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 GIFT OF 
 
 SEELEY W. MLDD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE 1. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 
 DR.JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 
 JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI 
 
 to the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH
 
 THE 
 
 HISTORY OF PARTY; 
 
 FROM THE RISE OF 
 
 THE WHIG AND TORY FACTIONS, 
 
 IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES II., 
 
 TO 
 
 THE PASSING OF THE REFORM BILL 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WINGROVE COOKE, Esq., 
 
 BAURISTEU AT LAW, 
 AUTIIOU or " MEMOIRS OF LORD B0LIN0I5110K E," &C. 
 
 VOL. III. 
 A. D. I7r»2— 1832. 
 
 LONDON: 
 .iOlIN .\L\CRONE, ST. JAMES'S SQUARE. 
 
 \l DCCCXXXVII. 
 
 9CS I 4 01QT9
 
 , • • • • 
 
 ; .• . ••• 
 
 
 WHITING, BKAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND.
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Bute administration — Political writings — Biographical anecdotes of 
 John Wilkeis — The North Briton — Negotiations for peace — Debate 
 upon the preliminaries — Mr. Pitt's speech — Formation of tlie opposi- 
 tion — Its members — Topics of o[)position — The cider tax — Unpopula- 
 rity and rt^signation of Lord Bute — Review of his administration . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Granville aJministration — The North Briton, No. 45 — Arrest of 
 Wilkes — General warrants — Death of Lord Egremont — Attempt of the 
 king and the Tories to detacli Mr. I^itt from the Whigs — Its failure — 
 Death of Earl Grenville — Meeting of parliament — Proceedings against 
 Wilkes — Review of the conduct of ministers in the proceedings against 
 Wilkes . . . . . . .25 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Grenville project for taxing America — Tlie Stamp act — Biographical 
 anecdotes of Charles Townshend — Debate on the Stamp act — Dissolu- 
 tion of the Grenville and formation of the Rockingham administration 
 — Biographical anecdotes of Edmund i^urke — Repeal of the Stamp act 
 — Dissolution of the Rockingham administration . . .48 
 
 CIIAPTKR IV. 
 State of the Wliig and Tory parties — The Chatham administration — Un- 
 popularity and imbecility of Lord Chatham — Charles Townsheud's 
 project to tax America — Death of Townshend — End of the Chatham 
 administration . . . . , , . 8i 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Supremacy of the Tory party — The Grafton administration — Biographical 
 anecdotes of Lord North — Of Charles .lenkinson — A new parliament 
 — State of the elections — Imprisonment of Wilkes — Hiots — Divisions 
 of the Whigs — The Middlesex election, and proceedings upon it — Ex- 
 citeiiieut of the people at the decision of the commons . . 96
 
 IV CONTENTS. 
 
 CIIAPTEU VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 JA'ttprs of Junius — Tlieir cliaracter and influence — Summary of'tlie claims 
 of the dill'erunt writers namud as tlio author of these letters . • 118 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Lord Mansfield's doctrine of libels — Resignation of Lord Camden — Of 
 the Duke of Grafion — The North administration — Biographical anec- 
 dotes of John Dunning — Of Thurlow — Middlesex election — Private 
 interference of George III. in the decision of a cause before the courts 
 — Subordinate changes in office — Attempt of the lords and commons 
 to preserve privacy in their debates — Arrest of the printers — Released 
 by the city magistrates — Proceedings of the commons . . 154 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 State of the popular mind— Rise of the democratic party— Biographical 
 anecdotes of John Horno Tooke — The Whigs abandon the cause of 
 corruption — Dissolution of parliament .... 185 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Elections to the new parliament — Disputes with America — A contest 
 between Whiggism and Toryism — Opinion of the Earl of Chatham — 
 Biographical anecdotes of Charles Fox— American declaration of inde- 
 pendence — Contests between the parlies upon the American war — 
 Lord North's propositions ...... 201 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 France concludes an alliance with America — Schism in the Whig party 
 upon the subject of American independence — Deatli of Lord Chatham 
 — Yorkshire petition — Burke's jdan of economical reform — IMolion for 
 the repeal of the Septennial act — George Byng — Diesolution of parlia- 
 luent — Elections— The new parliament — Motion against the American 
 war — Carried motion of censure upon the North administration — Dis- 
 solution of the North administration .... 237 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Formation of the second Rockingham administration — Biographical anec- 
 dotes of Richard Brinsley Sheridan — Of Lloyd Kenyon — Policy of the 
 Rockingham administration — Pacification of Ireland — Economical 
 reform — Expunction of the votes upon the Middlesex election — Par- 
 liamentary reform — Opinions of the Whig leaders upon this subject — 
 Contractors' bill — Revenue officers' Disfranchisement bill . . "477
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 PAGt 
 
 Put's motion in favour of a parliamentary reform — Biographical anecdotes 
 of William Pitt — Debate upon his motion — Death of the Marquis of 
 Rockingham — The Shelburue administration . . .301 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 State of parties in the commons — Debate on the preliminaries of peace — 
 Coalition of Lord North and Mr. Fox — Fox's defence of his conduct — 
 Defeat of the minister — Premiership offered to William Pitt — He 
 declines — Formation of the coalition cabinet — Relative strength of 
 Whigs and Tories — Mr. Fox's India bill, nature and policy of this 
 scheme — Opposed by Pitt — Passes the commons — Is rejected by the 
 lords — Dissolution of the coalition ministry . . . ol4 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Formation of the Pitt administration — Strength of the opposition — The 
 minister left in a minority — Mediation of the country gentlemen — Un- 
 successful — Perseverance of Pitl — Diminution of the opposition majo- 
 rity — Dissolution of parliament — General election — Adverse to the 
 coalition — The Westminster election — Westminster scrutiny — Pitt's 
 motion for parliamentary reform — Debate upon Mr. Beaufoy's motion 
 for tbe repeal of the Corporation and Test acts — Illness of the king — 
 Contest upon the subject of the regency — Conduct of Thurlow — Re- 
 covery of the king ..... . . 330 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The French revolution — Effect upon the state of parties — Conduct of 
 Burke — Sj)eech in the house of commons and breach with Sheiidan — 
 Expiration of the parliament ..... 3()6 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Review of the last parliament — Biographical anecdotes of .Tolin Scott — 
 Of Henry Addiiigton— Of Charles Grey— Of William Wyn>lham— Of 
 Samuel Whilbread— Of Erskine — Leaders of the democratic party — 
 Reflections on tl)e French revolution — Meeting of the new parliament 
 — Rupture between Burke and Fox — The Whigs decide ayainst Burke 382 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Mr. Fox's Libel bill — Dismissal of Thurlow — Political clubs — Thtir in- 
 aignificance — (Joinmenccment of the Tory war for the re-establislimont 
 of the 15ourbons — Opposition of tlio Whigs — Mr. (irey'a motion in 
 favour of parliamentary reform — Prosecutions for high treason against 
 parliamentary reformers— Hardy — HoruoTooke — Th. Iwall — Socession
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 I-ACE 
 
 of tlie Duke of Portland and liis lulheronfs — Zoal of tlio apostate Whigs 
 in tlio cause of Toryism — I'rovalenco of high Tory sontinicnts among 
 Pitt's followers — Death of ]5urke — Mr. Grey renews his motioti for 
 parliamentary reform — Biograiihical anecdotes of George Canning — Of 
 Tierney — Of Sir Francis Burdett — Corruption of Pitt's government — 
 Mr, Grey's motion of 1798— Catholic Emancipation question arising 
 out of the union with Ireland — Advocated by Pitt — Refused by the 
 Ijing — Resignation of Pitt ...... 409 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The Addington administration — Peace of Amiens — Resignation of Mr. 
 Addington — Pitt returns to office — Secession of tbeGrenvilles — Death 
 of Pitt — Lord Grenville's administration, comprising " All the Talents" 
 — The Catholic question — Death of Fox — Consequent ministerial 
 arrangements — Dissolution of parliament — Refusal of the king to grant 
 indulgence to tlie Catholics — Dismissal of ministers — Formation of a 
 Tory cabinet under the Duke of Portland — Biographical anecdotes of 
 Spencer Perceval — Of Lord Castlereagh — Irish policy of tliis ministry 
 — Resuscitation of the question of reform — Curwen'sbill — Boldness of 
 Canning and the Tories in resisting every inquiry that might lead to 
 reform — Motion of Sir Francis Burdett — Duel between Canning and 
 Castlereagh — The Perceval administration — Committal of Sir Francis 
 Burdett to the Tower — Incapacity of the king — The Regency bill . 453 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Views of the two parties — The Prince Regent abandons the Whig party 
 — J^ord Morpeth's motion for Catholic emancipation — Robert Peel — 
 Refusal of llie Wliigs to coalesce with the Tory ministry — Assassina- 
 tion of Perceval — Ministerial negotiations — The Liverpool administra- 
 tion — Canning's motion for Catholic emancipation — Conclusion of the 
 war — Revival of popular interest in domestic questions — Scarcity and 
 riots of 1716 — Suspension of the Habeas Corpus act — Coercion bills — 
 Massacre at Manchester — Indignation of the people — Shared by the 
 Whiss — Castlereagh's Six Acts — Lord John Russell's motion on the 
 subject of parliamentary reform — Death of George III. . . 482 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Thisllewood'fl conspiracy — The queen's trial — Unpopularity of the Tories 
 — Efforts of the Whigs to undermine their power — Education — 
 Hume's motions — Progress of the Catholic question — Mr. Plunket's 
 bill passes the commons — Canning's bill — State of Ireland — Death of 
 I,ord Londonderry — Accession of Canning to the ministry — Its effects 
 upon the Catholic question— Cabinet changes of 1823 — Irish Catholic 
 Association — Burdelt's Catholic bill of 1825 — Rejected by the lords —
 
 CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 1>AGE 
 
 Question of parliameatary reform — ^Ir. Larabton's motion of 1821 — 
 Lord John Russell's — Lord John Russell's motion of 18'22 — Petitions 
 in its favour — Canning's speech against it — State of the question in 
 1826 — General election of 1826 — Illness and retirement of Lord Liver- 
 pool — The new house of commons decide against the Catholics — For- 
 mation of the Canning administration — Secession of the high Tories — 
 Canning is supported by the Whigs — Death of Canning — Appointment 
 of Lord Goderich as his successor — Resignation of Lord Goderich . 311 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Formation of the Wellington administration — Beaten by the Whigs upon 
 the question of the Test Acts repeal — Debates upon the repeal — Catholic 
 question — State of Ireland — Emancipation bill brought forward by the 
 Duke of Wellington — Rage of the Tories when they find themselves 
 betniyed — Debates upon the bill — In the commons — In the lords — 
 Catholic bill passed — Resentment and opposition of the Tories — Gene- 
 rosity of the Whigs, who support the Duke of Wellington against his 
 own party ........ .545 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Prospects of the Whigs at the accession of William IV. — French revolu- 
 tion of 1830 — Duke of Wellington's declaration against reform — Defeat 
 of his administration — Formation of the Grey administration — Intro- 
 duction of the first Reform bill — Debates — Rejected on the second 
 reading — Dissolution of parliament — Elections — Meeting of the new 
 house — Reform bill re-introduced — Debated — Passed — In the house of 
 lords — Debated — Rejected — A short prorogation — State of the country 
 — Power of the press — Parliament re assembles — Second Reform bill 
 brought forward — Passes the house of commons— The Whigs defeated 
 in the house of lords — Resign— State of the country — The Duke of 
 Wellington fails to form an administration — Earl Grey returns to office 
 with power to create peers — The Reform bill passes the lords . 577 
 
 CHAPTER XXFII. 
 Conclusion ........ C20
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 TO THE THIRD VOLUME. 
 
 The first volume of this work exhibited a detail 
 of the rise of the Whig party, and of the efforts by 
 which they at length succeeded in stripping the 
 crown of every prerogative which could oppress the 
 subject. 
 
 The second comprised a long period durino* 
 which the Whigs administered, in the constitution 
 they had built; — a period less eventful, because less 
 checkered with misfortune. 
 
 In this volume the history is concluded. It nar- 
 rates the succeeding interval of Tory government, 
 and ends with the return of the Whigs to power and 
 the passing of the llcform bill. 
 
 This arrangement has unavoidably occasioned 
 some difference in the size of the volumes. A more 
 serious objection will be brought against the pre- 
 sent volume, la it, 1 have overstepped the threshold
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 of the present gcnemtion, and the events which 
 contemporaries judge so all-important, have been 
 passed over as lightly as those of other times. I 
 much regret that the nature of the work so impe- 
 ratively required that it should be brought down 
 to so recent a period. Contemporary history can 
 seldom be correct, and can never be satisfactory. 
 Each person sees only one phase of the events of his 
 time, and the great majority of readers will think 
 that the events they remember are slighted if they 
 are diminished until they harmonize with the general 
 scale of the historical picture. 
 
 The reasons which forbade me to continue the 
 biographical sketches into the present generation 
 are sufficiently obvious. 
 
 To an objection already urged, that this work is 
 deficient in minute details and statistical calcu- 
 lations, I must remark that " The History of 
 Party " is not intended as a work of reference to 
 supersede the thousand volumes from which it is 
 culled — it is not a collection of all that an historical 
 student can discover, but a compendium of know- 
 ledge of which no British elector should be ignorant.
 
 THE 
 
 HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 I. 
 
 A. D. 1762. 
 
 ' CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Bute administration — Political writings — Biographical anecdotes of 
 Jolin Wilkes — The North Briton — Negotiations for peace — Debate 
 upon the preliminaries — Mr. Pitt's speech — Formation of the op- 
 position — Its members — Topics of opposition — The cider tax — 
 Unjjopularity and resignation of Lord Bute — Review of his admi- 
 nistration. 
 
 The Earl of Bute became prime minister on the CHAP. 
 29th of May, 1762. George Grenville, who had now . 
 forsaken his early companion, and the principles to 
 which his friend still adhered, was made secretary of 
 state. Sir Francis Dashwood was chancellor of the 
 exchequer — ** a man to whom," says one of the pe- 
 riodicals of the day,* " a sum of five figures was an 
 impenetrable secret." Charles Townshend was se- 
 cretary at war. The Duke of Bedford, the Earl of 
 
 • Quoted in the History of the Minority. 
 VOL. HI. U
 
 A. D. 17(i-J. 
 
 <2 THK IlISTOKY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Effremoiit, who inlun-itod \hc Toryism of his father, 
 and Mr. CliarU>s Vorki^ rotaiiuHl their places. 
 
 The impetus whicli it liad received from the hand 
 of Pitt continued for some time to propel the state 
 mac'liine. Tidinofs of successes continued to arrive, the 
 loss of the Havannah checked the insolence of Spain, 
 and tlie processions of cart-loads of bullion plundered 
 from the captured galleons delighted the English 
 people. But no success, however brilliant, could give 
 po})ularity to the premier, or reconcile the nation to the 
 rule of a favourite. The king's friends — such was the 
 title under which the Tory party had now seized the 
 government — were still execrated, and all the honour 
 of success was ascribed to Pitt. The Tory ministers 
 were even looked upon with suspicion, as men who 
 scarcely participated in the joy of the nation, and who 
 were eager to follow in the steps of the last prime 
 minister of their party, and conclude a glorious war 
 by a dishonourable peace. It was said that the Earl 
 of Bute felt his own insufficiency to conduct the great 
 schemes which had been devised by his predecessor, 
 and would reject no terms that might be offered. 
 He had already refused to renew the annual treaty 
 by which Great Britain assisted the King of Prussia 
 with a subsidy and engaged to make no peace with- 
 out his concurrence ; and although this step was 
 readily defensible on the ground that Russia, Fre- 
 deric's gigantic enemy, had then become his ally,
 
 A. D. 17G2. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 and Sweden was about to withdraw from the confe- CHAP, 
 deracy against him ; still it was loudly censured at 
 home as a breach of national honour, and remarked 
 upon as a proof that the favourite entertained all the 
 ancient partiality of a Scotchman towards France. 
 
 Immediately after the earl was formally invested with 
 the office of premier parliament was prorogued, and he 
 was thus left to pursue his policy, whether for peace or 
 war, without direct interruption. It was now, how- 
 ever, that the effects of the long administration of the 
 Whigs became manifest in the conduct of the nation. 
 The Whig party was scattered and irresolute, Pitt and 
 his city friends looked with distrust upon Newcastle 
 and his aristocratic followers, and Newcastle envied 
 and dreaded his too powerful ally. No party-plan of 
 opposition couM be formed; but while the chiefs were 
 deliberating the people w^ere in action. Upon the 
 resignation of Pitt such a storm had arisen from all 
 parts of the kingdom, that the first act of the new 
 minister was an attempt to turn the current of public 
 opinion. On the 29th of May, the day he entered 
 upon his office, was published the first number of a 
 periodical called The Briton,* which had as its object 
 the suj)port of the new minister. The highly- wrouo-ht 
 panegyric upon the Karl of Pute which this number 
 contains, and the marked abuse of Pitt with which it 
 concludes, called forth several opponents. The Mo- 
 
 * Written by Dr. Smollett. 
 R Q
 
 AD. 17()2. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, nitor and the Obscrvator had boon already in exist- 
 once and opposition, hut on the ensuing^ Saturday a 
 rival, destined to obtain more enduring notoriety, 
 made its appearance. This was the first number of 
 the Noi-tli liriton which came forth to defend William 
 Pitt from the calumnies of the ministerial writer, and 
 to ridicule the perfections of his master. The prin- 
 cipal contributor to this periodical, John Wilkes, is a 
 character which circumstances rendered too important 
 to be introduced without especial notice. 
 
 John Wilkes was the second son of a wealthy dis- 
 tiller living in St. John's-square, Clerkenwell, but 
 descended of a family of that name long settled in 
 Buckinghamshire. John was born in October, 1730. 
 His father, supposing he had discovered in his son a 
 superior ability, bestowed considerable care upon his 
 education. At an early age he was placed under the 
 tuition of Mr. Leeson, a dissenting clergyman, from 
 whom he obtained a considerable knowledge of the 
 classics. While yet young he went, accompanied by 
 his tutor, to the University of Leyden, where he pro- 
 secuted his studies with diligence and success ; and 
 whence he returned, after the completion of the usual 
 academical course, with the reputation of being a 
 young man of very extensive acquirements and con- 
 siderable talent. To an accurate and extensive 
 knowledge of the ancient and modern languages he 
 added a graceful and gentlemanly deportment, great
 
 A. D. 1762. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 conversational powers, ready wit, and an undaunted CHAP, 
 assurance. His education was considered completed 
 by the usual tour of the continent, during which he 
 contracted friendships with many men eminent for 
 their genius and learning, and among others with 
 Dr. Andrew Baxter,* the most profound theologian 
 and metaphysician of his time, with whom he carried 
 on a frequent correspondence, and who did not think 
 his young friend unworthy of honourable mention in 
 one of his works. In 1 749 AVilkes returned to Lon- 
 don, and in October of the same year married Miss 
 Mead. This lady was possessed of a large fortune, 
 she was the only daughter of the most intimate friend 
 of his mother, and she had refused the addresses of 
 Lord Bellenden in his favour. These were incentives 
 which dutiful obedience, cupidity, or gratified vanity 
 would alike approve. On the other hand. Miss Mead 
 was upwards of thirty-two, Wilkes was not yet twenty- 
 two, and their dispositions and habits were as little 
 in accordance as their ages.t It was this ill-assorted 
 
 ♦ Baxter's Appendix to the by death : Mr. Baxter continuing 
 
 " Inquiry into tlie Nature of tlie his letters even after he was unable 
 
 Human Soul" is dedicated to John to write with his own hand. — 
 
 Wilkes, and is said by the author Hiog. Dirt., art. Baxter. 
 to have been suggested by a con- f In one of Wilkes's letters to 
 
 versation he held with \Niikes in Mre. Stafford, in 1778, speaking of 
 
 tlie Capuchins' garden at Spa. The this marriage, he says, " Now, one 
 
 correspondence between Wilkes word on my own situation. In my 
 
 anrl Baxter was only interrupted nonage, to please an indulgent
 
 A. D. 176'J. 
 
 THE IIISTOUY OF I'AIlTY. 
 
 CHAP. Amid such scenes it is no wonder that honour and 
 probity quickly died, that virtue soon appeared to 
 ^^' ilk.es but a stale jest, and patriotism the mask of 
 clever knaves. M'hen such men were admitted to his 
 wife's society, and Potter's obscene jests fell upon her 
 ear, it is no wonder that Mrs. Wilkes fled from her 
 husband's house, and sought the protection of her 
 mother. 
 
 The ruinous expenditure which this mode of life 
 entailed was the subject of frequent remonstrance 
 from Mrs. Wilkes, who appears to have been as par- 
 simonious as her youthful husband was licentious. 
 He was now ambitious of a seat in parliament : he 
 spent 3000/. in an imprudent and unsuccessful at- 
 tempt upon Berwick ; and upon his return from his 
 canvass, smarting under his defeat, he was assailed 
 with reproaches at home. A quarrel and a separation 
 ensued : by the deed Wilkes retained a portion of 
 the property, and granted an annuity of 200/. 
 
 In 1757, Wilkes, at an expense of 7OOO/., became 
 member for Aylesbury, where some of his property 
 lay, and he himself occasionally resided. His elec- 
 tion for this borough was not the reward of any poli- 
 tical exertions ; it was effected by a chain of delicate 
 manoeuvres by which his friend Potter, his predeces- 
 sor at Aylesbury, succeeded Mr. Pitt in the repre- 
 sentation of Oakhampton, thus making a vacancy for
 
 A. D. 1762. 
 
 THE HISTOUY OF TARTY. 9 
 
 Wilkes. Mr. Pitt was returned for Bath, and Wilkes CHAP, 
 paid the whole expense of the arrangement. 
 
 This heavy expenditure exhausted his finances, 
 and with the true heartlessness of a practised liber- 
 tine, he proposed to escape from his embarrassments 
 by forcing from his wife her separate property. 
 He pursued his design without shame or decency ; 
 brought Mrs. Wilkes into court by a writ of habeas 
 corpusy and only desisted from his attempt when 
 Lord Mansfield declared that any further annoyance 
 would subject him to a commitment. 
 
 Now it was that Wilkes began to look to the emo- 
 luments of office as a means to retrieve his fortune. 
 He at first proceeded with moderation ; he gained 
 the friendship of Lord Temple, who was his neigh- 
 bour in Buckinghamshire,* and so far retained that of 
 Sir Francis Dashwood that, when Sir Francis resigned 
 
 * What little interest Wilkes to throw a stone at Johnson, an 
 
 possessed he freely employed in impertinence which the doctor 
 
 behalf of his literarj' contempora- never forgave. In liis English 
 
 ries. Two of his most vehement Grammar prefixed to his Diction- 
 
 abuscrs were Dr. Smollett and ary, the lexicographer iiad written, 
 
 Dr. Johnson. About this time "'H,' seldom, perhaps never, begins 
 
 he conferred a signal obligation any but the first syllable." Wilkes 
 
 upon the latter, by obtaining published some remarks upon this 
 
 the release of his black servant dictum; commencing, "The author 
 
 who had been seized by a press- of this observation must be a man 
 
 gang. Dr. Smollett was the mo- ofrpiick appre-Acnsion, and of n 
 
 dium through which .Tohnson made most compre-/<ensivc genius." 
 his applicHlion. Wilkes had dan H
 
 AD. 17ti2. 
 
 U) THE IIISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, his commission as colonel of the Buckinghamshire 
 militia, he recommended Mr. Wilkes as his successor. 
 In 17()0, Sir James Porter, the British minister at 
 Constantinople, desired to be recalled, and Wilkes 
 fixed his desires upon the office, as one which would 
 at once gratify his love of distinction and remove 
 him from his creditors. His application was made 
 through Mr. Legge to the Duke of Newcastle ; but 
 Mr. Legge was at this time an unfortunate patron. 
 The Earl of Bute interfered, and Wilkes was disap- 
 pointed. Such was the origin of the hatred which 
 Wilkes always manifested towards the king's favourite 
 minister. In I76I, during Mr. Pitt's negotiation 
 with France, when it was known that Canada was to 
 be retained by England, the government of that pro- 
 vince caught Mr. Wilkes's attention. He mentioned 
 it to Lord Temple, and had the negotiation succeeded, 
 he would have had the appointment. The failure of 
 Mr. Pitt's negotiation, and the ejection of the Whig 
 party from office, destroyed all his hopes. His em- 
 barrassments had increased beyond endurance ; his 
 disappointment infused into him a hatred of the party 
 which had succeeded to power, and the desperate 
 state of his fortunes made him reckless as to the 
 means he adopted to overthrow them. 
 
 Under these circumstances, he, in conjunction 
 with the poet Churchill, started the North Briton. 
 The early numbers of this periodical attracted at-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 11 
 
 tention because they appealed to the passions and the CHAP, 
 preiudices of the multitude. The abuse of Scotland — — — ^- — — 
 
 ^ J A.D. 1762. 
 
 and of Scotchmen was the North Briton's constant 
 theme. At first, in accordance with the title assumed, 
 the abuse was conveyed in irony ; but as the attack 
 grew hotter this veil was thrown away, and the North 
 Briton continued to inveigh against the cloud of 
 adventurers, which, at the beck of the minister, 
 crossed the Tweed and spread like locusts over the 
 land, and to vent the most bitter personahties against 
 the favourite and his colleagues. 
 
 Upon a perusal of these letters, without reference 
 to the extraordinary excitement they occasioned, we 
 should judge them to be characterized by a very mo- 
 derate ability. In boldness of invention they had, at 
 their time, no rival, but in composition they fall very 
 far short of the Examiner or the Craftsman : they cer- 
 tainly do not sustain the reputation which, as a scholar 
 and a philosopher, Wilkes had acquired in his younger 
 and his better days. 
 
 Notwithstanding the abuse and opposition which 
 he knew it would call forth, the minister determined 
 upon putting an end to the war, and his papers were 
 instructed to pn^pare the public mind for this course 
 of policy. This was rather boldly than successfully 
 executed. The Jiriton dec-lared that tlie war had 
 been carried on in an injudicious manner, and that 
 our extraordinary successes wore to ho rcrkonrd
 
 A.D. 17C2. 
 
 1'2 TUli HISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, among its evil consequences.* The hint was im- 
 mediately taken, the land rung with laughter at the 
 novel discovery, and the popular papers which echoed 
 the voice of the multitude, immediately prophesied 
 a disgraceful Tory treaty. Soon after a notice to the 
 lord mayor gave information that the negotiation 
 had commenced. 
 
 Upon the meeting of parliament (Nov. S5), the 
 king could inform the houses that preliminaries had 
 been signed ; and on the 29th, they were laid upon 
 the table of the house of commons. A day was imme- 
 diately appointed for taking them into consideration, 
 and the public expectation was greatly excited. In 
 the lords it was expected that the opposition would 
 be very strong.! Lord Wycombe moved the address, 
 and Lord Hardwicke opposed it in a prepared and 
 lengthy speech ; several other peers followed, and 
 many severe and personal reflections were thrown out 
 against the Earl of Bute. He defended himself 
 with an energy he had not been supposed to possess, 
 and concluded by a wish, that his only epitaph might 
 be that he was the author of this peace. At the 
 conclusion of the debate the house was clearly in his 
 favour, and the address was carried without protest, 
 and apparently without division.^ Even in the com- 
 mons the struggle was not so severe as had been 
 
 • Briton, No. 6. f Chesterfield to his Son. 
 
 X Lorclj-' Journals.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. tS 
 
 anticipated. The minister had prudently provided for CHAP, 
 this contingency ; he had emissaries among all 
 parties, and so well did he strengthen their exertions 
 that it is said he in one day issued 25,000/. to their 
 order.* 
 
 Many of the old retainers of successive administra- 
 tions were so disgusted with their exclusion from 
 office, that they were disposed to neglect no oppor- 
 tunity of returning. Upon the day of the debate many 
 of these slunk away, some feigned sickness, others ran 
 out of town, and many more were absent without 
 troubling themselves to assign any excuse. t When 
 Mr. Fox opened the debate the state of the house 
 seemed scarcely to promise a division. He set forth 
 and justified the prehminaries in a speech of consi- 
 derable length, and appeared to have thoroughly 
 satisfied his auditory ; when Pitt, whom the occasion 
 had drawn from a sick-bed, raised himself upon his 
 crutches to reply. 
 
 Although at that instant suffering under the most 
 excruciating torture, he had, he said, determined at 
 the hazard of his life, to attend that day to raise his 
 voice and hand against the preliminary articles of a 
 treaty that obscured all the glories of the war, sur- 
 rendered the dearest interests of the nation, and 
 sacrificed the public faith by an abandonment of our 
 
 • History of the Minority, p. M. f IbiH.
 
 •A.D. 17G2. 
 
 14 11 li: HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, allies. Ho, he said, had indeed consented to con- 
 • elude a peace, and his terms had not satisfied all 
 persons, for it was found impossible to reconcile eveiy 
 interest ; but he had not, for the mere attainment of 
 peace, made a sacrifice of any conquest ; he had 
 neither broken the national faith nor betrayed the 
 allies of the crown. He called for a discussion of the 
 merits of the peace he had offered comparatively with 
 the present preliminaries, and challenged the most 
 able casuist among the minister's friends, who in 
 gallant appearance were all mustered and marshalled 
 for duty, to refute him. His motive was to stop that 
 torrent of misrepresentation which was poisoning 
 the virtue of the country. 
 
 Thus far he had proceeded, supported by two of 
 his friends, but his bodily weakness here over- 
 powered him. He sank, and the house, moved by 
 his fortitude and his sufferings, granted him the un- 
 precedented indulgence of delivering the remainder 
 of his speech sitting. 
 
 The indio-nant statesman continued for nearly four 
 hours to pour forth his objections to the terms which 
 had been accepted. He contrasted the surrender of 
 the fisheries which had been made by the Earl of 
 Bute, with the conditional surrender which the 
 French had consented to receive from him ; nor 
 would it have been necessary, he said, for him to 
 have conceded even thus much, had he not been
 
 A. D. 1762. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 14 
 
 overruled, not by a foreign but by another enemy, chap. 
 Of the retention of North America he approved, but 
 it was not the present negotiators who had obtained 
 it. It had been the uti possidetis of his own nego- 
 tiation ; it was a concession which he had gained. 
 Havannah, he said, was also his own, he had de- 
 signed the conquest, and it would have been made 
 some months earlier had he been permitted to exe- 
 cute his own plans. Why was this key to all the 
 Spanish treasures in America exchanged for Florida ? 
 The terms were inadequate : they were inadequate 
 in every point w^here the principle of reciprocity was 
 affected to be introduced. 
 
 The conquered islands were to be restored. The 
 restoration of Guadaloupe, it was said he had himself 
 proposed. But he had been overruled in that point 
 also ; he could not help it ; he had been overruled 
 many times — on many occasions ; he had acquiesced 
 — he had submitted. But, at length, he saw that all 
 his measures, all his sentiments were inimical to the 
 new system ; to those persons to whom his majesty 
 had given his confidence. But, to this island these 
 persons had added Martinique and St. Lucia. They 
 seemed to have lost sight of the great fundamental 
 principle that France is chiefly, if not solely to be 
 dreaded by us in tlie light of a maritime and com- 
 mercial power. By restoring to her all the valuable
 
 A.D. 17'.J*2. 
 
 IC) VUK IIISTOKY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. West Iiulia islands and concedintr the New- 
 foundland fishery, they have given her the means 
 of recovering her prodigious losses, and of becoming 
 once more formidable to us at sea. The fishery 
 trains u\) an innumerable multitude of young seamen ; 
 the West India trade employs them when they are 
 trained. 
 
 As to the equivalents for these concessions, he 
 argued that the trade of the conquests in North 
 America was extremely low ; the speculations of 
 their future precarious, and the prospect, at the 
 best, remote ; but the exhaustion occasioned by the 
 war called for supplies, certain, speedy, and consi- 
 derable : the retention of the French islands, or at 
 least one of them, would alone answer this triple 
 purpose. 
 
 In Africa, he said, Goroe had been surrendered 
 without the least apparent necessity, after he had 
 obtained that it should remain with the British 
 crown as an essential security to Senegal. 
 
 In the East Indies, conquests were to be mutually 
 restored. What, he asked, had France to restore ? 
 All the conquests she had made had been retaken. 
 All her own factories and settlements were in our 
 hands. We had conquered every thing, we re- 
 tained nothing. 
 
 Minorca was indeed restored j the East Indies,
 
 A. D. 1762. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 17 
 
 the West Indies, and Africa were its price — a price CHAP, 
 fifty times its worth. This was the only conquest 
 France had to restore. 
 
 Pitt now passed on to a defence of his own poHcy, 
 vindicated the propriety of the German war, and 
 declared with all his own startling emphasis, that 
 America had been conquered in Germany ; he re- 
 futed in detail, many of the objections which had 
 been urged against him, and returned again to the 
 treaty, inveighing against the desertion of the King 
 of Prussia as insidious, tricking, base, and trea- 
 cherous. He would have spoken of Spain, but his 
 voice was now scarcely audible, and he concluded by 
 declaring, that upon the whole, the preliminaries 
 met with his most hearty disapprobation. He saw 
 in them, he said, the seeds of a future war. The 
 peace was insecure because it restored the enemy 
 to her former greatness : its terms were inadequate, 
 because the places gained were no equivalent for the 
 places surrendered.* 
 
 Such were Mr. Pitt's objections to the terms upon 
 which his war had been concluded. His speech upon 
 this occasion was considered a failure, and such it 
 no doubt was. *' It is impossible," says Lord Ches- 
 terfield, upon this occasion, "for a human creature 
 to speak well for three hours and a half;" and Lord 
 
 • Pail. Hi*t., vol. \v., col. 1-J70. 
 VOL. III. C
 
 18 
 
 THF HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 A.D. 1762. 
 
 CHAP. Barring-ton, who was present, remarks that he never 
 before made so long or so bad a speech.* The 
 great force of Pitt's oratory lay not in the words he 
 uttered, but in the manner in which he uttered 
 them : there is eloquence in his reported speeches, 
 but not eloquence in any degree equal to the effect 
 they produced. We cannot read in them the 
 scathing power which made the boldest member 
 tremble when he arose, nor see in them the cause of 
 the paralysis which bound the most voluble speaker 
 when his eye was upon them.t Upon this occasion 
 
 • Lord Banington to Andrew opened to let him into the lobby. 
 Mitchell. Ellis's Letters, second A member then stiirted up, saying, 
 series, vol. iv., p. 455. " Mr. Speaker, — I rise to reply to 
 
 t On one occasion, Pitt, im- the honourable member." Pitt 
 mediately after he had finished turned round and fixed his eye on 
 a speech in the house of com- the orator, who instantly sat down 
 mons, walked out of it, and, as dumb : he then returned to his 
 usual, with a very slow step. A seat, repeating as he hobbled 
 silence ensued until the door was along, the verses of Virgil : 
 " Ast Danaum progenes, Agamemnoniaeque phalanges 
 Ut videre virum, fulgentiaque arma per umbras, 
 Ingenti trepidare metu, — pars vertere retro, 
 Seu quondam petiere rates — pars tollere vocem 
 Exiguam — inceptus clamor frustratur hiantes." 
 Then placing himself in his gentleman from whom he heard it, 
 seat, he exclaimed, " Now let me if the house did not laugh at the 
 hear what the honourable mem- ridiculous figure of the poor mem- 
 ber has to say to me." Mr. But- ber. " No, sir," he was answered, 
 ler, who relates tliis anecdote (in " we were all too much awed to 
 his '* Reminiscences") asked the laugh."
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 19 
 
 his sitting posture precluded all vehemence of ges- CHAP, 
 ticulation, and his feebleness extended to his voice, » r. i-^^ 
 
 ' A. D. 1 /62. 
 
 and, doubtless, subtracted largely from his confi- 
 dence of power. But this speech, however listlessly 
 heard, is read with interest. It was not an essay at 
 opposition, for no opposition was yet formed. 
 During the course of his harangue, the orator dis- 
 tinctly denied that he was then connected with any 
 who were thought to meditate a systematic oppo- 
 sition, and he intimated that he should appear but 
 seldom in the house.* We read herein, therefore, 
 Pitt's deliberate opinion of the terms upon which 
 the war he had carried on was concluded. We find 
 that terms which had been conceded to him, while 
 Spain was still powerful and ready to declare herself, 
 had been refused to his successor when that power 
 was crippled, and additional conquests justified addi- 
 tional demands. 
 
 Thus early was the determination of George the 
 Third to support an un})opular party, under the title 
 of the king's friends, followed by national loss. 
 They were compelled to make peace because they 
 could not raise funds to continue the war ; for the 
 merchants who had so readily 0})ened their purses to 
 Pitt, closed them against a minister whom they 
 doubted whether they could trust. This peace was 
 
 • Kllib's Letters, second series, vol. iv., p. 445. 
 (• -2
 
 *0 THK IIISTOUY OF I'AlltV. 
 
 CHAP, doubtless advantageous to England, and humiliating' 
 
 to France : arter such uniform triumi)h it could not 
 
 A.D. 1762. , / 
 
 have been otherwise. But how difi'erent had been 
 its conditions had Pitt been allowed to conclude the 
 work he had so well carried on. How great the 
 contrast between a negotiator who dictates con- 
 ditions of peace with the same pen with which he 
 had drawn schemes of gigantic conquests now 
 achieved, who knew his own power and his enemy's 
 weakness ; and a negotiator who trembled at the 
 shadow of his predecessor's greatness, doubted whe- 
 ther England or France was more his enemy, and 
 found his greatest embarrassments in the successes 
 of his country. 
 
 Fox, in reply to Pitt, repeated the advantages 
 that had been gained, extolled their value, and 
 argued that the objects for which the war had been 
 originally undertaken were fully secured. Upon 
 the division the victory was as complete as he him- 
 self could wish : the preliminaries were approved by 
 two hundred and twenty-seven against sixty-three. 
 In the two divisions which took place upon this 
 question, ninety-seven* members only avowed their 
 
 ** Pari. Hist , vol. XV. col. 127'2. speaking, left the house. It is 
 
 The greatness of tuis majority said that the Duke of Newcastle 
 
 was doubtless occasioned in some had desired his party in the house 
 
 degree by the disunited state of not to divide, but Mr. Dempster, 
 
 the Whig party. Pitt, after a young Scotch member, who had
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. SI 
 
 disapprobation. Thus easily was a house of com- chap. 
 
 A. D. 1762. 
 
 mons, which had during the former session been 
 nearly unanimous in their support of Mr. Pitt, per- 
 suaded to show themselves nearly equally unanimous 
 in rejecting his counsel when he was no longer 
 a minister. 
 
 This vote of the house of commons 'was but little 
 in accordance with the opinion of the nation, and the 
 outcr)^ was so great, that the minister thought it 
 necessary to devise some expedient to prevent its 
 reaching the royal closet. Ministerial envoys were 
 now despatched over the country, and every art was 
 used to procure addresses approving the peace. The 
 cause must be bad indeed which cannot find some 
 individuals in each county to support it ; but the 
 exposure of some of the intrigues by which these 
 addresses were obtained, and the protests they drew 
 forth, went far toward destroying their utility. 
 
 The multitudes who exclaimed against the late 1763. 
 treaty all looked up to Pitt as their chief, and the 
 Duke of Newcastle and his party of aristocratic 
 Whigs, finding they were powerless without the 
 support of the people, overcame their jealousy and 
 made overtures for a coalition with the late minister. 
 
 taken it into his head to bo in tiic posed the nakedness of his party, 
 
 minority upon this occasion, took —E//U's Lcltcrt, second series, vol. 
 
 it hkewise into iiis head to bring iv., p. 4^3. 
 the hoiisr to a division, which ex-
 
 A.D. 1760. 
 
 ?'2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Pitt readily consented: early in March the oppo- 
 sition was formed. The leaders met at a dinner at 
 the house of the Duke of Newcastle. There were 
 present, the Dukes of Devonshire, Bolton, and 
 Portland ; the Marquis of Rockingham ; Earls 
 Tem})le, Cornwallis, Albemarle, Ashburnham, 
 Ilanhvicke, and Besborough ; I^ords Spencer, 
 Sondes, Grantham, and Villiers ; Sir George Sa- 
 ville, Mr. J. Grenville, and Mr. Pitt. These were 
 now the conspicuous members of the Whig party. 
 
 The newly-formed opposition were not without 
 subjects of complaint. Among the financial ar- 
 rangements of the ensuing year, the minister had 
 proposed a loan of 3,500^000/., which he raised by 
 private subscription upon terms so exorbitant, that 
 they drew down the strong disapprobation of Mr. 
 Legge in the house of commons. The urgent 
 applications for portions of this subscription, yet 
 extant amono^ the MS. letters to Lord Bute in the 
 British Museum, show that the whole affair was a 
 mere contrivance to reward the ministerial phalanx. 
 In a few days the truth became evident to all. The 
 stock immediately rose ten per cent, above the sub- 
 scribing price, discovering that the minister had 
 thus distributed 350,000/. among his friends. This 
 was a flight which left the genius of Walpole far 
 behind. 
 
 The Earl of Bute was now about to imitate Wal-
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 23 
 
 pole in another part of his administration in which CHAP, 
 that minister had been less successful. Not daunted 
 by the storm, which he might have remembered as 
 occasioned by the last proposition of the kind, he 
 now proposed an excise upon cider. This measure 
 produced the same degree of virulent opposition 
 which had been arrayed against that of 1733 ; Pitt 
 put forth all his strength against it in the commons, 
 and it was not without six divisions that it was 
 forced through the house. Petitions against it to 
 both houses of parliament, and even to the throne, 
 poured in from every county affected by the mea- 
 sure, mobs were again assembled in all parts of the 
 country, and cockades were worn, inscribed "Liberty, 
 Whigs, and no Excise." To such a demonstration 
 Walpole succumbed, but the Earl of Bute professed 
 all his party's contempt for popular clamour. After 
 a struggle in the lords — a very unusual occurrence 
 upon a bill of supply, the measure became law.* 
 
 The odium which this perseverance occasioned, 
 drove the minister from the helm. So thoroughly 
 was he now detested, that it was unsafe for him to 
 appear in the public streets. Twice had he been 
 attacked by the populace : on one occasion his car- 
 riage had been demolished, although surrounded by 
 a guard of prize-fighters ; on another, his life was 
 saved by the interference of the civil power.t 'J'er- 
 
 • Annual Register. Tail. Hist. f History of the Minority.
 
 AD. 17(i3. 
 
 21- TMK HISTOUV OF TAUTY. 
 
 CHAP, riticd by tlic expressions of national abhorrence 
 I. • * 
 
 which he every wlicre encountered, and probably 
 actuated also by the motive which he himself as- 
 sioned, an unwillingness to render his master unpo- 
 pular, the Earl of Bute resigned office, and declared 
 that he would never again interfere in political ques- 
 tions. 
 
 This short administration, although the cabinet 
 consisted of Tories, was not founded upon Tory^rm- 
 ciples ; neither the king nor the minister advocated, 
 or perhaps understood the peculiar principles of 
 either party. The only principle of this government 
 was favouritism : the minister was the favourite of 
 the king, the subordinate officials were favourites of 
 the minister : these were all Tories, because the prin- 
 ciples, the pride, and the recent supremacy of the 
 Whigs forbade them to hold office under such humi- 
 liating terras. The kings of a constitutional mo- 
 narchy are usually obliged to be content with being 
 absolute in their own court ; George III. wished to 
 go further, and to make his courtiers his ministers. 
 The experiment failed ; the courtier was com- 
 pelled to retire from the public stage, and to be 
 satisfied with prompting others, himself unseen.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 25 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Grenville administration — The North Briton, No. 45 — Arrest 
 of Wilkes — General warrants — Death of Lord Ej;remont — 
 Attempt of the king and the Tories to detach Mr. Pitt from the 
 Whigs — Its failure — Death of Earl Grenville — Meeting of par- 
 liament — Proceedings against Wilkes — Review of the conduct of 
 ministers in the proceedings against W^ilkes. 
 
 The resiofnation of Lord Bute made little altera- CHAP. 
 
 & 
 
 tion in the measures of government. Like Walpole 
 he had taken care to leave his own friends in office 
 to protect him from prosecution or censure. George 
 Grenville was his successor. This gentleman, whose 
 brothers, Earl Temple and James Grenville, were so 
 strenuous and consj)icuous as members of the oppo- 
 sition, had now altogether deserted the party with 
 which ho had set out in life, and had become iden- 
 tified with the I'ories. Lords Egremont and Halifax 
 continued secretaries of state : Fox retained his 
 hicrativc but siibordiiiato station as jjaymaster of the 
 
 11. 
 
 A. D. 1763.
 
 26 
 
 THK HISTORY OF PAllTY. 
 
 CHAP, forces, receiving, however, a peerage as a reward for 
 ■ . jj ~^Z7^ his compliance. He was raised to the upper house, 
 by the title of IJaron Holland, and Sir Francis Dash- 
 wood resigning the chancellorship of the exchequer 
 to the minister, received a similar equivalent ; he was 
 created Baron le Dispencer. The Earl of Sandwich, 
 who possessed neither popularity, ability, or virtue, 
 was made first lord of the admiralty.* 
 
 Contemporary writerst attributed the overthrow of 
 Lord Bute to the talent and influence of the North 
 Briton, which had certainly directed and expressed 
 the popular indignation when the Whigs in par- 
 liament were silent. When the minister's resig- 
 nation was made known, the publication of this paper 
 ceased ; but ho sooner were the new appointments 
 gazetted, than it was resumed. Forty-four num- 
 bers had already been published. On the 23d of 
 April, No. 4o appeared, ushered by an adver- 
 
 * A note to one of the num- of Churchill, against Lord le Dis- 
 
 bers of the North Briton contains pencer and otiiers, we must be- 
 
 a most odious character of this lieve that most of the public men 
 
 nobleman, whom we have lately of this time were, in private life, 
 
 seen as the writer's most intimate monsters. The profligacy of the 
 
 friend ; but I cannot rely upon Earl of Sandwich and Lord le 
 
 any of Mr. \^'ilkes's writings for Dispencer is proved by a concur- 
 
 the characters of his contempo- rence of contemporary testimony, 
 
 raries. If we were to believe the f See the History of the Mino- 
 
 tithe of what is alleged in some rity and other pamphlets of the 
 
 of this writer's notes to the poems day.
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 27 
 
 tisement, in which the writer asserted that the CHAP. 
 Scottish minister had not retired, but that he still 
 governed by three wretched tools of his power ; he 
 declared that he was ready to combat this triple- 
 headed Cerberean administration, and pledged him- 
 self the firm and intrepid assertor of the rights of his 
 fellow subjects, and of the liberties of ^\Tiigs and 
 Eng-lishmen. 
 
 This sounding introduction was the prelude to a 
 strain of very ordinary abuse.* Wilkes considered 
 the king's speech to parliament as the speech of the 
 minister and criticised it as such ; an assumption he 
 had a perfect right to make. He spoke of the 
 sovereign as imposed upon by his minister, and 
 lamented that a prince of so many great and amiable 
 
 • It is said that No. 45 of speech which was to be spoken 
 
 the North Briton, was s\iggested on the morrow. Mr. Pitt was at 
 
 by a conversation held between Lord Temple's house, in Pall 
 
 Earl Temple, Pitt, and Wilkes. Mall, when the letter arrived. 
 
 On Mr. Grenville receiving his and, owing to his intercession, 
 
 appointment as first lord of the the consent was given. Wilkes, 
 
 treasury, it was of course neces- who was just returned from Paris, 
 
 sary that he should be re-elected ; called in at tiie same moment, 
 
 and as he sat for his brother's and a conversation ensued upon 
 
 borough of Buckingham, he was the speech. From his recollection 
 
 obliged, although then at variance of this conversation, and some 
 
 with him, to ask his permission to additions of his own, Wilkes 
 
 be rechosen In the letter contain- wrote this celebrated paper. — 
 
 ing the request was enclosed, as a Almons TAfc and Correspondence 
 
 compliment, a copy of the kinp'^ nf Wilkes, vol i., p. 9.5.
 
 A. 1). 1763. 
 
 28 THE HISTORY OF rAIlTY. 
 
 CHAP, qualities, could bo brouo-ht to ^\\c the sanction of 
 his sacred name to the most odious measures, and 
 the most unjustifiable ])ublic declarations, from a 
 throne ever renowned for truth, honour, and unsul- 
 lied virtue. 
 
 However libellous this sentence might be as re- 
 garded the Rarl of Bute, it was no libel upon the so- 
 vereign. The house of commons had in effect 
 expressed the same sentiment long before, when they 
 made it one of the articles of the impeachment 
 against Robert Earl of Oxford, that he had cor- 
 rupted the sacred fountain of truth, and put false- 
 hoods in the mouth of her majesty in several speeches 
 made to parliament. To hold that the sovereign is 
 answerable in any manner for his public speeches, or 
 can be libelled by a denial of the accuracy of their 
 statements, is clearly an anticonstitutional and Tory 
 heresy. 
 
 This was one of the passages selected as libellous : 
 another was the following piece of commonplace 
 declamation. "The King of England is only the 
 first magistrate of this country, but is invested by 
 the law with the whole executive power. He is, 
 however, responsible to his people for the due exe- 
 cution of the royal functions, in the choice of mi- 
 nisters, &c., equal with the meanest of his subjects 
 in his particular duty." The correctness of this 
 position evidently depend? upon the sense in which
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTV. 'r^O 
 
 the word responsible is used, and we are not to CHAP, 
 expect in the hurried productions of the periodical Y^n^GsT 
 writer, aiming as he does at bold and startling posi- 
 tions which shall excite for a moment and perish as 
 that excitement droops, the guarded restrictions and 
 carefully poised definitions of finished composition. 
 The whole of this celebrated paper may be judged 
 from these extracts : to those who are in the habit of 
 seeing the diurnal philippics of the present time, 
 which appear, are read, and are forgotten, this num- 
 ber of the North Briton will not be thought to ex- 
 hibit any extraordinary violence ; nor, judging it from 
 the same comparison, will it be remarked for its 
 ability. It was not the power of the writer, it was 
 the error of a weak ministry which made Wilkes and 
 forty-five the gathering cry of the poj)ulace, and ren- 
 dered the insulter of the sovereign the most popular 
 man in the kingdom. 
 
 At the council which was held to decide how this 
 libel should be treated, Lord Mansfield advised that 
 it should be let alone, and exposed, in a forcible man- 
 ner, the danger of giving the writer importance by a 
 public prosecution. The ministers, however, thought 
 differently ; they each had private wrongs to revenge ; 
 their master insisted upon vengeance, and an oppor- 
 tunity so favourable as an attack upon the king was 
 not likely to recur. 
 
 On the 30th of April Wilkes was arrested by
 
 A.D. 17G3. 
 
 30 THE HISTOKY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, three messcno^ers, under a general warrant from the 
 secretary of state, directint*- tlie officers to apprehend 
 and seize, togetlier with their papers, the authors, 
 printers, and pubhshers, of a seditious and treason- 
 able paper, entitled the North Briton, Number XLV. 
 These general warrants were clearly illegal, but they 
 had been so long in use, and so uniformly obeyed, 
 that this proceeding of the ministry was rather to be 
 censured as weak than condemned as tyrannical. 
 Having resolved to embark in a prosecution in which 
 they were sure to find- the sympathies of the populace 
 against them, they should have been careful that no 
 suspicion of irregularity should appear upon their pro- 
 ceedings. Wilkes saw his advantage ; he filled the 
 nation with complaints of the violence he had suffered, 
 and immediately applied for his habeas corpus. This 
 writ was evaded by transferring the prisoner from the 
 custody of the messengers ; but a second brought him 
 from the tower to the court of common pleas on the 
 3d of May. The case was now argued both by him- 
 self, in a speech which was intended to keep up the 
 excitement without, and by Sergeant Glynn, who 
 addressed himself to the bench. The court employed 
 three days in consideration ; and then, without giving 
 judgment upon the validity of the warrant, ordered 
 his discharge, on the ground that he was protected 
 by his privilege of parliament. This decision was 
 received with peals of applause, and Wilkes returned
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 31 
 
 home attended by a prodigious multitude of people, CHAP, 
 who followed him with continual acclamation. At 
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 night frequent illuminations and bonfires celebrated 
 the triumph of the popular idol. 
 
 While Wilkes was only known to the public as the 
 writer of the North Briton, the Whigs took little 
 notice of a man whose chief aim appeared to be to 
 attract that attention by his violence which he could 
 not command by his talent. Now, however, the 
 folly of the ministry rendered him of importance. In 
 him they had wounded the constitution, and the prin- 
 ciples no less than the inclination of the Whigs urged 
 them to afford him protection. Lord Temple imme- 
 mediately undertook his defence, and attempted to 
 render his conduct consistent with the dignity of the 
 part he now had to perform as the vindicator of pub- 
 lic liberty. But Wilkes had none of the disinterested 
 patriotism of Hampden or Russell ; public confusion 
 was the object he sought, and that he only desired, 
 as it would contribute to his private gain : he con- 
 tinued to adopt every contrivance to fix public atten 
 tion upon himself; wrote to the secretaries of state 
 accusing them of having broken into his house and 
 robbed him of his property, and brought actions 
 against all who had been employed in his illegal 
 arrest. Never forgetting the great end of all his 
 patriotism, he set up a printing press in his own house, 
 and reprinted his North Briton ; he also put forth
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 S'2 THK HISTOllY OF PAIITY. 
 
 CHAP, proposals for publishing- the proceedings against him, 
 at one g-uinea a co])y, and so numerous was his sub- 
 scription-list that he found himself relieved from his 
 pressing dithculties, and suddenly raised to a compa- 
 rative affluence. Several of these acts, and espe- 
 cially the last, were highly disagreeable to the Whigs 
 w^ho had espoused his cause ; their pride revolted from 
 the idea of so open a trade in patriotism ; and they 
 offered, if he would abandon his design, to raise among 
 themselves a sum equal to that he expected from his 
 publication. But Wilkes was not a man to be turned 
 from his purpose ; if the Whigs had his assistance 
 they must be content to receive it as he chose to afford 
 it ; he refused their offer, and continued, unmindful 
 of their counsel, his own schemes for increasing his 
 popularity and its gains. 
 
