Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

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.

It was natural that Pitt and Grenville, till her fleet, laden with the treasures of being such as they were, should take very America, should have arrived. 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, say 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

ed.

His wise and resolute counsel was rejectBute 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.

Pitt and Temple resigned their offices. To Pitt the young King behaved at parting in the most gracious manner. Pitt, who, proud and fiery every where 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 £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 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 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 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

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 Townsend 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.

the contempt which he had always shown of Cadiz, before Bute could be convinced for money, would be damaged by a pension: that the court of Madrid really entertained and indeed a crowd of libels instantly ap- hostile intentions. peared, 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. was generally expected that the orator 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 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 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 Pitts'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 DECEMBER, 1844.

31

In the Commons, George Grenville had been intrusted 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 by 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 all men of all parties; but which he thus threw away, or rather put he endured the outrage with majestic pa- into the hands of his enemies. If Newtience. In his younger days he had been castle had been suffered to play at being but too prompt to retaliate on those who first minister, Bute might securely and attacked him; but now, conscious of his quietly have enjoyed the substance of powgreat services, and of the space which he fill- er. The gradual introduction of Tories ed in the eyes of all mankind, he would not into all the departments of the government stoop to personal squabbles. This is no might have been effected without any vioseason,' he said, in the debate on the Span- lent clamor, if the chief of the great Whig ish war, for altercation and recrimination. connection had been ostensibly at the head A day has arrived when every Englishman of affairs. This was strongly represented should stand forth for his country. Arm to Bute by Lord Mansfield, a man who may the whole; be one people; forget every thing 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.

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 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 The prime minister himself was a bestowed without any reference to him. His Tory. Lord Egremont, who had succeedexpostulations only called forth significant ed Pitt as secretary of state, was a Tory, hints that it was time for him to retire. and the son of a Tory. Sir Francis DashOne day he pressed on Bute the claims of wood, a man of slender parts, of small expea Whig Prelate to the archbishopric of rience, and of notoriously immoral characYork. If your grace thinks so highly of ter, was made chancellor of the exchehim,' answered Bute, 'I wonder that you quer, for no reason that could be imagdid not promote him when you had the ined, except that he was a Tory and had power.' Still the old man clung with a been a Jacobite. The royal household desperate grasp to the wreck. Seldom, in- was filled with men whose favorite toast, deed, have Christian meekness and Chris- a few years before, had been the 'King tian humility equalled the meekness and over the water.' The relative position of humility of his patient and abject ambition. the two great national seats of learning was At length he was forced to understand that suddenly changed. The University of Oxall was over. He quitted that court where ford had long been the chief seat of dishe had held high office during forty-five affection. In troubled times, the High years, and hid his shame and regret among Street had been lined with bayonets; the the cedars of Claremont. Bute became colleges had been searched by the King's first lord of the treasury. messengers. 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

[ocr errors]

The favorite had undoubtedly committed a great error. It is impossible to imagine a tool better suited to his purposes than that

Jacobite airs. Of four successive Chan- The mutual animosity of the Whig and cellors of the University, one had notori- Tory parties had begun to languish after ously been in the Pretender's service; the fall of Walpole, and had seemed to be the other three were fully believed to almost extinct at the close of the reign of be in secret correspondence with the ex- George the Second. It now revived in all iled family. Cambridge had therefore its force. Many Whigs, it is true, were been especially favored by the Hano- still in office. The Duke of Bedford had verian Princes, and had shown herself signed the treaty with France. The Duke grateful for their patronage. George the of Devonshire, though much out of humor, First had enriched her library; George still continued to be Lord-Chamberlain. the Second had contributed munificently Grenville who led the House of Commons, to her senate-house. Bishoprics and dean- and Fox who still enjoyed in silence the eries were showered on her children. Her immense gains of the Pay-Office, had alChancellor was Newcastle, the chief of the ways been regarded as strong Whigs. But Whig aristocracy; her High-Steward was the bulk of the party throughout the counHardwicke, the Whig head of the law. try regarded the new minister with abhorBoth her burgesses had held office under rence. There was, indeed, no want of the Whig ministry. Times had now popular themes for invective against his changed. The University of Cambridge character. He was a favorite; and favorwas received at St. James's with compara-ites have always been odious in this countive coldness. The answers to the address-try. No mere favorite had been at the es of Oxford were all graciousness and head of the government, since the dagger warmth. of Felton reached the heart of the Duke of

