhorred as the
confidential friend of the conqueror of Culloden. He was, on personal grounds,
most obnoxious to the Princess Mother. For he had, immediately after her
husband's death, advised the late King to take the education of her son, the
heir-apparent, entirely out of her hands. He had recently given, if possible,
still deeper offence; for he had indulged, not without some ground, the
ambitious hope that his beautiful sister-in-law, the Lady Sarah Lennox, might be
queen of England. It had been observed that the King at one time rode every
morning by the grounds of Holland House, and that on such occasions, Lady Sarah,
dressed like a shepherdess at a masquerade, was making hay close to the road,
which was then separated by no wall from the lawn. On account of the part which
Fox had taken in this singular love affair, he was the only member of the Privy
Council who was not summoned to the meeting at which his Majesty announced his
intended marriage with the Princess of Mecklenburg. Of all the statesmen of the
age, therefore, it seemed that Fox was the last with whom Bute the Tory, the
Scot, the favorite of the Princess Mother, could, under any circumstances, act.
Yet to Fox Bute was now compelled to apply.
Fox had many noble and amiable qualities, which in private life shone forth in
full luster, and made him dear to his children, to his dependants, and to his
friends; but as a public man he had no title to esteem. In him the vices which
were common to the whole school of Walpole appeared, not perhaps in their worst,
but certainly in their most prominent form; for his parliamentary and official
talents made all his faults conspicuous. His courage, his vehement temper, his
contempt for appearances, led him to display much that others, quite as
unscrupulous as himself, covered with a decent veil. He was the most unpopular
of the statesmen of his time, not because he sinned more than many of them, but
because he canted less.
He felt his unpopularity; but he felt it after the fashion of strong minds. He
became, not cautious, but reckless, and faced the rage of the whole nation with
a scowl of inflexible defiance. He was born with a sweet and generous temper;
but he had been goaded and baited into a savageness which was not natural to
him, and which amazed and shocked those who knew him best. Such was the man to
whom Bute, in extreme need, applied for succor.
That succor Fox was not unwilling to afford. Though by no means of an envious
temper, he had undoubtedly contemplated the success and popularity of Pitt with
bitter mortification. He thought himself Pitt's match as a debater, and Pitt's
superior as a man of business. They had long been regarded as well-paired
rivals. They had started fair in the career of ambition. They had long run side
by side. At length Fox had taken the lead, and Pitt had fallen behind. Then had
come a sudden turn of fortune, like that in Virgil's foot-race. Fox had stumbled
in the mire, and had not only been defeated, but befouled. Pit had reached the
goal, and received the prize. The emoluments of the Pay Office might induce the
defeated statesman to submit in silence to the ascendancy of his competitor, but
could not satisfy a mind conscious of great powers, and sore from great
vexations. As soon, therefore, as a party arose adverse to the war and to the
supremacy of the great war minister, the hopes of Fox began to revive. His feuds
with the Princess Mother, with the Scots, with the Tories, he was ready to
forget, if, by the help of his old enemies, he could now regain the importance
which he had lost, and confront Pitt on equal terms.
The alliance was, therefore, soon concluded. Fox was assured that, if he would
pilot the Government out of its embarrassing situation, he should be rewarded
with a peerage, of which he had long been desirous. He undertook on his side to
obtain, by fair or foul means, a vote in favor of the peace. In consequence of
this arrangement he became leader of the House of Commons; and Grenville,
stifling his vexation as well as he could, sullenly acquiesced in the change.
Fox had expected that his influence would secure to the Court the cordial
support of some eminent Whigs who were his personal friends, particularly of the
Duke of Cumberland and of the Duke of Devonshire. He was disappointed, and soon
found that, in addition to all his other difficulties, he must reckon on the
opposition of the ablest prince of the blood, and of the great house of
Cavendish.
But he had pledged himself to win the battle: and he was not a man to go back.
It was no time for squeamishness. Bute was made to comprehend that the ministry
could be saved only by practicing the tactics of Walpole to an extent at which
Walpole himself would have stared. The Pay Office was turned into a mart for
votes. Hundreds of members were closeted there with Fox, and, as there is too
much reason to believe, departed carrying with them the wages of infamy. It was
affirmed by persons who had the best opportunities of obtaining information,
that twenty-five thousand pounds were thus paid away in a single morning. The
lowest bribe given, it was said, was a bank-note for two hundred pounds.
Intimidation was joined with corruption. All ranks, from the highest to the
lowest, were to be taught that the King would be obeyed. The Lords Lieutenants
of several counties were dismissed. The Duke of Devonshire was especially
singled out as the victim by whose fate the magnates of England were to take
warning. His wealth, rank, and influence, his stainless private character, and
the constant attachment of his family to the House of Hanover, did not secure
him from gross personal indignity. It was known that he disapproved of the
course which the Government had taken; and it was accordingly determined to
humble the Prince of the Whigs, as he had been nicknamed by the Princess Mother.
He went to the palace to pay his duty. "Tell him," said the King to a page, "I
that I will not see him." The page hesitated. "Go to him," said the King, "and
tell him those very words." The message was delivered. The Duke tore off his
gold key, and went away boiling with anger. His relations who were in office
instantly resigned. A few days later, the King called for the list of Privy
Councilors, and with his own hand struck out the Duke's name.
In this step there was at least courage, though little wisdom or good nature.