 Meanwhile the cabinet was thrown into some con- 
 fusion by the sudden death of the Earl of Egreraont, 
 which occurred on the 21st of August.* This noble- 
 man, although not possessed of the abilities of his 
 father, was of considerable importance in an admi- 
 nistration made up of men who were all, except Fox, 
 insignificant in their public characters. The govern- 
 ment was now become so weak that it was thought 
 absolutely necessary to look out for some addition to 
 its strength. Lord Bute saw the tottering state of 
 
 * Ellis's Letters, second series, vol. iv.
 
 A. D. 17G3. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 33 
 
 the ministry ; he knew that his own unpopularity CHAP, 
 was unabated, and feared that those whom he had 
 placed in office would be unable to protect him. He 
 sought a more powerful protector — to whom could he 
 turn but to Pitt? A negotiation was immediately 
 commenced, with the utmost secrecy, under the me- 
 diation of Lord Saville ; and, so rarely is perfect up- 
 rightness personated in a statesman, even Pitt, the 
 fairest of our public characters, did not at once refuse 
 to coalesce with the negotiator of the peace of Paris. 
 The arrangement, if it was not originated, was accele- 
 rated, by the death of the Earl of Egremont. The 
 Earl of Bute introduced Mr. Pitt to the king at 
 Buckingham House, and a long conference ensued. 
 The king listened attentively, and apparently with 
 conviction ; and Pitt, while he was firm in his 
 demands for the restoration of the Whigs, was courtly 
 in his bearing, and unassuming in his demeanour. 
 He found, however, that the secret influence which 
 had already proved so powerful was still to prevail j 
 for when he made an offer to unite with Lord 
 Bute, the king replied, "How! Mr. Pitt, do you 
 mean to laugh at me ? You must know, as well as 
 me, that that nobleman is determined never more 
 to take any share in the administration." Pitt 
 knew that the favourite's power would remain ; he 
 saw only that he was determined to refuse all res})on- 
 sibility. 
 
 VOL. III. D
 
 51. THE HISTORY or PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. The kinc^ also expressed a wish to see a reconcilia 
 11. 
 
 A.D. 17li3. 
 
 tion take place between George Grenville and his 
 brother, Earl Temple, to which Pitt made no reply, 
 but probably drew his inference, that the king's only 
 object was to gain a section of the Whig party to re- 
 inforce his present inefficient body-guard of Tories. 
 From Buckingham House Mr. Pitt proceeded to 
 Claremont, and acquainted the Duke of Newcastle 
 with what had passed, fully persuaded from the king's 
 manner and behaviour that he was in earnest, and all 
 points of difference would be overcome. The two 
 Whig leaders consulted with their friends, and several 
 influential members of their party were sent for to 
 town. The first audience had taken place on the 
 27th of August, the next was appointed for the 29th. 
 The Whig chief was received as graciously as before, 
 and the king began the conversation. He talked 
 strongly of his honour being concerned in the pro- 
 tection of his present ministers, and mentioned Lord 
 Halifax for the treasury. At this proposal Pitt was 
 naturally startled, and replied that he should never 
 have thought of him for the treasury ; but recom- 
 mended that he should receive the paymaster's place. 
 "But, Mr. Pitt," replied the king, " I had designed 
 that for poor George Grenville. He is your near rela- 
 tion, and you once loved him." To this the only answer 
 made was a low bow. " Why," continued the king, 
 " should not Lord Temple have the treasury ? You
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 3,5 
 
 could go on then very well." The object was now chap. 
 developed ; Pitt and Earl Temple were the only 
 Whigs the king cared to gain. Pitt replied, " Sire, 
 the person w^hom you shall think fit to honour with 
 the chief conduct of your affairs cannot possibly go 
 on without a treasury connected with him. But that 
 alone will do nothing. It cannot be carried on with- 
 out the great families who have supported the revolu- 
 tion government, and other great persons of whose 
 abilities and integrity the public has had experience, 
 and who have weight and credit with the nation. I 
 should only deceive your majesty if I should leave 
 you in an opinion that I could go on, and your ma- 
 jesty make a solid administration, on any other foot." 
 Some conversation ensued : Mr. Pitt named a great 
 number of his supporters, but refused to draw out, 
 upon the moment, a scheme of a new cabinet. All 
 who voted for the peace, with the exception of the 
 Duke of Marlborough and Lord Halifax, he objected 
 to, and declared that he would have nothing to do 
 with the Duke of Bedford or any Tory whatever. 
 He had now discovered that a change had taken 
 place in the king's intentions since the last interview, 
 and that it was doul)ly necessary to be firm in his 
 demands, and guarded in his concessions. At last, 
 when it became plain that the only terms upon which 
 Pitt would accept office were, the dismission of his 
 opponents and the ;i)ipointmcnt of his friends, the
 
 3() 
 
 TIIK IIISTOHV or I'AUTY. 
 
 A.D. 1763. 
 
 CHAP, kinir rei)lio(l, "Well, Uv. Pitt, I see this won't do ; 
 II. ^^ . 
 
 my honour is concerned and I must support it ;" and 
 
 again, more passionately, he declared, "Were I to 
 
 submit to such dictation, I had nothing more to do 
 
 than to take the crown from my head, place it upon 
 
 yours, and then submit my neck to the block."* 
 
 Upon the failure of this negotiation the Duke of 
 Bedford was applied to for assistance : he accepted the 
 office of president of the council, and his powerful in- 
 fluence brought a seasonable reinforcement to the 
 wavering ranks of the government. Lord Sandwich 
 succeeded Lord Egremont as secretary of state, and 
 Lord Egmont was made first lord of the admiralty. 
 
 The vacancy in the post to which the Duke of 
 Bedford now succeeded was occasioned by the death 
 of Earl Granville, who had passed a long life in the 
 cabinet, who, as Lord Carteret, had exercised such 
 weighty influence in the government, and who, in 
 the words of Lord Chesterfield, possessed, " take it 
 for all in all, the ablest head in England." 
 
 Notwithstanding his great and versatile powers, 
 Granville had failed as a statesman, and with talent 
 
 • Letter from Lord Hardwicke is the most authentic narrative ; 
 
 on the subject of a ministerial ne- but it only professes to be a sketch, 
 
 gotiation in 1 763. Ellis's Letters, I liave therefore thought myself at 
 
 second series, vol. iv., p. 470. See liberty to fill it up from the other 
 
 also the account of the contempo- accounts, one of which, that of Mr. 
 
 rary press in the Gentleman's Ma- Erskine in Ellis's Letters, is but 
 
 i{a7.ine for 1763. Lord Hardwicke's little less trustworthy.
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 THE HISTOUY OF PAllTV. 3? 
 
 which might have commanded the support of a pow- chap. 
 erful party, he was compelled to owe his transient - 
 moments of power to the personal favour of the king. 
 "^Miile he pretended to a leading station in the cabi- 
 net, the unpopularity of the government was always 
 great in proportion to the extent of his influence ; 
 when he cast away from him ambition all parties 
 were well content that he should hold the office he 
 then chose ; the emoluments of which his great extra- 
 vagance had rendered necessary to him. He was 
 almost as popular as a man as he was hated as a 
 minister. 
 
 The cause of Granville's failure may be found in 
 his utter destitution of political principle. It has al- 
 ready been remarked that a high and chivalrous sense 
 of honour, which will never yield to circumstances, or 
 deviate one line from its forward track at the dictation 
 of expediency, is an impediment to success in a states- 
 man of a free country. But Carteret erred still more 
 grievously on the other side. He entered, indeed, 
 into ])ublic life under the auspices of Sunderland 
 and Stanhope, and during the short time that those 
 leaders and their section of a party existed, he conti- 
 nued to support them. But when he ceased to be a 
 subordinate he renounced all allegiance either to 
 party or patriotism. He cared nothing for principle, 
 whether Whig or Tory ; thought that system of go- 
 vernment the best which preserved him in his office, 
 
 n
 
 A.D. 17G3. 
 
 38 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, and openly laughed at the idea of men acting from 
 any other motive. Many who acted as Carteret spoke 
 yet joined in the'gcneral condemnation of the avowed 
 political infidel. Such doctrines not only anni- 
 hilated patriotism and public spirit, but destroyed 
 what have so often been their efficient substitutes, 
 party princi})le and party honour. No political leader 
 would venture to ally himself to a man who disclaimed 
 alike the profession and the practice of fidelity ; and 
 Carteret, who thought he held in the royal preference 
 the surest tenure of office, was outlawed by both 
 parties ; he was represented to the nation as a pro- 
 fligate favourite, by men who, in private life, ad- 
 mired his varied talent, and eagerly courted his so- 
 ciety. Recently Earl Granville had become rather 
 popular. The multitude, always prone to think their 
 present evils their heaviest, looked back upon the 
 reign of George II. as a golden era, and thought all 
 who had been his ministers worthy of their worship. 
 As the earl professedly took no part in public affairs, 
 he was not involved in the unpopularity of Lord 
 Bute ; he had outlived his political importance, and 
 his death attracted little attention except among those 
 who hoped to succeed him. 
 
 Parliament met on the 15th of November, and 
 Wilkes and the North Briton, words which still rang 
 through the nation, were, of course, the first topics 
 of discussion. So anxious was the Grenville ministry
 
 A.D. 1763. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 39 
 
 upon this subject, and so careful to anticipate the ac- chap. 
 cusation of Wilkes, that the house of commons was 
 not allowed to enter upon the consideration of the 
 speech ; but a message was first delivered, informing 
 the house of the steps that had been taken against 
 Mr. Wilkes. This message was immediately taken 
 into consideration, and after a long debate, of which 
 no record remains, number forty-five, was, without a 
 division,* voted a libel, and ordered to be burnt by 
 the common hangman. Wilkes, who had in vain at- 
 tempted to address the house before, was now heard, 
 and the consideration of his complaint, as well as the 
 further consideration of the king's message, was ad- 
 journed. 
 
 But in the house of lords an attack was on the same 
 evening made, which affected Wilkes far more fatally. 
 When, elated by the popular applause, he had set up 
 a press in his own house, and reprinted the libels for 
 which he had been marked out for prosecution, he 
 forfeited the esteem of all moderate men, although 
 the folly of his enemies might perhaps compel them to 
 continue to him their support. Among other uses to 
 which he put this press, he had determined to print, 
 
 • There was a division upon the govcrnmont ;" l)ut no Whig ap- 
 
 terms. Some mcmhers thoiiglit it pears to have defended the paper. 
 
 inexpedient to describe the paper Even this objection was overruled 
 
 as " tending to excite traitorous in- by a majority of 273 to 1 1 1 . — Purl. 
 
 surrertions against his majesty's //w/,, vol. xv., col. l;)6f).
 
 ^0 THE Ml STORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAT, for some of his intimates, thirteen copies of a poem, 
 called " An Essav on Woman." There is no reason 
 
 A.D. 1763. 
 
 to su})])ose that this obscene and blasphemous pro- 
 duction was composed by Wilkes ; in sentiment it 
 precisely agrees with the practices of the Mock 
 Plonks Club ; and it was probably concocted in that 
 society, and well known by its members. Wilkes had 
 it printed w^ith the greatest privacy, and from the few 
 copies he struck oif it is evident that the poera was 
 only to be confidentially intrusted to some of his in- 
 timates who were ready to receive and admire it. 
 WTiile it was proceeding through the press, from con- 
 versation between the printers it became known to 
 Mr. Kidgell a clergyman, who, having bribed the 
 compositor to procure him a copy of the poem, 
 proceeded with it to Lord Saville, exhibiting it as 
 an invaluable weapon of offence against the trouble- 
 some patriot. Lord Saville, as a member of the 
 Mock Monks Club, was doubtless already well ac- 
 quainted with the poem ; but he saw the value of this 
 copy, and having arranged the necessary evidence, rose 
 and denounced it in the house of lords. Bishop War- 
 burton,* whose name had been used in one of the notes, 
 complained of this breach of his privilege; the lords ad- 
 dressed the king to prosecute the printer, and Mr. Kid- 
 gell favoured the public with such an account of the 
 
 These notes wore written by Potter. — Almon,
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 41 
 
 book,* that every one was in an agony of curiosity to chap. 
 
 see the poem itself; a curiosity which was not long- un- , ^ 
 
 ^ ' • <= A. D. 1763. 
 
 satisfied, since the book lay open upon the table of the 
 house of lords. Mr. Kidgell's pamphlet contains a 
 considerable quantity of such nonsense as the follow- 
 ing : " Deliberately, and in a few words, I ask, for 
 what one valuable consideration upon earth would a 
 serious or a good man permit an hour's perusal of this 
 execrable essay to his children ? I reason but from 
 what I feel within my own breast ; for could I be 
 persuaded that such a misfortune would probably 
 happen to a child of mine, I should be the most af- 
 flicted parent in the world."t Thus, he reasons as 
 though this essay had been intended for publication ; • 
 and when met by the fact of the number of copies 
 printed, he has recourse to the pitiful evasion that, in 
 the eye of the law, printing is a publication. There 
 can be little difference of opinion as to the fact that 
 Mr. Kidgell and his ministerial coadjutors were the 
 real disseminators of this obscenity. Had they 
 merely brought forward the " Essay on Woman," and 
 appealed to the morality of the country, to place no 
 public confidence in a man who avowed such senti- 
 
 • Cliiircliill, in liis poem of Aiidwhilst he rails at blasplicmy 
 
 " The Autlior," alluding to this bhtsphenies." 
 
 pamphlet, says of Kidgell, he f '• iN'arrative of a scandalous, 
 
 obscene, and exceedingly profane 
 '• Most lusciously declaims 'gainst libel, entitled ' An Essay on \No- 
 luscious themes, man,'"p. U.
 
 42 
 
 THE IIISTOIIY OF rAUTY. 
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 CHAP, ments, their conduct, whatever success it might have 
 obtained, would have been at least strai^httbrward. 
 But when the notorious profligate Lord Saville came 
 forward as the conservator of public morals, and when 
 it was pretended that religion and morality were about 
 to flill before thirteen copies of an indecent poem, 
 every one saw the hypocrisy ; none doubted that it was 
 the politician and not the poet that was aimed at ; and 
 although all men detested Wilkes in his private cha- 
 racter, many, even of the most virtuous, thought that 
 he was still to be defended. The Whigs saw that, 
 under the cover of the odium of Wilkes's private vices, 
 the Tories were advancing to attack the liberty of the 
 subject and the privileges of the commons. 
 
 Although it had been solemnly decided by the 
 court of common pleas that the parliamentary pri- 
 vilege from arrest extended to cases of libel, the 
 commons were called upon by the ministry to pass a 
 declaratory resolution against any such privilege, and 
 after a debate of two days such a resolution was 
 carried. Of the speeches dehvered upon this occa- 
 sion, Mr. Pitt's is the only one which has come 
 down to us. Pitt founded his opposition upon the 
 ground that such a surrender of the privilege of par- 
 liament would be highly dangerous to the freedom 
 of parliament, and an infringement of the rights of 
 the people. Whenever, he said, complaint was made 
 against a member, the house could give him up : the
 
 A.D. 1763. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY'. 43 
 
 privilege, although reposed in parliament for ages, had CHAP, 
 never been abused. ^Miy then was it to be voted 
 away ? Why was every member who did not vote 
 with the minister to be put under a perpetual terror 
 of imprisonment ? For Wilkes and his writings, he 
 attempted no defence. He condemned the whole 
 series of " North Britons," and called them illiberal, 
 unmanly, and detestable. He repudiated all con- 
 nexion with their author, whom he called the blas- 
 phemer of his God and the libeller of his king : but 
 he declared that having condemned the libel, it was 
 neither consistent with the honour and safety of par- 
 liament, nor with the rights and interests of the 
 people, to go one step further ; the rest belonged 
 to the courts below. The 'house, however, readily 
 agreed to cover the ministerial error by a renun- 
 ciation of their privileges. The resolution passed by a 
 majority of two hundred and fifty-eight to one hun- 
 dred and thirty- three, and the lords concurred.* 
 
 The Whigs appear, upon this occasion, to have 
 acted upon constitutional grounds. The object 
 of the privilege of parliament was to protect its 
 
 • But not until after a long de- The Duke of Newcastle refused 
 
 bate and a protest from the mino- to sign the protest on account of 
 
 rity. Earl Temple led the opposi- his friend, Lord Harwicke, who 
 
 tion, but the only speech which had declared his opinion against 
 
 remains, is that of Lord Lyttclton, privilege. — Hhlory of the M'mo- 
 
 which was afterwards published rity, p. 240. 
 with his lordship's corrections.
 
 A.D. 1763. 
 
 41- IHK msTOUV OV PAKTV. 
 
 CHAP, members from the power of the crown, not to 
 
 II. 
 
 give impunity either to libellers or debtors ; the 
 
 power was given to meet extraordinary occasions, 
 and should be dormant except when such occasions 
 present themselves. The privileges of parliament dis- 
 creetly exercised, are invaluable safeguards of the 
 constitution, and should never be resigned. It is 
 only in their abuse that they can be found injurious 
 to the subject, and the abuse can readily be remedied 
 without renouncino^ the right. 
 
 During the debates upon the North Briton, many 
 members who had been attacked in that journal, 
 took the opportunity of retaliating upon the author. 
 Among others, Mr. Samuel Martin, who had been se- 
 cretary to the treasury under the Duke of Newcastle 
 and Lord Bute, speaking of the writer of the North 
 Briton, said that whoever he was that, without a name 
 and in the dark, was mean enough to stab another 
 man's reputation, was a coward and a malignant scoun- 
 drel. Wilkes, who did not want personal courage, 
 despatched a note to Martin, avowing the authorship, 
 and in the duel which ensued was severely wounded. 
 This event caused some delay in the proceedings of 
 the house, and, at the adjournment for the Christmas 
 recess, Wilkes was still unable to appear in his place.* 
 
 « Adolphus's Rcigii of George the Third. History ol the Mino- 
 rity, 5' c
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 45 
 
 Meanwhile his actions against those who had ar- chap. 
 rested him were in progress. The proceedings 
 ao-ainst Lord Egrremont had abated by his death: 
 those against Lord Halifax were delayed by various 
 exertions of privilege, and even by standing out in 
 contempt of court. The action against Wood was 
 tried, and Chief Justice Pratt now solemnly decided 
 that the general warrant upon which he was arrested 
 was invalid. A verdict was returned for 1000/. da- 
 masres, and verdicts for various amounts were also 
 returned against the messengers who had executed 
 the warrant. 
 
 But althouofh AMlkes was thus successful, and 
 although his popularity was so great, that the city 
 authorities, assisted by two hundred constables, had 
 found it impossible to execute the order for burning 
 the North Briton,* yet he had before him a prospect 
 that might daunt the boldest spirit. There was a 
 prosecution against him in the King's Bench for the 
 North Briton, and another for the Essay on Woman, 
 and there sat Lord Mansfield from whom he could 
 expect neither sympathy or mercy. He had ar- 
 rayed against him, also, the personal resentment of 
 the king, and the indignant votes of the lords. The 
 commons were only waiting until he could obey their 
 
 • See the testimony given be- agree that the paper was not en- 
 fore tho hovise. Tlie witnesses tirely burnt — /'^/r/. //;>/. , vol. xv.
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 i-6 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, siiminons, to pronounce their fiat of expulsion. Had 
 ^V likes been animated by a genuine enthusiasm for 
 the cause he had espoused, he would have braved 
 the storm, and perhaps found an equipoise to his 
 sufferings in the popular sympathy. But as he w^as 
 merely acting a part, he saw all the real terrors of 
 the approaching prosecutions, and resolved to with- 
 draw. A few days after the adjournment for the 
 recess, being sufficiently recovered to travel, he set 
 out for Paris. 
 
 Upon the reassembling of the house in January, 
 all further adjournment was refused, and some evi- 
 dence of the authorship of the libel having been 
 given at the bar, Wilkes was unanimously expelled 
 the house. A subsequent motion to declare the 
 illegality of general warrants occasioned great dis- 
 cussion ; the resolution was narrowed by many 
 amendments, and at length met by an adjournment ; 
 which was carried by a slender majority of two 
 hundred and thirty-two against two hundred and 
 eighteen.* 
 
 • Many desertions were of mission, and other appointments 
 
 course necessary thus to swell the The opposition exclaimed very 
 
 minority, and, among others of vehemently against this abuse of 
 
 their supporters, General Conway patronage, and Horace Walpole 
 
 voted against ministers upon this wrote his " Address to the Public 
 
 occasion. For this he was shortly on the Dismissal of a General 
 
 afterwards deprived of his com- Officer ;" but the practice had
 
 A.D. 1764. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. '1'7 
 
 The conduct of ministers throuprhout this business CHAP. 
 
 II. 
 was violent and hasty. It was neither dignified nor 
 
 constitutional to prejudge by the votes of the two 
 houses of parhament a question which was in the 
 course of judicature by one of the ordinary courts. 
 Nor was it in accordance with an Enghshman's ideas 
 of justice, to condemn and punish a man upon un- 
 sworn testimony, without allowing time for obtaining 
 the opinion of a grand jury, or waiting until a process 
 of outlawry had issued. The whole proceedings bear 
 the stamp of vindictiveness ; and the worthlessness 
 of the person injured is no palliation to the in- 
 justice.* 
 
 been too constant with both fac- torney-general, coarsely told the 
 
 tions to render this a legitimate house, that upon such a subject 
 
 topic of party indignation. he should value their resolution 
 
 • In the debate on the subject no more than that of a parcel of 
 
 of the legality of general war- drunken porters.— See the pam- 
 
 rants, the ministerial orators were phlets of the time, particularly the 
 
 prompt to discover the incon- letter upon libels and general war- 
 
 venience of the house of com- rants, attributed to tlic Earl of 
 
 mons debating a point of law. Temple. 
 Sir Fletcher Norton, the at-
 
 48 Tnt; history of i'auty. 
 
 A.D. 17G4. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Grenville project for taxing America — The Stamp act — Bio- 
 graphical anecdotes of Charles Townshend — Debate on the Stamp 
 act — Dissolution of the Grenville and formation of the Rockingham 
 administration — Biographical anecdotes of Edmund Burke — Repeal 
 of the Stamp act — Dissolution of tlie Rockingham administration. 
 
 CHAP ^^ come now to the contemplation of a project 
 
 ^^" of the Grenville administration far more eventful in 
 its consequences than the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes. 
 
 Mr. Grenville's experience of the unpopularity of 
 the cider excise had taught him the impossibility of 
 laying on new taxes in a time of peace, and he looked 
 around for some device by which the public expen- 
 diture might be met. With the common error of a 
 weak politician, he immediately turned his atten- 
 tion to the distant Americans, as a people whose 
 taxation would be highly productive, and whose com-
 
 A.D. 17G4. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 49 
 
 plaints would hardly be heard in St. Stephen's. In chap. 
 
 III. 
 the committee of ways and means, therefore, a 
 
 series of resolutions was proposed, imposing va- 
 rious duties upon imports, and making other 
 arrangements which had always hitherto been 
 submitted to by the colonists under the title of 
 regulations of trade. 
 
 But among these resolutions lurked one of far 
 more comprehensive import. By the 14th, it was 
 resolved, *' That towards further defraying the said 
 expenses, it may be proper to charge certain stamp 
 duties in the said colonies and plantations." A bold 
 assumption of the British parliament to levy a tax 
 upon British subjects who were not represented 
 within its walls. 
 
 As ordinary measures of finance, these resolutions 
 attracted little notice, and no opposition ; the reso- 
 lution to impose a stamp duty is said to have passed 
 late at night, at the rising of the house,* when pro- 
 bably few members heard, and still fewer understood, 
 the fjuestion put. Having carried his resolutions, 
 the minister deferred until next session the measure 
 he intended to found u})on them ; and the king, in 
 proroguing th(; parliament, congratulated the nation 
 upon the wise regulations which had been esta- 
 blished to augment the public revenues, to unite the 
 
 * Letter on I.ibols and W arr.infs. 
 
 vol.. rn. !•:
 
 A. D. 17(34. 
 
 60 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, interests of the most distant })OSsessioiis of the 
 crown, and to secure their commerce with Great 
 Britain.* The parHament remained prorogued until 
 January of the following year. 
 
 Meanwhile the arrival of the parliamentary reso- 
 lutions in America, diffused consternation throughout 
 the colonies. The restrictions which Eno^land had 
 been accustomed to impose for the aggrandizement 
 of her own commerce were already found sufficiently 
 burdensome ; but this novel attempt was looked upon 
 as the commencement of a system of taxation which 
 was to be gradually extended to every article of 
 commerce. t The American colonists were not 
 sprung from a race accustomed to suffer in silence. 
 The gloomy puritans who had sought in the depth 
 of the everlasting forest, a refuge from the regal and 
 episcopal tyranny of Charles I., had bequeathed to 
 their descendants their fanaticism and their inde- 
 pendence. The doctrines of freedom which had 
 been advancing slowly and silently in Europe, had 
 been the creed of generations in the new world. 
 Upon receiving notice of England's intention to levy 
 
 * Pari. Hist., vol. XV., col. 1434. taincd a seat in parliament. — 
 
 f It is said that the scheme of Gordon's American Revolution, vol. 
 
 taxing the Americans was first i., p. 157. Hushe may have made 
 
 suggested by an American named such a suggestion, but the idea 
 
 Hushe, who, having acquired a was much older ; the proposal 
 
 fortune in his native colony, had was made to Sir Robert Walpole, 
 
 come to England, and had ob- who peremptorily rejected it.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 51 
 
 a tax, they boldly inquired her right, and argued chap. 
 it in a manner which showed they would submit only 
 
 A.D. 1764. 
 
 to conviction that such a right existed. The colonies 
 severally met in their councils of domestic legisla- 
 tion, and forwarded protests and remonstrances to 
 the British parliament, and commissioned agents to 
 represent their sentiments. The populace was in 
 the highest state of excitement, and every hamlet in 
 the wilderness sent forth its indignant cry against 
 the purposed tyranny. Those who appealed to the 
 justice of the mother country, urged that the claim 
 was as unfounded, as the manner in which it was 
 attempted to be enforced was tyrannical. The 
 colonies, they said, taxed themselves : during the 
 late war they had made great exertions in a quarrel, 
 which was national between England and France ; 
 and had contracted debts which they were still bound 
 to pay. As the monopolist of her commerce, 
 England was already vastly benefited by her con- 
 nexion with America, and protection in time of war 
 was the least recompence which could be given for 
 such advantafrc. No benefit could accrue to them 
 from prolonged tranquillity, or successful war, but 
 what would be a source of ultimate profit to Eng- 
 land. America, therefore, oweil to England no- 
 thing, but the obligation of having sent forth her 
 first colonists — an obligation of much too equivocal 
 a nature to bear a close inspection. Such wcw the
 
 A. D. 17G4. 
 
 50 THE insTOUY or tart v. 
 
 CHAT, interests of tlio most distant possessions of the 
 crown, and to secure their commerce with Great 
 Britain.* The parliament remained prorogued until 
 January of the following year. 
 
 Meanwhile the arrival of the parliamentary reso- 
 lutions in America, diffused consternation throughout 
 the colonics. The restrictions which England had 
 been accustomed to impose for the aggrandizement 
 of her own commerce were already found sufficiently 
 burdensome ; but this novel attem})t was looked upon 
 as the commencement of a system of taxation which 
 was to be gradually extended to every article of 
 commerce.t The American colonists were not 
 sprung from a race accustomed to suffer in silence. 
 The gloomy puritans who had sought in the depth 
 of the everlasting forest, a refuge from the regal and 
 episcopal tyranny of Charles I., had bequeathed to 
 their descendants their fanaticism and their inde- 
 pendence. The doctrines of freedom which had 
 been advancing slowly and silently in Europe, had 
 been the creed of generations in the new world. 
 Upon receiving notice of England's intention to levy 
 
 * Pari. Hist,, vol. XV., col. 1434, tained a seat in parliament. — 
 
 f It is said that the scheme of Gordon's American Revolution, vol. 
 
 taxing the Americans was first i,, p. 157. Ilushe may have made 
 
 suggested by an American named such a suggestion, but the idea 
 
 Hushe, who, having acquired a was much older ; the proposal 
 
 fortune in his native colony, had was made to Sir Robert Walpole, 
 
 come to England, and had ob- who peremptorily rejected it.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 51 
 
 a tax, they boldly inquired her right, and argued chap. 
 it in a manner which showed they would submit only '- 
 
 . r . A.D. 17G4. 
 
 to conviction that such a right existed. The colonies 
 severally met in their councils of domestic legisla- 
 tion, and forwarded protests and remonstrances to 
 the British parliament, and commissioned agents to 
 represent their sentiments. The populace was in 
 the highest state of excitement, and every hamlet in 
 the wilderness sent forth its indignant cry against 
 the purposed tyranny. Those who appealed to the 
 justice of the mother country, urged that the claim 
 was as unfounded, as the manner in which it was 
 attempted to be enforced was tyrannical. The 
 colonies, they said, taxed themselves : during the 
 late war they had made great exertions in a quarrel, 
 which was national between England and France ; 
 and had contracted debts which they were still bound 
 to pay. As the monopolist of her commerce, 
 England was already vastly benefited by her con- 
 nexion with America, and protection in time of wai- 
 was the least recompcncc which could be given for 
 such advantag-e. No benefit could accrue to them 
 from prolonged tranfjuillity, or successful war, but 
 what would be a source of ultimate profit to Eng- 
 land. America, therefore, owed to England no- 
 thing, but the obligation of ha\ing sent forth her 
 first colonists — an obligation of much too equivocal 
 a nature to bear a close inspection. Such were the 
 
 E 'Z
 
 5^2 
 
 THE III STORY OT PAllTV. 
 
 A.D. 17ti3. 
 
 CHAP, arouinents used by tho Ainoricans, and enforced by 
 
 in- 1 . / 
 
 then- a^jents in Enoland. 
 
 Early in the session of 17^>''5, the threatened bill 
 was introduced. But although the agents for the 
 colonies had appealed to the nation against the im- 
 position, no firm array of Whigs ap})earcd to resist 
 the contemplated tyranny. The great commoner 
 was confined to his chamber, and the Whigs in this 
 house of commons were by no means numerous. 
 But the subserviency of the house of commons is 
 not to be thus accounted for. A better solution of 
 the silence of the Whigs is, that the contemplated 
 system of American taxation was highly popular in 
 England. Englishmen, galled by the burdensome 
 imposts which they bore at home, looked upon the 
 minister as the discoverer of an unknown mine of 
 wealth. *' In England," testifies an eyewitness,* " we 
 cried out for new taxes on America ; whilst they 
 cried out that they were nearly crushed with those 
 which the w^ar and their own grants had brought 
 upon them " From the same authority we receive 
 a general account of the debates upon this bill. 
 Recurring to the subject, some years afterwards, 
 Mr. Burke said in the house of commons, "As to 
 the fact of a strenuous opposition to the Stamp act, 
 I sat as a stranger in your gallery when the act was 
 
 ♦ Burke's Speech on American Taxation.
 
 A.D. 1765. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 53 
 
 under consideration. Far from any thing- inflam- CHAP. 
 
 . . . ni. 
 
 matory, I never heard a more languid debate in this - 
 
 house. No more than two or three gentlemen, as I 
 remember, spoke against the act, and that with great 
 reser^'e and remarkable temper. There was but one 
 division in the whole progress of the bill, and the 
 minority did not reach to more than thirty-nine or 
 forty. In the house of lords I do not recollect that 
 there was any debate or division at all : I am sure 
 there was no protest. In fact, the affair passed with 
 so ver}', very little noise, that in town they scarcely 
 knew the nature of what you were doing."* 
 
 The most eloquent among the supporters of the 
 present ministry and their new measure was Charles 
 Townshend. He was the second son of the third 
 Viscount Townshend, and had entered parliament, 
 in 171<7, as a Whig. He had already served 
 under Pitt in the great struggle for a national 
 militia, and, afterwards, when his brother was 
 chosen by his leader to accomplish the work, 
 Charles cordially assisted. He had, under the 
 Pitt administration, held several subordinate ap- 
 pointments ; but, upon the dissolution of the Whig 
 cabinet, the offer of the post of secretary at war 
 gained him to the Earl of Bute. Under the 
 Grcnville administration he held the office of first 
 
 * r^urke's Speech on Amfricari Taxation.
 
 541 THE niSTOIlY Ol- PARTY. 
 
 CHAi'. lord ot'trado and the ijlantatioiis, a situation which 
 
 III. 
 
 — identitiod him with the question before the house.* 
 
 A. D. 1765. 
 
 The versatiUty of Townshend's pohtical conduct 
 had deservedly obtained for him the appellation of 
 the weathercock. The extent of his powers must 
 be judged from a quotation from that specimen of elo- 
 quence in which Burke has embalmed his memory, 
 and from which every other sketch has been borrowed. 
 In his recapitulation of the policy of England towards 
 America, and of the characters of the statesmen by 
 whom that policy had been directed, the orator, closing 
 his eulogium upon Lord Chatham, says, *' Then, sir, 
 even before this splendid orb was entirely set, and 
 while the western horizon was in a blaze with his 
 descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the 
 heavens arose another luminary, and for his hour be- 
 came lord of the ascendant. 
 
 *' This light too is passed and set for ever ; you 
 understand, to be sure, that I am speaking of Charles 
 Townshend, whom I cannot even now remember with- 
 out some degree of sensibility. In truth, sir, he was 
 the delight and ornament of this house, and the charm 
 of every private society which he honoured with his 
 presence. Perhaps there never arose in this country, 
 nor in any country, a man of more pointed and finished 
 wit ; and, where his passions were not concerned, of a 
 
 • (ollins's Peerage, by Sir E. Brydges.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 55 
 
 more refined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment. If chap. 
 he had not so PTeat a stock as some have had who — 
 
 ° A. D. 1765. 
 
 flourished formerly, of knowledge long treasured up, 
 he knew better, by far, than any man I ever was ac- 
 quainted with, how to bring together, within a short 
 time, all that was necessary to establish, illustrate, 
 and to decorate that side of the question he supported. 
 He stated his matter skilfully and powerfully ; he 
 particularly excelled in a most luminous explanation 
 and display of his subject ; his style of argument was 
 neither trite and vulgar nor subtle and abstruse ; he 
 hit the house just between wind and water ; and, not 
 being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter 
 in question, he was never more tedious or more 
 earnest than the preconceived opinions and present 
 temper of his hearers required, to whom he was 
 always in perfect unison. He conformed exactly to 
 the temper of the house ; and he seemed to guide 
 because he was always sure to follow it." Charles 
 To%\Tishend was apparently what Lord Carteret had 
 been, a man of great genius without political prin- 
 ciple, a beautiful vessel without ballast, driven aside 
 from her a})pointcd course by every breath that shook 
 her sails. The motives which influenced Carteret 
 and Townshend were different ; the former sought 
 power and emolument, the latter was ruled by a pas- 
 sion for j)reserving, under all clianges, and in every 
 conjuncture, the admiration and support oftheuia-
 
 6(] 
 
 Tllli IIISTOKV or i'.VKTV 
 
 CHAP, jority in the house of commons. They differed in 
 their ruhng desires ; but the cause that rendered 
 
 A.D. I7'j3. ' . ,^ . 
 
 their desires their rule of conduct was in each 
 
 the same. 
 
 Upon the present occasion Townshend supported 
 Mr. Grenville ; conckiding a piece of declamation 
 which he probably did not expect to hear answered, 
 with the question, '* And these Americans, children 
 planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence, 
 protected by our arms until they are grown to a good 
 degree of strength and opulence, will they grudge to 
 contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy 
 load of national expense which we He under ?" 
 
 The sole opposition to the bill at this stage was a 
 reply of Colonel Barre, which would seem to have pro- 
 duced rather more effect both within and without the 
 house, than the description of the debate given by Mr. 
 Burke would appear to imply. It probably, however, 
 was read with more attention than it was heard. 
 Those who are in the habit of listening to the de- 
 bates in the house of commons know that the most 
 eloquent harangue would sound tame and languid 
 amid the marked inattention and continual conver- 
 sation of an unwilling audience. 
 
 Colonel Barre, after arguing the question, applied 
 himself particularly to the concluding words of Charles 
 Town shend's speech . * ' Thet/, planted hy your care f " 
 he said. '* No, your oppressions planted them in
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 57 
 
 America. They fled from your tyranny to a then CHAP, 
 uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they •— -— 
 
 ^ -^ •' A. D. 1763. 
 
 exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to 
 which human nature is liable ; and, among others, to 
 the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I 
 will take upon me to say, the most formidable of any 
 people upon God's earth ; and yet, actuated by prin- 
 ciples of true English liberty, they met all hardships 
 with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in 
 their own country from the hands of those that should 
 have been their friends. Tliey, nourished by your 
 indulgence ? They grew by your neglect of them. 
 As soon as you began to care about them, that care was 
 exercised in sending persons to rule them, who were, 
 perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members of 
 this house — sent to spy out their liberties, to misre- 
 present their actions, to prey upon them — men, whose 
 behaviour, on many occasions, has caused the blood 
 of these sons of Hberty to recoil within them — men 
 promoted to the highest seats of justice ; some of 
 whom, to my knowledge, were glad, by going to a 
 foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of 
 a court of justice in their own. They protected hjf 
 your finns ? They have nobly taken up amis in 
 your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their 
 constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a 
 country whose frontier was drenciied in 1)1()0(1, while 
 its interior parts yiel(l«'(l all it.-, little savings to your
 
 THE lIlSTOIiy OF TARTY. 
 
 CHAP, cnioliiiiient ; and, believe me — remember I this day 
 111. 
 
 - told you so — that same spirit of freedom which 
 
 A. D. 1705. 
 
 actuated that peo})le at first, will accompany them still 
 — prudence forbids me to say more. God knows I 
 do not at this time speak from motives of party heat ; 
 what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart. 
 However superior to me in general knowledge and 
 experience the respectable body of this house may 
 be, yet I claim to know more of America than most 
 of you, having seen and been conversant with that 
 country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal 
 as any subjects the king has ; but a people jealous of 
 their liberties, and who will vindicate them if ever 
 they should be violated."* 
 
 Such is the most perfect version of a speech which 
 is known only from the reports transmitted by the 
 American agents to their constituents. Upon the 
 second reading of the bill petitions were offered against 
 it from the London merchants, as well as fi-om the 
 colonies. The minister, however, urged the stand- 
 ing order of the house, that no petition should be 
 
 * Gordon's History of the Ame- curtailed. The circumstance of 
 
 rican Revolution, vol. i., p. 160. our deriving our knowledge of this 
 
 The account given of tliis debate debate from the Americans, is 
 
 in the Parliamentary History is strongly illustrative of the fact 
 
 meager and incorrect. The speech that the decision was an object of 
 
 of Charles Townshend is there intense interest in America, but 
 
 attributed to Mr. Grenville, and of little or none in London, 
 that of Colonel Barre considerably
 
 A. D. 1765. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 59 
 
 received against a money bill, and they were not CHAP, 
 received. General Conway and Alderman Beckford, 
 two men who, in the present disorganized state of the 
 Whig party, were conspicuous as occasional leaders,* 
 now, for the first time, denied the power of parliament 
 to tax the colonies. The minister broadly and boldly 
 asserted the right, and a large majority of the house 
 supported him. The bill then passed. Thus was 
 America lost to England. 
 
 Mr. Grenville and his colleagues held their offices 
 by the tenure of an entire obedience to the courtiers. 
 Hitherto the two sections of the party, the king's 
 friends at court and the king's friends in the cabinet 
 had agreed ; but disputes now occurred upon the dis- 
 tribution of the patronage, of which the courtiers were 
 inclined to claim an unreasonable share, and some 
 differences of opinion arose as to the terms of the 
 Regency bill, which the king's recent illness had ren- 
 dered necessary. Stormy discussions had also taken 
 I)lace in the cabinet ; the ministers had sometimes 
 been intemperate in their remonstrances, and the 
 
 • General Conway had sup- adverse vote he declared to a mi- 
 ported ministers upon every occa- nistor that he was not, nor in- 
 sion previously to tiic vote upon tended to he engaged in opposition, 
 general warrants. He had voted — Ilhtoryoftltc Mimritij. — Seethe 
 for the cider excise, and had j)rocccdiiigs in the commons upon 
 srvcnil times stood up to speak this olficer's dismission. — Pari. 
 .-igaitisl Wilkes, and even after \\\s Hist., vol. xvi., col. 66.
 
 A.D. 1765. 
 
 ()0 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Duke of Bedford had, upon one occasion, offered a 
 
 111. 
 
 a gross personal insult to his sovereign. 
 
 It was resolved, therefore, that Mr. Grenville 
 should be dismissed ; and the Earl of Bute applied to 
 the Duke of Cumberland for assistance to form a 
 government which might enjoy some public confi- 
 dence. The duke, who had been throughout his 
 life connected with the Whig party, applied to Lord 
 Temple, but without success ; and afterwards to Mr. 
 Pitt, The great commoner answered that he had no 
 objection to go to St. James's if he could carry the con- 
 stitution with him ; but, upon descending to details, 
 it was found impossible to accommodate his demands 
 with the continuance of the court influence. The 
 existing ministry was then applied to, but Grenville 
 and his coadjutors now required complete emancipa- 
 tion from the sway of the Earl of Bute, and power to 
 conduct the government. These demands were 
 deemed inadmissible : recourse was again had to the 
 Duke of Cumberland, who now opened a negotiation 
 with the Duke of Newcastle. This ancient Whis: 
 leader, although his shadow now fell upon his grave, 
 was still greedy of power : he readily entertained the 
 proposition, and exerted his utmost influence to ob- 
 viate difficulties, and to reconcile differences. He 
 was at leng-th successful : the event was the forma- 
 tion of the Rockingham administration ; constructed, 
 not from that portion of the now disunited Whig
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 6l 
 
 party which stood highest in principle and popularity, chap. 
 but containing, nevertheless, elements of better go- - 
 vernment, and giving promise of the prevention of 
 the civil war which was now upon the point of burst- 
 ing forth. 
 
 In this cabinet the Marquis of Rockingham was 
 first lord of the treasury. General Conway was secre- 
 tary of state and leader of the house of commons,* 
 having- the Duke of Grafton as his colleague in the 
 secretaryship. The Duke of Newcastle was lord 
 privy seal. 
 
 Neither Pitt nor the Earl of Temple approved of 
 the new cabinet ; they thought that the Pelham 
 Whigs had seized upon the first occasion to recover 
 office, without stipulating for a change of measures 
 or destroying the power of the favourite ; they knew 
 them to be the Pelham Whigs of George II.'s 
 reign ; and, although their recent opposition had 
 aroused among them the fire of their party principle, 
 Pitt doubted whether it would not be extinguished at 
 the door of the cabinet. 
 
 Upon reviewing their strength the Newcastle 
 phalanx found that, during the few years they had 
 been in opposition, great ravages lind boon made in 
 their ranks. In subordinates they were especially 
 deficient ; of these, some had risen to the rank of 
 
 • History of the Minority. Life ofthr Karl of ( hatha 
 
 in.
 
 111. 
 
 A.D. 17G5. 
 
 6'2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, loaders ; but the far greater number were to be seen 
 in the camp of the enemy. Scarehing for adherents 
 wlio should compensate these losses, the heads of this 
 administration introduced upon the stage of public 
 life one of the most extraordinary of those highly- 
 o-iftcd men who were now about to rise, and ex- 
 tinguish, by their brilliancy, the waning luminaries 
 of this generation. The recommendation of several 
 fi'iends had made known to the Marquis of Rocking- 
 ham the name of Edmund Burke ; he was appointed 
 private secretary to that nobleman. 
 
 Edmund Burke, born on the 1st of January, 1730, 
 was a younger son of an eminent Dublin attorney. 
 A delicate and apparently consumptive constitution 
 debarred him, when in childhood, from the robust 
 sports of his brothers, and condemned him to solitude 
 and thought.* In his twelfth year he was sent to a 
 school at Ballitore, which was established by the 
 quakers, and became famous for the number of illus- 
 trious men whom it sent forth. Here he evinced 
 great readiness and perseverance ; he mastered the 
 rudiments of the classics with a facility which left 
 him leisure for other and, to his boyish taste, more 
 
 * This was not forgotten in plaiise which followed his brother's 
 
 after years. " I cannot think," eloquence, " how lie has contrived 
 
 soliloquized Richard Burke, as he to monopolize all the talent of 
 
 sat in the house of commons and the family ; — but he was always at 
 
 listened to tlic enthusiastic ap- work when we were at play."
 
 III. 
 
 A. D. 1765. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. (jS 
 
 congenial studies. History and poetry were not chap. 
 avoided, but the old romances, Palmerin of England, - 
 Don Belianis of Greece, and others, such as these, 
 were temptations which could at any time draw him 
 from his study or his sport.* From Ballitore he, in 
 1744, was removed to Trinity College, Dublin, 
 where he was looked upon as a young man of supe- 
 rior, but unpretending talents, more anxious to 
 acquire than to display knowledge. His assiduity 
 and regularity were rewarded with a scholarship. 
 
 While at the university, Burke declared his poli- 
 tical sentiments by some letters in which he ridiculed 
 Dr. Lucas, in his day so eminent as an Irish patriot, 
 and Brooke, the author of Gustavus Vasa, who was 
 as an author equally in favour with the patriot party, 
 and whom Burke, in allusion to the reported rapi- 
 dity of his composition, satirized as Diabetes. Thus 
 it appears, that from his youth, Burke attached him- 
 self to Newcastle's section of moderate or aristocratic 
 Whigs. These performances attracted no attention, 
 and are only known from the reports of his friends. 
 
 Edmund was intended by his father for the bar, 
 and having graduated at Trinity, he left Dublin for 
 London, where he became a member of the Middle 
 Temj)lc. 
 
 • Here is tlic germ of that siicli gdigcDusiicss to tlic ilo- 
 imaginativc faculty which gave (|ucncc of the man.
 
 A. D. 17G5. 
 
 64 THE HISTOHY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Hitherto Edmund Burke had obtained only the 
 
 III. . , . . 
 
 rejiutation of a respectable mediocrity, and had been 
 
 outstrip[)cd, both at school and college, by many 
 unremembercd examples of precocious talent. His 
 comparative obscurity at college may be readily 
 accounted for. Burke, although far from being blind 
 to the beauties of the classic writers of Greece and 
 Rome, and although well appreciating the pleasure 
 and the profit to be derived from their learning, their 
 sentiment, and their language, was rather careful to 
 enjoy their beauties and imbibe their spirit, than to 
 spend his energies in settling a disputed passage, or 
 encumber his memory with their various readings. 
 He extended his studies beyond the classics, de- 
 scended into modern history, expatiated in the fields 
 of science, wandered in the regions of romance, 
 delivered criticisms upon Milton, and even himself 
 perpetrated some poetry. No mortal genius could, 
 in the short time of a college course of education, 
 become proficient in all these studies, and the uni- 
 versities offer no rewards for multifarious mediocrity. 
 In London, Burke continued his reading, and 
 found congenial minds. His mornings were devoted 
 to arduous study, his evenings were spent in con- 
 versation. Several years were thus passed, during 
 which the student laid up stores of general, but very 
 little legal knowledge. Why he neglected his ap- 
 pointed profession we are not told : it was from no
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 65 
 
 disgust for its studies, for he afterwards spoke CHAP, 
 of it as one of the first and noblest of human 
 
 A.D. 17G5. 
 
 sciences ; *' a science which does more to quicken 
 and invigorate the understanding, than all the other 
 kinds of learning put together."* May he not have 
 doubted his success, or felt impatient of the interval 
 which must elapse before he could expect remu- 
 neration for his labour? Qualified as Burke un- 
 doubtedly w^as to become the first lawyer of the age, 
 such doubts, nevertheless, w^ere not unreasonable. He 
 saw around him many whom he had seen successful 
 and honoured at the university, unkno\^Tl and unem- 
 ployed in the courts of law ; he saw many of these, 
 disgusted at their ill success, turn again to literature. 
 Their success excited his emulation, and literature, 
 at first divided, then absorbed his attention. 
 
 During this period, he formed several designs for 
 his future course ; at one time, he sought the pro- 
 fessorship of logic, at Glasgow ; at another, he con- 
 templated proceeding to America. In his first pur- 
 suit, he was unsuccessful ; the second, was forbidden 
 by his father. His preparation, however, for a con- 
 test for the logic chair, at Cilasgow, gave at the 
 time a direction to his studies, and probably ])ro- 
 duced his " hupiiry into the Origin of our Ideas of 
 the Sublime and Beautiful j" the magnificent result 
 
 • S|)C( rl) (HI Aini'iic'iii 'l":i\;itioii. 
 vol,. IN. F
 
 06 THE HISTORY of party. 
 
 CHAP of the continued and laborious revisions of a juvenile 
 HI. 
 
 - essay. 
 
 A.D. ITU.'i. * • 1 1 1 p 1 • " IT 
 
 Burke now tried the strength oi his wing. He 
 became a contributor to many of the periodicals of 
 the day ; the superiority of his mind was admitted 
 within his own society of templars, and his reputation 
 became extended beyond that circle. Of the drama, 
 he was a devoted admirer, and he soon became 
 conspicuous at the Grecian coffee-house, the com- 
 mon resort of lawyers, authors, and actors. Here 
 he made the acquaintance of Mr. Murphy, who had, 
 at this time, attempted the stage as a profession, and 
 was immediately known to all the dramatic authors, 
 actors, and critics. At Garrick's table he met the 
 first men of the age : at Macklin's debating society 
 he made the first essay of his powers of oratory. In 
 the acquaintance of Miss Woffington he had a still 
 more potential introduction. This lady, whose beauty 
 and vivacity rendered her the Aspasia of the day, 
 was honoured with the applause of poets and the 
 homage of nobility. Her house was the resort of all 
 to whom rank or talent gave the privilege of access ; 
 and as a climax to her honours she had been elected 
 the only female member of the Beef-steak Club. Here 
 Burke was always welcome; and it has been hinted 
 that his intimacy with his fair hostess was more 
 strict than Plato would have advised. At her house 
 he greatly extended his acquaintance, and is said to
 
 A. D. 1765. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 67 
 
 have been introduced and recommended by her to chap. 
 the Duke of Newcastle, who was then prime mi- , 
 nister. The duke, no doubt in accordance with his 
 character, promised much, and had the next minute 
 forgotten that he existed. 
 
 In 1756, Burke published his "Vindication of Na- 
 tural Society ;" an ironical imitation of Bolingbroke's 
 style and argument, which appearing while the world 
 was yet troubled by the appearance of the viscount's 
 philosophical works occasioned some sensation. This 
 tract was published anonymously, as the nature of 
 the composition required, and could give no imme- 
 diate reputation to its author. 
 
 In a few months the philosophical " Inquiry into 
 our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" followed, and 
 at once established Edmund Burke's fame. He was 
 now admitted as an equal in the circle where the 
 most celebrated authors of the day shone. But he 
 did not long enjoy his celebrity. A fit of illness, 
 induced by study, or by his constitutional delicacy, 
 com})elled him to resort to Bath, from the waters of 
 which city he had before found benefit. Here he 
 met with his countryman and acquaintance. Dr. 
 Nugent, who enjoyed considerable reputation and 
 practice as a physician, and who invited Burke to 
 take up his residence at his house. Dr. Nugent had 
 a daughter ; and the result of the daily intercourse 
 between the young })eople was a mutual attachment
 
 A. D. 17Gj- 
 
 08 TIIK IIISTOHY OF rAUTY. 
 
 CHAP, and a speedy marriat'i'e. This connexion was highly 
 fortunate. Amid the turmoil of political contention, 
 disgusted by neglect, fretful from defeat, or jaded by 
 study, how oflen does the man of genius require some 
 pillow upon which his ambition and his hopes may 
 sleep ; some oasis in the waste, girded by a circle 
 which they cannot pass ! Burke had this refuge in 
 his home. There he ever found one who would 
 cheer him in his despondency, and exult with him in 
 his fortune ; one whose mind was capable of com- 
 munion with his own, whose love was idolatry, and 
 whose welcome was always unclouded. Burke was 
 accustomed to say, that ** every care vanished the 
 moment he entered under his own roof."* 
 
 Dr. Nugent accompanied his daughter to London, 
 and they resided together in Wimpole-street ; an 
 arrangement very advantageous to Burke, whose 
 resources were but a slender allowance from his 
 father, in addition to the emolument he derived from 
 
 * A character of Mrs. Burke it is a beauty not arising from 
 written by her husband is preserved features, from complexion, or 
 in Prior's Life of Burke, vol. i., p. from shape. She has all three in 
 62,with the title or"'rheldeaof a a higher degree ; but it is not by 
 Perfect Wife." It vi^as presented these she touches an heart; it is 
 by the husband on an anniver- all that sweetness of temper, 
 sary of his marriage ; and is, of benevolence, innocence, and sen- 
 course, a specimen of brilliant siblity, which a face can express, 
 eulogy. Take the first descriptive that forms her beauty." 
 ])assage : — "She is handsomi% l)iit
 
 A. D. 17G5. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 69 
 
 his connexion with the periodicals, and his editor- CHAP. 
 
 . III. 
 
 ship of Dodsley's Annual Register. 
 
 Burke's powers of abstract philosophical specu- 
 lation were made known by his first avowed pro- 
 duction ; his conversational ability was tested by that 
 great dictator over tea-tables, Johnson. They met 
 at Garrick's, and those who sat around were asto- 
 nished ; first, at the boldness of the man who dared to 
 dispute with Johnson, but still more to see the great 
 lexicographer submit to contradiction. But a greater 
 than Johnson was there. The doctor felt the pre- 
 sence of a superior genius, and found himself ex- 
 celled in his own peculiar excellence. Johnson was 
 too proud and too able, to feel jealous : he every where 
 celebrated the powers of the young Irishman, and 
 continued ever after to regard him with the highest 
 admiration. " Don't let Burke up," was Johnson's 
 injunction when he was ill. *' That fellow calls forth all 
 my powers; if I were to see him now it would kill me." 
 
 Johnson's remark is well known, that if you met 
 Burke for the first time in the street where you were 
 stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped 
 aside for shelter, he'd talk to you in such a manner 
 that when you parted, you would say, ** This is an 
 extraordinary man :" it was once remarkably verified. 
 After ]5urk(! Iiad attained the zenitli of his fame, he 
 was trav(?Hing through Lichfield ac('omj)aiiied by a 
 friend ; the plact; was then interesting to Burke as
 
 A. D. 1705. 
 
 '0 THE HISTORY OF TARTY . 
 