The watchwords of the new government Buckingham. After that event, the most were prerogative and purity. The sove- arbitrary and the most frivolous of the Stureign was no longer to be a puppet in the arts had felt the necessity of confiding the hands of any subject, or of any combina- chief direction of affairs to men who had tion of subjects. George the Third would given some proof of parliamentary or offinot be forced to take ministers whom he cial talent. Strafford, Falkland, Clarendisliked, as his grandfather had been forced don, Clifford, Shaftesbury, Lauderdale, to take Pitt. George the Third would not Danby, Temple, Halifax, Rochester, Sunbe forced to part with any whom he de-derland, whatever their faults might be, lighted to honor, as his grandfather had were all men of acknowledged ability. been forced to part with Carteret. At the They did not owe their eminence merely same time, the system of bribery which had to the favor of the sovereign. On the congrown up during the late reigns was to trary, they owed the favor of the sovereign cease. It was ostentatiously proclaimed to their eminence. Most of them, indeed, that, since the accession of the young had first attracted the notice of the court King, neither constituents nor representa- by the capacity aud vigor which they had tives had been bought with the secret service shown in opposition. The Revolution 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.

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 malignant Fury, the spirit of nation- for a libel on the Revolution, was honored al animosity, The grudge of Whig with a mark of royal approbation, similar against Tory was mingled with the grudge to that which was bestowed on the author of Englishman against Scot. The two of the English Dictionary, and of the Vansections of the great British people had ity of Human Wishes. It was remarked not yet been indissolubly blended together. that Adam, a Scotchman, was the court The events of 1715 and of 1745 had left architect, and that Ramsay, a Scotchman, painful and enduring traces. The trades- was the court painter, and was preferred to men of Cornhill had been in dread of see-Reynolds. Mallet, a Scotchman of no ing their tills and warehouses plundered by high literary fame, and of infamous charbare-legged mountaineers from the Gram-acter, partook largely of the liberality of pians. They still recollected that Black the government. John Home, a ScotchFriday, when the news came that the re- man, was rewarded for the tragedy of Dougbels were at Derby, when all the shops in las, both with a pension and with a sinecure the city were closed, and when the Bank of place. But, when the author of the Bard, England began to pay in sixpences. The and of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, Scots, on the other hand, remembered, ventured to ask for a Professorship, the with natural resentment, the severity with emoluments of which he much needed, and which the insurgents had been chastised, for the duties of which he was, in many the military outrages, the humiliating laws, respects, better qualified than any man livthe heads fixed on Temple Bar, the fires ing, he was refused; and the post was beand quartering-blocks on Kennington Com-stowed on the pedagogue under whose care mon. The favorite did not suffer the Eng- the favorite's son-in-law, Sir James Lowlish to forget from what part of the island ther, had made such signal proficiency in he came. The cry of all the south was the graces and in the humane virtues. that the public offices, the army, the navy, Thus, the first lord of the treasury was were filled with high-cheeked Drummonds detested by many as a Tory, by many as a and Erskines, Macdonalds and Macgilli- favorite, and by many as a Scot. All the vrays, who could not talk a Christian hatred which flowed from these various tongue, and some of whom had but lately sources soon mingled, and was directed in begun to wear Christian breeches. All one torrent of obloquy against the treaty the old jokes on hills without trees, girls of peace. The Duke of Bedford, who without stockings, men eating the food of negotiated that treaty, was hooted through horses, pails emptied from the fourteenth the streets. Bute was attacked in his 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 note of abuse, walked on, without once looking around, straight towards the Golden Fountain.

chair, and was with difficulty rescued by a troop of 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 Bute, who had always been considered with the mob was a jack-boot, a wretched as a man of taste and reading, affected, pun on his Christian name and title. A from the moment of his elevation, the jack-boot, generally accompanied by a petcharacter of a Mæcenas. If he expected ticoat, was sometimes fastened on a galto conciliate the public by encouraging lows, and sometimes committed to the literature and art, he was grievously mis- flames. Libels on the court, exceeding in taken. Indeed, none of the objects of his audacity and rancor any that had been munificence, with the single exception of published for many years, now appeared Johnson, can be said to have been well se- daily both in prose and verse. Wilkes, lected; and the public, not unnaturally, with lively insolence, compared the mo ascribed the selection of Johnson rather to ther of George the Third to the mother of the Doctor's political prejudices than to Edward the Third, and the Scotch minishis literary merits. For a wretched scrib-ter to the gentle Mortimer. Churchill, bler named Sheffeare, who had nothing in common with Johnson except violent Jacobitism, and who had stood in the pillory

with all the energy of hatred, deplored the fate of his country, invaded by a new race of savages, more cruel and ravenous than

« VorigeDoorgaan »