But, as nothing was too high for the revenge of the Court, so also was nothing
too low. A persecution, such as had never been known before, and has never been
known since, raged in every public department. Great numbers of humble and
laborious clerks were deprived of their bread, not because they had neglected
their duties, not because they had taken an active part against the ministry,
but merely because they had owed their situations to the recommendation of some
nobleman or gentleman who was against the peace. The proscription extended to
tidewaiters, to gaugers, to doorkeepers. One poor man to whom a pension had been
given for his gallantry in a fight with smugglers, was deprived of it because he
had been befriended by the Duke of Grafton. An aged widow, who, on account of
her husband's services in the navy, had, many years before, been made
housekeeper to a public office, was dismissed from her situation, because it was
imagined that she was distantly connected by marriage with the Cavendish family.
The public clamor, as may well be supposed, grew daily louder and louder. But
the louder it grew, the more resolutely did Fox go on with the work which he had
begun. His old friends could not conceive what had possessed him. "I could
forgive," said the Duke of Cumberland, "Fox's political vagaries; but I am quite
confounded by his inhumanity. Surely he used to be the best-natured of men."
At last Fox went so far to take a legal opinion on the question, whether the
patents granted by George the Second were binding on George the Third. It is
said, that, if his colleagues had not flinched, he would at once have turned out
the Tellers of the Exchequer and Justices in Eyre.
Meanwhile the Parliament met. The ministers, more hated by the people than ever,
were secure of a majority, and they had also reason to hope that they would have
the advantage in the debates as well as in the divisions; for Pitt was confined
to his chamber by a severe attack of gout. His friends moved to defer the
consideration of the treaty till he should be able to attend: but the motion was
rejected. The great day arrived. The discussion had lasted some time, when a
loud huzza was heard in Palace Yard. The noise came nearer and nearer, up the
stairs, through the lobby. The door opened, and from the midst of a shouting
multitude came forth Pitt, borne in the arms of his attendants. His face was
thin and ghastly, his limbs swathed in flannel, his crutch in his hand. The
bearers set him down within the bar. His friends instantly surrounded him, and
with their help he crawled to his seat near the table. In this condition he
spoke three hours and a half against the peace. During that time he was
repeatedly forced to sit down and to use cordials. It may well be supposed that
his voice was faint, that his action was languid, and that his speech, though
occasionally brilliant and impressive, was feeble when compared with his best
oratorical performances. But those who remembered what he had done, and who saw
what he suffered, listened to him with emotions stronger than any that mere
eloquence can produce. He was unable to stay for the division, and was carried
away from the House amidst shouts as loud as those which had announced his
arrival.
A large majority approved the peace. The exultation of the Court was boundless.
"Now," exclaimed the Princess Mother, "my son is really King." The young
sovereign spoke of himself as freed from the bondage in which his grandfather
had been held. On one point, it was announced, his mind was unalterably made up.
Under no circumstances whatever should those Whig grandees, who had enslaved his
predecessors and endeavored to enslave himself, be restored to power.
This vaunting was premature. The real strength of the favorite was by no means
proportioned to the number of votes which he had, on one particular division,
been able to command. He was soon again in difficulties. The most important part
of his budget was a tax on cider. This measure was opposed, not only by those
who were generally hostile to his administration, but also by many of his
supporters. The name of excise had always been hateful to the Tories. One of the
chief crimes of Walpole in their eyes, had been his partiality for this mode of
raising money. The Tory Johnson had in his Dictionary given so scurrilous a
definition of the word Excise, that the Commissioners of Excise had seriously
thought of prosecuting him. The counties which the new impost particularly
affected had always been Tory counties. It was the boast of John Philips, the
poet of the English vintage, that the Cider-land had ever been faithful to the
throne, and that all the pruning-hooks of her thousand orchards had been beaten
into swords for the service of the ill-fated Stuarts. The effect of Bute's
fiscal scheme was to produce an union between the gentry and yeomanry of the
Cider-land and the Whigs of the capital. Herefordshire and Worcestershire were
in a flame. The city of London, though not so directly interested, was, if
possible, still more excited. The debates on this question irreparably damaged
the Government. Dashwood's financial statement had been confused and absurd
beyond belief, and had been received by the House with roars of laughter. He had
sense enough to be conscious of his unfitness for the high situation which he
held, and exclaimed in a comical fit of despair, "What shall I do? The boys will
point at me in the street and cry, 'There goes the worst Chancellor of the
Exchequer that ever was.'" George Grenville came to the rescue, and spoke
strongly on his favorite theme, the profusion with which the late war had been
carried on. That profusion, he said, had made taxes necessary. He called on the
gentlemen opposite to him to say where they would have a tax laid, and dwelt on
this topic with his usual prolixity. "Let them tell me where," he repeated in a
monotonous and somewhat fretful tone. "I say, sir, let them tell me where. I
repeat it, sir; I am entitled to say to them, Tell me where." Unluckily for him,
Pitt had come down to the House that night, and had been bitterly provoked by
the reflections thrown on the war. He revenged himself by murmuring in a whine
resembling Grenville's, a line of a well-known song, "Gentle Shepherd, tell me
where." "If," cried Grenville, "gentlemen are to be treated in this way--."
Pitt, as was his fashion, when he meant to mark extreme contempt, rose
deliberately, made his bow, and walked out of the House, leaving his
brother-in-law in convulsions of rage, and everybody else in convulsions of
laughter. It was long before Grenville lost the nickname of the Gentle Shepherd.
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