 CHAP, tlio birthplace of Johnson, and tlic two travellers 
 III. 
 
 strolled towards the cathedral. One of the canons 
 
 seeing that they were strangers, politely offered to 
 point out the objects most worthy of curiosity. A 
 conversation ensued, but in a few moments the cler- 
 gyman's pride of superior local information was com- 
 pletely subdued by the copious and minute know- 
 ledge displayed by one of the strangers. Whatever 
 topic the object before them suggested, whether the 
 theme was architecture or antiquities, some obscure 
 passage in ecclesiastical history, or some question in 
 the life of an early saint, the stranger touched it as 
 with a sunbeam ; his information appeared uni- 
 versal ; his mind clear intellect without one par- 
 ticle of ignorance. A few minutes after their sepa- 
 ration, the canon was met hurrying through the 
 street. "^ I have had," he said, "quite an adventure ; 
 I have been conversing, for this half-hour past, with 
 a man of the most extraordinary powers of mind and 
 extent of information which it has ever been my for- 
 tune to meet with, and I am now going to the inn, 
 to ascertain, if possible, who this stranger is." 
 
 In I7GI, Burke, through the interest of Lord 
 Charlemont, obtained the office of private secretary 
 to Mr. AMlliam Gerard Hamilton, better known by 
 the name of Single-speech Hamilton, who was then 
 about to set out for Ireland in the capacity of public 
 secretary. This gentleman, who early in life, de-
 
 A. D. 17G5. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 71 
 
 serted Lincoln's-inn for the house of commons, had chap. 
 distinguished himself by one brilHant speech, which 
 obtained for him a reputation that led to his ap- 
 pointment in 1756, as a lord of trade under Lord 
 Halifax. Henceforward he was dumb in the house 
 of commons, and the genuineness of his singular 
 coruscation began to be doubted. Some of those 
 who ridiculed his silence affirmed that Burke had 
 written his celebrated harangue : but Hamilton's 
 laurel-leaf had been plucked before his connexion 
 with Burke had commenced, and notwithstanding 
 the sneers of his contemporaries, it was probably 
 his own. Hamilton was a fop in literature; — one who 
 would not write a note to his most intimate friend 
 without considerable study and careful revision. 
 The speech that had gained him such great ap- 
 plause had doubtless cost him infinite labour to 
 write, to learn, and to practise. Such efforts cannot 
 be frequently made ; and, if made, cannot always be 
 successful. Hamilton had obtained what he souirht 
 — a place. Such a fastidious writer could not hope 
 to be a good extemporaneous speaker ; and as his 
 incai)acity to reply must soon become known, he 
 acted wisely in eschewing oratory altogether. 
 
 Under this gentleman Burke returned to Ireland, 
 and obtained, through his influence, a pension of 300/. 
 a year. This connexion was not of long continuance ; 
 a rupture took place, which Burke, writing to Mr.
 
 A.U. 17G5. 
 
 72 Till-: IIISTOUY OF PAIITY. 
 
 CHAP. Flood, thus describes : ** It is very true that there is 
 111. •' 
 
 an eternal rupture between me and Hamilton. The 
 occasion of our difference was not any act whatsoever 
 on my part ; it was entirely on his ; by a voluntary, 
 but most insolent and intolerable demand, amounting 
 to no less than a claim of servitude during the whole 
 course of my life, without leaving me at any time a 
 power, either of getting forward with honour or retir- 
 ing with tranquillity. This was really and truly the 
 substance of his demand upon me ; to which I need 
 not tell you I refused, with some degree of indigna- 
 tion, to submit. On this we ceased to see each other 
 or to correspond, a good while before you left Lon- 
 don. He then commenced, through the interven- 
 tion of others, a negotiation with me, in which he 
 showed as much of meanness in his proposals as he 
 had done of arrogance in his demands ; but as all 
 these proposals were vitiated by the taint of that ser- 
 vitude with which they were all mixed, his negotiation 
 came to nothing."* 
 
 Burke now offered to resign the pension he en- 
 joyed, since he had obtained it through Hamilton's 
 influence, and that gentleman thought proper to 
 accept his offer : it was assigned to Mr. Hamilton's 
 attorney. 
 
 This paltry conduct of the Irish secretary was pro- 
 
 * Prior's Life ot" Burke, vol. i., p. 1 1.3.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 73 
 
 bably prompted less by avarice than by revenge. He CHAP, 
 felt the stronger genius of his subordinate, and 
 
 111- • -1 1 . ^■^- ^765. 
 
 adopted this petty persecution as a tribute to his 
 
 wounded vanity. 
 
 Burke was now known among the political leaders, 
 and his services in Ireland were appreciated. While 
 pursuing a course of diligent preparation — of daily 
 study of the constitution of the government and the 
 resources of the kingdom, and nightly attendance in 
 the gallery of the house of commons — he was sum- 
 moned to undertake the post of private secretary to 
 the new premier. A seat in parliament was now 
 provided for him. By an agreement with Lord 
 Vcrney, he was returned for Wendover, in Bucking- 
 hamshire, his lordship being, as an equivalent, gazetted 
 a privy councillor. 
 
 In ordinary cases, to a political aspirant, a seat in 
 the house of commons is but the starting-point of his 
 career : to Burke it was a high and long-ambitioned 
 vantage-ground, the acquisition of continued and 
 laborious toil. He had gained the top of the Alp, 
 and although many obstacles still intervened, he 
 could look down upon the prospect before hiin as 
 the Italy of his hopes. 
 
 The new senator did not nnnain silent in the 
 house ; the familiar acquaintanc(; with forms so in- 
 (lispcnsal)h' in a dcbatcn- liad been ac(|uired by him 
 wliilc sifting a stranger in the gallery. Hencetbr- 
 ward hi> deed- belong to history.
 
 A. D. ITtJa. 
 
 71. THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Tlie policy pursued by the Rockingham ministry 
 
 was of a temporizing character, calculated to awaken 
 no enthusiasm either in their friends or their enemies, 
 but rather to lessen the activity of both. As honour- 
 able and independent men they scorned the trammels 
 of the courtiers ; they would not hear of the party 
 which called its members the king's friends ; but 
 made the attempt to break their corps, to discounte- 
 nance their doctrines, and to revive connexions of a 
 different kind ; to restore the principles and policy of 
 the Whigs, and to reanimate the cause of liberty by 
 ministerial countenance.* But there was no energy 
 in the body to effect the intention ; the cabinet was 
 formed from the rear-guard of the Whigs ; men who 
 were timorous and suspicious of their own principles, 
 held them bound in the chains of aristocratic expe- 
 diency and personal interest, and dared not to loose 
 them because they knew not their power or their 
 ultimate tendency. 
 
 This indecision was strikingly manifest upon the 
 American question. They brought forward a bill 
 declaratory of the right of Great Britain to make 
 laws bindingf the British colonies in North America 
 in all cases whatsoever, yet, at the same time, pro- 
 posed to repeal the Stamp act. Thus abandoning 
 the solid advantage, but clinging to the obnoxious 
 principle — shrinking, themselves, from the com- 
 
 • Burke's Tlioughts on the present Discontents.
 
 A.D. 1763. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 75 
 
 mission of injustice, but providing a ready excuse for chap. 
 any less scrupulous successors. 
 
 In the debates upon this subject, which com- 
 menced on the first day of the session, and formed 
 the prominent feature throughout, Pitt reappeared. 
 When the Stamp act passed he had been ill in bed ; 
 he now stood forward to vindicate the natural rights 
 of his fellow men, declaring that when the resolution 
 to tax America was taken, so great was the agitation 
 of his mind, that if he could have endured to be car- 
 ried in his bed he would have solicited some kind 
 hand to have laid him down on the floor of the house, 
 to have borne his testimony against it.* This 
 kingdom, he said, has no right to lay a tax upon the 
 colonies : the commons of America have ever been 
 in possession of this their constitutional right of giv- 
 ing and granting their own money. They would 
 have been slaves if they had not enjoyed it. He 
 drew a distinction between the riffht of legislation 
 and the right of taxation, and instanced the British 
 house of peers as an estate possessed of the one with- 
 out the othcr.t " I rejoice," he said, "that America 
 has resisted — three millions of people so dead to all 
 
 * Pari. History, vol. xvi., col. have rights of taxation as well as 
 
 98. yourselves : rights which they will 
 
 f "If taxation be a part of claim, wiiich they will exercise, 
 
 simple legislation, tlic crown, the whenever the principle can be 
 
 peers, arc equally legislative supported by power." — I'arl.Hut., 
 
 power- with flic commons, and vol. xvi., col. 100.
 
 A. D. 1765. 
 
 Ji) THE IIISTOKY Ol' rAllTY. 
 
 CHAP, the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be 
 slaves would have been fit instruments to make slaves 
 of the rest. Upon the whole," he concluded, *'Iwill 
 beg leave to tell the house what is really my opinion. 
 It is, that the Stamp act be repealed, absolutely, 
 totally, and immediately. That the reason for the 
 repeal be assigned, because it was founded on an 
 erroneous princi})le. At the same time let the so- 
 vereign authority of this country over the colonies be 
 asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be 
 made to extend to every point of legislation whatso- 
 ever. That we may bind their trade, confine their 
 manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever, 
 except that of taking their money out of their 
 pockets without their consent. 
 
 Thus, broadly and unhesitatingly, was Mr. Pitt's 
 opinion upon this grand constitutional question de- 
 livered. In supporting the Repeal bill he was assisted 
 by the maiden eloquence of Burke, who thus made 
 his first essay in the cause of liberty, in defence of 
 men with arms in their hands, whom Whigs called 
 sons of liberty, whom Tories execrated as rebels. 
 Whether the eloquence of the new member burst 
 forth in all the gorgeousness of its meridian display, 
 or whether its perfection was the result of time, we 
 cannot now determine.* Its appearance was, at least, 
 
 * He was, certainly, for some house of commons, by no means 
 time after his appearance in the so highly estimated as Charles
 
 A. D. 1763. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 77 
 
 sufficient to fix the attention of the house, and called CHAP, 
 forth a smile of encourao^ement from William Pitt. 
 In the words of Johnson, his two speeches on the 
 repeal of the Stamp act filled the town with wonder. 
 The Tories, led on by George Grenville, vehemently 
 opposed the Repeal bill, asserting the absolute vassal- 
 age of the colonies, and asking contemptuously when 
 they had been emancipated ? They were answered 
 by the question, Wlien had they been enslaved? 
 and the question thus debated, was a real struggle 
 between Whig and Tory principles. " It was a 
 time," said Burke, afterwards recurring to this 
 struggle, " for a man to act in. We had powerful 
 enemies, but we had faithful and determined friends, 
 and a glorious cause. We had a great battle to fight, 
 but we had the means of fighting. Wc did fight 
 that day, and conquer."* The Repeal bill passed, 
 but so also did the Declaratory act. Of the debates 
 in the commons upon the latter we have no record ; 
 it was carried because Pitt and his friends had now 
 the ministerial Whigs as well as the Tories against 
 them. Burke's voice had been first heard in the 
 house calling for the repeal of an unjust impost ; may 
 we not fear that, with the usual indecision of the sect 
 
 Townsliend. Lord Charleniont, " Towiishcnd was tlie orator, the 
 
 writing to a friend, and dcs(Til)inj; rest were s|)eakcrs." — Thackeray s 
 
 a debate iti wliicli Towiiblieiid and lAfc of Chalham. 
 
 Biirkc had taken part, says, * Speech on Amrriran Taxation.
 
 A. D.17G5. 
 
 78 THL HISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, to which he had alHod himself, it was now heard 
 urtriiisi" the enunciation of a false and tyrannical 
 doi»ina ? 
 
 In the lords this Declaratory bill received its con- 
 demnation from the lips of that great Whig lawyer 
 who, as Chief Justice Pratt, had habituated the law 
 courts to the voice of constitutional liberty, and who 
 now, raised to the house of lords by the title of Lord 
 Camden, carried the same principles and the same 
 language into that assembly. " My position," he 
 said, *' is this — I repeat it — I will maintain it to my 
 last hour — taxation and representation are insepar- 
 able ; — this position is founded on the laws of nature ; 
 it is more, it is in itself an eternal law of nature ; for 
 whatever is a man's own is absolutely his own ; no 
 man hath a right to take it from him without his con- 
 sent either expressed by himself or his representative ; 
 whoever attempts to do this attempts an injury ; 
 whoever does it commits a robbery ; he throws down 
 and destroys the distinction between liberty and 
 slavery." 
 
 These debates were also remarkable for the proof 
 they afforded of disunion between Mr. Pitt and 
 Earl Temple. Earl Temple opposed the Repeal bill 
 in the lords, and his name is attached to all the Tory 
 protests entered upon this subject. 
 
 The bills became law, and the colonists, caring 
 
 * Purl. History, vol. xvi., col. 180.
 
 III. 
 
 A. D. 1765. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 79 
 
 little for the parliamentary declaration, and feeling CHAP 
 only the cessation of the evil, were pacified. 
 
 This mighty question being thus settled, the mi- 
 nisters proposed to give some further proofs of their 
 party faith. Resolutions, condemnatory of general 
 warrants and the seizure of private papers, were pro- 
 posed and adopted ; and a bill founded upon them 
 passed the commons, but failed in the lords. They 
 repealed the cider tax, an impost which was almost 
 as odious in the cider counties as the Stamp act in 
 the colonies ; and they were certainly the first admi- 
 nistration which encouraged public meetings, and 
 discountenanced the practice of removing raihtary 
 oflicers for their votes in parliament.* 
 
 The first of these measures entailed upon them 
 a visit fi'om Mr. Wilkes, who had been employing 
 himself, during his outlawry, in making a tour of 
 Italy, preparing an edition of Churchill's poems, and 
 designing a history of England ; but had never been 
 without good intelligence of what was going on at 
 home. Upon the formation of the Rockingham mi- 
 nistry he made another application for the embassy 
 to Constantinople, which was again vacant. In a 
 letter to his friend, Mr. Cotes, he expresses his ex- 
 pectation that the king might be forced into a con- 
 
 • See Biirke's short tract, calkd " A short Account of u late short 
 Administration."
 
 A. D. 17(53. 
 
 80 TIIK HISTORY OF PAUTY. 
 
 CHAP. sent. In 17()1- ho wrote to the same person, "If 
 government means peace or friendship with me, I 
 then breathe no longer hostihty ; and, between our- 
 selves, if they would send me to Constantinople as 
 ambassador, that is all I should wish."* His applica- 
 tion was either refused or evaded, and the patriot 
 quickly altered his style. He now began to threaten, 
 "I believe the Scot is the breath of this ministry's 
 nostrils. It depends, however, on them whether 
 Mr. AVilkes is their friend or their enemy. If he 
 starts as the latter he will lash them with scorpion 
 rods, and they are already prepared : I wish, how- 
 ever, we may be friends."t Wilkes's threats were as 
 little regarded as his solicitations ; and, pressed by 
 his poverty and his resentment, he boldly returned 
 to London. The ministry were, as he anticipated, 
 alarmed at his presence, and the patriot proportioned 
 his demands to their fears. These demands were 
 rejected ; for no ministry could dare to mention the 
 name of Wilkes to George III., except as an object 
 for prosecution ; but Burke was despatched to nego- 
 tiate with him, and to offer an eleemosynary pension 
 from the ministers, to be paid from their private 
 purses, in proportions regulated according to the 
 emoluments of their offices, and to cease upon their 
 
 • Almon's Life and Correspondence of Wilkes, vol. i., p. G2, and 
 vol. ii.,p. 53. 
 
 t Ibid., vol. ii.,j). 214.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 81 
 
 resignation. The offer was accepted, and Wilkes CHAP, 
 returned to Paris. 
 
 A. D. 1765. 
 
 On the 6th of June parHament was prorogued. 
 
 On the 2d of Aug-ust the Gazette informed the 
 nation that the Rocking-ham administration was dis- 
 solved. 
 
 VOL. III. r.
 
 8^2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 State of the Whig and Tory parties — The Chatham administration — 
 Unpopularity and imbecihty of Lord Chatham — Charles Towns- 
 hend's project to tax America — Death of Townshend. — End of the 
 Chatham administration. 
 
 CHAP. The cause of the early overthrow to the Rock- 
 
 '■ ing-ham administration was a want of energy and 
 
 to 1767. decision : they were too much Whigs to be welcome 
 to the court, too little, to be objects of interest to 
 the people. The king- who had received them un- 
 willingly, parted with them with pleasure : the news 
 was heard with indifference. 
 
 To Mr. Pitt was intrusted the formation of the 
 new cabinet, a task which the state of parties ren- 
 dered one of no ordinary difficulty. The Tories 
 were now clustered thickly around the throne, they 
 occupied all the offices of the household, and pos-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 83 
 
 sessed every avenue of the court, and their mem- chap. 
 
 bers were daily augmented by the accession of all ' 
 
 those who thought the favour of the sovereign more to 1767. 
 
 valuable than the patronage of the minister. A few 
 
 years had created a great change in the appearance 
 
 of this party. Six years ago it consisted chiefly of 
 
 country gentlemen who advocated in parliament the 
 
 principles upon which they governed their tenantry 
 
 in the country, denounced the corruption of the 
 
 Whigs, and thought slightingly of the title of the house 
 
 of Hanover. Since then a Tory king of that house 
 
 had ascended the throne : the strength of the party 
 
 had become courtiers, favourites, king's friends. 
 
 These were, however, consentient ; but the Whigs 
 were, as they generally have been, split into di- 
 visions. Of these, Pitt, supported by Lord Camden 
 and a few others, led that which was favoured with the 
 popular suffrages. These men were the pioneers of 
 Whiggism ; they strode boldly forward, guided only 
 by the compass of political principle, satisfied that 
 while they pursued this monitor they could not err, 
 and careless of the impediments which sometimes 
 arose in their })ath. Behind these, but at a consi- 
 derable distance, came the Rockingham phalanx ; 
 stronir in family connexions, aristocratic influence, 
 and wealth. This body was formed of men who, 
 from accident or education, had assumed the same 
 guide as their ouwanl Iricuds, but wIkj had never af- 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THK HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, tained a ])hiloso])liical conviction of its uncrrinf^ truth, 
 IV 
 
 — Thoy followed it so long as the course it pointed out 
 
 A. D. 17Go 
 
 to 1707. appeared otherwise expedient, but always slowly and 
 timorously : always cautiously exploring, lest its 
 track should lead them across some favourite pre- 
 judice, or bring them to tread upon some personal 
 interest. Should such impediments cross their path, 
 a long and dubious halt invariably succeeded: the 
 deserters immediately became numerous, and no 
 sooner had the most resolute passed the disputed 
 spot, than they saw those whom they had left behind 
 go over to the enemy. These deserters were always 
 the most active in subsequent attacks. Not unfre- 
 quently they made to themselves a new and very dif- 
 ferent compass ; and while remaining stationary with 
 the Tories, declared that they were the true and 
 orig-inal Whigs. 
 
 Such was the state of the party which Pitt again 
 undertook to unite in the service of their country. 
 Notwithstanding their late estrangement, his first 
 overture was made to Lord Temple, whom he pro- 
 posed to place at the head of the treasury. An in- 
 terview took place, and Pitt submitted his list of 
 appointments : but Earl Temple had now become 
 involved in Tory alliances, and refused to take office 
 unless Earl Gower and Lord Lyttelton were ad- 
 mitted to the cabinet. These conditions were pe- 
 remptorily rejected ; and Temple saying that Mr.
 
 THE HISTOllY OF PARTY. 85 
 
 Pitt was evidently determined to be sole and absolute CHAP. 
 
 T IV 
 
 dictator, put an end to the conference. '■ 
 
 . A. D. 1765 
 
 Failing m his attempt to unite the Whigs, Mr. to 17G7. 
 Pitt now endeavoured, by assembling around him his 
 own friends, and filling up their numbers from the 
 Tories, to obtain a coalition ministry, which he could 
 manage at his will. In this design he was doubtless 
 confirmed by the artifices of the courtiers, and the 
 homage proffered to him by Lord Bute. At the head 
 of the treasury he placed the Duke of Graflbon, 
 a nobleman who professed himself a Whig, who 
 had always hitherto acted with that party, but whose 
 only claim to that title appeared to be the devoted 
 attachment he professed for Mr. Pitt. He had, for 
 a short time, held the seals under the Rocking-ham 
 administration. When he resigned them, he declared 
 in the house of lords that he retired, because the 
 government wanted strength and efficiency, and 
 that he knew but one man who could give them. 
 Under him, he said, he would serve, not only as a 
 general-officer but as a private soldier ; he would 
 even take up a spade and a mattock at his com- 
 mand.* This nobleman Mr. Pitt named as one who 
 would be an obedient vicegerent. Lord Camden 
 was made lord chancellor. The Earl of Shelburn, a 
 young nobleman, who had warmly attached himself 
 
 • ClioU-ilicld's Letters to his Son.
 
 80 Tin: iijsioKY of i'aktv. 
 
 CHAP, to Pitt, who was animated by an affection for the 
 IV. . 
 
 principles of his party, and whose talents, although 
 
 A. 1). 17(ij 
 
 to 171)7. not calculated to shine in posts of the highest order, 
 were sound and valuable in a secondary station, was 
 created secretary of state. Thus far Pitt had secured 
 the support of professed friends : for their coadjutors, 
 he chose Lord Northington, whom he had dismissed 
 from the chancellorship, and made president of the 
 council ; Charles Townshend, the promoter of the 
 Stamp act, as chancellor of the exchequer and 
 manager of the house of commons ; while General 
 Conway, its great opponent, was continued as secre- 
 tary of state. 
 
 The arrangements of the inferior offices were 
 equally incongruous. At the different boards poli- 
 ticians of every shade were seen sitting together. It 
 was altogether a disconnected mass, which, Mr. Pitt 
 thought, being divided in itself, would only agree to 
 be ruled by him. Burke afterwards described this 
 cabinet as "a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and 
 whimsically dovetailed ; a cabinet so variously inlaid ; 
 such a piece of diversified mosaic ; such a tessellated 
 pavement without cement ; here a bit of black stone, 
 there a bit of white ; patriots and courtiers ; kings, 
 friends, and republicans ; Whigs and Tories ; trea- 
 cherous friends and open enemies. It was, indeed, 
 a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch, and 
 unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had as-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 87 
 
 sorted at the same board stared at each other, and were CHAP, 
 obhged to ask, * Sir, your name ? Sir, you have the '■ 
 
 J • „ Tir o 1 T 1 , A. D. 1765 
 
 advantage oi me. — Mr. Such-a-one. — 1 beg a thou- to 17G7. 
 
 sand pardons.' I venture to say it did so happen, 
 
 that persons had a single office divided between 
 
 them who had never spoke to each other in their 
 
 lives, until they found themselves, they knew not 
 
 how, pigging together heads and points in the same 
 
 truckle-bed."* 
 
 But the most sino^ular feature in this arrang-ement 
 was the part Mr. Pitt took himself. He named 
 himself lord privy seal and Earl of Chatham. 
 Verging now upon sixty, and broken by a life of 
 almost incessant torture, it is probable that Pitt felt 
 himself unequal to the stormy discussions of the 
 commons, and coveted peace. If this was his 
 motive, he chose an unfortunate moment : he was 
 thought by the nation to be then seizing the helm, 
 prepared to act and to command : those who saw him 
 shrinking from his own demonstration, and aban- 
 doning his post, could not constrain their disap- 
 pointment or forbear their censure. ** To with- 
 draw," says Lord Chesterfield, "in the fulness of 
 his power, and in the utmost gratification of his 
 
 • Speech on American Tax- Nortli and George Cooke as joint 
 ation. Tlie last sentence alludes paymasters of the forces, 
 lo tlir appointment of Lord
 
 88 THE IIISTOKY OP FAIITY. 
 
 CHAP, ambition, from the house of commons, and to ffo into 
 IV. . . . 
 
 that hospital of incurables, the house of lords, is a 
 
 A. D. 17G5 
 
 to 1767. measure so unaccountable, that nothing but proof 
 positive could have made me believe it : but true it 
 is — he is now only Earl of Chatham, and no longer 
 Mr. Pitt in any respect whatever. Such an event, I 
 believe, was never read or heard of."* These were 
 the sentiments of the public. The city of London, 
 where he had so long been worshipped, refused an 
 address upon his appointment, the press teemed with 
 invectives, and the people, who thought themselves 
 deserted, followed him with maledictions. 
 
 All this a man of Pitt's high resolution and un- 
 daunted character could have borne with contempt, 
 but it was not long before he felt that the public 
 voice was right ;t that he had been deceived by the 
 courtiers, had lent his influence, and sacrificed his 
 popularity in forming a government in which he was 
 to be a cipher. When he had executed his plan, 
 he had not an inch of ground to stand upon. When 
 he had accomplished his scheme of administration 
 he was no longer minister.^ 
 
 « Chesterfield's Letters to his his after language, in alluding to 
 
 Son. this time. — Pari. Hist., vol. xvi., 
 
 \ " 1 own 1 was credulous, 1 col. 842. 
 
 was dui)ed, I was deceived," was J Burke.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 89 
 
 The commencement of the career of this admi- CHAP. 
 
 IV. 
 
 nistration was by no means auspicious. The failure — 
 
 of the harvest had occasioned a scarcity of corn which to 1767. 
 amounted to famine : riots, pillage, and bloodshed 
 were the natural consequences ; and the sufferers 
 clamoured for protection and relief. Urged by the 
 extreme necessity, the ministry laid an embargo 
 upon the exportation of grain, and sent messengers 
 to the different ports to enforce obedience to the 
 proclamation. This measure was highly popular, 
 not a voice was raised against it : but upon the 
 meeting of parliament the opposition urged, that 
 although excused by the imminent necessity, the 
 act was unconstitutional and illegal, and required an 
 act of indemnity, to shield the authors from its con- 
 sequences. Ministers, on the contrary, urged that 
 in such cases of absolute necessity the constitution 
 recognised a right in the sovereign to suspend the 
 operation of an act of parliament ; and although they 
 introduced an act for the protection of the inferior 
 agents, they refused to include themselves. It 
 must have sounded strange to hear Whigs who had 
 proved throughout their lives their affection for 
 liberty, and their hatred of oppression, arguing in a 
 British house of commons in favour of a dispensing 
 power, ^^et, it is said, that Lord Camden was one 
 of these. As we derive our knowledge of the de-
 
 yO THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, bate from the writings of the opposition,* we are 
 — -p-— — 7^ unable to tell the precise line of argument adopted, 
 to 17G7. or the exact extent of the proposition contended for. 
 The bare canvassing of such a proposition, in such 
 an age, should be a moral lesson to their posterity. 
 The example of wise and good men betrayed into 
 egregious error by party pride which disdains to 
 own itself wrong, or by the popular voice which cries 
 that that cannot be illegal which is in itself so ex- 
 cellent, must teach us habitual caution in the for- 
 mation of our opinions, and moderation in pressing 
 them upon others. 
 
 Lord Chatham's health was now so entirely broken 
 that he was unable to take any part whatever in mi- 
 nisterial affairs, and remained at Bath, at Hampstead, 
 or at Hayes, apparently unconscious of his importance 
 in the state. When his power was no longer felt, his 
 influence ceased ; and it was remarked that, although 
 
 * Pari. Hist., vol. xvi. — A " Life of Lord Chatham," it is said 
 
 tract, called a speech, on behalf that Lord Chatham kept clear of 
 
 of the constitution against the this doctrine, calling it an act of 
 
 suspending and dispensing prero- power justified by necessity; and 
 
 gative, written by Mr. Macintosh, on hearing the debate, desired the 
 
 assisted by Lord Temple and Lord l)ill to be made as strong as pos- 
 
 Lyttelton, is the usual authority sible, to be extended to the ad- 
 
 for this debate. But in a letter visers, and to be made declaratory 
 
 from Mr. Henry Flood to Lord as well as indemnifying. 
 Charlemont, cited in Thackeray's
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 91 
 
 Constantly attacked in the course of debate, by the op- chap. 
 position, he was never defended by his colleagues.* . ^ 
 The ministry soon became divided into as many par- 
 ties as there were men in it, each complaining of the 
 others. Charles Townshend was at open war with 
 all ; Conway was angry ; Lord Shelburne out of 
 humour, and the Duke of Grafton by no means 
 pleased. MTiile the bond of unity was thus relaxed, 
 each member of the cabinet thought himself at liberty 
 to pursue his own policy. Charles Townshend 
 availed himself of this independence, and by a single 
 act, the effect of his sensibility and versatile charac- 
 ter, entailed disasters upon his country, which even 
 the continual exercise of his own brilliant genius could 
 not have compensated. 
 
 George Grenville could not forgive the Americans 
 for thwarting his favourite scheme of revenue, and 
 displacing his ministry. He lost no opportunity of 
 declaiming against their ingratitude, and stigmatizing 
 the ministers who had conceded their demands. 
 Upon one occasion, in the middle of his harangue, he 
 turned to the ministers : " You are cowards," he said. 
 ** You are afraid of the Americans ; you dare not 
 tax America." He repeated the taunt, and it had 
 its intended effect. The fiery temper of Townshend 
 
 • Letter IVom Lord Cliarlenioiil. Lite ol the Earl of Lliatliaiii, 
 vol. ii., p. 109.
 
 A.D. 17(37. 
 
 9!2 THE IlISTORV OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, was kindled. "Fear!" he said, "Fear! Cowards I 
 
 IV. 
 
 Dare not tax America ! I dare tax America." 
 
 Grenville stood silent for a moment, and then said, 
 ** Dare you tax America? I wish to God I could see 
 it." Townshend replied, '* I will, I will.*** 
 
 This declaration, once made, was not allowed to be 
 evaded or withdrawn. Grenville was incessantly re- 
 minding him of his pledge ; the whole body of courtiers 
 drove him forward. They always talked as if the king 
 stood in a sort of humiliated state, until something 
 of the kind should be done.t Burke, in sketching 
 the character of Townshend, has truly said, that, to 
 please universally was the object of his life. The 
 house of commons had approved the project of the 
 Stamp act. Townshend ardently supported it. The 
 house of commons had changed their opinion of that 
 measure ; and Townshend voted, and had not illness 
 prevented him, would have spoken for its repeal. 
 The opinion that America should be taxed began 
 again to prevail, and Townshend again conformed. 
 He boasted that he knew how to raise a revenue from 
 the Americans without giving them offence ; and as- 
 suming that, in Lord Chatham's distinction between 
 legislation and taxation, the former included commer- 
 
 * Pitkin's History of tlie United Dr. Wm. S. Johnson, then in Eng- 
 Stales, from tiie MS. papers of huid, as agent for Connecticut. 
 
 t Burke. 
 
 J
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 93 
 
 clal restrictions and import dues, he introduced a CHAP, 
 series of resolutions, imposing duties upon several ^ j^ ,^g, 
 articles of import to the British colonies in America. 
 The bill which was framed upon these resolutions 
 passed both houses of the legislature in silence.* The 
 Earl of Chatham was ill in bed. 
 
 The spirit which produced this bill was occasioned 
 by the recent conduct of the assemblies of Massa- 
 chusetts and New York, in refusing obedience to the 
 requisitions of the Mutiny act. The Americans had 
 now obtained some knowledge of their strength, and 
 were rather disposed to abuse it. Their captious 
 opposition had alienated the sympathies of many of 
 their friends, and enabled their enemies to recom- 
 mence their system of unjust taxation. Two other 
 bills accompanied that imposing the duties. One 
 created a board of customs in the colonies; the 
 second restricted the legislature of New York from 
 passing any bill until the provisions of the Mutiny 
 act had been complied with. 
 
 There can be no doubt that these measures were 
 highly esteemed by the king. Townshcnd was now 
 in favour at court ; his lady was created a peeress, 
 and he himself was about to seize ui)on the treasury. 
 
 • There was, however, great only opposed, but was, by a majo- 
 
 contcntion upon other parts of the rity against ministers, reduced to 
 
 budget ; the proposed land tax of three sliillings. 
 four shillings in the pound, was not
 
 A. D. 1767, 
 
 1)4 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. The result of the intri":ues now in prop^ress would 
 probably have been a cabinet, in which the king's 
 friends would have been again supreme; but the imme- 
 diate design was frustrated by the death of Townshend, 
 who was carried off by a putrid fever, in the prime 
 of his manhood, w^hen the object of his ambition was 
 just within his grasp. The difference between the 
 reputation and the fame of this highly-gifted man is 
 singular. His contemporaries ranked him as an 
 orator wath Pitt : in the house of commons he was 
 far more popular than the great commoner ; yet pos- 
 terity scarcely recognises his name ; and hundreds 
 who revere the Earl of Chatham as one of the demi- 
 gods of history, are ignorant that Charles Townshend 
 existed. 
 
 When Pitt and Townshend were withdrawn, the 
 ministry, which had been from its formation feeble, 
 became contemptible. Before the death of Towns- 
 hend the necessity for some change had been ap- 
 parent, and the king had sent for Lord Chatham to 
 advise with him upon the subject. That nobleman, 
 however, returned a verbal answer, excusing himself 
 on account of his illness. Arrangements were now 
 made without consulting him ; and the administration 
 which has been so improperly called the Chatham ad- 
 ministration — improperly, since the Earl of Chatham 
 was neither ostensibly nor really at its head — was no 
 more.
 
 A. D. 1767. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 95 
 
 The only important measure proposed by this mi- chap. 
 nistry, was the revival of the scheme of taxing Ame- 
 rica ; a scheme which Pitt had denounced in the house 
 of commons, with all his characteristic vehemence ; 
 but which the Tories of this administration, taking 
 advantage of a season of bodily and apparently 
 mental incapacity,* found means to send forth to the 
 world, stamped with the authority of his name. 
 
 * Lord Chesterfield attributes This experiment caused a severe 
 
 the Earl of Chatham's inactivity fit of illness, which chiefly affected 
 
 to the effects of the injudicious the nerves. The inaction or error 
 
 treatment of his physician, who of a man thus afflicted cannot 
 
 had prevented a threatened at- fairly be made the subject of criti- 
 
 tack of gout by dispersing the cism. 
 humour throughout his body.
 
 qC the history or fauty. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Supremacy of the Tory party — The Grafton administration — Biogra- 
 phical anecdotes of Lord North — Of Charles Jenkinson — A new 
 parliament — Stiite of the elections — Imprisonment of Wilkes — 
 Riots — Divisions of the Whigs — The Middlesex election, and pro- 
 ceedings upon it — Excitement of the people at the decision of the 
 commons. 
 
 CHAP. The Duke of Grafton retained his office as first 
 V. 
 — lord of the treasury ; and the new administration was 
 
 A. D. 1767 . ^ 
 
 to 1769. known by his name. General Conway and Lord 
 Northington had long been anxious to rejoin their 
 old allies, the Rockingham Whigs. Lord Gower, as 
 president of the council, and Lord Weymouth, as 
 secretary of state, supplied their places. Lord North 
 became chancellor of the exchecpier ; Mr. Thomas 
 Townshend succeeded him as paymaster ; and Mr. 
 Jenkinson was made a lord of the treasury. Earl
 
 A. D. 1767. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 97 
 
 Camden was not immediately removed from the chan- CHAP. 
 cellorship, and Chatham nominally retained the privy 
 seal ; the latter was probably unconscious of being a 
 minister, since, so great was his mental imbecility, 
 that the trifling duties of his office were transacted 
 by a temporary commission. Mr. De Grey, after- 
 wards Lord Walsingham, was attorney-general, and 
 Mr. Dunning solicitor-general. 
 
 Thus easily did the heterogeneous production of 
 Lord Chatham resolve itself into a regular Tory ad- 
 ministration ; and thus did the Tories become again, 
 ostensibly — as they had, since the dismissal of Lord 
 Rockingham, been effectively — the governing faction. 
 
 Among the members of the new cabinet appear 
 two names, those of Lord North and Mr. Jenkinson, 
 which will occur too frequently in after scenes to be 
 introduced without some particular notice. 
 
 Frederick Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of 
 Guildford, was born of a stock fruitful in the produc- 
 tion of men of second-rate talent. He received the 
 ordinary education of the aristocracy, at Eton, and 
 Trinity College, Oxford ; and, it is said, made more 
 than the ordinary use of the advantages he enjoyed.* 
 
 ♦ His classical knowledge, upon pioverb "iii;i<j;iniin vcjctigal est par- 
 one occasion, procnrod iiim a rare simonia ;" proiiDinu iiig, however, 
 triumph, even over Burke, 'lln' tlic second word as vecttjjal. Lord 
 latter, in introducing his scheme of Nortii, in a low tone, rciuarki d 
 economical reform, used ihr Latin ilic cnor ; hut Hinkc, \\ itli ailniii- 
 
 VOI.. III. H
 
 A.D. 17G7. 
 
 yS THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. From Oxford he, of course, set forth to visit the con- 
 V. 
 
 tinental courts, and to acquire that knowledge of 
 
 Germany which, in the reign of George II., every 
 courtier deemed indispensable. At Leipsic he studied 
 the Germanic constitution, under Mascow, a profes- 
 sor famous in his own generation, and forgotten in 
 ours. The young nobleman also applied himself 
 diligently to the study of diplomacy, and having thus 
 possessed himself of the usual qualifications of a can- 
 didate for office, returned to England in 1754, and 
 was elected by his father to represent the family 
 borough of Banbury. At the latter end of the Pitt 
 administration he received, as the reward of his ability 
 or his obedience, a seat at the treasury board, and re- 
 tained this appointment during the Bute administra- 
 tion. Georofe Grenville found and retained him in 
 office, putting him forward in the motions against 
 Wilkes, and valuing him as an unhesitating supporter 
 of the right to tax America. Upon the influx of the 
 Rockingham party, North was ejected with his col- 
 leagues ; but not before he had acquired the reputa- 
 tion of being a very useful member of the party to 
 which he had attached himself. When Lord Chatham 
 
 able presence of mind, turning to It gives me an opportunity of re- 
 
 the interrupter, said, " The noble peating the inestimable adage, 
 
 Lord hints that I have erred in 'magnum vect-I-gal est parsimo- 
 
 tlie quantity of a principal word nia.'" — Prior's Life of Burke. 
 in my quotation. I rejoice at it.
 
 A. D. 1767. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 99 
 
 composed his medley ministry he was yoked with a CHAP, 
 colleague with whom he had neither personal or poli- 
 tical communion, as joint paymaster of the forces ; 
 in the Tory ministry which now succeeded he 
 was chancellor of the exchequer, and a lord of the 
 treasury. 
 
 In private life Lord North was universally es- 
 teemed. Always amiable and urbane, with a per- 
 petual goodhumour which it appeared impossible to 
 ruffle ; witty without acrimony, abounding in scholas- 
 tic and general knowledge ; he was inestimable as a 
 companion, and valuable as a subordinate minister : 
 but destitute of vigilance, easily moved from his own 
 course by the suggestions of others ; and, incapable 
 of severity, he was not calculated to rule in moments 
 of danger. His speeches were in accordance with 
 his character ; light, sparkling, witty, always clever, 
 sometimes well arranged and perspicuous, but never 
 eloquent. The candour and known disinterestedness 
 of the man was of great service to the orator ; his 
 own conviction was so evident that it spread among 
 his hearers, and his audience listened with interest 
 to his professions because they knew them to be 
 truths. The character of his intellect affords no 
 subject for philosophical •speculation ; it was open to 
 all, seen in every act — a shining superficies, 
 
 Charles Jcnkinson, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, 
 was, throiin-hoiit life, tlic objcn-t of the tnost arrinio- 
 
 11 '3
 
 A.D. 17G7. 
 
 100 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, nioiis hostility from the Whigs. If we copy the por- 
 traits of the party writers of his day, we must draw 
 him as a mere court minion, who had abihty only to 
 flatter and to fawn ; whose honours were the reward 
 of disgraceful services, and whose ignoble descent 
 disgraced the peerage to which he was raised. Such, 
 however, is not the language of truth. Charles 
 Jenkinson was born in 17^7) the eldest son of Colonel 
 Jenkinson, who was a younger son of Sir Robert 
 Jenkinson, the first baronet of a family long and ho- 
 nourably known in Oxfordshire. Charles received 
 the rudiments of education at the Grammar-school 
 of Burford, and removed thence to the Charterhouse, 
 where he was placed on the foundation. From that 
 excellent school he proceeded to Oxford, and gra- 
 duated at University College. 
 
 Thus qualified, he sought the metropolis with the 
 intention of devoting himself to literature. Jenkinson 
 w'as at this time a Whig ; he aided in the establish- 
 ment of the Monthly Review, wrote largely in its 
 pages, joined in the cry for the establishment of a 
 national and constitutional force independent of a 
 standing army, and published a dissertation upon the 
 subject, abounding with the sentiments of Whiggisra. 
 W^hen this pamphlet was afterwards quoted against 
 him, in the house of peers, he acknowledged it as 
 the offspring of his extreme youth, and the repository 
 of its errors.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 101 
 
 This production evinced considerable talent, and CHAP. 
 
 met with some success ; but probably not sufficient - 
 to induce the author to continue in the service of the 
 party he had first espoused. He now produced his 
 " Discourse on the Conduct of the Government of 
 Great Britain, with respect to neutral Nations, during 
 the present War ;" a performance which was only dis- 
 covered to be able when its author was known to be 
 powerful : then it was translated into all the languages 
 of Europe. 
 
 We soon afterwards find Jenkinson had made the 
 discovery that, of the two parties, the Tories are by 
 far the more grateful to their supporters. An obsti- 
 nate election contest was raging in Oxfordshire, 
 where Sir Edward Turner, favoured by the univer- 
 sity and the court, was combating the Whigs. Jen- 
 kinson joined the Tory candidate, and was found so 
 useful in writing satirical songs and electioneering 
 pasquinades against the Whigs, and perhaps also from 
 his connexions in the county, that he secured Sir 
 Edward's future favour and patronage. 
 
 The Earl of Bute was now in the plenitude of his 
 ])ower, and to him, as to the high priest of fortune, 
 Jenkinson was presented by his patron. The mini- 
 ster listened to the recommendation, and appointed 
 him to a subordinate office. His own diligence and 
 the interest of the member for Oxfordshire, rather 
 than the I'.arl of lUite's favour, obtained his gradiial
 
 102 THE HISTOHV OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, promotion, and he was at length appointed the 
 earl's private secretary. Being thus admitted be- 
 hind the scenes, and initiated into all the mysteries 
 of court government, his rise could no longer be 
 impeded. In I76I he was appointed under secre- 
 tary of state, and was returned for Sir James 
 Lowther's borough of Cockermouth. When Lord 
 Bute retired into the country, a medium of com- 
 munication between him and the king became 
 necessary. Jenkinson was now frequently at St. 
 James's, and so well did he ingratiate himself there 
 that he was immediately ranked in a high station 
 among the king's friends. The lucrative situation of 
 treasurer of the ordnance, and afterwards the more 
 important office of joint secretary of the treasury, re- 
 warded his assiduity, during the supremacy of Lord 
 Bute and the administration of George Grenville. 
 The Rockingham government, which declared war 
 against favourites, dismissed Jenkinson from all his 
 places ; but he was recompensed by the princess 
 dowager, who appointed him to a post in her house- 
 hold. 
 
 Jenkinson was now looked upon as the pivot of 
 every court intrigue, the confidential agent of the 
 king, the princess dowager, and the Earl of Bute ; 
 the depositary of all their secrets, and the worker of 
 all their schemes. A\Tien Toryism began to predo- 
 minate in the Chatham administration, which was
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. lOC) 
 
 within a very few weeks after its settlement, Jenkin- chap. 
 son was restored to office. In I766 he was made a . ^^ ,^^q ' 
 
 A. U. 170c. 
 
 lord of the admiralty, and now, under the Grafton ad- 
 ministration, he became a lord of the treasury. 
 
 Mr. Jenkinson, although he possessed no shining 
 talent, had much solid abiUty, and official information. 
 He was not an orator, but he was a shrewd and sen- 
 sible speaker ; he was eminently conversant with in- 
 ternational law, and was profoundly versed in the 
 principles and details of trade ; he was a most efficient 
 minister in a subordinate office j he was not qualified 
 to lead and command a party. 
 
 Upon the settlement of the Grafton administra- 
 tion, the parties appeared exhausted by incessant 
 contest, and by the continual changes which their 
 struggles had produced. The remainder of the session 
 of 1767-8 passed with no other incident of interest 
 than a debate, in which the Whigs accused the mi- 
 nisters of taking advantage of the technicalities of 
 the law for electioneering purposes, and enforcing 
 the odious law maxim, "Nullum tempus occurrit regi," 
 to take from the Whig Duke of Portland, certain 
 y)ossessions which he held under a grant from WilHam 
 III., and to bestow them upon the Tory, Sir James 
 Lowther. This was an attempt so dangerous to the 
 security of private property, and so far beyond the 
 ordinary bounds of party warfare, that it met with 
 very general execration. In the hou^c of coinmnns
 
 A. D. 17(i8. 
 
 101 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, the niinistor dared not meet the Whiff motion by a 
 V. . . , 
 
 - negative, and only succeeded in obtaining an ad- 
 journment by a majority of twenty. 
 
 At the end of the session this parliament had sat 
 its septennial period, and the nation was awakened 
 to the excitement of a general election. The state 
 of the representation was at this time such, that no 
 Tory minister could want a majority in parliament, 
 unless sufficient excitement prevailed to overcome 
 the ordinary influence of the landholders. Very 
 many of the boroughs, once the property of the 
 AA'higs, had now been bought up by the treasury, and 
 were at the disposal of every successive minister. 
 Many others had been bought up by jobbers upon 
 speculation, * and were let to the highest bidders j 
 generally those who could reckon upon recovering 
 their purchase-money from the national coffers. The 
 corruption of the Whigs, although sufficiently repre- 
 hensible, was carried on for a party, and, as at least 
 the corrupters considered, for a patriotic object : the 
 borough representation was now a mere money spe- 
 culation, undisguised traffic, by which men were re- 
 turned to parliament to increase the gains of a capi- 
 talist ; and the majority in favour of Whig or Tory 
 principles might depend upon whether Whigs or 
 Tories were the more ready to satisfy the demands of 
 
 ' Aniiu;il Kr;;i-tf,T for l?'**^, !>• 7S.
 
 A. D. 1768. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 105 
 
 a Jew jobber. The terms for seats in the new par- chap. 
 
 V 
 
 liament were very high. Chesterfield offered 2500/. 
 for one for his son, but he was informed that all that 
 were in the market had been secured by the rich 
 East and West Indians, who had obtained them at 
 the rates of three, four, and five thousand pounds.* 
 Men who have passed their lives in an atmosphere of 
 despotism, and have been themselves the despots, 
 seldom retain much affection for civil equality or 
 popular rights. From the composition of this par- 
 liament we do not expect to find the majority very 
 zealous to push the principles of AVhiggism. 
 
 The great event of the day was, however, the 
 sudden return of Wilkes and his election for Mid- 
 dlesex. The Duke of Grafton, the present premier, 
 although still a young man, had passed through se- 
 veral shades of politics. During the struggle upon 
 the subject of general warrants he had strenuously 
 supported Wilkes, and he had, since that time, re- 
 peated his assurances of protection and friendship. 
 When placed by Lord Chatham at the head of the 
 treasury he had, through his own brother, conveyed 
 a similar message to the impatient democrat, who, 
 inflated with hope, returned to England to receive 
 his pardon. He found, however, upon his arrival, 
 that nothing was int(nidc(l in his favour. He re- 
 
 • C'ht'stcrlicld's Letters.
 
 lOG THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, vcnged hiinsolf by writing and publishing a severe 
 ■ -letter to the Duke of Grafton, taxing him with faith- 
 
 lessness and prevarication ; and he returned in bitter 
 disappointment to his exile and his poverty. 
 
 Upon the dissolution, which took place on the 
 12th of March, I768, he returned to England, and 
 immediately offered himself a candidate for the city 
 of London. Notwithstanding the philippic he had 
 published against the minister, the duke retorted no 
 acrimony, no writ was issued against the outlaw can- 
 didate, and he was allowed to appear upon the hus- 
 tings, and conduct his canvass with impunity. He 
 was defeated : but with undiminished confidence he 
 declared that the suddenness of his arrival had alone 
 prevented his success, and that he would appear as a 
 candidate for the county. His opponents were 
 George Cooke and Sir William Proctor, but at the 
 end of the first day's poll, Wilkes was so immensely 
 above him, that Sir William resigned the contest. 
 Wilkes now surrendered himself to receive judgment, 
 and obtained the reversal of his outlawry, which was 
 pronounced informal. Twenty-two month's impri- 
 sonment, fines to the amount of 1000/., and secu- 
 rities for his future behaviour were the terms of the 
 judgment for publishing the North Briton and the 
 " Essay on Woman ;" and Wilkes was immediately 
 conveyed to the King's Bench. 
 
 The imprisonment of their idol inflamed the po-
 
 A. U. 1768. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF TAllTY. 107 
 
 piilace to frenzy ; he was rescued from the custody CHAP, 
 of the marshal as he proceeded to Jbhe prison. 
 After he had surrendered himself, crowds of people 
 daily surrounded the prison demanding his release, 
 and a still greater number assembled on the day for 
 which the new parliament was formally summoned, 
 supposing that the object of their anxiety would 
 then go to take his seat. Against the multitude 
 thus assembled, the military were sent ; a conflict 
 ensued, and many of the people were killed and 
 wounded. Among the slain, was an innocent lad 
 named Allen, who was shot in his father's house. 
 The soldiery mistook him for a rioter whom they 
 were pursuing, and who had taken refuge there. The 
 coroner's jury pronounced the soldiers guilty of 
 murder : the king and his ministers thanked them 
 for their conduct.* This unhappy affair did not 
 conduce to remove the prejudices of the people 
 against a Tory cabinet. 
 
 In October, Lord Chatham was suflficiently re- 
 covered to external affairs to observe the policy 
 pursued by his colleagues, and to send in his resig- 
 nation. 
 
 On the 8th of November, parliament met for the 
 
 • When .Mr. Biirkc afterwards tliirty-nine votes against two liuii- 
 attcmpted to bring this affair be- dred and forty-five. — I'url. liisl., 
 fore parliament, lie obtained only vol. xvi., col. G03.
 
 A. D. 17G8. 
 
 jS the history of party. 
 
 CHAP, despakh of business.* In the discussions which took 
 place upon the ad(h-ess, there appeared to be two 
 distinct bodies of opposition ; the Rockingham party 
 of AVhigs, headed by Edmund Burke, who since the 
 loss of Pitt and Townshend was without a rival as 
 the orator of the house ; and the Grenville party. 
 George Grenville retaining many of the ideas he 
 had acquired in his contact with Toryism, had never- 
 theless receded from that party. His reconcilement 
 with Earl Temple had caused a great change in the 
 political conduct of each of the brothers, and the 
 Grenville party was now composed of individuals of 
 varied creeds, ranging from discontented Tories to 
 republican Whigs. All who were eager to oppose, 
 but unwilling to submit to the strict discipline of the 
 Rockingham party, joined the standard of the Gren- 
 villes. These two bodies only agreed in hostility 
 to the ministry ; on all other points, as the pamphlet 
 war between their leaders denoted, they were hos- 
 
 tile.t 
 
 The state of America was necessarily the first 
 object of importance which engaged the attention of 
 
 • It had sat a few days in May, f See Grenville's pamphlet 
 
 but merely for the purpose of con- " On the State of the Nation," and 
 
 tinuingthe temporary act for pro- Burke's " Ohservations " on that 
 
 hibiting the exportation of corn, pamphlet. 
 — Pari Ilinl , vol. xvi., col. 4(io.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 109 
 
 the houses. The ministry proposed a series of reso- CHAP. 
 
 hitions, declarinsf the risrht of taxation, noticino^ the - 
 
 * ^ * A. D. 1769. 
 
 violent resistance which had been offered to the law, 
 and resolving that military force was necessary to its 
 protection. In the lords, these resolutions were 
 enforced by Lord Hillsborough and the Duke of 
 Grafton, and feebly opposed by Lords Temple and 
 Shelburne.* In the commons, a debate of consi- 
 derable importance ensued. Burke and Grenville 
 proved that one of the resolutions was contrary to 
 the evidence before the house. The fact could not 
 be denied, and the ministerial speakers were dumb. 
 But their followers now came to their aid — drowned 
 the laughter of the opposition in cries of question, 
 and, upon a division, carried the resolutions, hastily 
 amended, by a large majority. 
 
 A topic of much less importance, but of far greater 
 popular interest was now furnished by Wilkes. The 
 Duke of Grafton had promised that person, that if 
 he would refrain from agitation until the period of 
 his imprisonment had expired, he should then be 
 allowed to take his seat without 0])position.t This 
 was not what the jiatriot desired ; he was well aware 
 of the importance of kec^ping himself in the public 
 view, and ])ersistcd in forwarding a petition to the 
 
 • Hardwirkc papers. I';iil. -| y\linoii's Life .iiid Corro- 
 
 Ilist., vol. xvi., rnl. 47(i. s|iiiii(li'ti((' of Wilkes.
 
 A.D. 17G9. 
 
 110 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, house, recapitulating his })ersccutions, charging the 
 chief justice with partiaHty, and the under secretary 
 with suborning evidence against him, and demanding 
 the interference of the commons. After the pre- 
 sentation of this petition, the duke kept no further 
 terms with his former friend. He was called upon 
 to prove some of the allegations of his petition, 
 and the house voted all his charges either false or 
 frivolous. He was then expelled.* 
 
 The resolutions upon Wilkes's petition passed with 
 little opposition from the Whigs, who only proposed 
 and obtained the omission of some opprobious epithets, 
 which they originally contained; but the motion 
 for his expulsion called forth a strong resistance. 
 Burke, Beckford, and even Grenville, names which 
 represented every modification of Whiggism, resisted 
 the measure. The speech of Mr. Grenville was 
 afterwards published, and is one of the most moderate 
 and argumentative orations of the time : it had little 
 effect upon the ministerial majority, who carried 
 their motion by two hundred and nineteen to one 
 hundred and thirty-seven. 
 
 The imprudence of this violent and unwarrantable 
 measure was immediately evident, the people's ex- 
 citement in his favour became enthusiasm ; it per- 
 vaded all ranks, and without the parliamentary circle 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol. xvi.,col. 544.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. Ill 
 
 of ministerial influence, there was scarcely an indi- CHAP. 
 
 .V. 
 
 vidual who did not think that a blow had been aimed 
 
 A. D. 1769. 
 
 at the constitution. Men asked each other whether, 
 since ministers had undertaken to say whom they 
 should not choose, the next step might not be to say 
 whom they should elect as their representatives. 
 The ignorant and the thoughtless regarded the 
 ejected member as a patriot, whose presence was 
 dreaded by a tyrannical ministry, and a venal par- 
 liament ; the Whigs saw in the persecution of a mere 
 demagogue adventurer, a precedent which might 
 prove fatal to better men. The electors of Mid- 
 dlesex immediately re-elected him ; and the day after 
 the election, the house of commons resolved that he 
 was incapable of being elected a member to sit in 
 that parliament. In the debate upon this motion, 
 Mr. James Townshend intimated that the proposed 
 resolution would call forth petitions to the throne for 
 a dissolution of parliament, an intimation which pro- 
 duced Lord North, fulminating with wrath, and de- 
 nouncing terrible threats against any one who should 
 sio-n such a petition. The house, however, was not 
 fallen so low as to be threatened into silence, and 
 his lordship found it prudent to explain his obser- 
 vations.* 
 
 • His explanation was that resent surli nii ;i(lroiit on those 
 most prohably parliament would who shouhl sii;n sucli ,i petit ion."
 
 ll'-i THE mSTOHY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. The necessity of a (lemonstration in tlioir favour 
 V. -^ 
 
 out of doors was now seen by the ministers. The 
 
 A. D. J7G9 
 
 Tories in London called a meeting, to vote a loyal 
 address to the king, but the adherents of Wilkes 
 assembled in such numbers at the place appointed, 
 that they drove their opponents from the room, and 
 reversed the character of the proceedings. A Tory 
 address was, however, at length prepared, but those 
 w^ho undertook to convey it to St. James's, bore also 
 into the palace the popular protest marked upon 
 their persons. A hearse, bearing an effigy of the 
 murdered Allen preceded them, and drew up before 
 the courtyard of the palace : those few of the ad- 
 addressers who reached the palace, were beaten, 
 wounded, and covered with the peltings of the po- 
 pulace. Such was the spectacle of Tory popularity 
 presented to the king. 
 
 Mr. Dingley, the principal promoter of the ad- 
 dress, undertook to contest the county, but the 
 
 His lordship appears to have hold thought the king the proper party 
 
 at a low estimate the liberty of an to punish a presumptuous peti- 
 
 Englishman, if he thought it could tioncr ; Toryism under the house 
 
 be taken away by a house of com- of Hanover, was jealous of no 
 
 mons, for petitioning the king to power which declared against the 
 
 exercise a branch of his prero- people. Privilege, in the hands of 
 
 gative. — Pari. IIi.it., vol. xvi., col. a Tory house of commons, was 
 
 57S. Here is an example of as useful as prerogative, and the 
 
 Toryism in its second generation, principle, which preferred prero- 
 
 Clarendon or Clifford would have gative was gone. Seea7i(e,vo].u.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. H^ 
 
 violence of the mob was so great, that he was afraid CHAP, 
 to appear upon the hustings at the nomination, and ^ ^ ^^^.^ 
 Wilkes was re-elected without opposition. This 
 election was also declared void and another writ 
 issued. 
 
 Such a contest as this, it was highly important to 
 the minister to terminate. He looked around upon 
 his supporters for one who, possessing the requisite 
 qualities of personal courage, and contempt of public 
 opinion, would exert both to the utmost in his ser-- 
 vice. Such a person was found in Colonel Henry 
 Lawes Luttrell, a young gentleman of good family 
 but of no fortune or immediate interest in the 
 county ; so great was the risk he was thought to 
 dare, that as soon as he had vacated his seat, and 
 declared himself a candidate, policies were opened 
 upon his life at several of the insurance offices in the 
 city. 
 
 These expectations were disappointed : the appre- 
 hension of affording a triumph to the Tories made 
 the friends of Mr. Wilkes preserve strict order in all 
 thoir proceedings. At the close of the poll i(. 
 appeared that the whole court and Tory interest 
 in the county could muster no more than two hun- 
 dred and ninety-six votes : Wilkes numbered eleven 
 hundred and forty-three. 
 
 When the n'tuni was laid before the house, 
 Wilkes's election was immediately declared void ; 
 
 vol.. III. 1
 
 A.D. 171)9. 
 
 114 THE HISTOKV OF TAKTY. 
 
 CHAP, and u})on the fbllowin*^ day the house resolved that 
 Colonel Luttrell ouoht to have been returned. 
 Fourteen days were allowed for petitions against this 
 decision, and one was accordingly presented and 
 heard. The resolution was, of course, confirmed, 
 and the clerk of the crown was ordered to amend 
 the return by rasing out the name of Mr. Wilkes, 
 and insertino^ that of Colonel Luttrell. 
 
 No public measure, since the accession of the 
 house of Hanover, had excited so general an alarm 
 as these resolutions. They were opposed in the 
 house of commons as loudly as they were denounced 
 by the people. When the attorney-general spun his 
 forensic sophistries, cited precedents of expulsion, 
 and argued that because aliens, minors, and cler- 
 gymen were excluded from that house, the same 
 power which could exclude a rank could exclude an 
 individual, he was answered by Mr. Grenville, who, 
 with an equal knowledge of election law, canvassed 
 his precedents, showed that they were either irrele- 
 vant or opposed to the ministerial doctrine, and 
 ridiculed the assertion, that the same power which 
 could legally exclude a class could exclude an indi- 
 vidual, as a position w^orthy only of a man who could 
 not distinguish between a legislator and a tyrant. 
 When Lord North appealed to the passions of his 
 audience, railed against Wilkes, enumerated the 
 variety of troubles he had given the ministry, and
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 115 
 
 dwelt upon the expediency of the measure proposed, chap. 
 he was met by Burke, who drew, on the other side, a . 
 moving picture of the state of the nation, and of the 
 terrible consequences to be dreaded from the conduct 
 of the ministry. He denied that this was a contest 
 between the house of commons and the freeholders of 
 Middlesex — it was a contest between that house and 
 the voters of England, whose franchises the house of 
 commons had invaded. He accused the ministers as 
 libellers of the people, with charging them in their 
 addresses with crimes they had themselves forced 
 them into, and as the sowers of discord between the 
 king and his subjects.* 
 
 On the <Jth of May the king, with many enco- 
 miums upon the conduct of his parliament, put an 
 end to the session. 
 
 The decision of the house of commons was heard 
 with rage and indignation. A Tory ministry and a 
 Tory house of commons, it was said, had at last met ; 
 they were worthily pursuing their old party precUlec- 
 tions; they had already evinced their contempt for the 
 constitution by destroying the right of representation, 
 and their hatnnl of the people by a military massacre. 
 
 • Pari. Hist. vdl. xvi., col. 590. It must not be forgotten that this 
 — Tlic best account of the urgu- work was written !>> or under the 
 ment on each side of this question imnicdiate superintendence of Ed- 
 is the summary contained in the nnind Rurke. 
 Annual R.-j;ist(T for I 7r,f», p tiH* . 
 
 I 'J
 
 A. D. 1769. 
 
 116 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. The indio;nation of the people and their leaders was 
 not greater than their boldness. Wilkes and his 
 party promoted the circulation and signature of the 
 most outrageous attacks upon the ministry, the 
 parliament, and the sovereign ; which, under the 
 name of petitions, carried the most poignant invec- 
 tive even to the throne. The Middlesex petitioners 
 reviewed the whole series of political transactions of 
 the reign, and concluded that they were a tissue of 
 unjust, tyrannical, and cruel acts, flowing from the 
 legislative, executive, and judicative estates. They 
 prayed, therefore, that he would banish for ever from 
 his favour, trust, and confidence, his evil and perni- 
 cious counsellors. The tenour of the London petition 
 was the same. 
 
 Westminster prayed more wisely for a dissolution 
 of parliament ; and fifteen counties and a great num- 
 ber of populous cities and towns immediately followed 
 the example. An effort was made to obtain ad- 
 dresses of an opposite character. Scotland sent them 
 readily ; the universities maintained their Tory cha- 
 racter, and complied ; but, of all the counties of 
 England, in Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Salop only 
 could such a demonstration be risked ; the cities of 
 Bristol and Coventry, and the single town of Liver- 
 pool, completed the list of admirers of the ministry. 
 
 Another class of petitions, expressed in language 
 firm but temperate, and forcible but decorous, pro-
 
 THE HISTORY OF Py\RTY. 117 
 
 ceeded from the AVliigs ; men who were not hurried CHAP. 
 away by their passions to exclaim against the perse- 
 cutors of "Wilkes, but who saw and deplored the 
 ravages which this ministry had already made in the 
 constitution. Of these, one from Buckinghamshire, 
 written by Mr. Burke, and another from Yorkshire, 
 by Sir George Saville, excited general attention and 
 approbation.
 
 lis Tin: msTouv of rAUTY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Lettei-s of Junius — Their character and influence — Summary of the 
 claims of the diiferent writers named as the author of these letters. 
 
 CHAP. This was a time, when all constitutional remedy 
 ^^' was suspended, and the house of commons had be- 
 
 to 1773- come an instrument of tyranny, to tax to the utmost 
 the power of the press — an engine whose power arises 
 from its necessity, and increases with its pressure ; 
 which can, at such a crisis as this, alone supply the 
 want of a representative body, and by imbuing mul- 
 titudes with the same definite purpose, enable them 
 to use the power they had been accustomed to dele- 
 gate. The age was by no means destitute of men 
 (jualificd for the occasion. Judge Blackstone, in his 
 pamphlet, called "The Answer to the Question 
 stated ;'* and Dr. Johnson, in another, called *' False
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 119 
 
 Alarm," exerted their great talents upon the Tory chap. 
 
 VI 
 
 side ; Wilkes and Sir MlUiam Meredith were only : — '■ 
 
 individuals of a multitude which gave utterance to to 1773. 
 the sentiments of the nation. But these writers, 
 able as they were, shrunk into insignificance beside 
 a rival who, upon his appearance, at once claimed 
 and monopolized the public attention. 
 
 Junius commenced that series of letters which has 
 inflicted a damning immortality upon every member 
 of this government, in January, I769. He was a prac- 
 tised political writer, well known to the public under 
 various signatures, and never unsuccessful in his 
 appeals. He was a Whig in party and in principle, 
 a defender not a servile encomiast of the Rocking- 
 ham party, differing from them upon many occasions, 
 sometimes preceding, at others falling short of them 
 in liberality of sentiment, but always halting far short 
 of those who urged forward their principle without 
 regard to aristocratic interests or personal expe- 
 diency.* 
 
 The powers of this writer as they are displayed in 
 these letters, stand unrivalled in any age or language. 
 
 • Junius, in parliament, would the other hand he denounced the 
 
 have voted for Lord Rockitigliam'b game laws as incompatible with 
 
 Declaratory act (Letter 63) ; and legal liberty (Letter 63); and 
 
 he would have opposed the dis- recorded his dissent from Lord 
 
 franchisement of nomination bo- Camden's doctrine of a suspend- 
 
 roughs (Letter to the supporters ing prerogative (Letter 69). 
 of tlic Bill of Rights). But on
 
 'JO Tin; HISTORY OF PARTY- 
 
 CHAP, liolingbroke could declaim in majestic and harmonious 
 language, allure his readers by a display of disin- 
 
 A.l). 17()J) 
 
 to 1773. terested and patriotic sentiment, and animate them 
 against his enemies by the eloquence of his accusa- 
 tion ; the elegant Addison could please, could 
 ridicule, could convince ; Swift, was an inimitable 
 lampooner, unhesitating in his assertions, and strong 
 in abuse ; but Junius surpassed all these. He ad- 
 dressed himself to the })owerful passions of our 
 nature, captivated attention by rancorous abuse, sar- 
 castic invective, and ferocious personalities ; yet dis- 
 guised these so well by the purity of his language 
 and the grace of his style, that while we relish the 
 pungency we do not taste the grossness. He offers 
 us an excitement to our passions, but the goblet 
 appears so pure that we pour from it a libation to 
 virtue ; he fences with a rapier of the highest temper 
 and polish : while we admire his amazing dexterity 
 we do not perceive that the blade is poisoned — that 
 the same weapon, urged by an infant's hand, would 
 inflict a deadly wound. 
 
 The aim of Junius was not calm conviction, it was 
 tumultuous excitement ; conviction might pen pam- 
 phlets, but would scarcely withdraw one vote from 
 the well-pensioned majority of the minister ; excite- 
 ment would carry terror into the cabinet and the 
 closet, and constrain, by fear, men who were deaf to 
 virtue. Thus, the weakest invention which his
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 1^1 
 
 readers believed, and all things are credible to an en- CHAP. 
 
 VI. 
 
 raged people, was readily caught up by Junius, and ^-^- 
 
 embalmed in the amber of his diction. He revived to 1773. 
 the long exploded accusation against Lord Mansfield, 
 that he had drunk the pretender's health upon his 
 knees. He favoured the popular belief that the 
 Duke of Bedford and Earl Bute had been bribed by 
 France to conclude the peace of Paris;* and even 
 condescended to remark the faded beauty of the Duke 
 of Grafton's mistress. He caught the topics and 
 scandal of the day, and wrought upon them until 
 those who had seen and received them in their native 
 coarseness were surprised and delighted to find 
 truths in which they thought they had an interest 
 presented in such an elegant and engaging garb. 
 
 It was thus that Junius excited attention. At this 
 distance of time the keenness of his satire attracts 
 thousands of readers who know nothing of the secret 
 history of the period, and little of the characters he 
 assails. If his style can charm such persons how 
 must it have excited his contemporaries, who saw in 
 every sentence a wound inflicted upon an enemy, and 
 knew that the man they hated was at the moment 
 
 • A belief which depended en- been long since disproved by a 
 
 tirely upon the testimony of Dr. public exainination of Mnsgravo 
 
 Musgrave, perhaps an honest, but at the bar of the liousc of commons, 
 
 rertiiinly an imprudent and credu- —Pari. Hint., vol. xvi., col. 7(j;). 
 
 lous man. 'I'iiis absurd story had But the mob still believed it.
 
 \'2'2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, writhinir under the infliction. The mystery of the 
 
 VI. 
 
 '- — authorship lent an additional shade of interest to the 
 
 to 177.}. lettei's. .Junius was exempt from the failings of hu- 
 manity, he had no conduct upon which his satire 
 could be retorted, no personal friendship which he 
 dwed not violate, no consistency to preserve beyond 
 his letters ; cased in impenetrable armour, he mingled 
 with the crowd, and pointed his unerring shafts in 
 security ; the throne was not too high, the cottage 
 not too low, for his visitations. 
 
 Such were the causes of Junius's popularity ; but 
 he was not destitute of other excellences. He could 
 reason clearly and strongly, and his letters contain 
 many beautiful specimens of logical argument. He 
 was possessed of profound political knowledge, and he 
 was immediately and accurately informed of the secret 
 transactions of the day.* Junius enjoyed every op- 
 portunity of becoming a perfect political writer, and 
 he used them. 
 
 The effect of these letters may be read in the 
 words of a man who was too accustomed to contem- 
 plate excellence in himself to overvalue it in others. 
 •' How comes this Junius to have broke through the 
 cobwebs of the law, and to range uncontrolled, un- 
 punished, through the land. The myrmidons of the 
 court have been long and are still pursuing him in 
 
 * See his private letters to Woodfail passim.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 1Q3 
 
 vain. They will not spend their time upon me, or CHAP, 
 you, or you : no, they disdain such vermin, when the '■ 
 
 ■^ . -^ -^ A. D. 1769 
 
 mighty boar of the forest, that has broke through all to 1773. 
 their toils is before them. But what will all their 
 efforts avail ? No sooner has he wounded one than 
 he lays another dead at his feet. For my part, when 
 I saw his attack upon the king, I own my blood ran 
 cold, I thought he had ventured too far, and that 
 there was an end of his triumphs. Not that he had 
 not asserted many truths. Yes, sir, there are in 
 that composition many bold truths by which a wise 
 prince might profit. It was the rancour and venom 
 by which I was struck. In these respects the North 
 Briton is as much inferior to him as in strength, wit, 
 and judgment. But while I expected from this dar- 
 ing flight his final ruin and fall, behold him rising still 
 higher, and coming down souse upon both houses of 
 parliament. Yes, he did make you his quarry, and 
 you still bleed from the wounds of his talons. You 
 crouched and still crouch beneath his rage ; nor has 
 he dreaded the terrors of your brow, sir ; he has 
 attacked even you — he has — and I believe you have 
 no reason to triumph in the encounter. In short, 
 after carrying away our royal eagle in his pounces, 
 and dashing him against a rock, he has laid you 
 prostrate. King, lords, and commons, are but the 
 sport of his fury. Were he a member of this house 
 what migiit not be expected from his knowledge, his
 
 lO.\, THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, firmnoss, and integrity ? He would be easily known 
 ^'" by his contempt of all danger, by his penetration, by 
 
 to 1773. his vigour. Nothing would escape his vigilance and 
 activity. Bad ministers could conceal nothing from 
 his sagacity ; nor could promises or threats induce 
 him to conceal any thing from the public."* 
 
 Such were the terms in which Burke spoke of the 
 genius and the influence of Junius. He knew that, 
 notwithstanding the rancour and venom which he 
 condemned, the productions of that writer had infused 
 a spirit of daring independence into the conductors 
 of political periodicals that had never before been 
 equalled. Alone Junius did this. At the com- 
 mencement of his career this same Junius, before he 
 had yet assumed the title under which he is become 
 immortal, had furnished Woodfall with a report of 
 one of Burke's speeches in the house of commons. 
 The report was covered with the usual disguise of a 
 speech at a debating society ; and as it is the earliest 
 so it is the tamest of Burke's reported speeches ; yet 
 Woodfall dared not publish it without several omis- 
 sions and alterations. Two years later the same 
 printer published, without hesitation, Junius's "Letter 
 to a King." The people had now found a writer 
 worthy of their support and they upheld him. 
 
 Lord North saw and deplored this consequence of 
 
 * Par). Hist., vol. xvi., col. 1 155.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 1^5 
 
 the popularity and impunity of Junius. In answer- CHAP, 
 ing Burke, he said, " Can any man recollect a period 
 
 A. D. 1769 
 
 when the press groaned with such a variety of wicked to ma. 
 and desperate libels ? Such is their number that one 
 would imagine there is not a single pen made, a 
 single standish used, or a single scrap of paper 
 bought, but in order to manufacture a libel. The 
 first thing we lay our hands on in the morning is a 
 libel, the last thing we lay out of our hands in the 
 evening is a libel. Our eyes open upon libels. In 
 short, libels, lampoons, and satires, constitute all the 
 writing, printing, and reading of our time. 
 
 ** Why, therefore, should we wonder that the great 
 boar of the wood, this mighty Junius, has broke 
 through the toils and foiled the hunters ? Though 
 there may be at present no spear that will reach him ; 
 yet he may be, some time or other, caught. At any 
 rate he will be exhausted with fruitless efforts ; those 
 tusks which he has been whetting to wound and gnaw 
 the constitution will be worn out. Truth will at last 
 prevail. When the feculence of bad humours has 
 worked itself off, the leaven of Junius will produce no 
 new fermentation ; he will then be despised for the 
 very falsehood and malice that now gain him readers ; 
 his pertness will no longer be mistaken for wit, nor 
 his impudence for spirit. The North Briton, the 
 most flagitious libel of its day, would have been 
 ecjually secure with Junius had it been as powerfully
 
 IQ6 TIIK IlISTOHY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. siii)porte(l. But the press had not then overflowed 
 
 VI. 
 
 the laud with its bhick gall, and i)oisoned the minds 
 
 A. D. 17G9 
 
 to 1773. of the people. Political writers had some shame left, 
 some reverence for the crown, some respect for the 
 name of majesty, nor were there any members of 
 parliament hardy enough to harangue in defence of 
 libels."* 
 
 It will be expected that, in a w-ork like the pre- 
 sent, some notice should be taken of the various hy- 
 potheses started as to the authorship of these letters. 
 Previously to the appearance of the private letters 
 from Junius to Mr. Woodfall, and the identification 
 of Junius with letters under other titles, the persons 
 who were chiefly suspected were Burke, Single-speech 
 Hamilton, Mr. Rosenhagen, General Lee, Wilkes, 
 Home Tooke, Hugh Macauley Boyd, and Lord 
 George Sackville.t Of these Wilkes and Home 
 Tooke could only be thought of by those who were 
 ambitious of starting and defending paradoxes. 
 General Lee's claim depended upon a confession said 
 to have been made to Mr. Rodney, and is disproved 
 by the absence of the General from England at a 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol. xvi., col. 1163. edition of Junius, and summarily 
 
 Collate the reports in W oodfall's disposed of by proof, that they 
 
 " Vox Senatus,"and in the " Gen- were either dead or absent from 
 
 tlenian's Magazine." England at some time when his 
 
 t There are several others fatlier was in almost daily commu- 
 
 namcd by Mr. Woodfall, in his nication with Junius.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 127 
 
 time when frequent private notes were passing be- CHAP, 
 tween Junius and Woodfall. Mr. Rosenhaofen, a '- 
 
 . . . A.D. 17'J9 
 
 fi'iend of Mr. Woodfall, and an occasional writer in to 1773 
 the Public Advertiser, is said to have propagated a 
 report that he was Junius, in order to induce Lord 
 North to silence him with a pension. Hugh Ma- 
 cauley Boyd, " a broken gentleman without a guinea 
 in his pocket,"* a great admirer and imitator of 
 Junius, was thought by Mr. Almon to be Junius, 
 because he blushed when charged with the author- 
 ship, and because Almon thought he could detect 
 some resemblance between the handwriting of Boyd 
 and that of Junius. Of these competitors Home 
 alone alone possessed a tithe of the ability requisite 
 to constitute a Junius. 
 
 Gerard Hamilton, Lord George Sackville, and 
 Burke, stand upon different ground ; they were all 
 men whom their contemporaries judged capable of 
 writing these letters. The principal fact against 
 Gerard Hamilton is, that he mentioned the substance 
 of a letter of Junius in conversation, which he pre- 
 tended to have just read in the Public Advertiser; 
 but which, on reference to the paper, was found not 
 to Ijc there, an apology instead of it being offered 
 for its postponement till the next day, when the letter 
 
 • So described by Almon in republican correspond Imt ill with 
 his bio^rapliy of him. The senti- the lofty and aristocratic Junius, 
 nients and fnrf unc of this vouthlul
 
 1'28 THE IIISTOIIV or PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, thus previously adverted to by Hamilton actually 
 made its appearance. This circumstance, however, 
 
 to 1773. is easily accounted for by the facts, that Hamilton 
 was intimate with Woodfall, and that the latter was 
 accustomed to communicate the letters of Junius to 
 his friends before they were published.* In other 
 respects we can find no identity between Junius and 
 Hamilton. Junius was a virulent partisan, Hamilton 
 was ever a moderate man, and never allied himself 
 closely with either party ; Junius was an ardent ad- 
 vocate for parliamentary reform (such as was then 
 proposed by the Whigs), Hamilton was so opposed 
 to any scheme of that nature that he declared he 
 would rather suffer his risfht hand to be cut off 
 than vote for it. Hamilton himself denied the 
 authorship with disdain, as an imputation upon his 
 good taste in composition. He doubtless had taste 
 and ability, but not such as would assume the form 
 of Junius. 
 
 The evidence against Lord George Sackville rests 
 chiefly upon a private letter from Junius to Woodfall, 
 in which he says, "That Swinney is a wretched but 
 dangerous fool. He had the impudence to go to 
 Lord G. Sackville, whom he had never spoken to, 
 
 ♦ Mr. Woodfall appeared to it, that Hamilton was Junius, was 
 
 point to this construction of the founded upon a misconception. — 
 
 incident, when he stated that he WoodfaWs Junius. 
 knew that the opinion drawn from
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 129 
 
 and to ask him whether or no he was the author of chap. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Junius — take care of him."* 
 
 A.D. 1769 
 
 Upon subsequent inquiry it was found that Junius to i"73. 
 must have become possessed of this intelhgence 
 within a few hours after the circumstance occurred. 
 Lord George Sackville's talents were well known and 
 admitted, his political principles w^ere closely in 
 accordance with those avowed by Junius, and Sir 
 William Draper expressed himself convinced that his 
 lordship was the author. But, on the other hand, 
 Junius's knowledge of Swinney's visit to Lord 
 George was probably shared with many others ; the 
 information was as likely to come from Swinney as 
 from his lordship, and the man who was impertinent 
 enough to go and put the question, was probably a 
 garrulous fellow, who proceeded directly to his club- 
 house and told what he had done. Lord George 
 Sackville once declared to a friend that, although he 
 should be proved capable of writing as Junius had 
 done, yet there were many passages in his letters he 
 would be very sorry to have written ; and in the cari- 
 cature of the ministry, called, "a Grand Council 
 upon the Affairs of Ireland, "t written by Junius, 
 but not under that signature. Lord Townshend is 
 represented as saying, '* T believe tJie best thing I 
 
 • Private Letters, No. 5, Wood- I7(i7, before the letters signed 
 ("alls Junius. .Iiiniu!> were commenced, 
 
 t This piece was written in 
 
 vol.. ill. K
 
 \30 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, can do is to go and consult with my Lord George 
 
 ; - ^ Sackvillo. His character is known and respected in 
 
 A. D. 17r.9 » 
 
 to 1773. Ireland as much as it is here ; and I know he loves 
 to be stationed in the rear as well as myself j"* an 
 equivocal compliment and a direct imputation of 
 cowardice which it is not probable that any man 
 would, without an object, fix upon himself.t 
 
 Burke remains. When Junius began to write in 
 the Public Advertiser, even while he wrote under 
 other titles, the voice of his contemporaries attributed 
 his productions to Burke ; and Junius was con- 
 
 * ]\Ir. Coventry, who has very 
 elaborately supported Lord George 
 Sackville's claims to the author- 
 ship of Junius, finding this passage 
 a serious obstacle, boldly denies 
 that it was written by Junius, and 
 starts the incomprehensible hypo- 
 thesis that this caricature was 
 drawn by the cabinet ministers 
 themselves, to ridicule Lord Sack- 
 ville as Malagrida. This letter is 
 identified as coming from Junius, 
 by a notice in the Public Adver- 
 tiser of October 21, 1767. " The 
 Grand Council on the Affairs, &c. 
 is come to hand, and shall have a 
 place in ovir next ;" and imme- 
 diately under, " Our friend and 
 correspondent C. will always find 
 the utmost attention paid to his 
 favours." Mr. Woodfall, who lias 
 
 printed this letter as a Junius, 
 is not likely to be mistaken. It 
 must be remembered also, that 
 Cumberland, who published a 
 panegyric upon Lord Sackville 
 soon after his death, speaks of him 
 as unusually deficient in classical 
 acquirements, and as possess- 
 ing neither the advantages of 
 literature, brilliancy of wit, nor 
 any superior pretensions to a fine 
 taste in the elegant arts. — Sec this 
 panegyric in Collins's Peerage. — 
 Could such a man have been 
 Junius ? 
 
 f Lord George Sackville, when 
 Lord George Germaine, was 
 broken by a court-martial, for 
 cowardice exhibited at the battle 
 of Minden.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PAllTY. ^ 131 
 
 tinually assailed in the public papers as "The Hi- CHAP, 
 bernian Secretary," " The lad whose face had been . ^^ ,^^- 
 
 " ' A. D. 1769 
 
 bathed in the Liffey," "The dealer in the sublime to 1773. 
 and beautiful," with many other similar epithets. 
 Mrs. Burke once admitted that she believed her 
 husband knew the author of the letters, but that he 
 certainly did not write them ; and Burke himself 
 once indirectly admitted to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 that he knew the writer of Junius's letters ; giving at 
 the same moment an intimation that he wished 
 nothing more to be said upon the subject. Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Malone beheved that 
 Burke did not write these letters, but certainly 
 polished and finished them for the public eye. Mr. 
 Dyer, an intimate friend of the Burkes, and a com- 
 missary in the army, was the person whom Burke's 
 friends suspected of having furnished the foundation 
 of the letters ; and their suspicion was increased, or 
 perhaps originated, by the conduct of Burke, who, at 
 the death of Mr. Dyer, which happened in 177~> 
 intruded into his lodgings, and hastily destroyed a 
 quantity of papers, saying they were of great import- 
 ance to him, but of none to any other person. Lord 
 Mansfield, Sir William Blackstone, and Sir Williniii 
 Draper, thought that Burke was Junius ; the last, 
 upon l>urk(!'s (h'nial, tiirncHl his suspicions upon 
 I^onl (ieorge Sackville : we have uo evideiu'c that 
 the other (»bjpcts of his att;u'k (•haiii2^(Ml their ()|)ini()n. 
 
 K 'i
 
 1.^2 THE IIISTOUY OF I'AHTY. 
 
 CHAP. As in tlio cases of Ilainiltoii and Lord Sackville, 
 a corroborative incident is brought forward against 
 
 A. D. 17G9 ^ ° 
 
 to 1773. Burke. The readers of Woodfall's edition of Junius 
 t\Yc aware that all the letters written by that author 
 were known to Woodfall by a private mark, *' C/* 
 By this mark many miscellaneous communications, 
 under various signatures, are identified as proceeding 
 from Junius, and among others the report of Burke's 
 speech already alluded to. In his introduction to 
 this report, Junius speaks of it as having been spoken 
 by himself at a debating society, and the advocates 
 of this hypothesis think that expression decisive upon 
 the subject. This same speech, however, was re- 
 ported much more correctly in the Political Register ; 
 and appears, probably for beauties which are lost in 
 the report, to have been much admired at the time. 
 Every member of the house of commons must have 
 recognised it at once as Burke's speech ; and it is 
 highly improbable that, if he had reported it himself, 
 he would state that the report came from the author. 
 The legitimate inference from this circumstance ap- 
 pears to be only an uncertain probability that Junius 
 was, at this time, a member of the house of commons. 
 On the other hand, Burke distinctly and sponta- 
 neously denied to many persons that he was the 
 author of these letters. Burke was a decided op- 
 opponent of George Grenville, condemned and 
 repealed th(! Stamp act, and detested the idea of 
 triennial parliaments. Junius was a persevering
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 1 S3 
 
 encomiast of Grenville, an approver of the Stamp chap. 
 act,* and an advocate for triennial parliaments; 
 points of difference might be multiplied, but these are to 1773. 
 sufficient to show that Burke could not have written 
 these letters. Another circumstance, in itself con- 
 clusive against the claims of Burke's friends, is the 
 action brought by Burke against Woodfall, in 1783, 
 for a libel printed in the Public Advertiser. Consi- 
 derable interest was made with Mr. Burke to induce 
 him to drop this prosecution, but he was inexorable. 
 A verdict of a hundred pounds was obtained and the 
 amount received. Junius could not have acted thus. 
 To any person who has no particular theory to 
 establish, the mere perusal of Junius's private letters 
 must be sufficient to convince him that they were 
 never written by ]5urke ; in these we see the tem- 
 per of the writer, and it is not the temper of Burke.t 
 Since the publication of the private letters, and 
 the identification of the miscellaneous letters, several 
 other names have been mentioned. A plausible 
 
 • " if the pretensions of the same nature with the former. It 
 
 colonies bad not been abetted by is this: Tliat the disturbances arose 
 
 something worse than a faction from tlic account which had been 
 
 here, the Stamp act would have received in America of tlie change 
 
 executed itself."— ./««»«'»• Mis- of ministry." 
 
 eellaneous Letters, No. xxxi.— ^ The arguments in favovir of 
 
 Compare this with IJurke's speech (iurkc will be found collected in 
 
 on American taxation. " Sir, the Prior's Life of Burke, and st.ited 
 
 agents and distributors of false- in the two pamphlets that have 
 
 hoods have, with their usual indus- been written in suppurl <>l the 
 
 try, circulated inuithcr lie <\\' (lie idrtilitv r.C l?iirkc and .Iiiiiinis.
 
 [Si THE IIISTOKV OF I'ARTV. 
 
 CHAT, writer has undertaken to demonstrate that the Duke 
 VI. . 
 
 . ^ . of Portland was Junius, and that the acnmony which 
 
 A. U. I7()9 
 
 to 177:3. inspired these letters was caused by the persecution 
 he suffered at the hands of the ministry, under cover 
 of the null ton fempus maxim. This advocate argues 
 that the restoration of the duke's estate, which had 
 been granted to Sir James Lowther, was the direct, 
 if not the only cause of Junius's writing. He shows 
 that, under the signature of " Mnemon," Junius 
 energetically and perseveringly supported the cause 
 of the duke : that upon this subject he was always 
 early informed, always minutely correct ; while upon 
 others his information was frequently general, and 
 sometimes erroneous : that in this defence he em- 
 ploys no less than seventeen signatures, and that the 
 great grievance, however covertly introduced, is 
 never absent from his mind. He shows also that the 
 letters in which Junius defended the Duke of Port- 
 land correspond, in a remarkable manner, with the 
 case published, under the duke's authority, by Almon, 
 in I7C8 ; and proceeds, after the manner of all his 
 competitors, to force every ambiguous sentence in 
 the letters into a declaration that the author was his 
 hero. This practice is so universal with the dis- 
 coverers of Junius, each is so keen in detecting and 
 ridiculing the credulity of his opponents, so credulous 
 and confident himself, that I know no study more 
 instructive, as an illustration of the infirmity of hu- 
 man judgment, than m j)erusal of the mass of contro-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 135 
 
 versy upon the authorship of Junius's Letters. The CHAP, 
 advocate of the duke is not without his direct evi- '- 
 
 A. D. 17(i«J 
 
 dence. The duke was intimately connected with to 1773 
 the Cavendish family, both by birth and marriage. 
 A packet received by Woodfall, but recovered by 
 Junius, was sealed with the Cavendish arras. One 
 of the letters in Woodfall's possession is sealetl 
 with, what this theorist considers to have been, 
 a ducal coronet,* others are antiques of which his 
 grace's mother had a very fine collection. The 
 handwritincr of Junius and that of the duke are com- 
 pared, and pronounced identical. In a memoir of 
 the duke, his advocate finds it stated, that it was 
 well known that no gentleman in England could write 
 a better letter ; and again, that he joined with the 
 Marquis of Rockingham in writing down two admi- 
 nistrations ; for which purpose a joint-stock purse 
 was collected and employed. 
 
 The anxiety which Junius showed to preserve his 
 secrecy, and his protracted silence when the period 
 of danger was past, arc accounted for with some 
 plausibility. The leases of the Marylebone estate 
 would expire in 1794' ; the Cumberland property was 
 already litigated. Had the duke been even sus- 
 pected to be Junius previous to that yeai-, could he 
 have expected from George III. the renewal of the 
 
 • 'Flic impression is so impcr- in the ncmld's College, none ol 
 feet, that when Ml. \\<M»(ir;ill biib- ilicrii (ouM <lctcrniine to what 
 mittcd it to several of his* friends rank it belonged.
 
 1^6 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTV. 
 
 (^ H Ap. Man leboiie estate, under any administration, or from 
 
 — -— the protection of either party ? •' Motives," he told 
 
 to 177.-3. Sir William Draper, ** very different from any appre- 
 hension of his resentment rendered it impossible he 
 should ever know him." It was important to the 
 duke that the Scotch influence and the Tory power 
 which had attacked his Cumberland estates should 
 be overthrown ; but absolute ruin would be the con- 
 sequence of his detection as their assailant. Junius 
 contended for a mighty stake — he thus secretly gave 
 vent to his bitterness ag-ainst men who were attack- 
 ing his patrimony, yet whom he dared not openly 
 provoke. The secret was never revealed, because 
 the duke, in 1794, changed his party, to procure the 
 renewal of the Marylebone estate. Thenceforward 
 the letters of Junius must have been a fountain of 
 bitterness to their author. 
 
 Such are the arguments put forth in support of a 
 hypothesis which, like all others that have been ad- 
 vanced upon the same subject, obtained attention by 
 the solemn air of confidence with which it was ushered 
 in, was heard, and was forgotten.* 
 
 A second person pointed out, by a no less san- 
 guine section of the examiners of the private letters, 
 was Sir Philip Francis, whose identity with Junius 
 is supported by an equal quantity of circumstantial 
 evidence. The advocates of this candidate discover 
 
 » Letters to h Nobleman, proving a late Prime Minister to have 
 been Junius;.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 137 
 
 that the chief obiect of the letters of Junius was to CHAP. 
 
 . . . . .VI. 
 vilify' the ministrv for having discharg-ed Mr. Francis — -— 
 
 , "^ o o A.D. 1769 
 
 from a situation in the war-office. They show that to 1773. 
 Junius, under other signatures, dragged before the 
 public all the petty details of intrigues among the 
 underlings of the war- office, dwelt upon them with 
 an interest which none but a person intimately 
 affected by them could have felt, and discovered a 
 minute knowledge of the transactions of the place, 
 w^hich none but an officer of the establishment could 
 have possessed. They remark that Junius, who is 
 so very sparing of panegyric upon other occasions, 
 lavishes it upon Mr. Francis and Mr. D'Oyly upon 
 their quitting their situations ; and that Junius him- 
 self appears to intimate that these letters were 
 written by an injured man ; since, under the signature 
 of *' Scotus," he tells Lord Barrington, "You have 
 had some lessons which have made you more cautious 
 than you used to be. You have reason to remember 
 that modest humble merit will not always bear to be 
 insulted by an upstart in office." The signature 
 under which .Junius wrote the letters to Lord Bar- 
 rington was " Vetei'dii;'' and, in several of his private 
 letters to Woodfall, he expressed his anxiety that 
 Veteran should not be known to be Junius. If it 
 can be prov(!d that Sir IMiilip Franc-is wrote the 
 letters signed *' Veteran," all further argument from 
 the expressions or peculiarities of the letters signed 
 "Junius" is suJ)erHuou^, iUs there can exist no
 
 Ui8 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, tloubt that the authors were identical. Those who 
 contend that Sir Phihp Francis was Junius, also 
 
 A.D. 17r)9 1 11 11 1 • 
 
 to 1773. remark that Junius never attacks Lord Holland, is 
 silent concerning him in his public letters, and in his 
 private communications to Woodfall acknowledges an 
 interest in his honour. Lord Holland, when Mr. 
 Henry Fox, had given Sir Philip Francis a little place 
 in the secretary of state's office early in life ; Dr. 
 Francis, Sir Philip's father, was Lord Flolland's do- 
 mestic chaplain, and the tutor of his son. It appears 
 that Junius and Sir Philip Francis have each declared, 
 the latter in his " Essay on the Regency," the for- 
 mer in the dedication to his letters, that they heard 
 Lord Chatham's speech of the 1 Ith December, 1770, 
 and noted his expressions. A journey made by Sir 
 Philip to the continent, during the period over which 
 the letters of Junius extend, tallies exactly with a 
 suspension of the correspondence between Junius and 
 Woodfall ; Junius was very apprehensive of being 
 w'atched by Garrick ; Garrick was acquainted with 
 Sir Philip, and had he caught a glimpse of Junius 
 could, under this supposition, have identified him. 
 The styles of Junius and Sir Francis are declared, by 
 the advocates of their identity, to be similar, and the 
 handwriting to be of precisely the same general cha- 
 racter.* 
 
 This circumstantial proof is very strong, but 
 (•11 the other hand, those who have some other 
 
 * Junius Identified.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. \o{) 
 
 theory to support, speak with great contempt of the CHAP, 
 advocates of Sir Philip. They iirg-e that Sir Phihp '- 
 
 . . ^ A. D. 1769 
 
 wrote to Sir Richard PhilHps, stating that it was a silly to 1773. 
 malignant falsehood to attribute the authorship of the 
 letters to hira. They remark that the works which 
 are avowedly those of Sir Philip have not a particle of 
 the spirit of Junius in them. They notice that Junius 
 was at first the violent assailant of Lord Chatham, and 
 only gradually dropped his hostility, and became an 
 admirer and panegyrist of that nobleman ; but that 
 Sir Philip, who had been brought forward in lite by 
 Lord Chatham's interest, was always his follower and 
 encomiast ; they remark that Welbore Ellis, who is 
 never mentioned by Junius but in the most con- 
 temptuous manner, w^as a man to whom Sir Philip 
 was indebted for great kindness ; that Sir Philip was 
 an Irishman, whereas it is now generally admitted 
 that these letters were written by an Englishman, 
 and that Junius " remembered the great Walpolean 
 battles," and " saw the Jesuitical books burnt at 
 Paris" — events which happened before Sir Philip was 
 born. By Sir Philip Francis's advocates it has been 
 thought a fact in their favour, that Mr. ^^^oodfall^ 
 the printer of the Public Advertiser, and Sir Philip, 
 had been contemporaries and intimates at St. Paul's 
 school. They say that Junius discovered an interest 
 ill the prosperity of his printer which he would not 
 h;i\(' tl'It had lie known hiui inerel) as a printer.
 
 1 1-0 THE IIISTOllY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. But the fact is also ca])ablc of beiiiff uro-ed on the 
 
 VI. o o 
 
 other side. Mr. Woodfall must have had some 
 
 A. D. 17(if) 
 
 to 1773. knowledge of his old schoolfellow, and when he was 
 named as the author he must have had peculiar 
 means of judging whether the report was correct ; he 
 always absolutely denied it. Some years after, Mr. 
 \^'oodfidl, having been to a public dinner at which 
 Sir Philii), then returned from India, was present, 
 remarked to a friend, that he had just met his old 
 schoolfellow, Sir Philip Francis. "Then," answered 
 his friend, ** you met, at the same time, your old 
 correspondent, Junius." — " Certainly not," was Mr. 
 Woodfall's reply. " To my absolute knowledge Sir 
 Philip never wrote one line of those letters."* 
 
 Upon an impartial review of the claims of each of 
 these writers, it will, I think, appear that, although 
 it is possible that one of them may have been Junius, 
 no sufficient proof can be brought forward in behalf 
 of either of them. The idea appears, in general, to 
 have been suggested by some strong coincidence in 
 a particular point. Struck by this single coincidence, 
 some sanguine inquirer has, in each instance, become 
 at once convinced. He has continued the investiga- 
 tion with a j)rejudice which nothing could shake, has 
 wrested every ambiguous circumstance to his own 
 side, given to every sentence a construction corrobo- 
 
 * This anecdote was comnnuiicated to me by the present JMr. 
 Woodfall.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 141 
 
 A.D. 1769 
 
 to 1773. 
 
 rative of his preconceived opinion ; and where he met ^^"^^ 
 with a difficulty which could be neither overlooked ^ 
 nor destroyed, has avoided it, by the ever ready 
 excuse, that Junius wrote with a constantly sustained 
 design of avoidino- detection. With such advantages 
 there is not a public man of the period who could not 
 be supported, with some degree of plausibility, as the 
 author of Junius's Letters. 
 
 Very recently the inquiry has been renewed with in- 
 creased spirit, by Sir David Brewster, whose acumen 
 and discrimination will certainly preserve him from 
 the inconsistencies into which all his predecessors 
 have been betrayed, and who, if the materials exist, 
 will probably determine the question. The candidate 
 whose claims are at present preferred by Sir David, is 
 Mr. Lachlan Maclean, secretary to the Earl of Shel- 
 burne. This gentleman, like every one of his con- 
 temporaries who was known to be a political writer, 
 was suspected by his private friends to be Junius, 
 and when he afterwards received a lucrative appoint- 
 ment in India, the newspapers of the day adopted 
 and spread the report. His claims were noticed by 
 Almon in the introduction to his edition of Junius, 
 but without much rcspcict, and the idea, which was 
 never very generally entiTtained, soon (IcH-lined, and 
 was forgotten. Its recent revival was the result of 
 accident; Sir David IJrcwster, among the })apers of 
 his relative, Mr. Macpherson, found a numl)er of
 
 142 Tlll^ lllSTOltY OF PAurv. 
 
 CHAP, letters addressed to that gentleman by Mack^an, 
 VI 
 
 with whom Maepherson was in some way con- 
 
 A.D. 1709 ,»,,,. . . r 
 
 to 1773. nected. Although written upon private or ordinary 
 
 topics, the style was so peculiar, the epigrammatic 
 diction which characterizes the writings of Junius was 
 so marked, the phrases were in many instances so 
 similar, and the general character of the handwriting 
 so closely corresponded with the fac-similes published 
 in Woodfall's edition of Junius, that Sir David was in- 
 duced to make further inquiries. From the scattered 
 notices which remain of so obscure a person, it appears 
 that Maclean was the son of an Irish Presbyterian 
 clergyman, descended from the Macleans of Coll, in 
 the Hebrides. He first appUed himself to the study 
 of medicine, and served for some time as regimental 
 surgeon in America. Upon his return he was intro- 
 duced to Lord Shelburne by Colonel Barre, and aban- 
 doned his profession, and became a pohtical writer in 
 London. The times were favourable for men of his 
 class. The government was corrupt^ and gave large 
 premiums for talent ; whilst the keenness of public 
 contests, and the variety of administrations that suc- 
 ceeded each other with such unexampled rapidity, 
 sharpened the public curiosity, and fixed it upon 
 party politics. By several letters and pamphlets, 
 which are not now readily to be met with or recog- 
 nised, Maclean acquired distinction. He became 
 private secretary to Lord Shelburne, and rose to be
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 143 i| 
 
 under secretary of state during^ the time that noble- CHAP, 
 man was in office. In this capacity he might have 
 acquired all that minute and ready acquaintance with to 1773. 
 state secrets which Junius, during the same period, 
 is proved to have possessed. He was the friend of 
 Burke and Goldsmith, and was, doubtless, a man of 
 considerable ability. 
 
 If Maclean was Junius he must have been a 
 reckless and unprincipled man. In I77I he pub- 
 lished a " Defence of the Ministry, on the subject 
 of the Falkland Islands," no copy of which pro- 
 duction has been yet discovered. At this very 
 time, when Maclean was publicly defending the 
 ministry, we are told (in Campbell's "Life of 
 Hugh Boyd"), that he possessed a mortal hatred 
 for the Duke of Grafton, and indulged his resent- 
 ment by painting him in the blackest colours. 
 He had been dismissed from office, and a person 
 of his temperament would thus have many enmi- 
 ties to revenge, and many rivals to attack. Mac- 
 lean had his reward for his public defence of the 
 ministry. In 177'^ he was a})pointed, by Lord 
 North, collector of Philadelphia; and his absence upon 
 this commission, as in the case of Sir Philip Francis, 
 tallies with the intt^rval in the correspondence of 
 Junius with Woodfall, an interval which lasted from 
 May, 1772, to January, 1773. In 1773 Maclean 
 returned from Amorica, and went to India, witli the 
 l)revet rank of" ricntctiant-colonrl. Tliis \v;is an
 
 ui. 
 
 THE HISTORY Ol- PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, appointment of no small emolument, and was thought 
 A r» ,-<^« to be the reward of some greater service than the 
 to 1773. <' Defence of the Ministry in the affair of the Falkland 
 Islands." It is certainly a curious coincidence that, 
 at this exact time, Junius ceased to write. Maclean 
 returned again to England in 177^>> and two years 
 afterwards he undertook another voyage to India, 
 being employed by the government, on official busi- 
 ness with the nabob of Arcot. He was destined 
 never to return. His last letter was written upon his 
 knee, in the desert of Suez. *' I have embarked," he 
 says, ** in a crazy ship, with a crazy captain." His 
 presentiment was verified ; the " Swallow" packet 
 went down, and all on board perished. In the ship- 
 wreck of this vessel perished any writings or docu- 
 ments that, if Maclean was Junius, might have 
 revealed the secret to his contemporaries. Maclean 
 left an enormous property, amounting to two or 
 three hundred thousand pounds. 
 
 Such is a brief summary of the leading features in 
 the career of the man whose claims to the authorship 
 of these letters are now undergoing investigation. 
 
 Since this hypothesis has been started, a curious 
 passage, in Gait's *'Life of West," has been pointed 
 out as favourable to its establishment. " An inci- 
 dent of a curious nature has brought him (Mr. 
 West) to be a party, in some degree, with the sin- 
 gular question respecting the mysterious author of
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 145 
 
 the celebrated letters of Junius. On the mornino^ CHAP. 
 
 VI. 
 
 that the first of these famous invectives appeared, — — — 
 
 ^ ^ A. D. 1769 
 
 his friend, Governor Hamilton, happened to call, and, to 1773. 
 inquiring the news, Mr. West informed him of that 
 bold and daring epistle ; ringing for his servant at 
 the same time, he desired the newspaper to be 
 brought in. Hamilton read it over with great atten- 
 tion, and when he had done, laid it on his knees, in 
 a manner that particularly attracted the notice of the 
 painter, who was standing at his easel. ' This 
 letter,' said Hamilton, in a tone of vehement feeling, 
 
 'is by that d d scoundrel, M'Lean.' — * What 
 
 M'Lean?' inquired Mr. West. 'The surgeon of 
 Ot way's regiment ; the fellow who attacked me so 
 virulently in the Philadelphia newspaper, on account 
 of the part I felt it my duty to take against one of 
 the officers.' — ' This letter is by him. I know these 
 very words. I may well remember them ;' and he 
 read over several phrases and sentiments which 
 M'Lean employed against him. Mr. West then 
 informed the governor that M'Lean was in the 
 country, and that he was personally acquainted with 
 him. ' He came over,' said Mr. West, with Colonel 
 Barry, by whom he was introduced to Lord Shel- 
 burne (afterwards Mar([uis of Lansdowne), and is, at 
 present, private secretary to his lordship.'" 
 
 This anecdote is certainly of considerable weight ; 
 some ])assages in the letters, possessed by Sir David 
 
 vol.. TII. L
 
 1 K) Till!: IlISTOKY OF I'AllTV. 
 
 CHAP. Brewster, bear a strong resemblance to Junius, and 
 VI. 
 
 — niiirht well have been the careless productions of that 
 
 A.D. 17(>{) /^ ^ 
 
 to 1773. vigorous mind ; the declaration of Junius that he had 
 served under one of the Townshends applies to 
 Maclean. The character of Maclean, habitually a 
 gambler and a debauchee, discovers the absence of 
 principle which must have characterized it if Mac- 
 lean was Junius. The opinion of his friends, and 
 even of the government authorities in Ireland, 
 pointed him out as the author. He stood in the 
 situation in which he could have learned the secrets 
 that Junius knew — he had been ejected from office 
 by those w^hom Junius attacked. These are a few of 
 the points favourable to the identity of Junius and 
 Lachlan Maclean. They are not put forward as a 
 fair abstract of the arguments in his favour, for the 
 inquiry is still in progress, and every day may bring 
 forth some decisive fact. 
 
 The objections to this hypothesis are certainly not 
 less weighty than those which are opposed to many 
 others. To begin with one of the weakest : Maclean, 
 although not a very young man, does not appear to 
 have been old. Dr. Goode, the author of the preli- 
 minary essay to Woodfall's Junius, who, having no 
 particular hypothesis to substantiate, is an impartial 
 authority, was convinced that Junius was a man of age 
 and experience. When we find that every one of those 
 intimations, which are so impossible to be avoided or to
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 1 IJ 
 
 be consistently feigned, favour this supposition ; that chap. 
 none oppose it, and that, according- to the best judges 
 
 ^^ . . . . A. D. )7(i9 
 
 of handwriting, the handwriting of Junius is that of to 1773, 
 the early part of the eighteenth century, we shall be 
 inclined, in the absence of strong proof to the con- 
 trary, to agree with Dr. Goode, and to say that a 
 candidate for the reputation of Junius should have 
 been able to remember the great Walpolean battles, 
 and to have seen the Jesuitical books burnt at Paris. 
 
 Another stronger objection is the denial of Mr. 
 Woodfall. Although it is highly probable that that 
 gentleman did not know who was Junius, yet he had 
 many means of discovering who were not. Minute 
 discrepancies betw^een the delivery of the private 
 letters and the positions or occupations of any reputed 
 Junius, might have enabled him authoritatively to 
 negative the claims of many of those with whom he 
 was intimate. Maclean was one of these ; yet when 
 he set out for India, and the report that Junius was 
 gone was whispered about, Woodfall ridiculed it as 
 absurd.* 
 
 The same objection which occurs to negative the 
 pretensions of 13oyd, will a})])ly also to any letters or 
 pam])hlets of Maclean, which, written after the date 
 of Junius's letters, may bear traces of his style. It 
 
 " I liave rLTci\«'il uii :i5isuiaiiCL' ol' tliis lai t fioiu tlif pix'scnt Mr. 
 Woodfall. 
 
 L '2
 
 M'8 THE IIISTOHV OF TAllTY. 
 
 ( IIAP. was the fasliion to imitate tlic style of Junius : the 
 VI. ..... 
 
 . ,, ., - whole herd of political writers studied his phrases 
 
 A. I). I7(i9 ^ i 
 
 to 1773, with curious attention, and thought they succeeded 
 in rivalling him in proportion as they could forge his 
 peculiarities. This mania was universal at the time. 
 Sheridan was absorbed by it. Any argument from 
 similarity of style must, therefore, be based upon 
 writings anterior to the appearance of Junius. 
 
 Still more serious difficulties are encountered in 
 the miscellaneous letters. The same letter, called 
 •* A Grand Council upon the Affairs of Ireland," 
 which has been already noticed as decisive against 
 Lord George Sackville's claims, is hostile to those of 
 Maclean. If Lord Sackville wrote it, he taunted 
 himself with that charge of cowardice which imbit- 
 tered his life — if Maclean wrote it he held up to 
 ridicule and contempt Lord Shelburne, his patron 
 and benefactor. In neither instance could this have 
 been a sacrifice to security, for the letter did not 
 bear the sicrnature of Junius, and therefore could not 
 have deceived the public. Junius had not yet com- 
 menced his letters, no especial cause for concealment 
 had hitherto occurred. 
 
 Another of these miscellaneous letters, signed 
 ** Vindex," will be conclusive against any thing but 
 unanswerable evidence. Junius, after the termina- 
 tion of the dispute with Spain upon the subject of 
 the Falkland islands, wrote two letters, under the
 
 THE HISTORY OF rAKTY. 1 t9 
 
 siornature of "Vindex," inveighins^ ag^alnst the com- chap. 
 promise which had been made. He first attacked the ~ ^ ^^^^ 
 ministers, and concluded with an insult to the king, to 1773. 
 so gross and personal that the printer objected to 
 publish it — that part was cancelled ; even at the 
 time of publishing Woodfall's edition it was thought 
 too offensive to be restored, nor has it ever yet been 
 made public. The MS. of this letter is now in Mr. 
 Woodfall's possession, written in the handwriting 
 of Junius, and marked with the private signature 
 *'C." The second letter is a continuation of the 
 first, and passes from the ministers to their defenders. 
 Maclean, as we have seen, was one of these. The 
 letter is as follows : 
 
 *' Sir, — Pray tell that ingenious gentleman, Mr. 
 Laughlin Maclean, that when the King of Spain 
 writes to the King of Great Britain, he omits four- 
 fiflhs of his titles, and when our king writes to him, 
 his address is always ' Carolo Dei gratia Hispaniarum 
 utriusque Sicilia? et Indiarum Rcgi Catholico.' It 
 was reserved for his present majesty to say, in a pub- 
 lic instrument, ' Falkland island is one of my posses- 
 sions, and yet I allow the King of Spain to reserve 
 a claim of prif>r right, and I declare myself satisfied 
 with that reservation.' In spite of Mr. Laughlin's 
 disinterested, unbroken, melodious, eloquence, it is a
 
 l/iO TIIF, TTTSTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 cilAl'. iiiekuK'lioly truth, tliat the crown of Kntrland was 
 
 VI. : ^ 
 
 — — jT — j:— never so insultecl, never so shamefully degraded, as 
 to 1773. by this declaration, with which the best of sovereigns 
 assures his people he is perfectly, entirely, com- 
 pletely satisfied. — Vindex."* 
 
 As the authenticity of this letter is unquestionable, 
 it follows that, if Lachlan Maclean was Junius, he 
 must not only have written against himself, but he 
 must have written also in ridicule of himself ; and this 
 without the object of secrecy, since no one but the 
 printer knew that Junius and Vindex were identical. 
 
 If we admit that Junius was such a knave as to 
 vilify his patron, and so foohsh as to ridicule himself, 
 it would be idle to insist upon the improbability of 
 his writing, at the same time, upon both sides of a 
 public question ; or to urge that the line of politics 
 advocated by Junius is not likely to be that which 
 would have been professed by Maclean. Yet it 
 would certainly require some explanation to account 
 for the fact of a secretary of Lord Shelburne writing 
 as a partisan of George Grenville, and making those 
 very letters a ground of merit with his patron. Such 
 must have been the case if Maclean was Junius ; for 
 Lord Shelburne must have known the fact, or the 
 
 * These letters arc both printed in Woodlall's edition of Junius, 
 vol. iii., [). ;j4:3.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 151 
 
 object of the author could not have been attained. CHAP. 
 Lord Shelburne may be supposed to be ignorant who ^ ^^ ^^^^ 
 Vindex was, iornorant also who it was who had exhi- to 1773. 
 bited him as Malagrida ; but he could not have been 
 ignorant who Junius was, or Junius must have 
 remained unrewarded ; and as the present hypothesis 
 represents Junius as an unprincipled adventurer, who 
 wrote on either or on both sides, as his malignity or 
 his interest dictated, such a supposition is not ad- 
 missible. 
 
 These are a few of the objections which occur at 
 the first view, to this hypothesis. When these are 
 satisfactorily removed, Mr. Lachlan Maclean will be 
 as likely as any one of his contemporaries to have 
 written the letters of Junius. Circumstantial evi- 
 dence, arising from style, handwriting, or particular 
 coincidence, may then be produced; it may be 
 shown that he had all the ficilities of minute infor- 
 mation, and all the acerbity of feeling against the 
 war-office underlings, which fallaciously pointed out 
 Sir PhiHp Francis as Junius; — that he had the intimate 
 connexion with the Duke of Portland which would 
 have ])ut him in possession of the intelligence, and 
 placed him under the influence of the bias that have 
 thrown an improbable sus])icionu})onthatnoblcman; — 
 that he had the personal animosities that might have 
 actuated Sackville— the vanity which drew ambiguous
 
 l.'>'2 THE IIISTOIIV OF I'ARTY. 
 
 CHAP, denials tVom 1 1 orne Tooke* — or the genius, the vigour 
 ■ ., .„ „ of intellect, wliieli ai)])eare(l to point out Burke. All 
 
 A. L). 17t)*) ' * ^ 1 
 
 to 1773. this may be proved, and much more, yet so long as 
 direct evidence is wanting, and the objections vi^hich 
 have been before enumerated remain, hearsay anec- 
 dotes and circumstantial evidence will weigh as dust 
 in the balance ; or rather no circumstantial evidence 
 can exist, since the line of coincidences is not un- 
 broken. 
 
 It is not altogether improbable that direct evidence 
 of the authorship of these letters still exists, although 
 its publication is reserved for some future period. It 
 is well known that Sir Phili]) Francis has left me- 
 moirs which, after an appointed time, will see the 
 light. A suspicion has also long prevailed that the 
 secret is in the custody of the Grenville family ; and 
 the answers that have been, on all occasions, returned 
 to inquiries upon this point, merely denying any 
 personal knowledge, but declining any answer to the 
 real question, whether the secret is supposed by the 
 family to be in their custody, certainly favours the 
 
 * VVlicn Mr. VVoodfall project- writer even at that distance of 
 
 ed liis edition of Junius, he ap- time, and evidently wished to 
 
 plied to Home Tooke for any infor- favour tiic absurd report, believed 
 
 mation he possessed upon the sub- and kept ahve by his immediate 
 
 ject ; Tooke pretended to evade his followers, that he was Junius, 
 questions, spoke of danger to the
 
 THE HISTORY OF TAUrY^ 153 
 
 supposition. If this suspicion should turn out to be CHAP, 
 well founded, it will be better to wait, with patience, "7"5~p^ 
 for the certainty, than to amuse our curiosity with to 1773. 
 plausible guesses. 
 
 Such is a condensed account of the state of the 
 controversy upon the authorship of the Letters of 
 Junius.
 
 l«5i THE HISTORY OF I'AUTY. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Lord Mansfieltl's doctrine of libels — Resignation of Lord Camden — Of 
 the Duke of Grafton — The North administration — Biographical 
 anecdotes of John Dunning — Of Thurlow — Middlesex election — 
 Private interference of George IH. in the decision of a cause before 
 the courts — Subordinate changes in office — Attempts of the lords 
 and commons to preserve privacy in their debates — Arrest of the 
 printers — Released by the city magistrates — Proceedings of the 
 commons. 
 
 CHAP. The terror spread amono- the retainers of the mi- 
 
 VII. 
 
 '- — nister, bv the scathing- satire of Junius, convinced 
 
 A. D. 1709 / ... 
 
 to 1774. the Tories of the necessity of silencing the press, and 
 introduced another topic of party contention. The 
 celebrated " Letter to the King" appeared in Decem- 
 ber of this year ; and, like number forty-five of the 
 North Briton, it was hailed by the Tories as an op- 
 portunity at which party vengeance might wear the 
 name of lovaltv. An ex-officio information was im-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 155 
 
 mediately filed ao-ainst Woodflill, the printer of the CHAP. 
 . * . . Vll. 
 
 ])aper in which the letters appeared ; and, since iuries 
 
 \ ^ rr » ' J A. D. 1769. 
 
 chosen from the people would be likely to consider 
 the satire deserved, and the author guiltless, Lord 
 Mansfield undertook to withdraw^ the essential part 
 of the charge from their judgment. It was upon 
 this occasion that he propounded the doctrine which 
 became such a favourite with his party, that, in ques- 
 tions of libel, the fact of publication was the only 
 point to be determined by the jury ; — whether the 
 publication was a libel was for the decision of the 
 judge. The sturdy common-sense of twelve English- 
 men was, however, superior to the sophistry of the 
 Tory judge. The words and effect of their verdict, 
 " guilty of printing and publishing only," were the 
 best reply that could be given to his charge. Since 
 it could not be denied that such a verdict amounted 
 to an acquittal, it was evident that something more 
 was required for a conviction than a verdict upon the 
 fact of publication. 
 
 The commencement of the session of 1770 was a. D. 1770. 
 signalized by Lord Camden's defection from the 
 ministerial side. In the debate upon the address he 
 broke the silence which he had long preserved. 
 Rising from the woolsack, he said he had sat there 
 too long — for some time li(> had beheld, with silent 
 indignation, the arbitrary measures which \v(>re pur- 
 suing l)y the niini.-tr). Jlc had often, he said,
 
 A. D. 1770. 
 
 l.)0 THE lllbTOUY Ol" I'AUTV. 
 
 CHAP, drooped and hung down his head in council, and dis- 
 a])proved, by liis looks, stops which he knew his 
 avowed opposition could not prevent. He would do 
 so no longer, but would openly and boldly speak his 
 sentiments. As to the incapacitating vote of the 
 house of commons, he agreed with Lord Chatham, 
 who had spoken before him, that it was a direct 
 attack upon the first principles of the constitution ; 
 and that if, in giving his decision as a judge, he was 
 to pay any regard to that vote, or any other vote of 
 the house of commons, in opposition to the know-n 
 and established laws of the land, he should be a 
 traitor to his trust and an enemy to his country. 
 The ministry, he said, by their violent and tyrannical 
 conduct, had alienated the minds of the people from 
 his majesty's government, he had almost said from 
 his majesty's person ; that, in consequence, a spirit 
 of discontent had spread itself into every corner of 
 the kingdom, and was every day increasing ; and if 
 some methods were not devised to appease the cla- 
 mours that so universally prevailed, he did not know 
 but the people, in despair, might turn their own 
 avengers, and take the redress of their grievances 
 into their own hands. In a word, he accused the 
 ministry, if not in express terms, yet by direct im- 
 j)lication, of having formed a conspiracy against the 
 liberties of their country.* 
 
 - Gcrillfinan's Magazine I'ur 1770.
 
 A.D. 1770. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 157 
 
 This declaration of hostilities was feebly answered CHAP. 
 
 VII 
 
 by Lord Mansfield ; who, instead of defending the 
 conduct of his party in the house of commons, merely 
 said, that he should carry his opinion of the incapa- 
 citating vote with him to his grave. Nothing could 
 draw from him any furthej- explanation. He even 
 sat silent when Lord Chatham replied that, if his 
 opinion was in favour of the ministry, it would be 
 pronounced without hesitation, and called upon him 
 to speak it, if he would not lie under the imputation 
 of being conscious to himself of the illegality of the 
 vote, and yet being restrained by some unworthy 
 motive from avowing it to the world. 
 
 The unexpected declaration of Earl Camden com- 
 pelled the minister to adjourn the house for a week, 
 in order to make the necessary arrangements to sup- 
 ply his place. The seals were offered to Charles 
 York, the second son of Earl Hardwicke, and who 
 had been twice attorney-general. Charles York was 
 a sound lawyer, and an able and honest man. He 
 accepted the seals with great reluctance, and at the 
 entreaty of the king, but died before the patent of 
 his peerage could be prej)arcd. The vacant dignity 
 was then offered to Lord Mansfield, but the Tories 
 were too unpo})ular to induce that prudent judge to 
 resign a p(M-jnan(;nt for a contingent office ; several 
 others also refused, and th(^ Tories were, at length, 
 com})elled to put the seals in comuiission, and make 
 Lord Mansfield speaker of the house of lords.
 
 A.D. 1770. 
 
 1,5S THE niSTOUY Ol- PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. While Lord Caiii(kMi roiiiaincd in ofdcc several 
 
 VII. 
 
 Wliigs, who held subordinate stations, thought them- 
 selves protected by his authority, and retained their 
 places — these now thought themselves obliged to 
 resign. In the debate upon the address, in the 
 commons, the Marquis of'Ciranby apologized for the 
 vote he had given for seating Colonel Luttrel, as an 
 error in judgment, to be bewailed as the greatest mis- 
 fortune of his life, and he resigned all his places 
 except his colonel's commission. James Grenville, 
 who had hitherto retained his vice-treasurership of 
 Ireland, resigned; Dunning, the solicitor- general, 
 the Dukes of Beaufort and Manchester, the Earls of 
 Coventry and Huntingdon — all who did not wish to 
 be entirely committed to the Tory party, and involved 
 in their unpopularity, followed his example. 
 
 These defections added considerably to the. strength 
 of the minority, and the attacks of the Whigs were 
 incessant throughout the session. The Tories ap- 
 pear to have felt that no defence they could make 
 would convert their enemies into supporters. They 
 admitted their unpopularity,* and nearly abandoning 
 the debate, reserved their triumph for the division. 
 
 * In the debate on the address, with the honourable gentleman, if 
 
 Charles Jenkinson said, " The the authority of this house was 
 
 honourable gentleman seems to be to depend on the voice of the 
 
 alarmed for the authority of tiiis people out of this house." — Parf. 
 
 house. I should readily agree Ilisf., vol. xvi., col. Gf)0.
 
 A.D. 1770. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 1,59 
 
 In the lords the opposition was still stronger ; there CHAP. 
 
 VII 
 
 the Duke of Grafton found himself exposed to the 
 indignant eloquence of Chatham, once his mentor 
 and his friend. Educated in those party principles 
 which accustomed him to place some value upon the 
 goodwill of his countrymen, and finding himself an 
 object of public hatred ; confounded in the house of 
 lords by the invective and reproaches of his former 
 friends, and followed, even into his strictest privacy, 
 by that terrible and mysterious shade, Junius, the 
 duke could endure his situation no longer. On the 
 28th of January he resigned. 
 
 Thus ended the Grafton administration, having 
 sown, during a short existence, more germinating 
 seeds of discontent than years of Whig government 
 could eradicate. It was succeeded by a cabinet 
 which, governing upon the same principles, and de- 
 riving no experience from the errors of their prede- 
 cessors, brought national disaster and defeat to fill 
 up the measure of their country's sufferings. 
 
 Lord North was the new minister, and he com- 
 menced the duties of his office by supplying the 
 vacancies which had occurred upon the resignation 
 of Lord Camden. Of these alterations the most 
 important was, that Dunning, the late solicitor- 
 general, was succeded by Thurlow, a circumstance 
 whiclj presents to us two men, eacli (nninent in the 
 party struggles of tlu^ time.
 
 A. D. 1770. 
 
 ICiO THE IIISTOllY OF I'AlirV. 
 
 CHAP. Jolin Dunning was, at this time, a successful har- 
 
 VII 
 
 rister, and the history of his early life would be 
 merely a recapitulation of the ordinary instances of 
 pecuniary difficulties and unwearied assiduity which 
 form the frequent introduction to the biography of 
 celebrated lawyers. His most intimate companions, 
 while a student and a junior barrister, were Mr. 
 Kenyon and Mr. Home. We may pause for a mo- 
 ment, to mark the three youths assembled over their 
 indiofent meal,* and look onward to the future, when 
 one will be dazzling the senate by his sparkling elo- 
 quence ; the second a powerful demagogue, swaying 
 the multitude at his will ; while the third presides 
 upon the bench of justice, revered as one of the 
 oracles of the law. Was it that a secret sympathy 
 emanated from the great although different powers of 
 these celebrated men, and brought them thus early 
 together, or should we deem their future fortune the 
 effect of their early friendship, — that their latent ener- 
 gies were called forth by contact 1 
 
 * In Stephen's " Life of Ilorne each. " As to Dunning and m}-- 
 Tooke," the biographer says, that self," said he, " we were generous, 
 he had been frequently assured, by for we gave the girl who waited 
 Mr. Home Tooke, tiiat he. Ken- upon us a penny apiece, but Ken- 
 yon, and Dunning, were accus- yon, who always knew the value of 
 tomed to dine together, during the money, sometimes rewarded her 
 vacation, at a little eating-house with a halfpenny, and sometimes 
 in the neighbourhood of Chancery- with a promise." 
 lane, for seven-pence halfpenny
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. l6l 
 
 Dunninof continued to frequent the courts without CHA.P. 
 "^ ^ VII. 
 
 success, until a happy accident introduced him to 
 notice. One of the leaders of his circuit being taken 
 ill, intrusted him with his briefs, and Dunning was 
 no longer without practice. He had the good for- 
 tune to be engaged on the popular side in one of the 
 cases upon general warrants, and his bold and able 
 argument rendered him known to the Whigs, and a 
 favourite with the people. It was the early object 
 of the Grafton administration to shield their Tory 
 principles and Tory measures by Whig names. 
 Dunning, therefore, in IjGS, was made solicitor- 
 general, and was, in the same year, by the influence 
 of Lord Shelburne, returned for Calne, in Wiltshire. 
 
 Dunning had many natural disadvantages ; his 
 personal appearance was mean and abject in the ex- 
 treme, his voice husky, his articulation difficult, and 
 his tone of speaking monotonous and destitute of 
 animation ; yet, notwithstanding these formidable 
 impediments, he soon became eminent as a parliamen- 
 tary speaker. His language was always pure, always 
 elegant, and the best words dropped easily from his 
 lips, into the best places, with a fluency at all times 
 astonishinfr. 1 1 is style of speaking consisted of the 
 artiiic(!s whicli the old rh(;toricians taught, and which 
 Cicero practis(>d, but Demosthenes disdained. Many 
 properly censured this style as vicious ; but although 
 they censured as critics, llury were traiis|)uiU'cl a.s 
 
 vol.. Ill- ^i 
 
 A.D. 1770.
 
 A.D. 1770. 
 
 ICyZ TIIK lllsrUHY OF I'AltTY. 
 
 CHAP, hearers. Tlie faculty, however, for which he was 
 chietly famed, and which all found irresistible, was 
 his wit. This relieved the weary, calmed the resent- 
 ful, and animated the drowsy ; this drew smiles even 
 from such as were the objects of it, scattered flowers 
 over a desert, and, like sunbeams sparkling on a lake, 
 gave spirit and vivacity to the dullest and least inte- 
 resting subject. Perhaps the vivacity of his imagina- 
 tion sometimes prompted him to sport where it would 
 have been wiser to argue, and perhaps the exactness 
 of his memory sometimes induced him to answer 
 remarks that deserved no notice, and to enlarge on 
 small circumstances which added little to the weig-ht 
 of his argument ; but those only who have expe- 
 rienced the difficulty of exerting all the mental fa- 
 culties in one instant, when the least deliberation 
 might lose the tide of action irrecoverably, can make 
 the requisite allowance for the defects of a public 
 speaker. 
 
 Such was Dunning, as he has been described to 
 us by his contemporaries, and as he has been por- 
 trayed by the friendly pencil of Sir William Jones. 
 As a party man he was honourable in his engage- 
 ments, and consistent through life. He entered the 
 house of commons as a Whig, and as a follower of 
 the Earl of Shelburne — the connexion with his party 
 and his leader was only terminated by death. 
 
 Edward Thurlow, who succeeded Dunning as
 
 A.D. 1770. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 1(33 
 
 solicitor-general, was a man of a very different order chap. 
 of intellect. His father was a clergyman, possessed 
 of an inconsiderable living, and his family connexions 
 do not appear to have been opulent or influential. 
 *' There were two Thurlows in my country — Thur- 
 low the secretary and Thurlow the carrier. I am 
 descended from the carrier," was an answer to an 
 inquirer, as illustrative of the character of the man 
 as of the antiquity of his family. Thurlow completed 
 his education at Peter-house, Cambridge, and mani- 
 fested, at the university, all the leading features of 
 his after character. Haughty and churlish, over- 
 bearing and obstinate, idle and irregular, he appeared 
 calculated to shine neither in dissipation nor in study. 
 But his ability, in some degree, counterbalanced his 
 want of application ; and although he never conci- 
 liated his tutors, he left the university with the repu- 
 tation of having acquired a tolerable knowledge of 
 the classics. From Cambridge he repaired to Lon- 
 don, and commenced his legal education. In l']58 
 he was called to the bar, and underwent the usual 
 ordeal of obscurity and indigence. For some time 
 his biograi)hy is but a reca})itulation of ingenious 
 devices for sup})lying his necessities, and of strata- 
 gems for reaching an assize town on his circuit with- 
 out the aid of money. But this period was sur- 
 HKjunted ; he grew into practice;, obtained tlu; favour 
 of the r('l('])r,'it('(l 1)ih1i(^"^s of QikhmisIxmtv, .ind
 
 1<)1 THE IIIsrORY or PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, throuo-h luM', the patronage of Lord Bute, and con- 
 VII. . ... . 
 
 tinued to riso in his profession until, in November 
 
 IjGS, he was elected for the boroufrh of Tam worth, 
 
 A.D. 1770. 
 
 and was now chosen to succeed Dunninsf as solicitor- 
 general. Thurlow was a Tory by natural disposi- 
 tion. A man whose originally narrow mind had 
 never been enlarged by the acquisition of general 
 knowledge, or even by any very profound study of his 
 own profession ; and who attempted to cover his defi- 
 ciencies by a haughty assurance and overbearing 
 demeanour. He possessed a bigotry upon which all 
 argument fell pointless, an obstinacy which no reason 
 could shake, and an intrepidity of assertion which was 
 either ludicrous from his ignorance, or astonishing 
 from his audacity.* He had a turbulent kind of elo- 
 quence, which sought rather to overbear opposition 
 
 * Thus, speaking in the house says the Bishop, " asserted that 
 of commons, of the decisions prior he perfectly well remembered 
 to tlie revolution, he undertook to the passage I had quoted from 
 defend the Stuart judges, and said Grotius, and that it solely respect- 
 that "even in those times when ed natural, but was inapplicable to 
 judges were not independent, the civil rights. Lord Loughborough, 
 streams of justice ran with remark- the first time I saw him after the 
 able clearness." — Pari. Hist., vol. debate, assured me, that before he 
 xxix., col. 1428. Another instance went to sleep that night, he had 
 is related by Bishop Watson, in looked into Grotius, and was 
 his autobiography. The bishop, astonislied to find that the chan- 
 in a debate, had cited a passage cellor, in contradicting me, had 
 from Grotius, respecting the de- presumed on the ignorance of the 
 finition of the word " right." house." 
 " The chancellor, in liis reply,"
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. l65 
 
 than to convince — to silence rather than to confute. CHAP. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The sturdy boldness with which he spoke, and the— 
 
 ^ ^ A. D. 1770. 
 
 uncompromising position which he always assumed, 
 obtained for him, with the multitude, and perhaps 
 with the king, a reputation for honesty of purpose 
 which his conduct sufficiently shows he did not pos- 
 sess. Although always opposed to the popular sen- 
 timent, he was not personally unpopular ; the people 
 could not believe that a man so coarse in his tastes, 
 so rude in his manner, could be a parasite or a 
 courtier.* 
 
 The chief occupation of the new ministry was to 
 repel the attacks of the opposition. The Middlesex 
 election was still a fruitful theme for motions. Mr. 
 Dowdeswell, a leading Whig member, was constant 
 in his motions upon this subject, and Dunning, 
 Glynn, Beckford, Sir George Yonge, Townshend, 
 Grenville, and Barre, were always ready to support 
 him. Lord North met all their attacks with easy 
 humour, and, supported by Onslow, Blackstone, Jen- 
 kinson. Do Grey, and Thurlow, as speakers, and by a 
 large majority of the house as voters, met a proposed 
 string of resolutions by a vote, that *' the decision of 
 the house upon the case of Wilkes was agreeable to 
 
 • Strictures on the Lives f)f Uoscoe's Lives of Eminent Law- 
 Eminent Lawyt-is. I'uhlic Clia- yers — &c. 
 meters, lintler's R«'miniscences.
 
 l(i(i 
 
 TIIK HIST()f{Y OF PAKTY. 
 
 CHAT, the hiw of the hiiul, and iullv autliorized bv the law 
 VII. ' •' ^ 
 
 — and custom of parliament." 
 
 A. D. 1770. ^ 
 
 Similar attem})ts were made in the house of lords, 
 where the Earl of Sandwich was now the ministerial 
 orator. The Marquis of Rockingham and Earl of 
 Chatham, however, were the only Whig speakers, and 
 their motion was negatived by a large majority.* A 
 resolution was, on the contrary, carried, *' that it was 
 a violation of the constitutional rights of the com- 
 mons'for the lords to interfere with that house in any 
 matter wherein their jurisdiction was competent." 
 
 In this debate the Earl of Sandwich took occasion 
 to charge Lord Camden with duplicity, in having 
 permitted those proceedings, in silence, which he now 
 so openly condemned. But Camden defended him- 
 self with success. He rose, and declared, upon his 
 honour, that long before those proceedings had been 
 resolved upon he had denounced them to the Duke 
 of Grafton, as illegal and imprudent ; that, when he 
 found both his advice and opinion rejected and de- 
 spised, and that those who had the immediate direc- 
 tion of them were determined to carry them into 
 execution against every remonstrance he could make, 
 he withdrew from the council whenever those sub- 
 jects were agitated, and had declined giving any 
 further opinion or advice relative to them ; that his 
 
 » Pari. Hist., vol. xvi., col. 798. t Pari. Hist,, vol. xvi„ col. 822.
 
 AD. 1770. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. iG'J 
 
 reasons for so withdrawing- himself proceeded from a chap. 
 
 . VII. 
 
 conviction that his presence would only distract mea- 
 sures which his single voice could not prevent ; and 
 that his farther opinion had never been asked, because 
 the conductors well knew he would have advised 
 agrainst them. Chatham came to the assistance of 
 his friend, and added his testimony to the truth of 
 his defence, and the integrity of his conduct. Pre- 
 cluded from any further motions, the Whigs attempted 
 to proceed by bill. Lord Chatham brought it for- 
 ward, but the attempt only succeeded in keeping 
 alive the spirit of opposition, and in drawing from 
 Lord Camden an able and constitutional speech. 
 
 The Tory policy with respect to America was 
 weak and undecided. Alarmed by the menacing pos- 
 ture assumed by the colonists, Lord North repealed 
 a portion of the duties ; but, contrary to the admo- 
 nition of the Whigs, and to every principle of sound 
 policy, insisted upon retaining the obnoxious tea-tax. 
 This miserable trembling course of conduct met the 
 success it deserved — increased the confidence and 
 excited the contempt of the Americans.* 
 
 One triumph the Whigs secured this session, a 
 triumph as glorious as the ministerial legislation was 
 contemptible. This was their carrying through both 
 houses, in spite of the ojjposition of Lord North and 
 
 • I'iirl. Hist., vol. xvi., col. HiiiJ.
 
 VII. 
 
 A. U, 1770. 
 
 1()S Till': iiiSTOHY or rAUTV. 
 
 CHAi'. liis coadjutors, a bill for abolishing the shaincful system 
 of deciding contested elections according to the inte- 
 rests ofa faction, and establishing that admirable mode 
 of decision which still prevails The evil was so no- 
 torious,* and its recurrence was so constant, that it 
 would be difficult to anticipate the line of argument 
 which could be adopted in its defence. The prin- 
 ciple of the bill could not be condemned, fault there- 
 fore was to be found with its details ; and when the 
 great parliamentary experience of George Grenville 
 had obviated those objections, the Tories retired to 
 their last and impregnable position, that the old 
 method had worked well, the new one was full of 
 uncertainty and danger. " While," said the attorney- 
 general, *' we seek to avoid an evil which, in its fullest 
 extent, we have endured for many years, without any 
 great hurt or damage, we should not involve ourselves 
 in dangers which may prove pernicious, and even 
 
 * In the debate upon rendering and whose only excuse for voting 
 
 this bill perpetual, in 1774, Mr. as they did was, that they were not 
 
 T. Townshend described the pre- in their senses." — Farl. Hist., vol. 
 
 vious election decisions :" Twenty xvii., col. 1064. Other members 
 
 or thirty members attended, and added their testimony, that, upon 
 
 possibly half those asleep, during these occasions, the members com- 
 
 the examination of the evidence ; ing to vote under the old system, 
 
 but immediately as the question were usually so intoxicated from 
 
 was put, down stairs came turn- Arthur's or Almack's, that they 
 
 bling a number of members, who could scarcely stand, 
 had not heard a word of the ti i;il,
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 169 
 
 destructive. Better to endure those evils of which CHAP, 
 we know the extent, than, in a sudden start of dis- ^ ^ ^^^^ 
 gust and humoursome passion, to 'fly to others 
 which we know not of.' "* 
 
 For once this veteran argument failed. As the 
 ministers did not condescend to intimate whence 
 these dangers were to proceed, the country gentle- 
 men, for once, doubted their reality ; some of them 
 also probably remembered that, during the supremacy 
 of the Whigs, they had been excluded from their own 
 counties and boroughs by the system which their 
 ministerial friends now extolled. The ministry was 
 left in a minority of 123 to 185, and the bill passed. 
 At the rising of parliament, in May, the results of 
 Tory government were evident in every part of the 
 empire. America was in rebellion ; the revival of an 
 obsolete law taking from the Irish house of commons 
 the right of originating money bills, had thrown that 
 island into confusion ; and at home multitudes were 
 forcing themselves into the presence of the sovereign, 
 sounding in his ears their fierce remonstrances, and 
 boldly throwing back his reprimand.t Such was the 
 
 • I'arl. Hist., vol. xvi., col. 921. scnted an " Address, Petition, and 
 
 Hatsell's Precedents, vol. ii., p. Remonstrance," which liad hcen 
 
 20 unfavourably received, proceeded 
 
 t A few days after the end of to St. James's with a second. The 
 
 tlie session, the corporation of answer, like that to tlit former, 
 
 London, who had already |iit- was, in eflect, a reprimand ; but
 
 A.I). 1770. 
 
 170 THE HISTORY OF PAllTY. 
 
 CHAP, state of things tlurlnor tlie recess; but Lord North 
 Vll. . 
 
 could still reckon upon his parliamentary majority, 
 
 and lauirh at the efforts of the Whitrs. 
 
 The death of George Grenville, which happened 
 in November, made some difference in the state of 
 parties. He had been at the head of a section which 
 bore no very decided party character, and was united 
 chiefly by the bond of family connexion and the com- 
 mon object of opposition. The Tory portion of this 
 body now rejoined their original party ; the Whigs 
 remained with theirs. The old Whigs, under the 
 Marquis of Rockingham, continued, as usual, to ex- 
 tend their family connexions, and oppose the mi- 
 nistry ; while Shelburne, Temple, and Chatham, each 
 the sun of a little system, looked out into the nation 
 for assistance, and rehed upon their popularity for 
 their strength. 
 
 the lord mayor, who headed the draw your confidence and regard 
 deputation, was Beckford. That from your people, is an enemy to 
 intrejjid and violent Whig, to the your majesty's person and family, 
 amazement of the court, and with a violator of the public peace, and 
 a boldness peculiar to himself, a betrayer of our happy constitu- 
 made an immediate and spirited tion as it was established at the 
 reply, which he concluded in the glorious and necessary revolution." 
 following words : " Whoever has — Annual Register. Alderman 
 dared, or shall hereafter endeavour, Beckford died a few weeks after 
 by false insin\iations and sugges- this event, and his fellow-citizens 
 tions, to alienate your majesty's erectedamonument in their Guild- 
 affections from your loyal subjects hall, to commemorate his patriot- 
 iu general, and from the city of ism and his services. 
 London in particular, and to with-
 
 A. D. 1770. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. l?! 
 
 The principal feature of the session which com- CHAP, 
 menced in November, was the attempt made by the 
 Whigs to impugn the doctrine of Lord Mansfield as 
 to the jurisdiction of juries in cases of libel. In the 
 house of commons, Sergeant Glynn, the most popu- 
 lar lawyer of the day, brought forward the subject, 
 dwelt upon the importance of the innovation, and de- 
 monstrated, both from principle and precedent, that 
 the doctrine of the chief justice was not law. He 
 concluded with a motion for a committee, to inquire 
 into the administration of criminal justice, in cases 
 relating to the liberty of the press. A debate ensued, 
 in which the London members rendered themselves 
 particularly conspicuous. Alderman Oliver declared 
 that his constituents thought that the courts of jus- 
 tice were not always regulated, in their decisions, 
 either by the principles of law, or the spirit of the 
 constitution ; they could see and feel the baneful 
 effects of court influence and Tory doctrines. In 
 their apprehension, he said, maxims of jurisprudence 
 which sap the foundation of our free government had 
 been countenanced and propagated by those very 
 men who ought to preserve the purity of the laws, 
 and to check every innovation upon the rights of the 
 people ; and of these men he believed the chief delin- 
 (juent to be Lord Chi(;f. Justice Mansfield. Alderman 
 Sawbridge sujjported the cause iiis constituents had
 
 A.D. 1770. 
 
 I?*^ THE HISTORY Ol' PARTY. 
 
 CHAT. SO warmly os})oused ; but Alderman Townshond said, 
 that the doctrine of Lord Mansfield was only part of 
 a system, and that the influence of the king- was 
 directly exercised to control the judicial decisions 
 of the judges. He related, as proof, a revelation 
 lately made, upon his deathbed, by Sir Joseph Yates. 
 " A late judge," he said, "equally remarkable for his 
 knowledge and integrity, was tampered with by the 
 administration. He was solicited to favour the crown, 
 in certain trials which were then depending between 
 it and the subject. I hear some desiring me to name 
 the judge, but there is no necessity for it. The fact 
 is known to several members of this house ; and if I 
 do not speak truth let those who can contradict me. 
 I call upon them to rise that the public may not be 
 abused — but all are silent, and can as little invalidate 
 what I have said as what I am going to say. This 
 great, this honest judge, being thus solicited in vain, 
 what was now to be done ? What was the last re- 
 source of baffled injustice? That was learned from 
 a short conversation that passed between him and 
 some friends, a little before his death. The last and 
 most powerful engine was employed. A letter was 
 sent him directly from a great personage ; but, as he 
 suspected it to contain something dishonourable, he 
 sent it back unopened. Is not this a subject that 
 deserves inquiry ?" — The ministers, at the mention
 
 A.D. 1770. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 173 
 
 of this letter, stared upon each other, but made no CHAP. 
 
 ^ VII. 
 
 reply.* 
 
 The debate was continued upon its original ground, 
 and all the distinguished speakers on each side were 
 called forth by the occasion. Among a crowd of less 
 illustrious names, appear Burke, Dunning, and Barre, 
 upon the Whig side, while Sir Gilbert Elliot, Onslow, 
 De Grey, and Thurlow, stand conspicuous among the 
 Tories. Thurlow's speech, upon this occasion, is 
 very characteristic. He held that the question as to 
 whether a paper be a libel, should, whether law or 
 fact, be left to the judge ; and that it was not of any 
 consequence which it was. No justice could, in state 
 trials, be expected from a jury, as they may justly be 
 considered as parties concerned against the crown. 
 Having disposed of the question in this summary 
 manner, he called for punishment upon the promoters 
 of the motion. *' If we allow every pitiful patriot 
 thus to insult us with ridiculous accusations, without 
 making him pay forfeit for his temerity, we shall be 
 eternally pestered with the humming and buzzing of 
 these stingless wasps. I hope we shall now handle 
 them so roughly as to make this the last of such 
 audacious attempts. They are already ridiculous and 
 contcnij>tiblc ; — to crown their disgrace, let us inflict 
 some exemjjlary punishment."! How rarely would 
 
 • I'arl. Hist., vc.l. xvi., rol. \-2-2'.K f r.iil. Hist., vol. xvi.,(()l. I-J!)l.
 
 IJ^ THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Tliui'low have emulated Jofferies. The solieitor- 
 
 VI I. 
 
 general was well calculated to remove any disgust for 
 
 A. D. 1770. ^ 
 
 lawyers which the conduct of Yates might have 
 created in the royal mind. A king would never 
 have begged a little tyranny in vain from Thurlow. 
 
 Several incidental debates occurred in the house 
 of lords also, upon the subject of Lord Mansfield's 
 charge upon Woodfall's trial. Chatham, Camden, 
 the Duke of Richmond, and the Duke of Manches- 
 ter, were incessant in their attacks upon the chief 
 justice. He met them all except Lord Camden. 
 Before the searching interrogatories of that constitu- 
 tional lawyer the spirit of Mansfield evidently quailed. 
 Even after pledging himself to discuss the question 
 he continued to evade the subject ; and when, having 
 specially summoned the lords, every peer came pre- 
 pared for the promised debate ; the earl's courage 
 apparently failed, and he merely informed his im- 
 patient auditors, that he had left a copy of the judg- 
 ment of the King's Bench, in Woodfall's case, with 
 the clerk, and that those peers who pleased might 
 take copies. 
 
 At the commencement of the year I77I, several 
 changes took place, by which the ministry acquired 
 additional strength. Mr. Bathurst was created 
 Baron Apsley and Lord Chancellor, Sir William De 
 
 * Pari. Hist., vol. xvi., col. ]fi]-3.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 175 
 
 Grey became chief justice of the common pleas, CHAP. 
 
 VII 
 
 Thurlow attorney-general, and Wedderburne's un ' — 
 
 certain Toryism was fixed by the post of solicitor- to 1774. 
 general. Lord Weymouth resigned the seals to 
 Lord Rochfort ; the Earl of Sandwich became first 
 lord of the admiralty, in the place of Sir Edward 
 Hawke ; and the Earl of Hahfax succeeded Lord 
 Sandwich as secretary of state, resigning his office of 
 privy seal to the Earl of Suffolk. 
 
 Among the objects now striven for by the Whigs 
 none was more valuable, and few more popular than 
 the abolition of that veil of secrecy which had been 
 recently cast over all parliamentary proceedings. 
 During the long administration of the Whigs, we 
 have a continued series of reports of the debates, 
 broken only by occasional and short intervals, which 
 were generally caused by the resentment of particu- 
 lar members, who considered themselves either over- 
 looked or misrepresented. When, however, the 
 Tories recovered their power, the opposition of the 
 house of commons to the publicity of their debates 
 became systematic ; the established vehicles for this 
 species of information were compelled to discontinue 
 their reports ; the parliamentary history becomes 
 meager and uncertain, and must be sought in the 
 journals of the house, and in the single speeches 
 which were occasionally published by their authors. 
 Every met hod was taken to prevent tlicir di^hates
 
 170 THE IIISTORV OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, from transpiring beyond the walls of the house. 
 '■ The most effectual i)recaution was thouorht to be to 
 
 A.D- 1771 '■ 1 P • 1 • 
 
 to 1774. debate with closed doors, and for some time this 
 
 practice was strictly observed. In the session of 
 1770, the terror of the Tory peers, lest the speeches 
 of their Whig op})onents should go forth to the pub- 
 lic, produced a scene in the house of lords which had 
 nearly brought them into hostile coUision with the 
 commons. The Duke of Manchester was descant- 
 ing with considerable eloquence upon the condition 
 of the country, the causes of popular complaints, and 
 the contempt with which those complaints were 
 heard, when he was interrupted by Lord Gower, 
 who moved that the house be cleared. The Duke 
 of Richmond denied the right of the earl to move to 
 clear the house while a peer was speaking. Imme- 
 diately a violent outcry arose, and all became clamour 
 and confusion. *' Clear the house — clear the house !" 
 was echoed from side to side. The Duke of Rich- 
 mond's voice was drowned in the clamour. Lord 
 Chatham arose, hoping that his age, his reputa- 
 tion, his abilities, would force attention ; but in 
 vain. He continued, without being heard, for some 
 time. He sent the Duke of Richmond to the 
 speaker, to acquaint him that he wanted to speak to 
 the construction of the standing order. But he could 
 not be heard. At length, wearied out, he declared 
 that, if he was not to have the privilege of a lord of
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 177 
 
 parliament, and allowed the exercise of free debate, ^^i^^- 
 it was needless and idle for him to attend parliament. 
 
 A. D. 1770 
 
 He left the house and about eighteen lords followed *« 1774. 
 him. No sooner were these peers retired than the 
 crowd of strangers, including many members of the 
 house of commons, were indiscriminately ejected. 
 Some of these members were intrusted with a bill 
 from their o^\Tl house, and demanded to be readmitted ; 
 but no sooner had they delivered their bill, than the 
 outcry began again ; time was not allowed them to 
 return of their own accord, but they were hurried 
 and hooted out of the house, many of the peers 
 coming down to the bar and almost pushing them out. 
 Such was the zeal of the Tories in favour of secrecy. 
 The commons were highly indignant ; George On- 
 slow returned to the commons, in a passion, and 
 immediately moved that the house be cleared, " peers 
 and all." This the Whigs, who wished to take more 
 serious notice of the insult, in vain opposed. Those 
 Whig peers who had left their own house because 
 they would not be a j)arty to the insult upon the 
 commons, were now ignominiously turned out — 
 there was no Tory peer present.* 
 
 After this scene, which Colonel Barre described 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol. xvi., rol. 1317—2!). 
 VOF,. III. N
 
 178 THK HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, as unequalled by any bear-oarden or cock-pit, strict 
 orders were ffivcn bv the lords, to their officers, to 
 
 A. D. 1770 . . 
 
 to 1774. admit no persons into their house except commoners 
 inlrusted with bills, and to see that these departed 
 as soon as they had made their customary obediences. 
 The delicacy of Sir Fletcher Norton, the speaker of 
 the house of commons, was so shocked by the account 
 of this riot, that, upon the occasion of some clamour, 
 a few days after, he called to the members, " Pray, 
 gentlemen, be orderly ; you are almost as bad as the 
 other house."* 
 
 The Tories of the house of commons, although 
 they manifested some resentment at their own exclu- 
 sion, were no less absolute in their own house. At 
 the commencement of the debate upon the bill to 
 secure the rights of electors, upon a lord of the 
 treasury made the now customary motion to clear 
 the house, and some little discussion arose. George 
 Onslow said that, as long as the newspapers published 
 the debates he would always move the house to take 
 this step ; that none but the house had a right to 
 print them, and that this would show whether any of 
 the members were concerned in writing them. 
 Several of the Whig members replied to him. They 
 
 * Pari. Hist., vol. xvi., col. seum, which was now the boldest 
 1355. From the London Mu- reporter of parliamentary news.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 171> 
 
 said they were astonished to hear him make this mo- CHAP. 
 
 Vll. 
 
 tion, seeinor that the reporter of the debates, whoever ^ ^^ ,^^^^ 
 
 ' o I A. U. 1770 
 
 he was, had greatly improved his speeches, and had to 1774 
 even made them sense and grammar ; and that the 
 impartiality with which the speeches were reported 
 showed that they were not composed by any man 
 under the influence of party. 
 
 Onslow and his party persevered, but without 
 success. Sir William Meredith, and several other 
 Whig members, were always ready to report any 
 important debate, and either sent their notes to the 
 newspapers or published them as a pamphlet. Find- 
 ing their first expedient fail, the Tories advanced 
 a step further, applied the privileges of parliament to 
 purposes of violence, and thus turned the power 
 which had been given them by the constitution to 
 resist the tyranny of the crown, into an instrument 
 to destroy their responsibility to the people. Instead 
 of shutting out reporters they undertook to terrify 
 printers. In the session of 1771» the house issued 
 orders for the attendance of two printers, who had 
 thus offended ; and when these orders were treated 
 with contempt, despatched their sergeant-at-arms to 
 bring them before them in custody. The printers 
 absconded, and a reward of fifty pounds was offered 
 for thvAv apprehension. TIk^ crusade thus com- 
 menced, the majority found no lack of objects of 
 vengeance ; six other p(ir.sons were soon after de- 
 
 N '2
 
 ISO THK lilSTOHY OF PAUTV. 
 
 CHAP, nounccd* tor the saino ciinic, aiul a most obstinate 
 
 VII. 
 
 - striigforlc ousiuhI between the parties. The Whigs, 
 
 A. D. 1770 '^'^ ^ V 
 
 to 1774. finding that arguments to expediency and justice 
 were aHke answered by cries of question, availed 
 themselves of every expedient for the delay which 
 the forms of the house allowed, and persisted in con- 
 tinual motions for adjournment. The numbers upon 
 these divisions varied from 143 to '70 on the side of 
 the majority, and from 55 to 10 on that of the mi- 
 nority. The majority, however, were finally victori- 
 ous ; the six printers were ordered to attend ; some 
 were reprimanded, one was in the custody of the 
 lords for a similar misdemeanor, and one who did not 
 obey, was ordered to be taken into the custody of 
 the sergeant-at-arms.t 
 
 A few days afterwards, the three who stood out in 
 contempt were taken. Wheble, one of those named 
 in the proclamation, had already obtained the opinion 
 of Mr. Morris, a barrister, upon the legality of the 
 warrant, and that gentleman had advised, that any 
 magistrate before whom he might be brought by vir- 
 tue of such a warrant would, if he did his duty, set 
 him at large, and commit the assailant (whether he 
 were a king's herald or a speaker's messenger), 
 unless he gave good bail for his appearance.^ 
 
 • Colonel Onslow was again said, when he rose to move the 
 the Tory champion. He had order for their attendance. 
 " three brace of printers more," he f Annual Register. Pari. Hist. 
 I Pari. Hist., vol, xvi., col. 96.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 181 
 
 The city magistrates were not slow to act upon CHAP. 
 
 vri. 
 
 this opinion. Wheble obtained a friend to discover " . ^^ , „ 
 
 A A.D. 1770 
 
 him and claim the reward, and was carried before to 1774. 
 Wilkes, who was now an alderman, at Guildhall. 
 Wilkes liberated him without hesitation, bound over 
 the captor to appear at the sessions to answer for the 
 assault, and obliged the printer, by a recognizance, 
 to appear and prosecute. Thompson, the other 
 printer named in the proclamation, was also taken, 
 and carried before Alderman Oliver, who acted in 
 precisely the same manner. The third delinquent, 
 MiUer, the printer of the Evening Post, now sur- 
 rendered himself, and was taken before Mr. Brass 
 Crosby, the lord mayor. The proceedings had evi- 
 dently been pre-arranged : the deputy sergeant-at- 
 arms found Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver with the 
 lord mayor, and the three magistrates immediately 
 discharged his prisoner, and held himself to bail. 
 
 This bold proceeding on the part of the city ma- 
 gistrates cannot be defended as legal ; but neither 
 is it to be condemned as factious. That the 
 house of commons possessed the privilege they thus 
 abused is indubitable ; but the legality of their pro- 
 ceedings only magnified their danger. At a time 
 when the independence^ of parliament was but a name, 
 and when th(» privileges which tlicy held in trust for 
 their constituents had been prostituted to strengthen 
 the j)ri;rogativ(> ol" \\\r crown, it was patriotism lo
 
 IS 'J THE HISTORY OF I'AllTY. 
 
 C'HAr. liavo recourse to any means which might call the at- 
 '■ — tention of the ])eoi)le to the crisis, and warn them 
 
 A. D. 1770 ^ ' 
 
 to )774. of their danger. 
 
 The commons could not but resent this attack upon 
 their authority, and they were compelled to persevere 
 in the crusade they had so wantonly commenced. 
 The lord mayor, being a member of the house, was 
 ordered to attend in his place, and he was escorted 
 on his way by thousands of the citizens, who hailed 
 him upon his arrival with one universal shout, pro- 
 longed for nearly three minutes ; crowds of respect- 
 able citizens thronged around him, and saluted him 
 as " the people's friend," " the guardian of the city's 
 right and the nation's liberties ;" and, on his return, 
 his horses were taken from his carriage, and he was 
 borne back in triumph to the mansion-house.* Al- 
 dermen Oliver and Wilkes were also ordered to 
 attend, together with the lord mayor's clerk, whom, 
 having got into their power, they forced to rase from 
 his books the recognizance of their messenger. 
 Wilkes refused to attend unless he was allowed to 
 attend in his place ; and he sent a letter to the 
 speaker, claiming to be sworn as knight of the shire 
 of Middlesex. 
 
 Brass Crosby and Oliver were committed to the 
 Tower, after two debates, in the fonner of which the 
 
 * Gentleman's Magazine for 1771.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 188 
 
 Whigs put forth all their powers. The principal chap. 
 point they made was the refusal of the Tories to allow ^ ^ ^.^^ 
 the accused to be heard by their counsel. Colonel to 1774. 
 Barre having spoken against the motion for the com- 
 mittal of Oliver, concluded, '* That I may not be a 
 witness of this monstrous proceeding I will leave tho 
 house ; nor do I doubt but every independent, e^'ery 
 honest man, every friend to England, will follow 
 me. These walls are unholy, they are baleful, they 
 are deadly, while a prostitute majority holds the bolt 
 of parliamentary omnipotence, and hurls its vengeance 
 only on the virtuous."* 
 
 He then retired, and Mr. Dowdeswell, the Caven- 
 dishes, and nearly all the Whigs, accompanied him. 
 Upon the next day of sitting, when the motion for 
 the committal of the lord mayor was to be proposed, 
 crowds besieged the parliament house. Lord North 
 was attacked, and only preserved from serious in- 
 jury by the interference of Sir ^\'illiam Meredith. t 
 When, however, the Tories got into the house, they 
 were unopposed. Few of the Whigs attended; Burke 
 made a short speech and Icfl them, and the accused 
 refused to defend himself in a case which was already 
 prejudged. 
 
 Wilkes, even this house of commons was afraid to 
 interfere with. Having made an order for his attend- 
 
 • Tail. Hist., vol. wii, col. I.Vi. t Ihid., 1.^3.
 
 18i THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, ance, wliich was tlisobeyed, tliey issued another, and 
 
 VII. 
 
 then escaped from their embarrassment by adjourning 
 
 A. D. 1770 , . , 1 ,1 1 
 
 to 1774. over the day on which he was ordered to attend. 
 The Tory majority was, in effect, vanquished, and 
 the debates were reported more regularly than ever.
 
 THE HIS'JORY OF PARTY. 
 
 185 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A. D. 1770 
 to 1774. 
 
 State of tlie popular mind — Rise of the democratic party — Biogra- 
 phical anecdotes of John Home Tooke — The Whigs abandon the 
 cause of corruption — Dissolution of parliament. 
 
 The impunity of Wilkes upon the occasion of his *"y A^* 
 releasing the printers, was a minute, but an import- 
 ant proof of the presence of a new and gigantic power 
 in the elements of government ; it was a tacit and 
 unwilling homage to the sovereignty of the people. 
 The long administration of the Whigs had awakened 
 the middk; classes from their political slumber ; dur- 
 ing this interval they learned to note, to canvass, to 
 criticise ; and if they were then silent it was because 
 the mass is not easily moved ; and they saw little 
 worthv of ODndrmnnticiii. Tli(Mr voice was not in the 
 cm|)ty clamour vvjiicli tlic /.cjil of Jacobites and the
 
 IS() THK HISTOUV OV PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, spleen ofdisa]>i)ointed place-hunters sustained against 
 Sir Robert W'alpole — once, indeed, that statesman 
 
 to 1774. heard it, and shrunk in terror from the sound. No 
 reliance upon a sure parliamentary majority, no rash 
 counsel from less wary partisans, could induce him to 
 provoke the repetition of that warning. No sooner 
 did he feel that it was no longer the fabricated imi- 
 tation of Bolingbroke and Pulteney, but the genu- 
 ine voice of the people which called upon him, than 
 he obeyed in consternation — *' I am not so mad as 
 ever again to engage in any thing that looks like an 
 excise."* 
 
 It was reserved for Toryism to arouse this sluggish 
 but resistless monster into action. Toryism appeared, 
 and arrested the national exultation in the full tide 
 of victory, drove away the nation's idol, and fixed in 
 his place a king's favourite. A peace which all but 
 its fraraers deemed dishonourable, and a distribution 
 of patronage which all but Scotchmen deemed unjust, 
 produced a murmur that could not be mistaken. Cor- 
 ruption strove in vain to silence it — she was not yet 
 equal to the contest. Force, the other instrument of 
 Toryism, was sent forth ; imprisonments, seizures, 
 military massacres, followed, and the voice was heard 
 in thunder. To the ear of the philosophic states- 
 man it was a fearful sound ; it told the presence of a 
 volcanic fire, whose power could not be estimated, 
 
 * Ante, \o\. ii., p. 185.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PAHTY. 
 
 187 
 
 to 1774. 
 
 whose extent could not be measured; which ran ^y^^J*" 
 beneath the surface, and was confined to no country, "XTdTitto 
 peculiar to no clime. 
 
 This heaving in the popular mass was first seen in 
 England. One of its earliest and most important 
 symptoms was the estabhshment of public meetings ; 
 a custom unknown to our earlier constitution, and now 
 adopted as a means through which the people might 
 declare their newly-acquired consciousness of power. 
 These assemblies, in which the nation deliberated 
 without the presence of its aristocratic chiefs, cannot 
 be distinctly traced higher than the year I7G9 ; but 
 they were now of daily occurrence. In them energy 
 and talent gave importance to the humblest trades- 
 man ; the riofhts of the industrious classes were dis- 
 cussed and exaggerated until every individual in the 
 nation felt that he had an interest in the politics of 
 the state. Hence arose the frequent declamations 
 against the aristocratic form which the government 
 had now assumed, and exciting appeals in favour of 
 democracy. The light which had been kindled 
 in England shone as a beacon to the nations, and 
 sent its glare even across the Atlantic. There, 
 amid the forests of the New World, slept a magazine 
 of the elements of rebellion, the remnant of the same 
 spirit \vhifh had once ovcu'thrown the British rao- 
 narcliv. Toryism sup|ilied the t(nv.\\, and it cxplixhul
 
 188 
 
 THE FlISTOltV 01' PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, with a violence that shook the institutions of the Old 
 vm. 
 , ,^ ,„, World, and laid half the thrones of Europe in the dust. 
 
 A. D. 1 /7() *■ 
 
 to 1774. In England these throes and convulsions preceded 
 the birth of a new party. In the metropolis first 
 arose a sect of politicians who boldly set at nought 
 the creeds of both the established parties, and invited 
 the attention of the nation to a third principle of 
 
 government. 
 
 The founders of this party were highly educated 
 and thoughtful men, and the principles they avowed 
 were far more philosophical, in appearance, than those 
 of the Whigs. They disencumbered themselves at 
 once of all veneration for ancient usages and esta- 
 blished formulas ; they noted with industry every 
 defect, both in theory and practice, which could be 
 discerned in the government of the country as it was 
 then carried on ; and they employed themselves in 
 devisino- a reformation which should remove every 
 anomaly, and reduce the constitution to a state of 
 theoretical perfection. In the prosecution of this 
 scheme they would make allowance for no prevailing 
 prejudices, they would suffer no existing interests to 
 impede their progress ; every thing was to be made 
 to bow to the great object of a perfect government ; 
 nothing could be worth sparing which was an impedi- 
 ment in that path. The difference between this 
 new party and the Whigs was, that the former were
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^^^ 
 
 reformers in gross, the latter in detail ; the one party CHAP, 
 were theoretical, the other practical politicians ; the -- - 
 
 former declared war against all abuses, the latter at- to i^^*** 
 tacked them only when they became unbearable, and 
 were then careful to adapt their remedy to the exist- 
 ing state of society. 
 
 In arguing upon broad and general principles the 
 disciples of this school of politicians have always pos- 
 sessed a manifest superiority over the Whigs ; they 
 were confined within no limits, and were not afraid 
 to push their principles lest they should lead them to 
 some too violent or disagreeable conclusion. But as 
 they have been superior in theoretical argument 
 so they have been deficient in power. The sub- 
 ject was of too mighty and extensive a nature to be 
 embraced by ordinary minds ; yet it involved the 
 fortune of every member of the community. Upon 
 matters of mere speculation men are often ready to 
 yield their credence to high authority ; but upon 
 those which ])ractica]ly affect their own interest 
 they require substantia! proof All knew that this 
 was a subject upon wIikK the highest intellect might 
 well become bewildered ; they knew also that the 
 consequences of an error were incalculable, and they 
 treated the professors of the new doctrines as vision- 
 aries and enthusiasts ; they thought their reasoning 
 specious but unsound, and their object, even if attain-
 
 190 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, able, not worth the irciioral disorganization tlirou^h 
 whicli alone it could be accomplished. The middle 
 
 A. D. 1770 
 
 to 1774. classes, therefore, all who had property to lose, 
 remained with the Whigs ; but, on the other hand, 
 the mere populace, who had nothing tangible, and to 
 whom the subject was only a matter of speculation, 
 readily yielded credence to the authority of able men ; 
 and, with the ordinary influence which the character 
 of the followers has upon that of the leaders, added 
 a deeper tinge of democracy to the new creed. 
 
 One of the most able, and by far the most cele- 
 brated of the leaders of this new party, was John 
 Home, a man who, in addition to his great ability, 
 brought honesty and intrepidity to the task he under- 
 took. 
 
 The biographer of John Home Tooke, after some 
 prelude about the sword-cutler of Athens, and the 
 fuller of Arpinum, reluctantly admits that his hero was 
 the son of a poulterer in Cheapside. John Home 
 was the youngest and the favourite son ; and as his 
 father was possessed of considerable wealth no ex- 
 pense was spared in his education. He was born in 
 1736, and having passed two years at Westminster 
 school, and six at Eton, he, in 17^5, became a member 
 of St. John's college, Cambridge. Here he applied 
 himself with some assiduity, and upon his examina- 
 tion for his degree, he obtained a subordinate place
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 19^ 
 
 amono- the classical honours. From a diligent stu- chap. 
 
 . . VIII. 
 
 dent at Canibrido;e we find the g-rammarian and — 
 
 ^ A. D. 1770 
 
 future demaCToo-ue suddenly transformed into an to 1774. 
 usher at a boarding-school at Blackheath. This 
 situation was probably not the choice of youno* 
 Home ; he doubtless found the drudgery and the 
 monotony as great a penance as Johnson had found it 
 before him ; perhaps it was inflicted upon him by his 
 father, to overcome the aversion which he had always 
 displayed for his appointed profession, the church. 
 If such was the father's object he was successful. His 
 son consented to be ordained, and accepted a curacy 
 in Kent ; but his disgust for the duties of a clergy- 
 man, strengthened by an ague which he caught in 
 their exercise, became unconquerable ; he turned to 
 the bar as the object of his earliest partiality, and 
 became a member of the Inner Temple. This step 
 excited the anger of his father ; and the student's 
 funds became at length so low that he was obliged to 
 reliiupiish his favourite profession, make his peace at 
 home, and return to the church. Upon this submis- 
 sion his father purchased for him the living of New 
 Brentford, a piece of preferment then producing be- 
 tween 200/. and 300/. a year, and which Home 
 continued to enjoy for eleven years. While he re- 
 retained this situation, he apj)ears to have faithfully 
 fulfilled the duties of a parish priest ; he was tiie
 
 19- THE IIISTOUY OF TARTY. 
 
 S'Vn * ^*'^^"*^' the adviser, and the physician of his flock ; he 
 "^Td^tto appeared to have overcome his restless spirit, and to 
 to 1774. Y^^y^^ reconciled himself to the monotony of his sta- 
 tion ; seldom enjoying any other excitement than 
 could be gained from a game at ombre or v^'hist. He 
 was orthodox in his doctrines, and plain in his dis- 
 courses ; he could see no defect in the hierarchy, or 
 merit in a dissenter ; except in his studious habits 
 and profound philological erudition, he had nothing 
 to distinguish him from the ordinary mass of the body 
 to which he belonged. 
 
 The proceedings against Wilkes, and the national 
 enthusiasm which they awakened, aroused all those 
 turbulent passions which had so long been chastened 
 into silence in the breast of the pastor of New Brent- 
 ford. The Middlesex election brought the scene be- 
 fore his eyes, and the actors to his own door. The 
 temptation could be no longer resisted. Squibs, 
 puns, paragraphs, letters, essays, flowed with cease- 
 less rapidity from his pen, and were readily printed 
 by the London newspapers. As he proceeded he 
 grew more ardent in the cause ; he published a vio- 
 lent pamphlet, in which he avowed himself a candidate 
 for the honours of the pillory, and invoked the venge- 
 ance of the ministry. " Even I, my countrymen," 
 he writes, " who now address you — I, who am at pre- 
 sent blessed with peace, with happiness, with inde-
 
 A. D. 1771 
 to 1774. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 19^ 
 
 j)endence, a fair character, and an easy fortune, am, CHAP. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 at this moment, forfeiting them all. Soon must I be 
 beggared, vihfied, imprisoned. The hounds of power 
 will be unkennelled and laid upon the scent. They 
 will track out, diligently, my footsteps from my very 
 cradle. And if I should be found once to have set 
 my foot awry, it is enough — instant they open on me. 
 My private faults shall justify their public infamy; and 
 the follies of my youth be pleaded in defence of their 
 riper villany. Spirit of Hampden, Russell, Sydney, 
 animate my countrymen ! I invoke not your assist- 
 ance for myself, for I indeed was born a freeman." 
 
 The prosecution thus eagerly courted did not fol- 
 low ; perhai)s the boldness of the challenge prevented 
 its acceptance ; or, which is more probable, the Tories 
 were unwilling to make the popular insinuations 
 against the Princess of Wales a subject of discussion 
 in a court of justice. Home had become acquainted 
 with Wilkes during a residence upon the continent, 
 whither he went as tutor to the son of a neiirh- 
 bouring gentleman. Although the treatment he 
 received from the outlawed patriot was not such as 
 to give him great confidence either in his honesty or 
 his friendship, he continued to correspond with him ; 
 and imprudently poured forth, in these letters, senti- 
 ments which were buried at other times, and which 
 wen; probiibly heightened to suit the taste of tlie 
 lilHTtini; v,\\\r.. (jx)!! llic ^^^'sf minster election 
 
 vol.. IN. o
 
 iy4< THE HISTORY OV PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Horne broke all tlio bounds of clerical decorum ; he 
 
 VIII. 
 
 — -— canvassed the county on horseback, opened inns at 
 
 A. D. 1771 •' '■ 
 
 to 1774. Brentford at his own expense, ap})eared upon the hust- 
 ings, and attached his name to a virulent printed attack 
 upon one of the ministerial candidates. In the sub- 
 sequent contest with the house of commons he was 
 no less conspicuous ; he was the author of many of 
 the most violent of the addresses which were now 
 transmitted to the throne ; he published, in the Pub- 
 lic Advertiser, an account of the interview between 
 the London remonstrants and the king, concluding 
 with the remark, upon the king's turning to his cour- 
 tiers at the conclusion of the interview and laughing, 
 that " Nero fiddled whilst Rome was burning." It 
 was Horne, also, who drew up the address, remon- 
 strance, and petition from the London common-coun- 
 cil ; and it is said that he also composed the reply- 
 made by the Lord Mayor Beckford to the sovereign's 
 answer. 
 
 In 1769, the party of which Horne was so promi- 
 nent a member, found themselves strong enough to 
 attempt the establishment of a society which should 
 represent their opinions. Alderman Townshend and 
 Horne were the founders of this association, which 
 was called the Society for Supporting the Bill of 
 Rights. A list of the early members presents us 
 with the names of the most conspicuous members of 
 the new party. These were Sir John Bernard, Sir
 
 A. D. 1771 
 to 1774. 
 
 THE HISTOllY OF PARTY. 19«5 
 
 Francis Blake Delaval, Sir Joseph Mavvbey, Mr. chap. 
 
 V i J. 1 • 
 
 Sergeant Glynn, Lord jVIountmorris, Dr. Wilson, - 
 John Home, Mr. Sergeant Adair, Aldermen Wilkes, 
 Sawbridore, Ohver, and Townshend, Robert Morris, 
 and William Tooke. The ostensible object of the 
 institution of this society was the support and defence 
 of all objects of ministerial oppression. Thus, they 
 encouraged the printers to publish the parliamentary 
 debates ; and, as we have already seen, they col- 
 lected and expended immense sums upon John 
 Wilkes. But their political tenets most clearly ap- 
 pear in the terms of the test they proposed to candi- 
 dates who sought their recommendation. This test 
 required them to promise that they would consent to 
 no suppHes without a previous redress of grievances ; 
 that they would promote a law subjecting each can- 
 didate to an oath against having used bribery or any 
 other illegal means of compassing his election ; that 
 they should endeavour to obtain a full and equal re- 
 presentation of the peoj)le in parliament ; that they 
 should restore annual parliaments, promote a pension 
 and place bill, disqualifying all ])onsioners or place- 
 men for a seat in parliament ; impeach the ministers, 
 vindicate the rights of juries, expunge all records of 
 the arbitrary proceedings of the commons, redress 
 the grievances of Ireland, and restore the right of 
 taxafiori to America.* 
 
 * Sft'plicns Life (if Ilnilic Toiikf.
 
 19^ THE HISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAF. In this inanit'esto matters of the most enduriiw and 
 
 VIII. ... 
 
 — fundamental importance are minted with others which 
 A. n. 1771 ^ , * ^ 
 
 to 1774. possessed only a temporary interest. The substantive 
 part of this party confession of faith is the declaration 
 in favour of the universal right of representation, an- 
 nual parliaments, and the exclusion of the influence of 
 the crown. In the theory of the British constitution, 
 monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are equally 
 mixed ; but in practice no such equality has ever 
 been discerned. They are antagonist principles, 
 which can never coexist in equal and active opera- 
 tion. When the monarchical principle fell the aristo- 
 cratical succeeded ; it was now in full domination. 
 The Whigs were prepared to reduce its power, and 
 to throw weight into the democratic scale, to balance, 
 with nicety, the two principles ; but not to give the 
 preponderance to democracy. The new party denied 
 the expediency or practicability of this, and while 
 they assisted the Whigs to spoil the aristocracy, they 
 called upon them to join them in building up the 
 power of the populace. 
 
 The Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights 
 was broken up, by the pretensions of Wilkes, who, 
 caring nothing for the political objects of the founders 
 of the Society, had succeeded in getting a number of 
 his own creatures elected into it, and had rendered a 
 political association a mere vehicle for obtaining sub- 
 scriptions for his use. Home and his party then left
 
 THE HISTORY OF P/VRTY. 197 
 
 it : the contest between "Wilkes and Home, which so CHAP, 
 much amused the public, ensued ; and a society ; 
 
 ^ •' A.D. 1771 
 
 called the Constitutional Society, from which the to 1774. 
 Wilkites were excluded, succeeded it. 
 
 The appearance of this new party was of consider- 
 able benefit to the AVhigs. The extreme tenets they 
 professed stimulated the populace to action, while the 
 boldness with which they attacked existing institu- 
 tions, and the startling reforms which they proposed, 
 drew general attention to these subjects, awakened a 
 spirit of inquiry, accustomed the public mind to their 
 discussion, and habituated the educated classes to 
 look with less suspicion upon the more moderate pro- 
 positions of the ^\Tiigs. 
 
 This increase of popular strength occasioned a con- 
 siderable alteration in the tactics of the Whigs. Cor- 
 ruption was no longer necessary to their party, and 
 they disclaimed it ; the electors were no longer so 
 universally devoted to their landlords ; many of them 
 had begun to think, and the AVhigs were sure of their 
 assistance. Henceforward, therefore, we find a great 
 portion of the Whigs strenuous in behalf of short par- 
 liaments, and eager to extend the popular influence over 
 th(; elections so far as that could be effected without 
 danger to the monarchical fi)rms of the constitution. 
 
 In the session of 1771 > Alderman Sawbridge 
 moved for leave to bring in a bill for shortening the 
 duration (if parliiiiiicuts, a measure which, in tlM> time
 
 1!)8 THE HISTORY oi' tarty. 
 
 CHAP, of Sir Robort Walpolc, was the favourite proposition 
 
 VIII. 
 
 of the Tories ; but wliich now met with so Httlc f'a- 
 
 A. I). 1771 
 
 to 1774. vour from them that the ministers thought it unneces- 
 sary to reply to the speeches of its supporters, and 
 crushed it at once by their majority.* In the session 
 of 177^2 the same motion was made with the same 
 success, and repeated in 177^^ b^it the Tories always 
 cleared their gallery, and then put an end to further 
 discussion by a division. This parliament could 
 never be brought to entertain the question, and a 
 difference of opinion among the Whigs, some of whom 
 thought that parliaments should be triennial, and 
 others that they should be annual, prevented their 
 pushing the question with that unity which can alone 
 secure success. 
 
 On the subject of America the Whigs were more 
 unanimous, but not more successful. The Tories, true 
 to no general system of policy, at one time sought to 
 appease the colonists by partial and ill-timed conces- 
 sions, and at others to bear down opposition by violent 
 and exasperating enactments. The Whigs always 
 attempted to extend the former so as to render them 
 efficacious, and opposed the latter as ineffectual and 
 
 * The majority was 105 to 34. of the near conclusion of the 
 
 Many Whigs, among whom was session. — /*«;■/. //w^, vol. xvii., col. 
 
 Mr Cavendisli, opposed the mo- 182. 
 tion as unrensoiiable, on account
 
 THE HISTOilY OF PARTY. 199 
 
 unjust. A motion made in the session of 1774, for chap. 
 
 . VIII. 
 
 a repeal of the Tea-dutv bill, produced Mr. Burke's ^ — 
 
 1 1 * • • X. 1 A.D. 1771 
 
 celebrated speech on American taxation, one of the to 1774. 
 most brilliant pieces of oratory heard in our senate, 
 or recorded in our literature. But the power of the 
 minister continued unabated, and even Burke ad- 
 dressed an indifferent or impatient audience. 
 
 At the end of the session of 1 77^^ ministers found 
 that the hostile measures they had pursued with 
 regard to America had produced these effects. Af- 
 fairs there stood in a very precarious condition ; and 
 the news of some violent attempt was daily to be ex- 
 pected. The civil list also was again become deeply 
 in debt ; and the distresses of the lower part of the 
 household, from the withholding of their wages, were 
 become so notorious, and so much spoken of, that it 
 seemed disgraceful to the nation as well as grievous 
 to the sovereign. It would be necessary, therefore, 
 in the ensuing session to demand a large sum of 
 money for the discharge of the standing debt, and a 
 yearly addition to the civil list for the future. At 
 the end of the session this parliament would expire, 
 and the minister considered that it would be highly 
 impolitic to send their friends to their constituents, 
 burdeiKMl with the odium of the grant to the civil 
 list, and of the measures which were })r()ducing such 
 excitement in America. It was decided, therefore, 
 that the parliament should be at once dissolMMJ.
 
 200 nil-: iiisTouY oi' pautv. 
 
 CHAP. Tinioly notice was ffiven to the Tories, who thus had 
 Vlll. . * . 
 
 time to make tlieir canvass, and secure their elections, 
 
 A D. 1771 
 
 to 1774. while the Whi^s derived their first information from 
 the Gazette. Parliament was dissolved on the 30th 
 of September, and a new one was summoned to meet 
 on the "^Oth of November.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 201 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Elections to the new parliament — Disputes with America — A contest 
 between Whiggism and Toryism — Opinion of the Earl of Chatham — 
 Biographical anecdotes of Charles Fox — American declaration of in- 
 dependence — Contests between the parties upon the American war 
 — Lord North's propositions. 
 
 The attempt now made by the Tories, to take the CIIAP. 
 electors by surprise, had been foreseen by Junius, — - — '—— 
 
 ' A.D. 1774 
 
 and anticipated in liis dedication of the collected to 1778. 
 edition of his letters. It was, nevertheless, to a con- 
 siderable extent successful ; corruption and influence 
 obtained the re-election of a ^reat majority of the 
 Tory county members ; and the number of treasury 
 boroutrhs j)n'vented any apprehension in the minister 
 ol (inding himself in a minority in the new par-
 
 '30*2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, liamcnt.* The commencomcnt of the session dis- 
 
 IX. 
 
 . ,^ ., — covered tliat tlic Tories had calculated accurately. 
 
 A.l). 1774 -^ 
 
 to 1 77a. Ji^ tJie division upon the address the numbers were 
 264 to 73, a division that was decisive as to the cha- 
 racter of the new parliament.t 
 
 The decision of this house upon the Middlesex 
 election case, the great source of inquietude to the 
 former house, agreed with that of their predecessors. 
 Mi Ikes was again returned member for Middlesex. 
 The people, who seemed to look upon him as one 
 whom they had created, and to love him as a son, 
 had paid his enormous debts, rendered him easy in 
 his circumstances, made him Lord Mayor of London, 
 and now sent him again into parliament triumphant 
 over all his enemies. His first attempt was to obtain 
 
 * Tlie elections to this parlia- freeholders of that county, and, 
 
 ment present us with early in- through tliem, of all the electors 
 
 stances of the practice of exacting of the kingdom ; and for repealing 
 
 pledges from the candidates. At the recent acts which had been 
 
 a meeting of the freeholders of passed to control the spirit of 
 
 Middlesex, Mr. Wilkes and Ser- resistance in America. Similar 
 
 geat Glynn signed a paper, engag- tests were proposed and subscribed 
 
 ing their utmost endeavours to in London and some other popu- 
 
 promote bills for the shortening lous constituencies ; but the lead- 
 
 the duration of parliaments, for ers of the Whigs disclaimed all 
 
 the exclusion of placemen and such obligations as derogatory to 
 
 pensioners from the iiouse of com- their characters as senators, and 
 
 mons, for a more fair and equal re- restrictive of their rights as men. 
 presentation of the people, for vin- f Pari. Hist., vol, xviii., col. 45. 
 dicnting tlie injured riglits of the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 203 
 
 that the resolution which had declared him incapable CHAP, 
 to sit in the last parliament should be expunged from ^ ^ ^^^^ 
 the journals. His persecutions and his experience to 1778. 
 had moderated his violence, and even Gibbon, who sat 
 in this parliament, could say that, upon this occasion, 
 he spoke well, and with temper. A majority, how- 
 ever, of 239 against I7I rejected his motion. 
 
 The grand feature in the proceedings of this par- 
 liament were the debates upon the subject of the 
 insurrection in America. This question now be- 
 came, and, while the contest lasted, continued, the 
 touchstone of the parties, and the point upon which 
 they exerted all their energies. Early in the first 
 session papers were laid before parliament which 
 first discovered to the nation the magnitude and 
 imminence of the danger. It had been previously 
 represented by the minister as a mere popular out- 
 break at Boston ; it was now seen in its true cha- 
 racter, as the stern and desperate resolve of an 
 united people. 
 
 On the next day the Earl of Chatham commenced 
 the attack upon the ministerial policy, with a motion 
 for an address to tlie king, to withdraw the troops 
 from Boston. The decrepit statesman appeared in- 
 s])ired with the fervour of his youth, as he combated 
 again in the cause of liberty. lie dwelt with anxiety 
 upon the importance of the contest into which the 
 coimtrv liJid Immmi phiiigcd, and, with iiidigiuiLioii,
 
 '204 THE IIlsrOllY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. iij)on the injustice of the measures wliich had provoked 
 — it. " Resistance to your acts," he said, " wasneces- 
 
 A. D. 1774 ^ 
 
 to 1778. sary as it was just ; and your vain declarations of the 
 omnipotence of parliament, and your imperious doc- 
 trines of the necessity of submission, will be found 
 equally impotent to convince or to enslave your 
 f<>llow-subjects in America ; who feel that tyranny, 
 whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legis- 
 lature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally into- 
 lerable to British subjects. 
 
 ** This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation 
 might have been foreseen ; it was obvious, from the 
 nature of things and of mankind ; and above all from 
 the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The 
 spirit which now resists your taxation in America is 
 the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, 
 and ship money, in England ; the same spirit which 
 called all England on its legs, and, by the Bill of 
 Rights, vindicated the English constitution ; the 
 same spirit which established the great fundamental, 
 essential maxim of your liberties — that no subject of' 
 England shall be taxed but by his own consent. 
 
 " This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three 
 millions in America, who prefer poverty with liberty 
 to gilded chains and sordid affluence ; and who will 
 die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen. 
 What shall oppose this spirit, aided by the congenial 
 flame glowing in the breasts of every Whig in Eng-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 205 
 
 land, to the amount, I hope, of double the American CHAP. 
 
 ^ IX. 
 numbers ? Ireland they have to a man. In that — — r 
 
 •' A. D. 1774 
 
 country, joined as it is with the cause of the colonies, to i778. 
 and placed at their head, the distinction I contend for 
 is, and must be, observed. This country superintends 
 and controls their trade and navigation ; but they 
 tax themselves ; and this distinction between exter- 
 nal and internal control is sacred and insurmount- 
 able. It is involved in the abstract nature of things. 
 Property is private, individual, absolute. Trade is 
 an extended and complicated consideration ; it 
 reaches as far as ships can sail or winds can blow ; it 
 is a great and various machine. To regulate the 
 numberless movements of its several parts, and com- 
 bine them into effect for the good of the whole, re- 
 quires the superintendence, wisdom, and energy of 
 the supreme power in the empire. But this supreme 
 power has no effect towards internal taxation, for it 
 does not exist in that relation ; there is no such thiuir 
 — no such idea in this constitution, as a supreme 
 power operating upon property. Let this distinction, 
 then, remain for ever ascertained. Taxation is theirs 
 — commercial reoculation is ours. As an American I 
 
 ^ )-) 
 
 could recognise to Kngland her supreme right of 
 n^gulating connnercc and navigation ; as an English- 
 man, by birth and j)rinciple, I recognise to the Ame- 
 ricans their supreme unalienable right in their j)i()- 
 pcrty, a rightvvhich tlu'y are justified iji the defence
 
 '-iOG TilK IIISTUUV OF I'Airi'Y. 
 
 CHAP, of to the last extremity. To maintain this principle 
 is the common cause of the Whiffs on the other side 
 
 A.D. 1774 
 
 to 1778. of the Atlantic and on this. ' 'Tis liberty to liberty 
 engaged.' That they will defend themselves, their 
 families and their country. In this great cause they 
 are immovably allied ; 'tis the alliance of (iod and 
 nature — innnutable, eternal — fixed as the firmament 
 of heaven."* 
 
 Thus was the contest upon this all-absorbing 
 question recommenced in the new parliament. Lord 
 Chatham soon after produced his promised project of 
 conciliation. This measure declared the absolute 
 dependence of the colonies upon the British parlia- 
 ment, and its right of legislation in all matters 
 touching the general weal of the whole dominion of 
 the imperial crown of Great Britain, and in regulat- 
 ing navigation and trade throughout the complicated 
 system of British commerce. Having made this 
 declaration, it proposed to enact that no tax or charge 
 for his majesty's revenue should be levied from Bri- 
 tish freemen in America, without common consent 
 by act of provincial assembly there, duly convened 
 for that ])urpose. 
 
 Having thus conceded the great point in issue, 
 the bill })roposed to restrain the powers of the Ame- 
 rican admiralty courts within their ancient limits, to 
 
 * Pari. Hist., vol. xviii.,coI. l.'>4.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 207 
 
 restore the trial by jury wherever it had been abo- ^"^^• 
 lished, to take away the power of removing American ^ ^ ^^^^ 
 criminals to England for trial, and to suspend the «•» 1778. 
 acts passed by the last parliament for stopping the 
 port of Boston, altering the charter of Massachusets 
 Bay, regulating the government of Quebec, and pro- 
 viding for the quartering of soldiers. These acts 
 were to be repealed from the day that the recognition 
 of the supreme legislative authority and superintend- 
 ing power of parliament should be made on the part 
 of the colonies. The judges were to hold their com- 
 missions, as in England, quamdiu se bene gesserint, 
 and the charters of the respective colonies were de- 
 clared inviolable. The bill concluded, *' So shall 
 true reconcilement avert impending calamities, and 
 this most solemn national accord between Great 
 Britain and her colonies, stand an everlasting monu- 
 ment of clemency and magnanimity in the benignant 
 father of his people, of wisdom and moderation in this 
 great nation, famed for humanity as for valour, and 
 of fidelity and grateful affection from our brave and 
 loyal colonics to their parent kmgdom, which will 
 ever protect and cherish them."* 
 
 Such was the Whig proposition of conciliation with 
 America ; a })roi)ositioii introduced by Chatham, and 
 supported by Lyttelton, Sh('ll)urne, Camden, Rich- 
 mond, Manchester, and Temple ; which only secured 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol xviii., rol. im.
 
 '20S THE HISTORY OF PAKTY. 
 
 t HAP. to British subjects in Anioriea riohts that were al- 
 IX. 
 
 ready enjoyed by every Britisli subject in Eugland. 
 
 A. D. 1774 
 
 to 1778. But the Tories would not for a moment Hsten to it. 
 The Earl of Sandwich, angry that any one should 
 interfere with the ministerial mismanagement, imme- 
 diately moved that the bill be rejected. The Duke 
 of Grafton, Earl Gower, and the Earl of Hills- 
 borough enunciated Toryism and called for war. 
 No one among the Tories, and scarcely any one 
 among the Whigs, appears to have entertained any 
 suspicion of the power of the Americans. The Tories 
 always spoke of them with the greatest contempt. 
 In the debate upon the address to the king to have 
 recourse to active measures to put down the rebellion, 
 Colonel Grant said he had served in America, and 
 knew the Americans well ; he was certain they would 
 not fight. They would never dare to face an English 
 army, and did not possess any of the qualifications 
 necessary to make a good soldier. He proceeded to 
 amuse the house by ridiculing their dialect, their re- 
 ligious observances, and their customs, and his audi- 
 ence appeared highly to relish his powers of mimicry. 
 Thus did the Tories animate each other against their 
 fellow-subjects by mutual exhortations that their 
 victims were incapable of resistance. They prevailed 
 upon the division by a majority of Ol to 32, and their 
 descendants at this day feel the effects of their suc- 
 cess — they feel it in the existence of a powerful rival.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^09 
 
 instead of a grateful dependant^ and an hereditary CHAi'. 
 burden of a hundred railHons of national debt. 
 
 A.D. 1774 
 
 In the same session, Lord North brought forward to i778. 
 a ministerial scheme of conciliation. This consisted 
 of a resolution, that whenever any one of the colonies 
 should propose to make provision, according to its 
 circumstances, for contributing its proportion to the 
 common defence, and should engage to make provi- 
 sion, also, for the support of the civil government and 
 the administration of justice, if such proposal should be 
 approved by his majesty and the two houses of par- 
 liament, it will be proper to forbear to levy any duty, 
 tax, or assessment in such colony. This proposition 
 was opposed by the Whigs as futile and treacherous, 
 and its effect, for it was of course carried, verified 
 their judgment. The Americans rightly judged that 
 it merely proposed to throw upon the colonial assem- 
 blies the odium of collecting a revenue to be fixed in 
 its amount by the British legislature. It was rather 
 an acknowledgment of weakness than an overture of 
 peace, and mot with the contempt such indecisive 
 measures deserve.* 
 
 In th(^ session of 177'5, an attem])t was made in 
 the commons similar to that which had aln^ady failed 
 in the lords. I5urk(>, the acknowledged lender of the 
 Whigs in that asseuii)lv, brought forward tlu; subjeel, 
 
 • I'.irl Hist., vol. xviii., col. .'V2(>. Hiiitnu's Hist, of the I'liind 
 States. 
 
 VOL Ml. r
 
 ^10 THE HISTORY OK PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, and prefaced a string of resolutions with one of his 
 IX. ' . '^ 
 
 — -^r — :; — own bursts of genuine eloquence. But eloquence 
 
 to 1778. ^vas of little use before a tribunal which had already 
 
 prejudged the question, and as the house had been 
 
 carefully cleared of strangers before the debate was 
 
 suffered to commence, the Whigs had not even the 
 
 satisfaction of feeling that they were appealing from 
 
 their opponents to their constituents. The Tories 
 
 repeated their general arguments on the supremacy 
 
 of the British parliament, and in favour of the policy 
 
 and necessity of American taxation. Charles Jen- 
 
 kinson cited the practice of the French in their Pais 
 
 d^etats as illustrative of the true principle of taxation. 
 
 There, though the people seemed to grant, yet, in 
 
 reality, the mode alone of raising the tax w^as left to 
 
 the province, the amount was fixed by the crown. 
 
 That people, he said, had always been satisfied with 
 
 this reputed freedom, except in one instance, and in 
 
 that the interference of an army had quickly subdued 
 
 all discontent. Lord Frederick Campbell thought 
 
 any minister ought to be impeached who suffered the 
 
 grant of any sort of revenue from the colonies to the 
 
 crown. Other speakers follow^ed in a similar strain, 
 
 and the previous question was carried by a majority 
 
 of 270 to 78. 
 
 The Whigs were unfortunately not supported upon 
 
 this question by the people. The city of London, 
 
 indeed, whose merchants felt the effects of the Tory
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTV. QH 
 
 policy in the destruction of their trade, was earnest CHAP. 
 
 IX. 
 
 in the cause, and the corporations of other large com- 
 
 . , . . A.D. 1774 
 
 mercial cities and towns followed the example. Ad- to 1 778. 
 dresses were presented to Lord Chatham and Mr. 
 Burke, thanking them for their exertions and implor- 
 ing their perseverance, but the feeling was by no 
 means general. It did not, as in the case of Wilkes, 
 pervade all classes, or challenge the national sympa- 
 thy. Many who, in such a cause, would have deemed 
 resistance patriotism in England, thought it rebellion 
 in America. It is seldom that tyrants can discern 
 the iniquity of tyranny. The English nation were 
 in this instance the tyrants.* 
 
 The adoption of the American cause, as their chief 
 topic of opposition, is highly honourable to the Whigs 
 of this period. Any domestic reform would have 
 been far more popular, would have offered them a far 
 better prospect of restoration to power, and none 
 
 • In the Declaration of Inde- common kindred, to disavow these 
 
 j)endence, it is said, " We have usurpations which would inevi- 
 
 warned our British brethren, from tably interrupt t^ir connexions 
 
 time to time, of attempts l)y their and correspondence. They, too, 
 
 legislature to extend an unwar- have been deaf to the voice of 
 
 ranubie jurisdiction over us. We justice and of consanguinity. We 
 
 have reminded them of the cir- must, tiierefore, accjuiesce in the 
 
 cumstanres of our emigration and necessity wliich denounces our se- 
 
 settlement here. We have a|)- panition, and hold them, as we 
 
 pealed to their native justice and hold the rest of mankind, enemies 
 
 magnanimity, anil we have con- in war, in jicace friends." 
 jurcd tlicm, by tin- lies of our
 
 '21'2 THE IIISTOIJY OF PAIJTY. 
 
 CHAP, could have been more distasteful to the sovereign. 
 IX. 
 
 The cause of the American was founded upon a prin- 
 
 A.D. 177 4 
 
 to 1778. ciple too extensive to be estimated by a multitude, 
 too liberal to be tolerated by a Tory king. The 
 doctrine of an universal and inalienable right to free- 
 dom, a doctrine which even the versatile Halifax 
 could not renounce when he abandoned his party — 
 which he proclaimed to his startled colleagues, even 
 in the cabinet of Charles the Second,* was a funda- 
 mental principle in the Whig creed, transmitted to 
 the present Whigs from the age of Hampden and 
 Russell, ever cherished and upheld by the thinking 
 members of that party, disregarded or denied only 
 by those who had assumed the name without imbibing 
 the spirit of Whiggism. This principle of their party 
 called upon the Whigs of the present day to stand 
 forward as opposers of the injustice sought to be in- 
 flicted u})on the Americans. Unmindful of the frowns 
 of royalty, of the weakness of their numbers, of the 
 loss of their popularity, they obeyed. They kept 
 their party faith. 
 
 The discussion of this question, calling forth ap- 
 peals to the first principles of liberty, occurred sea- 
 sonably to renovate the philosophical character of 
 AVhiggism, and proposed a theme which might well 
 attract and develop the highest order of intellect. In 
 these party battles, as they are now dimly seen, we 
 
 * See vol. i , p. 339.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^13 
 
 can discern the outlines of the form of many a for- chap. 
 
 IX 
 
 midable combatant, and amono^ them, one whose ^ 
 
 111 1 A. D. 1774 
 
 prowess, and whose deeds become shortly better de- to 1798. 
 
 fined, who gained his loftiest triumphs before the 
 
 public eye, and whose fame depends upon records 
 
 which all may peruse. Burke has been lately the chief 
 
 figure in our panorama of the house of commons, he 
 
 must now submit to divide our admiration with 
 
 Charles Fox. 
 
 Charles James Fox was born on the 2ith of Ja- 
 nuary, 1749, the third son of that Henry Fox, whose 
 career we have already traced from its commence- 
 ment, under Sir Robert Walpole, to its termination 
 in the house of peers. When but nine years old, 
 Charles was sent to Eton, where it is said he gave 
 early promise of his future eminence. When he had 
 been about five years at this school, his father, whose 
 fondness for him was excessive, carried him, during 
 his holidays, first to Paris and then to Spa. Lord 
 Holland was himself addicted to play, and he incau- 
 tiously suffered his son to participate in his amuse- 
 ments. The love of gaming thus early imi)lanted 
 in the boy became a passion in the man, the source 
 of continual unhappiness, and the most serious im- 
 pediment to his honourable ambition. From Ftoii, 
 he was removed to Oxford, where \u) was jilaced a I 
 Hertford college, under the tuition of Dr. Neweome 
 afterwards primate of Ireland. Here the fiilnre
 
 'J 11. Tin: nisTOUY of r.MiTY. 
 
 CHAT, statosman was distinfriiii^luHl by the closeness of his 
 IX. 
 ai)i)lication as much as by the power of his intellect. 
 
 A. D. 1774 ... * . . 
 
 to 177S. "Application like yours," said his tutor, in a letter 
 which Fox was in after life proud to exhibit, "re- 
 (piires some intermission ; and you are the only per- 
 son with whom I have ever had connexion to whom 
 I could say this." He acquired at Oxford an ex- 
 tensive and intimate acquaintance with ,the Greek 
 and Roman writers, an acquaintance, which during 
 the strife and turmoil in which his manhood was 
 passed, he never suffered to be interrupted, and 
 which formed his delight in his declining days.* 
 For the mathematics he had little taste. Notwith- 
 standing the exertions of his tutor, he brought away 
 little of that kind of learning from Oxford, and al- 
 though he sometimes lamented he never remedied 
 his deficiency. 
 
 In the autumn of 17^^, Fox quitted Oxford, and 
 accompanied his father and mother to the south of 
 Europe, where Lord Holland had been advised to 
 pass the winter, on account of his health. He 
 remained with them at Naples during the winter, 
 and was left by them in Italy upon their return to 
 England in the ensuing spring. During his re- 
 
 * There are some very inte- printed in the Appendix to Mr. 
 
 resting letters from Mr. Fox to Trotter's Memoirs of the Latter 
 
 Mr. Trotter, containing criticisms Years of Charles James Fox." 
 iij)ori many of the ancient writers
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 215 
 
 sidence in Italy, Fox acquired proficiency in the CHAP, 
 language and partiality for its literature ; he in- ^ ^^ ^^^^ - 
 dulged freely in pleasure, but, unlike the generality to i778. 
 of those who devote their nights to dissipation, he 
 could give the morning to study. A visit to Vol- 
 taire at Fern ay, and a fondness for private thea- 
 tricals, in which he appears to have been more san- 
 guine than successful, are the only other circum- 
 stances which are recorded of his residence abroad. 
 
 Fox returned to England in August, I768, and 
 although not of aj^e, he took his seat in the house of 
 commons for Midhurst, for which borough he had 
 been elected in his absence. Lord Holland had, as 
 we have already seen, gradually lapsed into Toryism. 
 Young Fox had been educated in his father's 
 adopted creed, aijd one of his earliest productions 
 was a copy of French verses written in lyGls full of 
 invective against Pitt, and eulogy of the Earl of 
 Bute. Charles Fox, therefore, entered the house of 
 commons as a Tory, and immediately proclaimed his 
 presence, by a speech full of insolence and zeal 
 against Wilkes, and in favour of Colonel Luttrel's 
 claim to the representation of Middlesex. After 
 this maiden essay, Tox returned to Paris and the 
 gaming table, and we hear little of him until in 
 February, 177<), when he was retained by the mi- 
 nistry with the jjlacc of junior lord of the admiralty. 
 W'liile sitting upon the treasury benches, Vox was,
 
 2\C) THE HISTOUV Ol PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, bv no means niodoratc in liis Toryism. He dc 
 
 IX. " . . 
 
 claimed in favour of Lord Mansfield, ridiculetl th( 
 
 A. D. 1774 
 
 to 1778. demands of the ])eople, op})Oscd the Nullum Tempus 
 act, spoke and voted against Mr. Grenville's bill for 
 deciding election cases, and was the most energetic 
 and violent man of the party in his persecution of 
 printers and anti-ininisterial writers. But although 
 the young senator thus endeavoured, with fiery zeal, 
 to propagate the political faith of his childhood, he 
 was not a submissive subordinate. In 177^-> he 
 opposed the Royal Marriage bill, by which the Tory 
 ministry surrendered to George III. tyrannical power 
 over all his relations. The king could not think 
 this opposition to his own measure expiated by less 
 than a tw^elvemonth's exclusion from ofiice, but not 
 even this punishment could bring him to the re- 
 quisite sense of ministerial discipline. Early in 
 1774, Woodfall was brought to the bar of the house 
 of commons to answer for the publication of a libel 
 upon the speaker, written by Home Tooke. It was 
 moved that he should be taken into the custody of 
 the sergeant-at-arms, and the house, unwiUing to 
 engage in a new contest with the press, were about 
 to acquiesce. But Fox was warm and independent 
 in his zeal : without communicating with Lord North, 
 he moved, as an amendment, that Wooodfall be com- 
 uiitted to Newgate ; the minister was compelled to 
 support his col](vigue, and found himself in the mi-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 217 
 
 nority. Lord North, incensed at the disgrace, CHAP. 
 
 punished the temerity which caused it, by dismissing — 
 
 Fox from his office.* to 1778, 
 
 This was the decisive moment of his hfe ; but it 
 was a moment for which he had been some time pre- 
 pared. Before his breach with Lord North, Fox had 
 formed an intimate acquaintance with Burke, and, 
 like all that great man's contemporaries, had been 
 taken captive by his genius. His admiration of the 
 Whig champion led him to re-examine the grounds 
 of their political opposition. Burke was his compa- 
 nion in the inquiry ; he traced, with the finger of 
 philosophy, the pervading principle of the apparently 
 confused and entangled state of politics and parties. 
 He showed that the dangerous engines which had 
 been devised and employed by Sir Robert Walpole, 
 and for which Fox probably entertained an heredi- 
 tary respect, had long since been seized by the party 
 which Walpole defeated ; that corruption and influ- 
 ence were now united against the national interest ; 
 and that Toryism, under the house of Brunswick, 
 had lost nothing but its sincerity. From the master's 
 
 * Tlic manner of this dismissal card was delivered to him hy one 
 was very unceremonious. VVliilc of tlic door keepers — " His ma- 
 Fox was actually cn{;aged in ( on- j<'sty has thought proper to order 
 versiition witii Lord North on in- a new cr)mniission of treasury to 
 dirt'eri-nt sul)j(xts, in lli<- house of he made f)nt, in which I do jkiI 
 connnons, tlic ri.ll.iwitif; laconic see youi nainc" — Xmi/i.
 
 '218 THE IIISTOHV OK PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. exam})lo and instructions the young senator caught 
 — ,, .^,. more elevated ideas of public principle than had been 
 
 A. D. 1774 III 
 
 to 1778. entertained by the statesmen of the last generation ; 
 and he learned the necessity of party connexions, in 
 a mixed government, to counterbalance the influence 
 of the executive, to watch the conduct of every mi- 
 nister, and to preserve a due balance of power be- 
 tween the crown and the people. The masculine 
 mind of Charles Fox grasped and examined the argu- 
 ment thus submitted to it ; the scales fell from his 
 eyes, and he became in principles, a Whig. 
 
 No sooner had Fox taken his scat upon the same 
 bench with Burke, Barre, Dunning, and Saville, 
 than a new era in his existence appeared to have 
 opened ; he found himself in the element for which 
 he had been designed ; his spirit shook off the early 
 fetters by which she had been limited, and spread 
 forth her pinions for a bolder flight. No sooner had 
 he taken the free principles of Whiggism for his 
 topics and his creed than, in the words of Gibbon, 
 " he discovered powers for regular debate which 
 neither his friends hoped nor his enemies dreaded.'* 
 
 It had been injustice to the memory of this great 
 man had we introduced him into every scene of party 
 contest which occurred after his entrance into the 
 house of commons. In the little-esteemed retainer 
 of a minister, whose speeches were never thought 
 more than clever, whose opposition was not always
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 219 
 
 considered worthy of notice by the AVhiffs, and whose CHAP. 
 
 IX. 
 
 support was not always deemed valuable by the 
 
 ^\ -^ ^ ^ -^ A.D. 1774 
 
 Tories, we could recognise nothing of the Charles t« 1778, 
 Fox whom history honours. In those cramped limbs, 
 swathed in the bandages of Toryism, we see no pro- 
 mise of the thews and muscle of the mighty party 
 chief ; in those academical speeches we hear no pro- 
 mise of the voice which was heard above the turmoil of 
 party strife, which cheered on a little band of followers 
 to attack the power of a minister and the prejudices 
 of a nation, and sounded throughout Europe the toc- 
 sin of public liberty. The political career of Charles 
 Fox, as he is known to posterity, commences from 
 the time when he placed himself among the friends 
 of freedom and America. 
 
 The eloquence of Fox, as it appeared at its matu- 
 rity in the house of commons, cannot be better 
 described than in the words of Sir James Macintosh, 
 who, during the last fifteen years of his life, enjoyed 
 his friendship. " Everywhere natural," writes Sir 
 James, " he carried into public something of that 
 simple and negligent exterior which belonged to him 
 in private. When he began to speak a common 
 observer might have thought him awkward, and even 
 a consummate judge could only have been struck 
 with the exqui.site justice of his ideas, and the tran- 
 sj)arent siiiipHcity of his manners. But no sooner 
 liad he spoken for some time than he was changed
 
 O20 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, into niiotluM' being ; he forgot himsclt' and every thing 
 — around him ; he thouglit only of his subject. His 
 
 A. I>. 1774 , 1 1 i. 1 
 
 to 1778. Q-enius wanned and kindled as he went on ; he darted 
 fire into his audience. Torrents of impetuous and 
 irresistible eloquence swept along their feelings and 
 conviction. lie certainly possessed, above all mo- 
 derns, that union of reason, simplicity and vehemence, 
 which formed the prince of orators. He was the 
 most Demosthenean speaker since the days of De- 
 mosthenes. * I kncAv him,' says Mr. Burke, in a 
 pamphlet written after their unhappy difference, 
 * when he was nineteen ; since which time he has 
 risen, by slow degrees, to be the most brilliant and 
 accomplished debater the world ever saw.' "* 
 
 Having once embraced the principles of freedom. 
 Fox clung to them under every circumstance ; his 
 was not a mind to be frighted from its convictions, to 
 
 * Dr, Parr's Collection of Cha- did not, as Burke employed it,con- 
 
 racters of Charles James Fox. In vey a denial of the right of Fox 
 
 his own essay upon the same suh- to he considered an orator. A 
 
 iect. Dr. Parr finds great favdt good debater, in the ordinary ac- 
 
 with this testimony of Mr. Burke, ceptation of that term, implies a 
 
 and attributes his choice of the man who speaks with shrewdness 
 
 term debater to envy. I am un- and ready tact, skilfully adapting 
 
 willing to admit that Edmund his language to the temper and 
 
 Burke could feel envious of any prejudices of his audience. The 
 
 man, still less of his early friend man who adds " brilliancy" to 
 
 and pupil. The word so obnox- these qualities is an eloquent 
 
 ious to Dr. Parr was probably orator, 
 used in an extensive sense, and
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 321 
 
 start at some unexpected effect, and abandon the CHAP. 
 
 IX. 
 
 advocacy of the ofeneral cause ; it was too philoso '- 
 
 ,. , ' A. D. 1774 
 
 phical to become the dupe of the common fallacy to 1778. 
 which condemns a principle or an institution, by citing 
 instances of its abuse. The beautiful simplicity of 
 his character extended to his intellect ; he micrht 
 have required the analytical powers of Burke to 
 accompany him in his search for political truth ; but 
 having found it he needed no other guide thence- 
 forward ; his course was clear, and well defined ; he 
 pursued it with the obedience of a child, with the 
 strength and energy of a giant. 
 
 In the session of I77'i'» Fox joined the Whigs in 
 their spirited but unsuccessful opposition to the Bos- 
 ton Port and Massachuset's Bay bills, and although 
 little record remains of his speeches, his name appears 
 in every attack made upon the ministerial American 
 policy. In the debate upon the address in the session 
 of 177'^> he moved the amendment, and it was his 
 speech upon this occasion that excited the astonish- 
 ment of Edward Gibbon, and called forth the esti- 
 mate of his ability which has been already quoted.* 
 
 • For this sketcli of tlic early tliough he has probably wiililuld 
 life of Mr. Fox 1 .im chiefly in- mucli that iiiiiy iiereaft r meet the 
 debtcd to an article in the Sii[)|)!e- i)iiblic eye, he gives a most accii- 
 ment to the Encyclopedia Hritan- rate, althongh a concise, view of 
 nica. The author manifestly li;iil thecharacter.principlcs.and trans- 
 access to private corresijondenee actions of Mr. I'ox's piil)Ii<- life. 
 and anilwntic |)apers ; and nl-
 
 2<-2^2 IIH- HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 (^HAP. The first occcasion upon which Fox appeared as a 
 
 !-■ — leader of* the Whigs, was upon a motion which he 
 
 to 1778. made in the session of 1775, for an account of the 
 expense of the army in America. The return he 
 moved for would, he said, open an astonishing scene 
 of ministerial delusion, held out by the pretended 
 estimate laid before the house a few days ago. It 
 would bring the staff into the full glare of day which 
 had been hitherto artfully held back ; it would show, 
 that the expense of the ordnance this year had ex- 
 ceeded any one of the Duke of Marlborough's cam- 
 paigns, while in the midst of repeated victories he 
 was immortalizing the British name, and it would 
 convince the greatest court infidels of the temerity 
 of the minister who, to the very last day of the ses- 
 sion, insistedr-and declared that the military service 
 in every branch and under every description, was 
 amply provided for ; that all his arrangements were 
 made, and who thus durst, in the bare article of 
 the ordnance alone, incur a debt of £240,000. He 
 said it would be a farce to sit any longer in that 
 house if accounts of this nature were refused ; that 
 the motion was parliamentary ; that it would convey 
 no secret to the enemy ; and within his own know- 
 ledge or reading, he never heard of an instance where 
 such information was denied, unless in instances 
 where it was impossible to comply with them ; such 
 as the accounts desired not having been received, or
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 223 
 
 officially made up. Aware of this, he would be per- CHAP. 
 
 fectly satisfied with copies of those already come to — — — 
 
 hand, or of those gross computations made by esti- to i778. 
 mate, and wait with pleasure for the remainder, till the 
 ministry could venture to face the public and an en- 
 sured majority with the disgraceful contents.* 
 
 Thomas Townshend, Burke, and Sir George Se- 
 ville, all Whigs of experience and importance, were, 
 this evening, led by an orator six and twenty years 
 old, and who, at that early age, had fought his way 
 to the foremost rank in each party successively. 
 Lord North refused the returns demanded, and Jen- 
 kinson supported him in his refusal, a circumstance 
 which gave the Whigs an opportunity they did not 
 neglect, of taunting Lord North with the protection 
 of his powerful friend. The motion was negatived 
 without a division. 
 
 It would be tedious to enumerate, from the journals 
 of the houses of parliament, the various motions by 
 which the Tory policy was attacked. The deter- 
 mined stand of a small minority is an interesting 
 object of contemplation, when we can trace every 
 incident of the struggle, observe the weaker party 
 gradually increasing, and mark the effect of their elo- 
 (juence u})on the public mind, until the mass becomes 
 inoculated with their enthusiasm. But although I'ox 
 
 • Pari. IIi-,t. v.il. xviii., rol. f)U9.
 
 \>^2l IJli; IIISTOUV {)! PAUTY. 
 
 CHAP, and Burke poured forth tlieir elocjuence upon tliis 
 IX. 
 
 — theme, their niirhtlv invectives died within the walls 
 
 A 1^ 1 774 o • 
 
 to 1778 of St. Stephen's. The Tories carefully closed the 
 strano-ers' gallery, and, except when Burke put forth 
 one of his finished orations through the press, the 
 public knew no more of the debate than the news- 
 paper writers could gather from the recollections of 
 the members. The contests in the house, therefore, 
 had little effect upon public oi)inion ; and the minis- 
 ter, who estimated the eloquence of a speaker by the 
 number of his supporters, frequently returned to the 
 most elaborate speeches of Burke and Fox no other 
 reply than a division. 
 
 A curious instance of the anxiety of the Whig 
 speakers to address the nation, occurred, in a 
 debate upon the budget, in I776. Upon this 
 occasion the minister was about to set forth the 
 resources of the kingdom, and the gallery was 
 opened. The Whigs eagerly took advantage of the 
 circumstance. Governor Johnson remarked that, the 
 object in opening the gallery upon that one day was 
 evidently to give the minister an opportunity of mis- 
 representing the usual arguments of the Whigs, and 
 dispersing through the country his own uncontra- 
 dicted statements. Fox made more ample use 
 of the occasion. *' He repeated," says the report, 
 *' the governor's observation respecting the opening 
 of the gallery, asking if it was cooler and more conve-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 2^5 
 
 iiient for a crowd then than in January or February ; CHAP. 
 
 IX. 
 
 and asserted that the noble lord's speech of this day — 
 
 ^ , . -^ A.D. 1774 
 
 was the reverse of what he had repeatedly maintained to 1778. 
 in that house ; that it was a custom with the noble 
 lord to contradict himself, but that he believed he 
 might have prudence enough, with a tolerable share 
 of preparation, to appear consistent for one day, and 
 to tell the same story, however contradictory it might 
 be to his usual argument, than which nothing could 
 possibly be more opposite than his flattering descrip- 
 tion of our situation and ability to answer every want 
 the turn of affairs was likely to occasion. He ani- 
 madverted with some humour and great asperity, on 
 the irregular conduct of the house respecting the 
 opening of the gallery doors ; asserting that the public 
 had a right to hear in what manner their representa- 
 tives discharged their duty, and, that the gallery being 
 open or shut should de})end on the will of any one 
 or two persons, was exceedingly unfair. He dwelt a 
 considerable time on this point, and after declaring 
 that he knew that the gallery had been opened on a 
 whisper from the noble lord, when he was prepared 
 to say any thing likely to produce a po])ular effect ; 
 he asserted, that in his o})inion, it was a breach 
 of the constitution to ])revent tlu; public from 
 hearing tlicir procecnlings.. To the resolutions of- 
 fered, Ik; said, he should give his flat negative, and 
 that, not because of any ])artio\ilar objections to the 
 VOL. ni. Q
 
 ^2Qi\ THE insrowY of rxuTY. 
 
 CHAP, taxes proposed (although there mioht be a sufficient 
 ground for urging many) but because he could not 
 
 to 1778. conscientiously agree to grant any money for so 
 destructive, so ignoble a purpose, as the carrying on 
 a war commenced unjustly and supported with no 
 other view than to the extirpation of freedom, and 
 the violation of every social comfort. This, he said, 
 he conceived to be the strict line of conduct to be 
 observed by a member of parliament ; and to show 
 that it w^as justifiable, he found himself necessitated 
 to state the case of the American quarrel ; for as 
 strangers were admitted but for one day, it was ne- 
 cessary for him to repeat what he had often urged. 
 This he acknowledged was rather out of order, but 
 the noble lord must expect that the irregularity of his 
 conduct would give rise to irregular debate. 
 
 " He then, in a very masterly manner, painted the 
 quarrel with America as unjust, and the pursuance 
 of the war as blood-thirsty and oppressive. He said it 
 had been repeatedly urged that the Americans aimed 
 at independence, and therefore ought not to be treated 
 with until they laid down their arms : nothing could 
 be more absurd than this sort of argument ; it would 
 have been just as ridiculous, if in our war with Louis 
 XIV., who was said to aim at universal monarchy, 
 vre had declined to treat about the provinces of 
 Alsace and LoiTain, on account of the report of his 
 aiming at universal monarchy. After expressing his
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. i227 
 
 opinion of the quarrel, and justifying America with CHAP, 
 that rapid flow of words, and that spirit and force of 
 
 ^ ... A. D. 1774 
 
 argument ibr which Mr. Fox was so distinguishable, to 1778. 
 he, at length, took notice of the resolutions offered 
 by Lord North, and, in particular, spoke of the 
 additional stamp on newspapers, which he urged as 
 impolitic and unfair, while the ministerial brochures 
 remained unstamped. He said he was far from 
 being a friend to the licentiousness of the press, 
 although he revered its freedom. The papers were 
 intolerably licentious and injurious to the peace of 
 private families ; but the ministiy had given rise to 
 their insatiable rage, to their calumny, by suffering 
 his hirelings to abuse the gentlemen in opposition, 
 in terms of the most daring- nature. He observed 
 that the press, at this time, teemed with ministerial 
 ])ublications, many of which deserved the severest 
 censure. That the pamphlet entitled, ' A History 
 of the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain,* 
 was a libel on that house, a libel of the most 
 impudent kind, and yet it passed unnoticed. The 
 minister had very triumphantly held up, as a proof of 
 the freedom of the press, the information that twelve 
 million and upwards of newspapers were stanijx^d in 
 one year ; he begged him to consider that there were 
 near twelve million of people in thi; kingdom : he, 
 therefore, only ])roved, that every man in the realm 
 might l)uy one pa])er in the course of the year. The
 
 i^*^^ THE IlJSTUllY OK PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, minister told tlie house wc were able to provide sup- 
 ^ j-^ j^ plies equal to any necessity, and yet he was pur- 
 to 1778. suing an inhuman, unnatural war, for the sake of a 
 trifling and uncertain revenue. lie, however, rather 
 believed what he said in the house, when strangers 
 were not in the gallery, than what had been so 
 triumphantly stated by him this day ; for he Was 
 sure his declaration of the people's wealth could only 
 be proved by admitting the doctrine, that when by 
 any tax, four shillings in the pound were taken from 
 a subject he was greatly obliged, as he was, in fact, 
 given the remaining sixteen shillings. After a great 
 deal of very poignant matter, Mr. Fox sat down, re- 
 peating that he gave his flat negative to the reso- 
 lutions proposed."* 
 
 In the lords the Whigs were joined by the Duke 
 of Grafton. In March, 177^> that nobleman, for the 
 first time, informed the house that the Tea-duties bill 
 had been carried in the cabinet against his opinion ; 
 and that he had always disapproved the measure ; 
 and he submitted to the house a proposition for con- 
 ciliation which had the support of Lord Camden and 
 the Whigs. With the duke's assistance, however, 
 the Whigs could only obtain a minority of 31 peers ; 
 91 voted with the ministers. 
 
 In November of the same year the Whigs resolved 
 
 * Pari. Hist., vol. xviii., col. 1327.
 
 THE HISTOllY OF PARTY. ^^0 
 
 once more to record their protest against the Tory ^?x ^' 
 pohcy towards America. Lord John Cavendish ^ p j^^^ 
 brought forward a motion, that the house should '^ ^'^'^^' 
 resolve itself into a committee to consider of the 
 revisal of all acts of parliament by which the Ameri- 
 cans thought themselves aggrieved. A debate en- 
 sued, in which the principal speakers on each side 
 took part, and, upon a division, the numbers were 
 47 to 109.* 
 
 The declaration of independence was at this time 
 known in England ; that declaration which declared 
 that the history of the then present king of Great 
 Britain was a history of repeated injuries and usurpa- 
 tions ; that he was a prince whose character, marked 
 by every act which may define a tyrant, rendered 
 him unfit to be the ruler of a free people ; that the 
 United Colonies were thenceforth independent states, 
 and all political connexion between them and Great 
 Britain was dissolved. t 
 
 Many of the English readers of this document 
 were scandalized by the reflections upon the king ; 
 but almost every man felt himself insulted by the 
 renunciation of the sovereignty of his country : the 
 war also became expensive, and the money was bor- 
 rowed ; lucrative contracts, and advantageous loans 
 could throw a ray of loyalty even into the city ; po- 
 
 • Pari. Hist.,voI.xviii.,col.l448. Hist, of the United States, vol. i., 
 )• Sec tliib dociinniit in llititou's p. ;)j5.
 
 '^30 
 
 TIIH IIISTOUY OF I'AUTV. 
 
 CHAP, pular excitement (;oiild not be sustained ; and those 
 IX. 
 ■ ' — of the M'hi<rs who still thoujifht that America was 
 
 A. D. 1774 ^ & 
 
 to 1778. just in her demands, and who foresaw that she would 
 make good her independence, found their warnings 
 unheeded, and their opposition useless. From this 
 time a great number of this party, particularly of the 
 Rockingham section, began to relax in their attend- 
 ance upon parliament in either house, or rather to 
 withdraw themselves wholly and avowedly upon all 
 questions which related to America, and only to attend 
 upon such matters of private bills or business in which 
 they had some particular concern or interest. This 
 conduct was so marked that some of the principal 
 leaders of opposition, after attending the house of 
 commons in the morning upon private business, as 
 soon as a public question was introduced, took a for- 
 mal leave of the speaker, and immediately withdrew.* 
 The Whigs avowed that they despaired for their 
 country. 
 
 From this state of indolent despondency, they 
 were roused in the session of 1777> by the surrender 
 of General Burgoyne, at Saratoga, and by the uni- 
 versal feeling of indignation and alarm which the 
 intelligence spread throughout the country. The ill 
 success of the war had awakened many to its 
 injustice : as Wilkes remarked in the house of 
 
 * Annual Register. Pari. Hist., vol. xvi., col. 1229.
 
 THE HISTORY OF TAKTY. 231 
 
 commons, Washington and Gates were powerful chap. 
 apostles.* The country gentlemen, whom the mi- 
 
 A. D. 1774 
 
 nister had amused by the prospect of decreasing the to 1778. 
 land tax by means of an American revenue, were 
 beginning to see the fallacy of their hopes ; the 
 Whigs returned to the charge, and the majorities 
 of the minister perceptibly diminished. 
 
 During the debates of this session, a contention 
 took place between Lord Lyttelton and the Earl of 
 Chatham, strikingly illustrative of the antiquity of 
 the device by which deserters represent themselves 
 as consistent, and their party as the deserters. Lord 
 Lyttelton supported the ministers and their war, 
 and Lord Chatham, in denouncing the war, took 
 occasion to speak of certain Tory doctrines which 
 had been promulgated in print by one of the bishops ; 
 declaring that they were the doctrines of Atterbury 
 and Sacheverell, and, as a Whig, he could never 
 endure them. Lord Lyttelton, who now found no 
 fault with these doctrines, thought it incumbent upon 
 him to show that they were perfectly reconcileable 
 with the purest Whiggism. He avowed himself as 
 genuine a Whig as the noble earl. He had been 
 bred in the principles of \Miiggism from his earliest 
 days, and should persevere in them to the end. He 
 loved Wliiggish principles as much as he despised 
 
 ♦ I'arl Hist., vol. xix., rol. HOn.
 
 '^'O'J THE II ISTOKV Ol' I'AUTy. 
 
 eHAi\ tliose of aiiareliv and rcuublicanism. But it* the bare 
 . ,^ . name ot Wliiir was all that was meant, he disclaimed 
 
 A. 1). 1774 '^ 
 
 to 1778. the name. It' an impatience under every species of 
 constitutional government, if a resistance to legal 
 restraint, if the abetting of rebels, was the test of 
 modern AV higgism, he begged leave to be excused 
 as one not avowing or professing such doctrines. 
 He would, indeed, much rather share the odium 
 which had been unjustly cast upon another set of 
 men, and be accounted a Tory in preference to a 
 modern Whig.* 
 
 Here we have Lord Lyttelton using the well- 
 worn expedient of drawing a distinction between 
 ancient and modern Whiggism, and appealing from 
 the new to the old Whigs. Lord Lyttelton was, in 
 his own estimation, the true representative of the 
 party of Russell and Essex ; the Earl of Chatham 
 was, at least by implication, an anarchist and a re- 
 publican. In the contests of the parties, we conti- 
 nually tind public men sustaining themselves against 
 the reproaches of their friends by similar assertions. 
 Posterity has adjudged all these as apostates, some, 
 perhaps, unjustly ; but the private motives of so 
 many of them can be traced, that the remaining tew 
 are designated from this comparison. 
 
 Previously to the arrival of the news of General 
 
 • Pail. Hist., vol. xix., col. 491.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 '233 
 
 Burgoyne's surrender, Fox had extorted from the chap. 
 minister his consent to an inquiry into the state of ^_^^ 
 
 the nation. The information gained by the oppo- to 1778. 
 sition in conducting this inquiry, formed the basis of 
 several motions directed against the ministerial 
 pohcy, but they received httle discussion : the mi- 
 nisters were now digesting a plan of their own, and 
 shunned any altercation through which their schemes 
 might become know^n. In February, 177^> Lord 
 North laid this plan before the house, and intro- 
 duced it with an elaborate speech. He declared 
 that from the beginning he had been uniformly dis- 
 posed to peace, that the coercive acts which he had 
 made, were such as appeared to be necessary at the 
 time, though, in the event, they had produced effects 
 which he never intended. That, when he found they 
 had not the effect he intended, he proposed a con- 
 ciliatory proposition before the sword was drawn. 
 " At that time, he thought," he said, " the terms of 
 that proposition would form the happiest, most equi- 
 table, and most lasting bond of union between Great 
 Britain and her colonies. By a variety of discus- 
 sions a })roposition that was originally clear and 
 simple in itself, was made to appear so obscure as to 
 go damned to America ; ^o that the Congress con- 
 ceiv(Kl, or took occasion to represent it as a scheme 
 for sowing divisions, and introducing taxation among 
 them in a worse mode than the former, and accord-
 
 '23i THE HISTORY OF I'AUTY. 
 
 CHAP, ingly rejected it. His idea never had been to 
 draw any considerable revenue, either in that way or 
 
 A. D. 1774 
 
 to 1778. any other, from America: his idea was that they 
 should contribute in a very low proportion to the 
 expenses of this country. He had always known 
 that American taxation could never produce a bene- 
 ficial revenue. " He never," he said, had " proposed 
 any tax on America ; he found them already taxed ; 
 when he unfortunately, as he still must say, what- 
 ever use had been or might be made of the word, 
 came into administration. His principle of policy 
 was to have had as little discussion on these subjects 
 as possible, but to keep the affairs of America out of 
 parliament ; that accordingly as he had not laid, so 
 did he not think it advisable for him to repeal the tea 
 tax, nor did he ever think of any particular means 
 for enforcing it. One of the bills he proposed to 
 move for was to quiet America upon the subject of 
 taxation, and to remove all fears, real or pretended, 
 of parliaments ever attempting to tax them again, 
 and to take all exercise of the right again in future, 
 so far as regarded revenue. That as to the other 
 particulars in controversy, he observed, that the 
 Americans desired a repeal of all the acts passed 
 since 1763. 
 
 "That as to the late acts, such as the Massachusets 
 charter, the fishery, and the prohibitory bills, as they 
 were the effects of the quarrel, they should cease.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^^^5 
 
 and that as to complaints of matters of a various na- chap. 
 ture, authority should be sriven to settle them to the .,,,.. 
 
 *' ^ A.D. 17/4 
 
 satisfaction of America. On the whole, his conces- to 1778 
 sions were from reason and propriety, not from ne- 
 cessity. That we were in a condition to carry on the 
 war much longer. We might raise many more men, 
 and had many more men ready to send ; for the navy 
 was never in greater strength, the revenue very little 
 sunk, and that he could raise the supplies for the 
 current year, as a little time would show. He sub- 
 mitted the whole, with regard to the propriety of his 
 past and present conduct, to the judgment of the 
 house."* 
 
 A melancholy silence for some time succeeded to 
 this speech. It had been heard with profound atten- 
 tion, but without a single mark of approbation from 
 any part of the house. Astonishment and dejection 
 had overclouded the whole assembly. The minister 
 had declared that the sentiments he expressed that 
 day had been those that he always entertained, but it 
 is certain that none had understood him in that 
 mann(;r, and he had been represented to the na- 
 tion at large as, next to the sovereign,! the 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol. xix , col. "tlic king's war," " his majesty's fa- 
 
 7()H. voiiritc war." The pubhc prints 
 
 f Instead of liilliiif; the war tlic teemed with a.ssertions of this 
 
 war ofparliamont, or of the people, kind. Persons were eii)|)loyod 
 
 it was, by the king's friends, called ,,„ jmrpose to write hooks, pam-
 
 '236 -THE HISTORY OF PAHTV. 
 
 CHAP, poi-son ill it the most tenacious of those parlia- 
 — mentary riorhts which he now ])roposc(l to resign, 
 
 A. D. 1774 J )r^ 11 o 
 
 to 1778. and the most remote from the submissions which he 
 now proposed to make. It was generally, therefore, 
 concluded, that something more extraordinary and 
 alarming had happened than yet appeared, which was 
 offeree, to produce such an apparent exchange in mea- 
 sures, principles, and arguments. If the Whigs had 
 then pressed him and joined with the war party, now 
 disgusted and mortified, the minister would have been 
 left in a minority. But their conduct was directly 
 the reverse of this ; they took such a hearty part with 
 the minister, only endeavouring to make such altera- 
 tions in, or additions to the bills as might increase 
 their eligibility, or to extend their effect, that no 
 appearance of party remained, and some of his coiji- 
 plaining friends vexatiously congratulated him on his 
 new allies. These new allies, however, though they 
 supported his measures, showed no mercy to his 
 conduct.* 
 
 phlets, and daily publications, in North's Conciliatory Bill. Pari, 
 
 order to disseminate these notions, Hist., vol. xix., col. 857. 
 
 and make them universal. — Lord * Annual Register. 
 Rockingham's Speech on Lord
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 237 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 France concludes an alliance with America — Schism in the Whig party 
 upon the subject of American independence — Death of Lord Chat- 
 ham — Yorksliire petition — Burke's plan of economical reform — Mo- 
 tion for the repeal of the Septennial act — George Byng — Dissolution 
 of parliament — Elections — The new parliament — Motion against the 
 American war — Carried motion of censure upon the North admi- 
 nistration — Dissolution of the North administration. 
 
 The fears entertained by Lord North's hearers CHAP, 
 were unhap[)ily too well founded. Measures of con- 
 ciliation were now too late. France had concluded a 
 treaty with our revolted subjects, and within a few 
 weeks after the debate upon Lord North's proposi- 
 tions, avowed, through her ambassador, her new en- 
 gagements. 
 
 The communication of this intelligence fell like 
 a thunderbolt upon the nation. The Whigs looked 
 hack to the time when th(Mr ])arfy had been driven 
 
 A. I). 1779.
 
 ^23H 
 
 TIIK IlISTOUY OF TAUTY. 
 
 CHAP, from tlio cabinet, and to the positi(ni wliieh tluMr 
 
 country then held ; and they were stung to fury when 
 
 tliey contemplated the state to which she was now 
 reduced : her armies defeated, nay captured ; her re- 
 sources drained, her dominions dismembered, unable 
 to contend even with her revolted subjects, and obliged 
 to bear the insults of her ancient national foe. 
 The Tories met their reproaches with a sullen obsti- 
 nacy ; and, however much they might murmur 
 against their leaders in private, made it a point of 
 honour to support them with their votes. Thus, 
 when the French treaty with America was com- 
 municated to the house of commons, and the Whigs 
 moved, as an amendment to the ministerial address, 
 a clause praying his majesty to be graciously pleased 
 to remove from his counsels those persons in whom 
 his people, from past experience, could repose no 
 confidence ; they were outnumbered by a majority of 
 150; and when Mr. Fox attempted to draw atten- 
 tion to past miscarriages, and moved a string of reso- 
 lutions condemnatory of the Canada expedition, he 
 found himself supported only by 44 votes. Such 
 being the fate of his first resolution, Fox declared, in 
 a tone of violent feeling, that he would not make 
 another motion, and, tearing up the rest of the reso- 
 lutions, he threw the fragments upon the floor, and 
 left the house. 
 
 The Tories, with the irresolution which had cha-
 
 A.D. 1779. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^39 
 
 racterized their policy throug-hout the American chap. 
 
 A.. 
 
 contest, were now as timorous as they had before been - 
 rash. Many of their speakers inadvertently betrayed 
 the despondency which pervaded their counsels, and 
 gave colour to the general idea that they were ready, 
 if provided with a decent pretence, to terminate the 
 war at any sacrifice. Among the Whigs a consi- 
 derable difference of opinion prevailed upon this sub- 
 ject ; a difference which soon after became an open 
 schism. The majority of the Rockingham party, 
 abandoning all hope of being able to overthrow Lord 
 North's administration, observing the deplorable state 
 to which the country had been reduced, and feeling 
 that the men who could not maintani it in prosperity 
 could never raise it from misfortune, wished to put 
 an end to the series of national disgraces upon any 
 terms. This section of the AVTiig party was desirous 
 of acknowledging the independency of the colonies 
 at once, rather than continue so severe a contest 
 under incompetent leaders. Lord Chatham, on the 
 other hand, repudiated the idea of England shrinking 
 fr-om a contest. The mighty spirit which had borne 
 his country victorious through a crisis of equal dan- 
 ger, which had raised her once before from a posture 
 of humiliation to the pinnacle of glory, and made her 
 the arbiter of Europe, could not brook the ignominy 
 of abandoning a civil contest at the command of a 
 foreign ononiy. This ronntrv was great enougli to
 
 ^210 'llIK IllSTOUV OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, be just, without fear that her motive would be mis- 
 X. 
 
 construed ; but justice to an injured subject was very 
 
 A. D. 1779. 
 
 different from the dismemberment of the empire. His 
 voice was for immediate war with France, and for the 
 continued and uncompromising assertion of the British 
 sovereignty. Broken and decrepit as he now was, 
 the danger which threatened his country made him, 
 nevertheless, forget his age and his decrepitude. 
 Roused by the great occasion, his soul appeared to 
 scorn the sufferings of the body ; he appeared nightly 
 in the house of lords, shaking even the throne with 
 his vehement invective, and encouraging his coun- 
 trymen with his exhilarating eloquence at a time 
 when his body appeared scarcely able to perform 
 its functions, and life trembled in the flicker which 
 precedes extinction. 
 
 Thus did Lord Chatham spend his last days, and 
 thus he died. On the 7th of April, 1778, the Duke 
 of Richmond brought forward an address composed 
 of a series of resolutions founded upon the information 
 which had been obtained during the inquiry into the 
 state of the nation. These resolutions recapitulated 
 the events of the war, recounted the efforts that had 
 been made, the treasures that had been expended, 
 the blood that had been spilt, and the successes that 
 had been obtained, and contrasted all these mighty 
 efforts with the then state of the British cause in Ame- 
 rica, where our acquisitions were only two open
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^41 
 
 towns and a few islands on the coast, and our army CHAP. 
 
 X 
 
 and navy were alike reduced and inefficient. The 
 
 / A. D. 1779. 
 
 conclusion drawn from these facts was, that " we see 
 it impossible to carry on the present system of re- 
 ducing America by force of arms." 
 
 Havina- thus stated their facts and drawn their 
 conclusion, the Whigs proceeded to account for the 
 calamities they deplored, and they found their origin 
 in the delusive arguments and false representations of 
 the ministers. The remedy they proposed was to 
 withdraw^ from America those armies which were re- 
 quisite to our security at home, to effectuate conci- 
 liation with the colonies on such terms as might 
 preserve their good will, to restore the ancient morals 
 of the kingdom and recover the true spirit and prin- 
 ciples of the constitution by some sober, well-digested 
 plan of public reformation, and to banish from the 
 royal councils those ministers who had abused his 
 majesty's confidence, tarnished the lustre of his crown, 
 disgraced his arms, weakened his naval power, and 
 dismembered his empire. The address conchuhHl 
 with an admonition to the sovereign to look back to 
 the principles which had placed his family upon the 
 throne ; to call to mind the circumstances of his 
 accession to the crown, when he took possession of 
 an inheritance so full of glory, and of the trust of 
 preserving it in all its lustre ; and to put an end to 
 the system wliicli had so long |)revailed in his court 
 
 VOL. III. |{
 
 24^ THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, and cabinet, wliich, if suffered to continue, would 
 
 X. 
 
 ■7-7; leave nothinof in the country wliich could do honour 
 
 A. D. 1779. *=> -^ 
 
 to his government, or make the name of Englishmen 
 that pride and distinction in which they had such 
 reason to glory in former happy times. 
 
 The Duke of Richmond enforced these reso- 
 lutions by an able speech. Lord Chatham sat 
 opposite to him, and listened with earnest atten- 
 tion. '* He had come into the house," says an eye- 
 witness of the well-remembered scene that fol- 
 lowed, *' leaning upon two friends, lapped up in 
 flannel, pale and emaciated. Within his large wig, 
 little more was to be seen than his aquiline nose and 
 his penetrating eye. He looked like a dying man, 
 yet never was seen a figure of more dignity : he 
 appeared like a being of a superior species. He 
 rose from his seat with slowness and difl[iculty, 
 leaning on his crutches, and supported under each 
 arm by two friends. He took one hand from his 
 crutch and raised it, casting his eyes towards 
 heaven, and said, ' I thank God, that I have 
 been enabled to come this day to perform my 
 duty, and to speak on a subject which has so 
 deeply impressed my mind. I am old and infirm, 
 have one foot, and more than one foot in the 
 grave. I am risen from my bed to stand up in the 
 cause of my country, perhaps never again to speak 
 in this house.* The reverence, the attention, the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 243 
 
 stillness of the house was most afFecting: if any one CHAP, 
 had dropped a handkerchief the noise would have -— 
 
 been heard. At first, he spoke in a very low and 
 feeble tone ; but, as he grew warm, his voice rose, 
 and he was as harmonious as ever ; oratorical and 
 afFecting, perhaps more than at any other period, 
 from his own situation, and fi-om the importance of 
 the subject on which he spoke. He gave the whole 
 history of the American war ; of all the measures 
 to which he had objected ; and all the evils which he 
 had prophesied in consequence of them, adding at 
 the end of each year, * and so it proved.' "* 
 
 " My lords," continued he, " I rejoice that the 
 grave has not closed upon me ; that I am still alive 
 to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of 
 this ancient and most noble monarchy. Pressed 
 down as I am by the hand of infirmity, I am little 
 able to assist my country in this most perilous con- 
 juncture ; but, my lords, while I have sense and 
 memory, I will never consent to deprive the royal 
 o9*spring of the house of Brunswick, the heirs of 
 the Princess Sophia, of their fairest inheritance. 
 Where is the man that will dare to advise such a 
 measure ? My lords, his majesty succeeded to an 
 empire as great in extimt as its rej)utation was un- 
 sullied. Shall we tarnish the lustre of this nation by 
 
 ♦ Si'wanl's Anccdotf'S, vol. ii., |i. 'J8M. I'.iil. Hist., vol. xix., 
 rol IlK'lii. 
 
 I{ '2
 
 ''^'i'i THE IllSTOHV Ol I'AUIY. 
 
 CHAP, an ignoinlnious surrender of its rights and fairest 
 ~-r possession ? Shall this jjreat kinirdom that has sur- 
 
 A.D. 1779. * fo ft 
 
 vived whole and entire the Danish depredations, 
 the Scottish inroad, and the Norman conquest ; 
 that has stood the threatened invasion of the Spanish 
 Armada, now fall prostrate before the house of 
 Bourbon ? Surely this nation is no longer what it 
 was. Shall a people that seventeen years ago was 
 the terror of the world, now stoop so low as to tell 
 its ancient inveterate enemy, * Take all we have, only 
 give us peace ?' It is impossible I I wage war with 
 no man or set of men. I wish for none of their 
 employments, nor would I co-operate with men who 
 still persist in unretracted error, or who, instead of 
 acting on a firm decisive line of conduct, halt be- 
 tween two opinions where there js no middle path. 
 In God's name, if it is absolutely necessary to de- 
 clare either for peace or war, and the former cannot 
 be preserved with honour, why is not the latter 
 commenced without hesitation. I am not, I confess, 
 well informed of the resources of this kingdom, but I 
 trust it has still sufficient to maintain its just rights, 
 though I know them not. But, my lords, any state 
 is better than despair : let us, at least, make one 
 effort, and if we must fall, let us fall like men." 
 
 Lord Chatham sat down, and Earl Temple whis- 
 pered to him, " You forgot to mention what I talked
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 245 
 
 of— shall I get up." Lord Chatham replied, " No, CHAP, 
 no, I will do it by and by." ^ p ^^^q 
 
 The Duke of Richmond rose to answer the 
 speech of his friend, and re-stated the reasons which 
 induced him reluctantly to dissent from so great an 
 authority. While the duke spoke. Lord Chatham 
 hstened with attention and composure ; and when he 
 sat down, he made an eager attempt to rise, as if 
 labouring with some great idea: but his strength 
 failed him. After two or three unsuccessful efforts to 
 stand he fell backwards. He was instantly sup- 
 ported by those who were near him ; every one 
 pressed round him with anxious solicitude. His 
 youngest son, then a youth of seventeen, was behind 
 the bar, and sprang forward to support his vene- 
 rable parent. The house was immediately cleared, 
 the debate adjourned, every consideration was ab- 
 sorbed in anxiety for the life of Lord Chatham. 
 History has no nobler scene to show than that which 
 now occupied the house of lords. The unswerving 
 patriot whose long life had been devoted to his 
 country, had striven to the last. The aristocracy 
 of the land stood around ; even the brother of the 
 sovereign thought liimself honoured in being one of 
 his supporters ; ])arty enmities were remembered no 
 more ; every other feeling was lost in admiration of 
 the great spirit which seemed to be passing liom 
 among them. He was removed in a state of insen-
 
 '216 TIIH IIISTOUY OK PAllTY. 
 
 CHAP, nihility from the house. M'hen the efforts of his 
 X. 
 
 — physicians had restored him to some degree of ani- 
 
 mation, he expressed his wish to die among his wife 
 and children, and was removed to Hayes. He Hn- 
 gered for a short time, but on the fourth day expired. 
 The event, although it could not have been unex- 
 pected, was deplored as a national calamity. The 
 house of commons received the intelligence with 
 deep sensation, and when it was proposed to honour 
 the departed nobleman with a public funeral, and a 
 monument in Westminster Abbey, orators from 
 every part of the house came forward with their tri- 
 bute of panegyric. It is highly honourable to the 
 character of Lord North that he was the first of his 
 party to support the motion to do honour to his illus- 
 trious enemy. Lord Chatham died poor ; he had 
 passed through offices in which large fortunes had 
 been usually accumulated, refusing even the ordi- 
 nary perquisites of his appointments. Upon one 
 occasion, no less a sum than 20,000/. thus received, 
 was applied by him to the public service, and this, 
 at a time, when he was scarcely master of 1000/. 
 The country had still, therefore, a debt of grati- 
 tude to discharge. The commons voted 20,000/. 
 or the payment of his debts, and passed a bill, 
 annexing a pension of 4000/. to the title. In 
 the lords, this bill was opposed : eleven Tory 
 peers attempted to intercept the gratitude, nay the
 
 A. D. 1779. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 247 
 
 justice, of the nation. The Duke of Chandos CHAP. 
 hinted that the bill was far from being a measure 
 favoured by the king. The Lord Chancellor 
 thought it a sufficient reason to reject the bill that it 
 had not originated with the crown, and remarked, 
 with a sneer, that he saw no reason to despond 
 although the Earl of Chatham was no more. Lord 
 Ravensworth could see no merit in the Earl of Chat- 
 ham. He had, he said, come into parliament with 
 him, and sat with him for fourteen years in the other 
 house, and he doubtless thought that, if perseverance 
 in a pursuit deserved success, he had himself by far 
 the better right to a pension. The Earl of Abing- 
 don, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Camden, the 
 Earl of Radon, Lord Lyttelton, and the Earl of 
 Shelburne, nobly defended their deceased friend. 
 The bill passed by a majority of 31. Bathurst, 
 Chandos, Paget, and the Archbishop of York pro- 
 tested — such pubhc degradation will men welcome in 
 order to pander to the passion of a king. 
 
 Lord Chatham's career has been too closely an 
 object of our attention to require any detailed analysis 
 of his character. lie was a man formed for great 
 occasions, possessed of the highest and noblest 
 qualities, which were all subservient to the i)urest 
 patriotism ; he was calculated to wield a dictatorshij) 
 with energy and success, and might have been trusted
 
 248 THE IIlsrOllY OF I'AIITY. 
 
 CHAP, to lay it down when the danger had passed ; but he 
 
 '- was not a statesman for ordinary occasions. He once 
 
 dechired himself a lover of honourable war ; it was in 
 that that his boldness, his decision, his prompt and 
 penetrating wisdom, were pre-eminently called forth. 
 He could not condescend to flatter adherents, to pare 
 down differences of opinion in the council, to manage 
 the different interests which obtained in either party ; 
 his genius was of an imperial order, and required an 
 ample field and a grand occasion for its develope- 
 ment. In his earlier days he declaimed against party 
 distinctions ; and refused to be known as a member 
 of either faction ; but as he increased in experience 
 he reversed this opinion. As he saw more nearly 
 the practical working of the constitution he became 
 convinced of the necessity of party connexions in a 
 free country ; and, during the latter years of his life, 
 he was frequent and energetic in his declarations that 
 he was a Whig. 
 
 Thus, deprived of their champion, that section of 
 the Whigs which refused to acknowledge American 
 independence became weak. Lord Shelburne, Barre, 
 and Dunning, were the most conspicuous members of 
 their party who adhered to this opinion. Burke and 
 Fox, with the great body of the Whigs, wore the 
 American uniform of buff and blue, and declared for 
 peace and indci)cndence. On the day preceding that
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 24-9 
 
 of Lord Chatham's death, a motion upon this subject CHAP, 
 was made in the commons ; Fox and Burke spoke in ^^ ^^^^ 
 favour of the motion ; but several of the Whi^s, who 
 had become enamoured of the Tory scheme of recon- 
 ciHation, thought the proposition premature, and it 
 was lost without a division. Fox, undaunted by 
 defeat, returned nightly to the charge : whenever an 
 address was proposed by ministers, whenever an op- 
 portunity for introducing the topic of America was 
 given, he was found inveighing against the obstinacy, 
 the absurdity, the imbecility of ministers ; and calling 
 for condign punishment for all the advisers of the 
 present policy. His perseverance was not without 
 its effect. In the session of 1779 he had nearly 
 routed the ministerial ranks by a vote of censure upon 
 Lord Sandwich. The country gentlemen, con- 
 founded by his eloquence, appeared to waver ; and 
 Lord North only recalled them to their allegiance by 
 declaring that the result of a defeat must be a disso- 
 lution of the ministry.* Still the opposition gained 
 considerably, the numbers being I70 to 204. These 
 motions were incessant throughout the session, and 
 the minority was no longer composed of from 40 to 
 50 members. In a committee of incjuiry into the 
 conduct of the American war, the Whigs divided — 
 155 to 189, and 158 to 180, a sign that those who 
 
 • Aiiiiiial Register.
 
 X 
 
 A. D. 1779. 
 
 '260 THE HISTORY OF PAllTY. 
 
 CHAT, had uro;o(l ministers forward in their violent Tory 
 poKcy would desert them with little ceremony, when 
 that policy was found unsuccessful. In November of 
 this year, the vehemence of Fox betrayed him into a 
 personal quaiTcl with Mr. Adam, a gentleman who 
 had just declared himself a ministerial convert, and 
 who excused his apostacy by declaring that he saw 
 men on the opposition bench far more incapable than 
 those then in office. Fox complimented the ministers 
 upon their success in procuring so able an advocate ; 
 one w^ho had told them he could not defend them on 
 the ground of their own conduct, but that he would in- 
 form the world that the men who opposed them were 
 more infamous and more disgraceful than themselves. 
 '' Were I a minister," he said, " and so addressed, I 
 would instantly reply, * Begone ! begone ! wretch I 
 who delighteth in libelling mankind ; confounding 
 virtue and vice, and insulting the man thou pre- 
 tendest to defend, by saying to his face that he cer- 
 tainly is infamous, but that there are others still more 
 
 so." 
 
 Mr. Adam resented this attack, and the result was 
 a hostile meeting. In this affair Mr. Fox behaved 
 with great coolness ; and, although wounded by the 
 first fire, concealed his hurt until a second shot had 
 been exchanged and the quarrel settled. 
 
 While Fox was thus exhausting all his indignant 
 declamation upon the minister and his underlings.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 251 
 
 Burke was pursuing a more laborious system of oppo- CHAP, 
 sition. It was the universal cry of the AVhig-s both — 
 
 •' , ^ A.D. 1779. 
 
 in the houses of parliament and without, that the mi- 
 nisterial majority was held together by bribery ; and 
 that the pai'liamentary approbation of the American 
 war formed no inconsiderable item in the list of its 
 expences. It was said that the immense sums spent 
 by the administration in the prosecution of this enter- 
 prise gave the minister an opportunity of sending 
 into the house of commons a number of members 
 who, as government contractors, must be devoted to 
 his service. Several motions had been made, and 
 severe speeches delivered against this class of mem- 
 bers ; and the Whigs had even introduced a bill to 
 exclude them from the house ; but Burke had em- 
 ployed himself upon a laborious and extensive task, 
 which included this amon^ other acknowlcdsfed exist- 
 ing evils, and had given promise of a scheme of eco- 
 nomical reform, which, extending to every branch of 
 the public service, should diminish the improper 
 influence of the executive, and protect the interests 
 of the people. This was a formidable instrument of 
 opposition. If the cause which had rendered the house 
 so unanimous for the American war was, that the 
 country gentlemen had hoped to effect by it a reduc- 
 tion of the land tax, they would probably be equally 
 willing to accept such a boon from a Whig as a Tory, 
 and if it coiiM be obtaiiunl l)y abandoning 1 lie war,
 
 ^52 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, would perhaps sacrifice it and its authors to their pri- 
 mary object. 
 
 A.D. 1779. 
 
 On the 11th of December 1779, Mr. Burke gave 
 notice of his plan. After some observations upon the 
 means he conceived were used to prevent him from 
 engaging the attention of the house to this subject, he 
 said, *' a general sense prevails of the profusion with 
 which all our affairs are carried on, and with it a 
 general wish for some sort of reformation. That 
 desire for reformation operates every where except 
 where it ought to operate most strongly — in this 
 house. The proposition which has been lately maide 
 by a truly noble duke, and those propositions which 
 are this very day making in the other house, by a 
 noble lord of great talents, industry, and eloquence, 
 are, in my opinion, a reproach to us. To us, who 
 claim the exclusive management of the public purse, 
 all interference of the lords in our peculiar province 
 is a reproach. 
 
 ** This is the second year in which France is waging 
 upon us the most dreadful of wars, a war of economy. 
 M. Neckar has opened his second budget. In the 
 edict of November last the king of France declares, 
 in the preamble, that he has brought his fixed and 
 certain expences to an equilibrium with his receipt. 
 In those fixed expenses he reckons an annual sinking 
 of debt. For the additional services of the war he 
 borrows only two milhons. He borrows not for per-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 253 
 
 petuity, but for lives ; and not a single tax is levied CHAP, 
 on the subject to fund this loan. The whole is X^^itto. 
 founded on economy, and on improvement of the 
 public revenue. This fair appearance, I allow, may 
 have something- at bottom which is to be detracted 
 from it ; a large unfunded debt is probably left. Be 
 it so ; but what is our condition in respect of debts 
 both funded and unfunded ? What millions shall we 
 not, must we not, borrow this year? What taxes 
 are we to lay for funding these millions ? which of our 
 taxes already granted for these three years are not 
 deficient ? not one, in my opinion. We must tax for 
 what is to come ; we must tax for what is past, or we 
 shall be at a dead stand in all the operations of the 
 war. Are we to conceal from ourselves, that the om- 
 nipotence of economy alone has, from the rubbish and 
 wrecks, and fragments of the late war, already created 
 a marine for France ? Are we not informed that, in 
 the disposition and array of the resources of that 
 country, there is a reserve not yet brought forward, 
 very little short of an annual two millions and a half, 
 in the war taxes? Against this masked battery, 
 whenever it shall be opened in the conflict of finance 
 between the two nations, we have not a single work 
 thrown up to cover us. We have nothing at all of 
 the kind to oppose to it. The keoj)ing this sup})ly 
 in reserve by France is the work of economy, of eco- 
 nomy in a court formerly the most prodigal, and in an
 
 Q5i THE HISTORY OF I'AllTY. 
 
 CHAP, adiiiinistration of finance the most disorderly and 
 
 '-' corrupt. Absolute monarchies have been usually the 
 
 A. D. 1779. ... , . . . 
 
 seats of dissipation and profusion ; republics of order 
 
 and good management. France appears to be im- 
 proved. On our part, indeed, we are not ; we are 
 not, indeed, what we have been ; and, in our present 
 state, if we will not submit to be taught by an enemy 
 we must submit to be ruined by him. On this sub- 
 ject of economy, on the other side of the house they 
 have not so much as dropped a single expression ; 
 they have not even thrown an oblique hint which 
 glances that way. What the ministers, whose duty 
 it is, and whose place furnishes them with the best 
 means of doing that duty, refuse to do, let us attempt 
 to do for them. Let us supply our defects of power 
 by our fidelity and our diligence. It is true that we 
 shall labour under great difficulties from the weight 
 of office ; and it is a weight that we must absolutely 
 sink under if we are not supported by the people at 
 large. This house has so much sympathy with the 
 feelings of its constituents, that any endeavour after 
 reformation, which tends to weaken the influence of 
 the court will be coldly received here, if it be not 
 very generally and very warmly called for out of doors. 
 But to offer is all that those out of power can do. If 
 the people are not true to themselves, I am very 
 sure that it is not in us to save them. I cannot help 
 observing that the whole of our grievances are owing to
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 thefatal andoverofrown influence of the crown ; and that CHAP. 
 
 . X. 
 
 influence itself to enormous prodigality, ihey move 
 
 in a circle, they become reciprocally cause and effect ; 
 and the affg-reo^ate product of both is swelled to such 
 
 Co O JT 
 
 a degree that, not only our power as a state, but 
 every vital energy, every active principle of our 
 liberty, will be overlaid by it. To this cause I attri- 
 bute that nearly general indifference to all public 
 interests which, for some years, has astonished every 
 man of thought and reflection. Formerly the opera- 
 tion of the influence of the crown only touched the 
 higher orders of the state ; it has now insinuated 
 itself into every creek and cranny in the kingdom ; 
 there is scarce a family so hidden and lost in the ob- 
 scurest recesses of the community which does not 
 feel that it has something to keep or to get, to hope 
 or to fear from the favour or displeasure of the 
 
 A. D. 1779. 
 
 crown." 
 
 The people were not unmindful of the call which 
 Burke thus made upon them. Yorkshire and Mid- 
 dlesex, counties which may be said to represent the 
 landed and monied jiropcrty of the kingdom, took 
 the lead. The Yorkshire petition was compre- 
 hensive in its object, and explicit in its avowals ; it 
 was strong though temperate in language, consti- 
 tutional in princi})lcs, exact and circumstantial in 
 details. It set forth that the nation had, for several 
 years, been engaged in an expensive and unfor-
 
 A.D. 177?). 
 
 Q5G THE msToiiv of party. 
 
 CHAR tunatc war. Valuable colonics had declared them- 
 
 X. 
 
 selves ind(>pendent, and formed a confederacy with 
 
 foreiirn enemies. A lar^e addition to the national 
 debt, a heavy accumulation of taxes, a rapid decline 
 of the trade, manufactories, and land rents of the 
 kingdom, were among the consequences of the war. 
 Alarmed at the diminished resources, and growing 
 burdens of the country, the petitioners were con- 
 vinced that rigid frugality was now necessary ibr the 
 salvation of the state. They observed, they said, with 
 grief, that many individuals enjoyed sinecure places 
 with exorbitant emoluments, and pensions unmerited 
 by public service. The true end of every legitimate 
 government was then declared to be the welfare of 
 the community. The British constitution, seeking 
 the public good, had entrusted the national purse to 
 
 * A motion was brought for- are now libelling this house, 
 
 ward by the Earl of Shelburne, Every instance they give, and they 
 
 that same day, in the lords, against give many, and strong instances of 
 
 the practice of incurring, under uncorrected abuse, with regard to 
 
 the name of extraordinaries, debts public money, is a libel on this 
 
 which had not been authorized by house. Every argument they use 
 
 parliament. The motion was lost for the reduction of prodigal ex- 
 
 by a majority of 81 to 41. Fox, pense, and their arguments, are 
 
 who was present during the de- various, and unanswerable, is a 
 
 bate, went down to the commons libel on this house. Every thing 
 
 house, and said, " I am just come they state on the luxuriant growth 
 
 from another place, where the of corrupt influence (and it never 
 
 first men in the kingdom, the first was half so flourishing), is a libel 
 
 in abilities, the first in estimation, on this house."
 
 A. D. 1779. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. '257 
 
 the house of commons. To that house, therefore, CHAP, 
 they appealed, and they represented that until effec- 
 tual measures were taken to redress these grievances 
 by suppressing all useless donatives, and preventing 
 unnecessary and extravagant largesses, the grant of 
 any additional sum of money beyond the produce of 
 the present taxes, would be injurious to the rights 
 and property of the people, and derogatory from the 
 honour and dignity of parliament. 
 
 This petition was signed by upwards of eight 
 thousand freeholders; it was adopted at a meeting of 
 six hundred gentlemen, possessing in the aggregate, 
 more property than the whole of the members of the 
 house of commons ;* and a committee of opulent and 
 influential men was appointed to advocate its prayer. 
 Other counties had followed the example, and so 
 general was the feeling of the nation, that a recapi- 
 tulation of the names of the petitioning counties, 
 would be a repetition of nearly all the counties of 
 the kingdom. Meetings were held, speeches equally 
 reprobating the conduct of the ministers, and that of 
 the majority of both houses were delivered, and com- 
 mittees were appointed in each county to correspond 
 with each other, and organize the agitation.! In 
 the d(!bate upon thi; i)etition, the venerable Whig, 
 
 • Sir George Saville's speefli upon |)rt>8eiiting the petition.— y^«'/. 
 //ij/ . vol. XX . rol. I.'}7H. t Annual Register for 1780. 
 
 vol.. III. S
 
 A.D. 1770. 
 
 ^25S THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Sir GcorQ;o Savillo, appeared to advocate the cause 
 of his constituents. Fox proposed the question as 
 a test to determine of vvhicli party, corruption was the 
 child. The AMiiofs were wilHno:, were desirous that 
 it should be sacrificed : the Tories had made similar 
 professions. The time was come, he said, to prove 
 the sincerity of both. " Let us see which will 
 now acknowledge this dear but denied child corrup- 
 tion." Mr. Turner came forward with a petition from 
 nearly all the burgesses of York, and Burke produced 
 one from Bristol, declaring that these petitions were 
 not to be forsaken like an ostrich's egg, to be fostered 
 by the accidental rays of the sun in barren sands, but 
 to be followed up with care and perseverance, nor to 
 be abandoned until they had produced their off- 
 spring. 
 
 On the 1 1th of February, I78O, Mr. Burke brought 
 forward his plan for the better security of the inde- 
 pendence of parliament and the economical reforma- 
 tion of the civil and other establishments. The whole 
 scheme was contained in five bills. By the first, 
 all crown lands, except those especially excepted by 
 the bill, were directed to be sold, and the proceeds 
 applied to the public service. The second, which 
 applied to Wales and Chester, was for more perfectly 
 uniting the principality and county palatine to the 
 crown, abolishing useless offices, selling the crown 
 lands, and applying the produce to the public service.
 
 A.D. 1780. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^59 
 
 The third and fourth carried the same reform into CHAP, 
 the duchy and county palatine of Lancaster, and the 
 duchy of Cornwall. 
 
 The fifth was the celebrated Estabhshment bill, 
 which proposed to abolish the office of third secretary 
 of state, a great variety of offices of the household, 
 the boards of trade, green cloth, and of works. The 
 offices of keeper of the king's hounds, many of the 
 civil branches of the ordnance, the whole establish- 
 ment of the mint, the patent offices of the exchequer, 
 many offices connected with the payment of the army 
 and navy, together with numerous other public esta- 
 blishments, were all proscribed by this sweeping re- 
 formation. Moreover a new arrangement of the civil 
 list was proposed, by which the debts which were so 
 constantly accruing upon it would be prevented for 
 the future, and priority of payment was ensured to 
 the least powerful claimants, the first lord of the trea- 
 sury being the last on the list. 
 
 The aiTanjTcment of the details of such a measure 
 was a herculean task, and many of his contemporaries 
 thought that the genius of Burke was of too elevated 
 a nature to allow him to garner the minute informa- 
 tion necessary to its accomplishment. They were 
 io-norant of the character of liurkc's mind. The same 
 indomitable industry and facility of analysis which 
 enabled liini to resolve into its first principles the 
 subject of a sj)ocul;iti\(' iiujuiry, iittendctl hini in this 
 
 s^2
 
 A. D. 1780. 
 
 2GO THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, more practical invcstisi'ation. Great as was the idea 
 
 X. 
 
 entertained of his talents, expectation was infinitely 
 surpassed by the introduction of the plan itself. In 
 the hands of most men the description of such a 
 scheme would have been a dry and tiresome enume- 
 ration of details which could have interested none but 
 those whose existence it threatened. Burke, how- 
 ever, rendered his subject no less attractive than it 
 was important. " His bill," says Mr. Gibbon, "was 
 framed with skill, introduced with eloquence, and 
 supported by numbers. Never can I forget the de- 
 light with which that diffusive and ingenious orator 
 was heard by all sides of the house, and even by 
 those whose existence he proscribed." Gibbon, a 
 member of the board of trade, was one of these. 
 
 The demands of the people had been so distinctly 
 made known, that the Tories did not venture to offer 
 a formal and general opposition to the Whig scheme. 
 It was read a second time without opposition,* and 
 
 * I have said without opposition, was attended by a singular cir- 
 
 although the house divided upon cumstance. As there was not 
 
 the committal. That mischievous room enough in the lobby to 
 
 maniac, Lord George Gordon, now contain those who intended to 
 
 appears in parliament, distracting go forth there were 90 who 
 
 the proceedings with his disorderly were obliged to remain within, 
 
 speeches, and insisting upon divi- and being numbered with his lord- 
 
 sions in which he hnd either the ship, made up 91 against commit- 
 
 house or the lobby to himself, ting the bill. 
 Upon this occasion, the division
 
 X. 
 
 A.D. 1780. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^^(jl 
 
 the care of the ministerial party was confined to chap. 
 destroyinof it in committee. The divisions in com- 
 mittee were exceedingly close, and strongly prove 
 the necessity of an opposition applying itself to some 
 question which the people can understand to be 
 directly beneficial to themselves. Upon the clause 
 abolishing the ofiice of third secretary of state, the 
 Tories succeeded only by a majority of seven.* A 
 few days after, the Whigs succeeded upon the clause 
 for abolishing the boai-d of trade, by a majority of 
 eight. On the third day, however, the Tories reco- 
 vered their courage, and when the clause which car- 
 ried reform a step nearer the throne was proposed, it 
 was rejected by 211 against 158. Burke now de- 
 clared his bill was gone, and professed to take no 
 further interest in its progress, but Fox roused him 
 to his w^onted attention, by declaring that the least 
 advantage was worthy of the struggle, that they 
 would together renew the bill from session to session, 
 and if they only succeeded in destroying the seven 
 lords of trade this session, they would have seven of 
 the enemies less to fight against in the next.t 
 
 This manifestation of an intention to destroy the 
 bill, which had now become the object of all popular 
 favour, produced an excitement without doors, which 
 reanimated the Whigs. On the Gth of April, Mr. 
 
 • Pari. Hist., \ol. xxi., col. ;34n. | Ibi(l.,.'37J.
 
 A.D. 1780. 
 
 -id'Z TllK HISTORY Ol' TAUTV. 
 
 CHAP. Duiiniiiir made that celebrated motion vvliieh gave 
 the first check to tlie supremacy of the Tories. 
 Atler passing- many high encomiums upon Mr. 
 Burke's bill, and contrasting the favour with which 
 it had at first been received by the house with the 
 hostility by which it had been more recently met, he 
 intimated that he was firmly persuaded the latter 
 temper and disposition which had appeared against 
 the bill originated with the sovereign. That bill, he 
 argued, had been introduced to diminish the impro- 
 per influence of the crown ; Colonel Barre, with the 
 same object, had introduced a plan for the institution 
 of a committee of accounts ; Sir J. P. Gierke had 
 offered a bill to exclude persons holding contracts 
 privately made from the house of commons. All 
 these attempts to further the prayer of the petitions 
 upon the table had been met with an appearance of 
 candour and afterwards decently destroyed. Every 
 plan of retrenchment had been rendered unavailing, 
 "And now,*' said the speaker, "ministers stand forward 
 and tell you that it is not competent for this house to 
 inquire into the expenditure of the civil list.''* 
 
 That the influence of the crown was increased and 
 ought to be diminished, was, he argued, a matter of 
 notoriety to be decided by the consciences of those 
 who, as a jury, were called upon to determine what 
 
 ♦ Tail Hist., vol. xxi., tol. 403.
 
 A.D. 1780. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 263 
 
 was and was not within their own knowledge. " I can CHAP, 
 affirm," he said, '*upon my own knowledge, and pledge 
 ray honour to the truth of the assertion, that T know 
 upwards of fifty members of this house who always vote 
 in the train of the noble lord in the blue ribbon 
 (Lord North), yet who confess out of the house, that 
 the influence of the crown is increased, and danger- 
 ously increased." To these men, and to the whole 
 house, he now proposed a test, the decision would 
 declare whether the petitions of the nation were to 
 be really attended to or finally and totally rejected. 
 He then moved, that it was necessary to declare that 
 the influence of the crown has increased, is increas- 
 ing, and ought to be diminished. Appending to 
 this bold declaration, an assertion of the right of the 
 house of commons to examine into the expenditure 
 of the civil list revenue, as well as every other branch 
 of the public revenue. 
 
 A debate ensued, of which we have, probably, but 
 a very imperfect report, since the acknowledged 
 leader of the opposition is not named as a speaker, 
 and Fox is only mentioned as making an incidental 
 observation. We can, however, sufficiently discern 
 that it was stormy and acrimonious ; that Lord North 
 was subjected to the most vehement abuse, goaded 
 out of his usual refuge of wit and good-humour, and 
 provoked to turn angrily upon his assailants.* An 
 
 • r'nrl. }|iM,, \n|. xxi., col. 411.
 
 A D. 1780. 
 
 'J(J1. THE inSTOHY OF TAKTY. 
 
 CHAT, abusive is generally a falling minister. At twelve 
 o'clock, the commons divided, and declared by a ma- 
 jority of IS, that the influence of the crown had in- 
 creased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished. 
 The effect was electrical. The minister, wont to be 
 so haughty, frequently vouchsafing no other answer 
 than a division to the arguments of the Whigs, was 
 suddenly and unexpectedly prostrate, imploring the 
 committee to adjourn, and ineffectually protesting 
 against its proceeding, as violent and arbitrary. The 
 Whigs were suddenly raised from despondency to 
 triumph, and Burke afforded them an opportunity for 
 giving vent to their hilarity by a witty speech which 
 he made in answer to the lamentations of Mr. Rigby, 
 the Tory paymaster of the forces.* 
 
 At the next meeting of the house the Whigs car- 
 ried a resolution for securing the independence of 
 parliament by a majority of two ;* but still Lord North 
 held on, confiding in the interest of the court and the 
 disunion or imprudence of the Whigs. His courage 
 appears to have reanimated those of his old adherents 
 who had wavered. In resisting a bill introduced by 
 the Whigs, to prevent revenue officers from voting 
 at elections, he found himself once more in a majority ; 
 the numbers were 224 to 195.* The next day the 
 lords threw out the Contractors' bill,* and the mo- 
 
 * r;irl. Hist., vol. xxi.
 
 THE HISTORY OF TARTY. 
 
 '265 
 
 A. D. 1780. 
 
 mentarv strusrsrle was over; the Tories had reo;ained CHAP, 
 their majority and kept it through the session. This 
 recovery from defeat, a recovery which can be so sel- 
 dom effected by a minister who is chiefly supported 
 by a large body of pensioned adherents, is highly cre- 
 ditable to Lord North as a clever party tactician. 
 After declarinor that the influence of the crown had 
 dangerously increased, a few county members were, 
 or affected to be, alarmed, and absented themselves 
 upon the second division, in which the Whig majority 
 was reduced to two. A sudden illness of the speaker 
 then caused a recess of a few days, and in the interim 
 the point was gained. Lord North brought over 
 persons of a doubtful description so successfully that, 
 by the time the house met again, the new converts 
 were made, the majority secured. All the toil and 
 labour of the Whigs had been at once demolished by 
 the magic touch of the minister, with great ease to 
 himself and doubtless with infinite satisfaction to the 
 persons thus miraculously converted. Such was the 
 account afterwards given of this affair by Mr. Saw- 
 bridge in the house of commons ; and he challenged 
 the minister, if he denied the charge, to move to 
 have his words taken down, when he would bring for- 
 ward proofs of tampering, which, although probably 
 not legally sufficient to convict the minister, would 
 be sufficient to justify his accuser. Lord North al-
 
 A.D. 1780. 
 
 Of)G THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, ternately denied and ridiculed the charge, but he did 
 not accept the challenge.* 
 
 This session Mr. Sawbridgc changed his annual 
 motion, in favour of annual parliaments, into a propo- 
 sition for the repeal of the Septennial act ; and his 
 motion, which had hitherto been yearly negatived 
 without debate, assumed a different character. Fox, 
 Byng, and even Bai-re, declared themselves converts 
 to the principle, while the more cautious and more 
 strictly aristocratic members of the same party joined 
 the Tories. Thomas Pitt spoke against the motion, 
 but refused to vote. Lord John Cavendish would, in 
 deference to the popular wish, allow the bill to be 
 introduced ; but he would not pass it. Burke op- 
 posed it altogether, and delivered, upon this occasion, 
 that glittering piece of oratory which has come down 
 to us among his works. Earl Nugent, Lord North, 
 and Mr. Kigby, who were now the most usual Tory 
 speakers, united with these ; but Mr. Sawbridge suc- 
 ceeded in getting 90 members to vote for his motion 
 — the majority was 182. 
 
 Among the speakers upon this question I have 
 mentioned George Byng, a name not so frequently 
 seen among the leading speakers in a debate as many 
 others, but one which is never absent from those lists 
 
 • Pari, Hist., vol. xxi., col. 616. t Ibid., 615.
 
 A.D. 1780. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 267 
 
 of divisions which have been preserved, and which CHAP, 
 usually appears as that of one of the tellers upon the 
 Whig side. George Byng was not particularly dis- 
 tinguished for eloquence or influence ; and^ had he 
 died young, his name would probably have been un- 
 remembered. A long life of constant and energetic 
 labour for the principles of A\Tiiggism, a career un- 
 stained by a suspicion of interest, or even of ambition ; 
 a rare and unsullied consistency of act and principle 
 — these are the sterling qualities which challenge the 
 attention and the respect of the historian ; and which 
 will compel him to assign to so solid and so valuable 
 a character a high place among the public men of this 
 age, many of whom were more brilliant but none so 
 spotless. 
 
 Byng's first speech in parliament was upon 
 the Boston Port bill. " I rise, sir," he said, " to 
 speak my mind upon this bilL Whatever principles 
 I have hitherto adopted, be they right or be they 
 wrong, I have always adhered to ; and as I live with 
 such opinions I hope I shall die in them. Men's 
 characters are known after their death ; and to have 
 steadily adopted one uniform set of principles from 
 which 1 ha\ e not deviated, I hope, will not be deemed 
 factious."* These were his first words in the house 
 of commons, and they contained a pledge which was 
 
 • I'.iil. Hist., vol. xvii., col. J 176
 
 A. D. 178<). 
 
 .'()S JIIK IllSTOUV Ol- I'AUTV. 
 
 CHAP, honourably redeemed. In popularity and through 
 odium he still retained his consistency ; and so well 
 has he impressed upon his son the character he him- 
 self bore, that, in reading the parliamentary debates, 
 wc must have recourse to extraneous sources of infor- 
 mation to discover where the father's course ended 
 and where the son's beg-an. 
 
 On the 1st of September, having sat but six ses- 
 sions, this parliament was unexpectedly dissolved. 
 In reviewing its proceedings, we find Toryism in all 
 things predominant, but it was not that reckless 
 Toryism which distinguished the early days of its 
 predecessor. Continual discussion, the power and 
 populanty of the Whig orators, and the necessity of 
 recurring to first principles, both for attack and 
 defence of the great questions which were then agi- 
 tated, had produced some slight toleration of inquiry, 
 some little relaxation of the usual habit of dogma- 
 tizing, and upon questions to which they were not 
 already pledged, the Tories of this parliament did not 
 refuse to listen to liberal sentiments, and sometimes 
 to agree to a liberal measure. 
 
 In 1778, Sir George Saville and Mr. Dunning 
 had introduced a bill for repeahng that sanguinary 
 act which denounced the penalties of high treason 
 against any Roman Catholic priest who should 
 solemnize the mass in England, and which rendered 
 persons of that rehgion incapable of acquiring landed
 
 A. D. 1780. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^69 
 
 property. The Tories, in a very honourable man- CHAP, 
 ner, accepted the measure, although it came from 
 Whigs, and was not even recommended by popu- 
 larity. The iniquitous bill, the shameful result of a 
 party stratagem, was repealed. This cautious re- 
 laxation of the thongs of bigotry was received with 
 a yell of execration by the ferocious religionists of 
 Scotland ; and although the repeal did not extend to 
 that country, the presbyterians of Glasgow and Edin- 
 burgh thought fit to show how they estimated those 
 principles of toleration, under which they themselves 
 reposed, by a general conflagration of popish mass- 
 houses and popish dwellings. The flame spread to 
 England. Lord George Gordon, whose wild de- 
 baucheries were innocent in comparison with his 
 religious frenzies, headed an association of persons, 
 contemptible alike from ignorance and station, but 
 detestable for their ferocity and power of mischief. 
 The acts of these worthies are well remembered ; 
 the mobs which attempted to overawe the parliament, 
 the drunken cham])ions of Protestantism, who pro- 
 ceeded from the burning of mass houses to the 
 piuiuhjr of distilleries, and shouted *' No Popery!" 
 while they let loose the malefactors from their gaols 
 — these, and their ex])]oits, belong to the general 
 historian. They were abetted by neither of the 
 political j)arties ; Whigs and Tories were alike 
 objects of hostility to the myrmidons of thi.s l*ro-
 
 A. D. 1780. 
 
 270 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 c HAP. tcstant Association ; the house of Sir John Fieldintr, 
 and the treasures of Lord Mansfield were ignited by 
 the same hands and perished in the same cause. 
 
 The proclamation for dissolving the last par- 
 liament was, to the Whigs, sudden and unexpected. 
 They were again taken by surprise, and appear to 
 have remained astonished and inactive, while their 
 opponents were prepared and vigorous. The 
 poverty of the times operating with a general hope- 
 lessness that any opposition in parliament would be 
 capable of producing a change of parties, had to- 
 gether so powerful an effect, that candidates were 
 not to be found who would expend the immense 
 sums then necessary to a county contest. Some 
 Whiff members had ffrown tired of their useless 
 attendance, and were careless of their election : 
 others were disgusted by the venality of their con- 
 stituents, and finding that whenever the touchstone 
 was applied, this alone appeared to be their motive, 
 withdrew in indignation. Such were the reasons 
 assigned by the Whigs for the general success of the 
 Tories in this general election. Of the one hundred 
 and thirteen new members who were now elected, 
 the great majority were Tories. But the feeling, 
 whether of cupidity or loyalty, which had elected 
 them, did not extend to the most popular consti- 
 tuencies. Middlesex returned John Wilkes and 
 George Byng. Westminster, which since the
 
 X. 
 
 A. D. 1780. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 271 
 
 memorable struororle which had released it from the CHAP, 
 trammels of the treasury, had always been stanch - 
 in the cause of Whiofo-ism, was the scene of an 
 obstinate contest between Charles Fox and the Earl 
 of Lincoln. The Tory was, of course, supported by 
 the whole weight and power of the court, but the 
 ^^^lio• was returned by a triumphant majority. The 
 personal influence of the king sufficed to deprive 
 Admiral Keppel of his old seat for Windsor, but the 
 electors of Surrey recompensed him for the loss, and 
 chose him, notwithstanding the great local influence 
 and connexions of his Tory opponent. Upon the 
 whole, the new parliament was highly favourable to 
 the existing ministry ; they had a certain majority in 
 both houses, and if a creation of six new peers was 
 now gazetted, the measure testified the gratitude, 
 not the weakness of the party.* 
 
 At the meeting of parliament, the anticipations 
 of the Tories were verified : they carried their 
 address by a majority of 8'-2 ; and although the per- 
 sonal consideration in which Sir Fletcher Norton was 
 held, left them in a minority when they attempted 
 to refuse him a vote of thanks,t and their majority 
 
 • Annual Register. the last session, and liad rendered 
 
 f A majority of 40 returned the himself obnoxious to the king by 
 
 late speaker thanks. Sir Fleteher the boldness of his language upon 
 
 Morton had stistained a personal tlie presentation of a money bill. 
 
 altercation with Lord North in — ['nrl. IHx/.. vr.l. wi., rol. 87^.
 
 A.D. 1782. 
 
 ^2J'2 TIIH HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, grew less in resistinir Mr. Byng*s motion for ex- 
 posing the corrupt practice of dividing advantageous 
 loans among the Tory members of this house of 
 commons, yet it was comparatively a (][uiet session, 
 the house showing a most exemplary horror of all 
 reforms.* 
 
 The next session was one of more decisive result. 
 We may pass over the numerous contests in the 
 houses, which occurred previous to February, 1782. 
 Contests highly interesting to the student of his- 
 tory who peruses them at length, and enjoys the 
 eloquence of the combatants, but dry and unenter- 
 taining in a summary. Upon the 27th of this 
 month General Conway repeated the motion which 
 had been so often unsuccessfully made against the 
 further prosecution of offensive war with America. 
 The subject had been regularly debated for so many 
 years, that we cannot hope to find among the 
 speeches any thing worthy of repetition, but, upon 
 the division, Mr. Byng, who had been so constantly 
 the teller of minorities, must have been astonished 
 to find himself in a majority of 2^54 to 215. 
 
 Such w^as the issue of the American contest in the 
 house of commons. As success grew more hopeless, 
 
 * This liouse, by large, com- inquiring into expenditure, in- 
 
 parative, majorities, met all the creasing the strength of the navy, 
 
 ordinary Whig motions for dis- &c. — Fail. Hid., vol. xxii. 
 franchising revenue officers, for
 
 X. 
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^TjS 
 
 I 
 
 and disasters accumulated, disapprobation of the war CHAP, 
 had increased in the nation, and the majority had 
 diminished in the commons. As Burgoyne and 
 Cornwallis successively surrendered, as France, 
 Spain, and Holland, successively declared them- 
 selves our enemies, conversions to the Whig side of 
 the question went on. The scales were for a short 
 time nearly balanced; several times they vibrated, now 
 the fall was decisive, and Toryism kicked the beam. 
 
 Lord North had often declared that he would hold 
 his places no longer than a parliamentary majority 
 should sanction his measures ; it was, therefore, ex- 
 pected by the Whigs that he would now immediately 
 resign. They were disa])pointed. The Tories said 
 *'it did not appear by any vote that parliament had 
 withdrawn its confidence from them," and until such 
 a vote was passed, they were resolved to retain their 
 situations. The challenge was accepted ; and con- 
 fiding in their increasing strength, the Whigs re- 
 solved to bring this question to inunediatc issue. 
 Lord John Cavendish, a few days after, proposed a 
 series of resolutions of censure. These stated that, 
 from the year ly?''^* the nation iiad expended 
 upwards of one hundred millions, had lost thirteen 
 colonies, and many West India and other islands, 
 was now engaged in an expensive war with AnKMica, 
 I'Vance, Spain, and IIoHand, without a single ally ; 
 
 VOL. III. J
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 ^74 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, and that the chief cause of these accumulated mis- 
 furtuues, was the united incapacity and misconduct 
 of the administration. 
 
 In the debate u})on these resolutions, the mover, 
 Lord John Carendish, Mr. Powys, Townshend, 
 Burke, Sir Horace Mann, Viscount Maitland, 
 Charles James Fox, Thomas Pitt, Richard Brinsley 
 Sheridan, William Pitt, and Lord Howe, were the 
 speakers among the Whigs. For the Tories appeared 
 Jenkinson, now secretary at war, Mr. Secretary 
 ElHs, Earl Nugent, Mr. Rawlinson, Mr. Adam, the 
 lord advocate, and Lord North ; several country- 
 gentlemen, who were usually silent, also rose to ex- 
 press their high opinion of the ministers.* 
 
 The A\Tiigs generally contended that a uniform 
 series of calamity and disgrace was a sufficient proof 
 of misconduct ; weakness or folly, they said, marked 
 each separate measure of every minister, and collec- 
 tively pervaded the whole system of administration. 
 Lord North's speech is badly reported ; but he suc- 
 ceeded on the division by a majority of 10. 
 
 On the 15th of March, the motion, varied only so 
 as to evade the rules of the house, was renewed. The 
 Whigs were beaten by a majority of 9* Rather ani- 
 mated than depressed, they returned to the charge. 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol. xxii.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY, 
 
 175 i 
 
 A.D. 178-2. 
 
 On the 50th a f^reater number of members appeared CHAP, 
 in the house than had been before seen during that 
 session. The ofalleries also were crowded, and all 
 things seemed prepared for a decisive struggle. Earl 
 Surrey rose to brino^ forward his motion, but Lord 
 North contested the attention of the house ; and, 
 amid the tumult and cries of "order" which ensued, 
 declared there was no administration. 
 
 The victory was won ; the Whigs reluctantly with- 
 drew their motion, and the house adjourned. 
 
 Such was the catastrophe of the North administra- 
 tion ; a government which, although professing as their 
 creed the strong tenets of Toryism, were as weak and 
 vacillating in their execution as they were severe in 
 their resolves. North and his compeers had formed 
 no design against the liberties of their country ; they 
 had not even the abihty and decision to work out 
 with ordinary success the policy of their party. 
 They were not men who, like the Cabal, would have 
 sold their country to France ; nor did they wish to 
 set up the bayonet as the instrument of government 
 in England. Yet, with probably the most honest 
 intentions, they had certainly reduced their country 
 to the lowest condition of distress and heli)lessness. 
 Whether this result is to be attributed to their acting 
 upon Tory princii)les, or to their not pursuing their 
 principles with suiKcient energy, every reader will 
 
 T Q
 
 'J7(3 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, determine accordinfr to his preconceived party sym- 
 pathies. The fact is clear, that, after twenty years 
 of Tory dominion, that party restored the British 
 empire to the Whigs dismembered, impoverished, and 
 all but undone. 
 
 A.D. 1782.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^77 
 
 i 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Formation of the second Rockingham administration — Biographical 
 anecdotes of Richard Brinsjey Sheridan — Of Lloyd Kenyon — Policy 
 of tile Rockingham administration — Pacification of Ireland — Econo- 
 mical reform — Expunction of the votes upon the Middlesex election 
 — Parliamentary reform — Opinions of the Whig leaders upon this 
 subject — Contractors' bill — Revenue officers' Disfranchisement bill. 
 
 The Whiff s re-entered the cabinet under the lead- CHAP. 
 
 XI. 
 
 ership of the Marquis of Rockingham, who returned 
 
 to the post he had before held, and presided at the 
 division of the spoil. This division strongly exem- 
 plifies the narrow, exclusive, and aristocratic spirit 
 whi(;h was so long the bane of the Whig party. The 
 Whigs would espouse the cause of the people, but 
 the conduct of the contest must be left wholly to 
 them ; they alone must be tli(^ headers, fli(>ir f(>llovvers 
 
 A. D. 1 782.
 
 A.D, 1782. 
 
 27s THE HISTORY OF TARTY. 
 
 CHAP, were never to aspire beyond the ranks. The Tories 
 won] 1 oppress the })cople, but they were generally 
 too weak to be exclusive ; and they were always 
 ready to share their tyranny with any who could aid 
 them in their design. Hence the reason why the 
 latter faction has so often recruited its wasted talent 
 from the middle classes ; why so many brilliant men, 
 who made their first campaign with the Whigs, spent 
 their lifis with the Tories. Disgusted at finding, 
 among a popular party, a barrier of aristocracy 
 which they could not pass, they confounded the 
 party with their principles, and discarded both. 
 
 Under the new arrangement, Edmund Burke, who 
 had borne all the labour of the long contest, who had 
 for some time, alone, sustained it, who had been for 
 many sessions the acknowledged leader of the oppo- 
 sition, and who, although now joined by a colleague 
 of equal power, could plead that he had supported 
 the cause even against him who now championed it 
 — Edmund Burke was excluded from the cabinet, 
 receiving only the post of paymaster of the forces. 
 Those who were considered sufficiently worthy to be 
 admitted into the cabinet were the premier, the Earl 
 of Shelburne and Fox, secretaries of state, the third 
 secretaryship was abolished ; Lord John Cavendish, 
 chancellor of the Exchequer; Admiral Keppel, created 
 a viscount, first lord of the admiralty ; Duke of 
 Grafton, lord privy seal ; Lord Camden, president of
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 279 
 
 the Council ; Duke of Richmond, master-general of 
 the ordnance ; Lord Thurlow to continue chancel; 5r ; 
 General Conway, commander-in-chief of the forces ; 
 and John Dunning, chancellor of the duchy of Lan- 
 caster, now created Baron Ashburton. From this 
 list, the reader will notice the absence of names far 
 more conspicuous in the contest than many of those 
 who obtained the prizes, but those efficient servants 
 of the party who were not qualified by connexions 
 with the great Whig families to a seat in the cabinet 
 were compensated with offices which were, perhaps, 
 equally lucrative, although less honourable.* Among 
 
 CHAP. 
 XI. 
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 • The inferior appointments 
 were thus distributed ; 
 Duke of Manchester, lord cham- 
 berlain ; 
 
 Viscount Chewton, vice chamber- 
 lain ; 
 
 Viscount Weymouth, groom of 
 the stole ; 
 
 Earl of Jersey, master of the buck- 
 hounds ; 
 
 Earl of Carlisle, lord steward of 
 the household ; 
 
 Lord Rivers, lord of the bcd- 
 ehambor ; 
 
 Earl of Effingiiam, treasurer of the 
 household ; 
 
 Earl of Ludlow, comptroller ; 
 
 Lord de I'arrara, captain of the 
 band of gentlemen pensioners ; 
 
 Viscount Althorpe, James Gren- 
 
 ville, and Frederick Montagu, 
 
 lords of the treasury ; 
 Sir Robert Harland, Bart., Hugh 
 
 Picot, Lord Duncannon, Hon. 
 
 John Townshend, O. Brett, R. 
 
 Hopkins, lords commissioners 
 
 of the admiralty ; 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and 
 
 Thomas Oide, undcr-secreta- 
 
 rics of state ; 
 Lloyd Kenyon, attorney-general ; 
 John Lee, solicitor-general ; 
 • 1^1 on. Thomas Townshend, secrc- 
 
 tary-at-war ; 
 Rigiit lloii. Isaac Barre, treasurer 
 
 of the navy ; 
 Edmund Burke, paymaster-gene- 
 ral «if tlie forces ;
 
 A.D. 1782. 
 
 *^8l) Tllli HISTOHY OF I'AUTY. 
 
 CHAP, these appointments, we remark names which show 
 - that the most brilliant era which has ever distinguished 
 the British house of commons was arrived; that Burke 
 and Fox were no longer to remain without rivals, but 
 must share their laurels with competitors who now 
 stood forward to claim for our assembly perfection in 
 every style of eloquence, and to render the time in 
 which they flourished the Augustan age of English 
 oratory. Richard Brinsley Sheridan had recently 
 entered the political scene, and now shared the 
 triumph of his party. 
 
 The friendship and coiTCspondence of Dr. Sheri- 
 dan and Dean Swift, and the competition, and even 
 rivalry, which Thomas Sheridan so long maintained 
 with Garrick, the former the grandfather, the latter 
 the father of Richard, are the first remembered inti- 
 mations of that versatile and hereditary talent which 
 has, for several generations, distinguished this family. 
 
 Earl of Tarikerville, Right Hon. Sir Fletcher Norton was created 
 H. F.Carteret, joint postmaster- Lord Grantley ; 
 general ; The Duke of Portland, lord lieu- 
 Lord William Gordon, vice-admi- tenant of Ireland ; 
 
 ral of Scotland ; Earl of Scarborough, Sir George 
 
 Sir William Howe, lieutenant-ge- Yonge, Bart., joint vice-trea- 
 
 neral of the ordnance ; surers of Ireland ; 
 
 Hon. Tliomas Pelham, surveyor- Colonel Fitzpatrick, secretaiy to 
 
 general ; the lord lieutenant ; 
 Lord Howe, created viscount, to Lieut.-general Burgoyne, corn- 
 command the grand fleet; mander-in-chief of the forces in 
 
 Ireland
 
 THE HISTORY OP PARTY. 
 
 281 
 
 Richard was born in Dublin in the year 1751, and CHAP. 
 
 . . i XI. 
 
 havinor undergone the discipline of a preparatory - — - 
 
 o a r r- r J a. D. 1782. 
 
 school was, when twelve years old, sent to Harrow. 
 Here, after some time, he fell under the ferrule of 
 Dr. Parr, who could discover in him neither industry 
 nor emulation, but found him slovenly in his constru- 
 ing and defective in his Greek grammar. Nor would 
 so unpromising a pupil have probably excited the 
 doctor's special notice, had he not remarked in him, 
 when speaking upon subjects foreign to the business 
 of the school, the vestiges of a superior intellect. 
 Even the particular attention, the probing and teas- 
 ing of Dr. Parr, did not succeed in making Sheridan 
 a scholar. He was at home in Virgil and in Horace ; 
 he could talk copiously of Cicero ; he had read the 
 four orations of Demosthenes as they are taught in 
 our public schools, and, perhaps, he occasionally 
 looked into the Iliad. Such was the full extent of 
 his classical reading when he left Harrow, and it 
 does not appear to have been afterwards extended, 
 except we call his partnership translation of Aristacnetus 
 an extension of his ac(juaintancc with the classics. 
 
 At Harrow, Sheridan contracted a friendshij) with 
 one of his schoolfellows named Halhed, and when 
 these two friends left the school, they continued 
 their intercourse. Feeling an ecjual desire of literary 
 distinction, they set out together, and embarked 
 their first venture in the same bottom. In tlic let-
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 '282 TIIK 1 11 STORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, tens written at this time by Halhod to Sheridan, it is 
 
 XI. 
 
 said by a very competent judge,* that there is a 
 
 youthfiihiess of style, and an unaffected vivacity of 
 thought, which could scarcely have been surpassed 
 by his witty correspondent. The superiority of either 
 of these adventurers who set out thus amicably toge- 
 ther in search of fame, could scarcely have been then 
 determined. How different have been their fates. 
 One has fully reached the goal of immortality for 
 which he started ; the other is lost among the crowd 
 of adventurers who left their homes to push their 
 fortunes in India. Halhed's name would never be 
 adverted to but as that of the friend of Sheridan. 
 
 At an early age Sheridan turned his attention to 
 politics ; there have been found, among his papers, 
 many drafts of letters prepared for the public news- 
 papers. Some of those were written during the 
 Grafton administration, and those which are not 
 avowed and infelicitous imitations of Junius, discover 
 a clearness of thought and style very remarkable in 
 so young a writer. 
 
 The pecuniary resources of Sheridan were very 
 limited ; his father now settled in Bath, had nothing 
 beside the pension of 200/. a year conferred upon 
 him for his literary merits, and the little profits he 
 derived from his lectures. From him, therefore, 
 
 * Mr. Thomas Moore's Life of Sheridan.
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 283 
 
 Sheridan could expect no material assistance, and CHAP. 
 
 XI. 
 
 other resources he had none. At his father's house, 
 Sheridan encountered Miss Linley ; a young lady 
 who, by her talents and beauty, had attracted uni- 
 versal admiration, and who had extended her con- 
 quests over half the beaux of Bath. Sheridan had 
 no sooner seen her than he worshipped among the 
 rest. With that peculiar faculty of making himself 
 beloved which distinguished him through life, and 
 often formed his only stay amid a thousand difficul- 
 ties, he now pressed his suit. It was not an easy 
 adventure. A girl who was beautiful, yet not merce- 
 nary, living in an atmosphere of applause, yet gentle 
 and unpretending ; an actress, yet without a film 
 upon her fame, was not destitute of pretenders to her 
 love : her personal charms, the exquisiteness of her 
 musical talents, and the full light of publicity which 
 her profession threw upon both, had extended her 
 fame, until the Maid of Bath, as she was then called, 
 was on all sides besieged with suitors. Sheridan 
 could scarcely look around him without discovering 
 a rival. His friend Halhed, and even his brother 
 Charles, had felt her influence, and not suspecting 
 that Richard also was a suitor, overwhelmed him by 
 their confidence. The })ower, however, of a superior 
 mind is, where the object is capable of apj)reciating 
 its sujHTiority, as great in rivalries of love as in 
 struggles for power ; it was not long before the heart
 
 ^2Sif THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, of the young siivn was all his own. But Sheridan 
 ^^- was a jealous lover. It, is said, that he has ridiculed 
 A. D. 1782. jj-^ ^^^ morbid sensibility at this period, in his cha- 
 racter of Falkland, in " The Rivals." The general 
 admiration to which his mistress was subjected, the 
 ambitious views of her father, the honourable preten- 
 sions of a wealthy old gentleman, named Long, and 
 the less legitimate persecution of a married man, 
 named Matthews, combined to keep alive his jealousy 
 and perpetuate his misery. At length he persuaded 
 his romantic songstress to elope with him from the 
 scene of all her triumphs, and to fly to France, 
 where he would place her in a convent. Sheridan 
 was at this time little more than twenty, Miss Lin ley 
 was just entering her eighteenth year. The young 
 people, accompanied by an old woman, as a preven- 
 tative against scandal, made good their escape to 
 London ; and, when arrived there, having probably 
 but slender funds at his disposal, Sheridan, with 
 equal boldness and dexterity, introduced his compa- 
 nion to a merchant, an old friend of the family, as a 
 rich heiress who had consented to elope with him to 
 the continent. The prudent old gentleman warmly 
 commended his wisdom in having abandoned all 
 pursuit of the portionless Miss Linley, and so highly 
 approved of his present project, that he accommodated 
 the fugitives with a passage in one of his own ships 
 then about to sale to Diepi)o, and gave them letters
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^85 
 
 to his correspondents at that place, who, with the chap. 
 same zeal and despatch, facihtated their journey to - 
 Lisle. 
 
 MTien they were safe from immediate pursuit, 
 Sheridan found no great difficulty in convincing his 
 charge, that it was as essential to her fame as to his 
 happiness that a marriage should precede her entry 
 into a convent. The ceremony took place, and She- 
 ridan returned to England, leaving his young wife 
 in a convent, at Lisle, until he could strike out some 
 expedient for obtaining an income which might 
 enable him to claim and support her. Upon his 
 return, Sheridan found Miss Linley's persecutor, 
 Matthews, furious with rage, and threatening death 
 to the stripling who had dared to step between him 
 and his prey. Sheridan was not long in offering him 
 the revenge he sought, but the courage of this 
 " Nimrod to all female fame," as Sheridan had before 
 called him, was not equal to his gallantry. In the 
 duel he disgraced himself — a disgrace which was 
 hardly effaced by another meeting which desperation 
 made him demand, and an unwise generosity in- 
 fluenced his adversary to grant. In this second en- 
 counter Sheridan was dangerously wounded. 
 
 Miss LinKw had been brought back by her father, 
 and as her marriage was known only to herself and 
 her husl)aM(l, she continued in the exercise of her 
 profession. Sheridan, forljidden her society l)y her
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 286 THE HISTORY oi' paiity. 
 
 CHAP. fatluM-, was reduced to the necessity of beholding his 
 wife from among the audience of the theatre, or of 
 snatching a few words with her in the disguise of a 
 hackney-coachman, as he drove her home after the 
 performance. Linley, however became, at length, 
 convinced that it was impossible to keep the young 
 couple any longer separate. Accident had drawn 
 from his dauirhter a sudden intimation of her mar- 
 riage, and, at length, the marriage of Sheridan, now 
 a member of the Middle Temple, and the celebrated 
 Miss Linley of Bath, was formally announced. 
 
 The necessity of acquiring some more immediate 
 source of income than could be hoped for from his 
 profession, produced from the happy husband the 
 completion of a comedy from the numberless fi-ag- 
 ments of dramatic inventions which had been accu- 
 mulated since his childhood, among his papers. In 
 January, 1775, "The Rivals" appeared, and She- 
 ridan's fame was at once established as a dramatic 
 writer. 
 
 It is not our province to pursue Sheridan's 
 career in this character ; his first effort gave him 
 all the dramatic fame he coveted, and a few years 
 satiated him with his successes. As a successful 
 author he had obtained access to Devonshire House, 
 whither concentred all that was noble, brilliant, 
 or powerful, of the Whig faction. There he saw 
 Burke, the friend and equal of those with whom he
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ' 287 
 
 lived ; his nobility of intellect received as an equi- CHAP, 
 valent for nobility of birth, and his obscure origin 
 forgotten in the contemplation of his political power. 
 Sheridan was still the son of an actor, and he saw 
 that nothing but a successful career in politics could 
 efface this mark of inferiority from the minds of his 
 associates. Thenceforward politics became his busi- 
 ness. He began to discipline the enthusiasm which 
 had long ago borne him into party controversy, to 
 lay up stores of the necessary knowledge, to bend his 
 mind to the task, and to concentrate its powers. 
 
 His first effort, in conjunction with the party with 
 which he had now connected himself, was the esta- 
 blishment of the "Englishman," a paper started by the 
 Whigs, in 1779- Sheridan, Townshend, Grenville, 
 and Fox, the conductors of this periodical, were none 
 of them distinguished for punctuality. The English- 
 man was very capricious in its appearance ; and, 
 after many apologies for omitted numbers, the paper 
 at length ceased altogether. 
 
 Sheridan now attached himself in an especial man- 
 ner to Fox, and his first ap])earance in public was 
 under that party-chiefs auspices, in the year 1780. 
 Then, when I'ox, as chairman of the Westminster 
 committee, signed the resolutions in favour of annual 
 parliaments and universal sufi'rage, Sheridan signed a 
 report on the same subject from tlu; sub-connnittce, 
 which was also laid before the public.
 
 A.I). 178-2. 
 
 288 ■ THE HISTORY OF 1'.\11TY. 
 
 CHAP. On the dissolution of I7SO Slioridan was returned 
 
 for Stafford, forminir a rare instance of one of the 
 great men of this period who did not first enter the 
 house of commons as the representative of a close 
 borough.* 
 
 Sheridan's first essay in parliament was made in 
 defence of his own seat. The author of " The Rivals" 
 was listened to with great attention and curiosity ; 
 but, apparently, with equal disappointment. Rigby, 
 a veteran debater, turned all his virtuous indignation 
 at the charges brought against him into ridicule ; and 
 Sheridan stood fully in need of the extended aid of 
 Fox, who, in turn, demolished the raillery of his op- 
 ponent by a torrent of vehement crimination. Hav- 
 ing made his essay, Sheridan hastened to the gallery, 
 where Woodfall, in whose judgment and experience 
 the wits of that day had great confidence, was sitting, 
 and asked him, with much anxiety, what he thought 
 of his first attempt. WoodfalJ's reply must have been 
 almost destructive to so ardent an aspirant. " I am 
 afraid this is not your line," he said, " you had better 
 have stuck to the stasfe." Sheridan rested his head 
 
 • This is no recommendation money by which such recruits were 
 
 of the close borough system. Men commonly enlisted. It was gene- 
 
 of genius found the service of a rally felt througli life as a fetter 
 
 party less arduous than that of the which chafed and confused the 
 
 people, and the reward more sure, most manly intellect. 
 A close borough was the bounty-
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^89 
 
 upon his hand, and remained silent a few minutes, CHAP. 
 
 . . XI. 
 
 then suddenly exclaimed with vehemence, *' It is in 
 
 me, however, and, by God, it shall come out." His 
 confidence w^as well justified by the event ; but it 
 does not appear that his reputation as a speaker was 
 by any means so suddenly attained as his fame as a 
 dramatist. Throughout the great contests which in- 
 tervened between his return to parliament and the 
 resignation of Lord North, Sheridan is not found 
 occupying any distinguished station. A review of 
 the occasions upon which he spoke would rather sug- 
 gest the opinion that he felt himself unequal to mingle 
 in the conflict beside Fox and Burke, and was con- 
 tented to try his unpractised pinion in a minor flight. 
 Even these attempts were prefaced by preparation 
 and close study. He wrote out his early speeches 
 before he delivered them, as carefully as he sketched 
 the outlines of his plays. He was contented to 
 make his way gradually, but surely ; to avoid 
 shocking the prejudices of those, who would hardly 
 endure that the son of a player, and the owner of a 
 playhouse, should seize at once a chieftainship in a 
 political })arty ; or of those, perhaps c(pially numerous, 
 who deem a man wedded to the profession in which 
 he has excelled, and an intruder and an empiric if he 
 ventures to forsake it for another. 
 
 At his outset, Sheridan does not appear to have 
 discovered that ricli vein of wit which afterwards ren- 
 
 VOL. in. u
 
 200 THE HISTOllY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. (Icrcd him the favourite of the house of commons; 
 
 XI 
 
 and securing for him a wiUing audience, when Fox 
 
 A.D. 1782. 1 T^ 1 1 1 • 1 1- 
 
 tailed to arouse, and liurke was heard with hst- 
 lessness. His first efforts in oratory were in a 
 grave and florid style, and we are amused to find 
 him seriously rebuking Rigby and Courtenay for 
 treating a subject before the house with levity and 
 raillery. He had, however, sufficiently distinguished 
 himself to make hiin considered an important ally 
 by his party, a fact proved by his appointment to 
 an under secretaryship by this Rockingham admini- 
 stration.* 
 
 Lloyd Kenyon also was introduced to public life by 
 his appointment as attorney-general to this ministry. 
 There is nothing in Kenyon's career to distinguish 
 it from that of other successful lawyers. He first 
 devoted himself to a branch of the law which re- 
 quires patient and unwearied attention rather than 
 brilliancy and eloquence ; he gradually acquired a 
 reputation as a sound lawyer, and the practice 
 w'hich followed this reputation enabled him to amass 
 a fortune. Thus he was toiling on, little known 
 beyond his profession, t when a Whig minister 
 
 * This sketch of Sheridan's occasion, he was eclipsed by his 
 
 early life is derived entirely from junior, who was no other than 
 
 Mr. Moore's Life of Sheridan. Erskine. There is a memoir of 
 
 f He had been, indeed, em- Lord Kenyon in the Gentleman's 
 
 ployed in the defence of Lord Magazine, vol. Ixxii. 
 George Gordon, but upon this
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 291 
 
 created him at outre, without the usual preparation of chap. 
 the solicitor-generalship, attorney-general. Whether 
 Kenyon obtained this appointment by ardent profes- 
 sions of Whiggism, or whether, as is perhaps more 
 probable, he owed it to the fi-iendship of Lord Thur- 
 low, it is difficult to decide. The continuance of 
 Thurlow in the chancellorship was a concession to the 
 private wishes of the king, a concession which was 
 neither prudent or patriotic ; but since it had been 
 made, Lord Rockingham probably thought it better 
 to extend his conciliatory policy, and to deliver up 
 Westminster Hall altogether to the Tories. 
 
 This appointment was another instance of that 
 weakness of purpose which has operated to make 
 the bar a stronghold of Toryism. Ambitious men 
 thought that while obedience was the only passport 
 to Tory favour, opposition was their best recommen- 
 dation to a conciliating Whig government. Had 
 Dunning and Glynn been Tories, they had obtained 
 the highest honours of their profession, they certainly 
 would not have been left, the one altogether neglected, 
 and the other withdrawn fi-om his profession, to be- 
 hold a political opponent enjoying tlie rewards they 
 had earned, and sitting as lord chancellor in a cabinet 
 of their friends. 
 
 It now remained to be proved whether the Whigs 
 who had so loudly advocated beneficial reforms when 
 the Tories were in power, would remain consistent, 
 
 u 2
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 29^ THE mSTOllY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, when consistency must bring them into collision 
 with the court. An advocacy of principles when in 
 opposition, which they would not put in practice 
 when in power, has always been the ready accusation 
 of their opponents ; an accusation, however, which is 
 not, to any great extent, borne out by the history of 
 the party. The American war was certainly the grand 
 topic of party contest throughout the North admi- 
 nistration ; but there were other ancillary questions 
 involved in the same general principles upon which 
 the two parties were equally at issue. The chief 
 of these were, the government of Ireland, Mr. 
 Burke's economical reform, the decision of the house 
 of commons in the case of the Middlesex election, 
 and the great rising question of parliamentary reform. 
 The first of these was a dispute precisely similar to 
 that which which had produced the American war. 
 Ireland, not yet united to Great Britain, legislated 
 by a separate parliament, and taxed by a separate 
 house of commons insisted upon her right to a per- 
 fect, legislative, and judicial independence. The 
 patriot party in her house of commons, led by Grat- 
 tan. Flood, Burgh, and Yelverton, and abetted by 
 Lord Charlemont and his party in the house of 
 lords, demanded that the powers possessed by the 
 pri\y council of sending down money bills, and sup- 
 pressing, or altering others that had passed, should 
 be abolished ; that the English house of peers which
 
 A.D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^93 
 
 had recently usurped the appellate jurisdiction of the chap. 
 
 XT 
 
 peers of Ireland should restore it, that the Mutiny 
 bill should be, as in England, an annual measure, and 
 that the act of 6 George L, which asserted a 
 legislative power in England over Ireland should be 
 repealed. The refusal of Lord North to Hsten to 
 their complaints had produced in this neighbouring 
 island, results, too similar to those that had pre- 
 ceded the rebellion in America to be viewed 
 with indifference. Associations for non-importation 
 and non-consumption of British manufactures arose, 
 and a threat of invasion from France afforded excuse 
 for the enrolment of volunteer companies and mili- 
 tary societies. This latter project was no sooner 
 conceived than it was executed. Suddenly, and as if 
 by preconcerted signal, arose vast bodies of citizens, 
 training themselves to arms, choosing their own 
 officers, serving at their own charges, and increasing 
 in numbers until they could overawe the regular 
 forces drained off as these had been by the American 
 war, and, until in the pride of their strength, they 
 pointed to America as their example, and to their 
 arms as their protection. Lord North, alarmed at 
 their power, made some concessions which allayed 
 their immediate violence but did not satisfy their 
 demands ; but no sooner had that ministry resigned 
 than Mr. ICden, the Tory secretary, came over to
 
 A. D. 17&2. 
 
 '2!)1' THE HISTOUY OF PAUTY. 
 
 CHAT. Eno^land, and insisted upon the necessity of the im- 
 
 1-^ mediate recoofnition of all their claims. This factious 
 
 attempt failed, the Irish still preferred the party 
 which had always been their friend, to that which was 
 only become generous when it had no longer the 
 power to give ; they received the Duke of Portland, 
 the Whig lord-lieutenant, with every manifestation 
 of confidence and esteem : a repeal of the declara- 
 tory act passed the British parliament, the large 
 power of the executive in Ireland was exerted in a 
 liberal spirit, and Lord Shelburne declared in the 
 house of lords, the principle of Whig policy towards 
 Ireland — " that it was just that there should he 
 no distinction between that country and Great 
 Britain."* The Irish, as grateful for kindness, as 
 impatient under insult, received the new measures 
 with loud demonstrations of joy and satisfaction ; 
 an address was carried through both houses, with 
 scarcely a dissentient voice, declaring that no con- 
 stitutional question between the two countries would 
 any longer exist ; and hberal supplies were voted for 
 the general defence. Thus was the armed popu- 
 lation of Ireland converted by the Whigs from 
 watchful enemies to devoted aUies. 
 
 The next topic of the Whigs in opposition was 
 
 * Pari. Hist., vol. xxiii., col. 37.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^95 
 
 that of economical reform ; it was also one of the first CHAP, 
 measures of the Whisfs in government. A message — — - — —- 
 
 ^ r> o A.D.I 782. 
 
 from the throne recommended it to the parliament, 
 and Burke revived his bills. His plan enabled his 
 majesty to pay off the debt upon his civil list, but 
 provided against the recurrence of such exorbitant 
 encumbrances for the future. The reforms in the 
 household effected an annual saving of 73,000/. The 
 next quarter in which he applied the pruning knife, 
 was in that of his own office, which had hitherto been 
 enormously lucrative, from the custom of allowing 
 immense sums of public money to remain in the 
 paymaster's hands. This source of wealth to himself 
 Burke abolished. 
 
 Wilkes, who annually moved the expunction of 
 the votes of the house upon the Middlesex elec- 
 tion, was now successful. Fox, who had been 
 as violent for his expulsion as any Tory of the 
 house, had not now the firmness to own his error : 
 he voted and spoke against his colleagues, but was 
 left in a minority of 4-7 to 115. Thus suddenly had 
 the house of commons changed their opinions with 
 the chanfTC of ministers. 
 
 Reform in parliament was the last and mightiest 
 of all these questions. When the generation 
 which witnessed the existence of nomination bo- 
 roughs shall have passed away, the next will 
 ])robably smile at the contest which llicir lathers
 
 ^J})() 
 
 THE HlsrOllY Ol' I'AUTV. 
 
 CHAP, thought SO severe. It will be scarcely believed 
 XI. ^ . 
 
 ■7^-jTTT- that the principles of representation could stand 
 
 in need of advocacy ; still less will it be deemed cre- 
 dible that those who were its advocates were derided 
 as visionaries and mad enthusiasts ; that even the 
 Whigs looked upon it as pregnant with ruin ; or that 
 their leaders, finding it necessary to echo the popu- 
 lar cry, took refuge in extremes, and provided against 
 the success of their proposals by dashing them with 
 absurdity. Yet such was the policy of Fox and Sheridan. 
 Annual parliaments and universal suffrage, the wild- 
 est instrument of anarchy that could be devised for a 
 civilized country, formed the repulsive body in which 
 they incased the principle of parliamentary reform. 
 Fox thus succeeded in making it terrible to every 
 moderate person, while Sheridan was equally success- 
 ful in making it ridiculous. " He," he said, *' was an 
 * oftener if need be,' " adverting to a joke of Burke, 
 who, when the advocates of annual parliaments argued 
 from the ancient act, which provided that parliaments 
 should be holden at least once a year and " oftener if 
 need be," covered the reasoners with ridicule by in- 
 flicting upon them this name.* We may trace the 
 smile of irony even in the most eloquent of the nume- 
 rous speeches in which Fox and Sheridan pretended 
 to enforce a parliamentary reform. Whenever the 
 
 • Moore's Lil'c of Slieiidaii.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 297 
 
 remedy proposed was gentle in its nature and gradual chap. 
 in its operation, they were in earnest ; when it in 
 
 -. , . . A.D. 1782. 
 
 eluded an organic change they but bandied it m sport. 
 As a moderate party holding the balance between the 
 two extreme factions of Toryism and democracy, the 
 Whigs would not sanction a violent reverting even to 
 the ancient constitution, while it appeared possible to 
 avoid the revolution. In this they were more timo- 
 rous as statesmen than prudent as party-men. The 
 old Whig constitution would still have kept the Whig 
 party in power : it was the treasury boroughs which 
 excluded them. Had they been bold enough at this 
 time to join the democrats in a body, and to force 
 from the Tories a large measure of parliamentary 
 reform, the long reign of Toryism would not have 
 succeeded, the crusades in favour of despotism would 
 not have taken place.* 
 
 * Since the rise of the demo- whichthey were made, and shouted 
 
 cratic faction, the Whigs have for the candidates most hkely to 
 
 owed all their reverses, as a party, destroy it. But the possession of 
 
 to tlieir timidity of the people, power, generally, not universally, 
 
 Mankind, when not interested in tends to fit a man for its exercise. 
 
 the result, love bold and extreme The mind assumes a dignity from 
 
 measures. Interest alone procures the occasion, and rea.sons hcforc it 
 
 admiration for prudence. The decides. The schoolboy monitor 
 
 majority of the people, knowing of a class is more restrained by his 
 
 they possessed no voice in the sense of dignity tiian he will be a 
 
 elections, thought they had no year later, as an undergraduate at 
 
 interest in the constitution under a university ; tin- masfcr ol arts
 
 !298 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. 
 XI. 
 
 A. 1). \7&2. 
 
 But the Whigs, although they trembled to attack 
 the stronghold of corruption, were very ready to 
 demolish its outworks. They passed through the 
 commons the bill for excluding contractors, which 
 they had introduced when in opposition : and when, 
 after much fighting in the lords, the bill came back 
 to them mutilated, they refused to adopt it, and at 
 last prevailed upon the peers to pass it in its original 
 form. This was no inconsiderable blow to ministe- 
 rial corruption : it was accompanied by another which 
 deprived revenue officers of their votes at elections. 
 Mr. Onslow, Lord Nugent, Sir F. Basset, and some 
 others of the determined Tories opposed it in the 
 
 there is more careful of his deport- 
 ment than he is when he arrives in 
 London, a junior student of one 
 of the Inns of Court ; the sense of 
 dignity is throughout attendant 
 upon the possession of aulliority. 
 Even age imposes gravity only 
 because it confers authority. The 
 analogy, T think, holds good in po- 
 litical discussions ; even the conces- 
 sion of household suffrage and the 
 ballot would operate much more 
 to strengthen the hands of the 
 Whigs than to increase the influ- 
 ence of that small knot of politi- 
 cians who, classing themselves im- 
 properly among Radical reformers, 
 propose no limit to their organic 
 
 changes short of absolute demo- 
 cracy. Nearly all disfranchised 
 democrats would become enfran- 
 chised Whigs. The experience 
 we have had of household consti- 
 tuencies shows that, although they 
 have often returned violent men to 
 resist violent enemies, they have 
 shown no disrespect to the claims 
 of property, or even of rank. An 
 assembly thus returned would 
 certainly tolerate no abuse, they 
 would pass the thumb-nail over 
 the statue of the constitution, but 
 they would religiously defend it 
 from destruction. But 1 am stat- 
 ing an opinion, not advocating an 
 experiment.
 
 A.D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^9^ 
 
 commons, but their minority never exceeded 14.* chap. 
 
 XI. 
 
 In the lords the Earl of Mansfield, whom the death 
 of Lord Chatham had left without a superior, delivered 
 a long oration against the bill, arguing that the in- 
 fluence of the crown w as by no means too great, and 
 exhorting his peers not to be hurried away by the 
 rage for reformation that prevailed. Lord Rocking- 
 ham's answer was highly interesting, as exhibiting a 
 picture of the magnitude of the evil now redressed. 
 He stated that there w-ere no less than seventy bo- 
 roughs where the election depended chiefly on the 
 votes of revenue officers ; and that the custom-house 
 and excise could alone command 11,500 votes. He 
 put it to the house whether it would not be a great 
 cruelty to oblige these 11,500 persons to vote against 
 the persons who had given them their places ; yet, 
 if such means w^ere persisted in by one party, no 
 other party could exist without following their ex- 
 ample. t This hint to the Tories that they were 
 preparing a proscrij)tion against their friends had the 
 desired effect — the bill passed. A bill which released 
 seventy boroughs from the thraldom of the minister, 
 was, in itself, no inconsiderable parliamentary reform. 
 An example, also, was exhibited to electors by the 
 disfranchisement of the borough of Crichdalc, which 
 had long been an open market for votes — not tliat it 
 
 • Pari, llisi., vol. xxii., cl. l.3;jK. f Pnil. Hist., vol. xxiii , col. 101.
 
 300 THE HISTORY OF 1»ARTV. 
 
 CHAP, could be more corrupt than many of its neighbours, 
 
 XI 
 — ■ but, because it was more indecent and unblushing in 
 
 its corruption : the Tories fought for it with a con- 
 fidence worthy of their clients, and Lord Mansfield, 
 and his legal friends in the lords, sustained the con- 
 test with considerable pertinacity. But they were 
 worsted upon division, and the bill passed.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 301 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A. D. 178'2. 
 
 Pitt's motion in favour of a parliamentary reform — Biographical 
 Anecdotes of William Pitt — Debate upon his motion— Death of the 
 Marquis of Rockingham— The Shelburne administration. 
 
 Thus far the Whiffs advanced in concert to the CHAP 
 
 XII. 
 
 very confines of organic change. Burke, Towns- 
 hend, and others of the party, would go no further. 
 Among the men who were prepared to overstep this 
 limit, existed the diiferences of opinion which must 
 always obtain in a body associated for action. Saw- 
 bridge, and a few others in the house of commons, 
 were earnest in their pursuit of universal suffrage. 
 Wilkes made the same cry an instrument of pecu- 
 niary gain, and laughed at it in private. Fox and 
 Sheridan practised a similar du})licity for a party 
 purpose. But among the Rockingham party, opposed 
 in heart as this body was to pernicious extremes, 
 there existed a strong feeling in favour of a moderate 
 parliamentary reform. The interest of the fVhig
 
 S02 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAr. . parfj/ ahso/ufeh/ demanded such a reform. The 
 — W— vast number of Treasury borouirhs placed the deci- 
 
 A. D. 1782. - . 
 
 sion as to which party should govern, in the hands of 
 the king, and although the odium arising from a long 
 series of disasters would sometimes give to the 
 popular voice a power superior to that of corruption, 
 yet such events must be rare and transient : the 
 hurricane of national indignation might, indeed, for 
 an instant, appear to have mingled the elements, and 
 destroyed those laws of order which its violence 
 suspended ; but the next moment it was passed 
 away, and the trade wind of Toryism blew steady 
 and continuing as before. So long as seventy seats in 
 the house of commons were at the private disposal of 
 the king, so long the Whigs could only hope to 
 possess the government during fitful moments of high 
 popular excitement. 
 
 George III. was the first monarch of the House of 
 Hanover who felt himself secure upon the British 
 throne, or could venture to cancel the debt of gratitude 
 his family owed the WTiigs. The use he had made 
 of his opportunity must have convinced the Whigs 
 that the favour of the monarch, though highly to be 
 valued when fairly obtained, was not their natural 
 support. Patriotism in kings, like virtue in indi- 
 viduals, is doubtless their true interest ; yet how 
 few of those who repeat this truth are strong-minded 
 enough rigidly to adhere to it. A monarch, of an
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 303 
 
 enlarged and philosophic mind, would probably prefer ^^f^' 
 the principles of the Whigs as conducive alike to his a. D. 176-2. 
 safety and his glory, but a weak or narrow minded 
 king would infallibly cleave to the practice of the 
 Tories, and the Whigs would be driven from the 
 helm, precisely at the moment when their vigilance 
 would be most required. 
 
 Henceforward, therefore, the great question to be 
 decided between the factions, was whether the king 
 or the nation were to judge upon what principles the 
 government should be conducted. 
 
 Chatham appears to have foreseen that this would 
 be the ultimate question ; and to have foretold its 
 decision, when, speaking of the nomination boroughs, 
 he said, *' This is what is called the rotten part of the 
 constitution ; it cannot continue the century, if it 
 does not drop off it must be amputated."* Par- 
 liamentary reform was now become so evidently 
 necessary as a party measure, that we must consider 
 any M'hig who is found opposing a rational and well- 
 digested measure of that nature, to have been either 
 of very limited comprehension, or very feeble party 
 principle. 
 
 The question was pressed upon the notice of the 
 Rockingham administration by William Pitt, son of 
 its great originator, the Earl of Chatham. » 
 
 • I'arl Hist., vol. xvi., rol. ion.
 
 i304 
 
 THE HISTORY OT TAUTV. 
 
 CHAP. In producing William Pitt in the position which his 
 
 ^ ^ ., — father would have held, few words of preface will suf- 
 
 A.D. 1782. '■ 
 
 fice. His origin is made illustrious by his father's 
 deeds. The traveller, who meets with the infant Rhone 
 tumbling with headlong violence amid the precipices 
 of Switzerland, prefers to trace it up to its native 
 glacier before he follows its course towards the lake 
 in which it terminates ; but he, who meets with that 
 other Rhone, careering among the fields of France, 
 remembers that it rushes from the lake fed by the 
 waters of its mountain sire, and does not wonder 
 that it is so beautiful. The impetuous career of the 
 Earl of Chatham will interest every reader, in tracing 
 the scattered records of his obscure youth. In the 
 youth of his son there is nothing of obscurity and 
 little of interest. The second son of the Earl of 
 Chatham was designed for the bar and the senate. 
 He received the rudiments of education from his 
 father, whose frequent intervals of confinement left 
 him leisure for instruction ; and so well did he profit 
 by the lessons of his illustrious preceptor, that, at the 
 age of fourteen he was found qualified for the univer- 
 sity. He was probably more indebted to the instruc- 
 tion he received at the bedside of his father than to 
 his tuition at Cambridge, or his experience upon the 
 :jpontinent, when, in I78O, he was called to the bar. 
 He went the western circuit once, and appeared, in a 
 few cases, as junior counsel. The duties of a junior
 
 A.D. 178-2. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 305 
 
 counsel in a circuit cause are too few and trivial chap. 
 
 • ... XII 
 
 to offer any opportunity for distinction ; and Pitt's 
 
 forensic talents may be said to have been untried in 
 I78I, when, after an unsuccessful canvass of Cam- 
 bridge, he was brought in by Sir James Lowther, 
 now in opposition, for the borough of Appleby. Pitt, 
 so far as the different character of their minds would 
 admit, had imbibed the political principles of his 
 father ; and he made his first speech, in the house of 
 commons, in support of Burke's bill of economical 
 reform. As the son of the Earl of Chatham, he, of 
 course, fixed the attention of the house ; nor had his 
 auditors listened to him long before they confessed 
 that he would be able to step forth from the halo of 
 his father's name, and work out for himself a title to 
 eminence. Throughout that and the ensuing session 
 he took part in all the efforts made to unseat Lord 
 North, voting and speaking upon every occasion with 
 the most decided portion of the Whig party, even to 
 supporting Mr. Sawbridge's motion for triennial par- 
 liaments. When the triumph was achieved, and 
 the minister fell, Pitt was among those who ex- 
 ulted over his defeat : but the veteran parlia- 
 mentary debaters around him nmst have smiled 
 when they heard a young man of two-and-twenty 
 say, that he himself could not expect to take 
 any share in a new administration ; but wv.rv his 
 <l()in<r >() iiion- within his r(>ach, \\r iwwv would 
 
 VOL. III. X
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 30C THE HISTORY OF 1»AIITY. 
 
 CHAP, accept of a subordinate situation.* In compliance 
 with this confident resolve, he refused a seat at the 
 treasury board, under the new ministry. 
 
 William Pitt now brought forward the question of 
 parliamentary reform. *' The moment was come," 
 he said, " when it was necessary that there should be 
 a calm revision of the principles of the constitution, 
 and a moderate reform of such defects as had imper- 
 ceptibly and gradually stolen in to deface, and which 
 threatened at last totally to destroy, the most beauti- 
 ful fabric of government in the world. The country 
 was now blessed with a ministry whose wishes went 
 along with those of the people, the people were 
 unanimous throughout the kingdom, and their repre- 
 sentatives were nearly unanimous in that house. All 
 men had confidence in the declarations of those who 
 had so invariably proved themselves the friends of 
 freedom. All things pointed out this as the auspi- 
 cious moment of reformation. The frame of the 
 constitution had," he said, "in modern times, under- 
 gone material alterations, which had given a danger- 
 ous bias to the commons house of parliament, a bias 
 which had become so powerful that the representa- 
 tives had ceased in a great degree to be connected 
 with the people. The representation had been 
 designed to be equal, easy, practicable, and com- 
 
 * Pail. Hist., vol xxii., col. S 1 40.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 307 
 
 plete. When it ceased to be so; when the repre- chap. 
 
 XII 
 
 sentative ceased to have connexion with the consti- 
 
 A.D. 1782. 
 
 tuent, and was either dependent upon the crown or 
 the aristocracy, there was a defect in the frame of 
 representation, and it was not innovation, but reco- 
 very of the constitution to repair it. 
 
 " The instances of boroughs either absolutely go- 
 verned, or totally possessed by the treasury, w^ere 
 too numerous and notorious to require enumeration, 
 and where this influence was opposed, it was usually 
 not by the people or for the people, but by an aris- 
 tocrat for aristocratic purposes. There were other 
 boroughs which had no existence in property, in 
 population, or in trade, which had no other inha- 
 bitants but the servants of the person who owned the 
 borough, and himself made the return of its members. 
 Others there were which possessed no other property 
 than the votes of their electors, and belonged more 
 to the nabob of Arcot than to the people of Great 
 Britain — were more within the jurisdiction of the 
 Carnatic than the limits of the em})ire of Great Bri- 
 tain. In none of these boroughs did real re})resen- 
 tations exist." 
 
 ' Having stated the extent of the evil and put seve- 
 ral cases of extreme ruin which might readily accrue 
 from such a cause, he spoke of the remedy. Declar- 
 ing his reverence for the constitution, and his rc^spect 
 (•v«Mi for its vestiges, lie was nevertheless fortirKMl in 
 
 X '>
 
 308 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 (.HAP, his opinion of the necessity of reform by the assist- 
 — ance of abler and greater men than himself, ])articu- 
 
 A. 1). 17&2. ^ IP 
 
 larly of one now no more, of whom every member of 
 that house could speak with greater freedom than 
 him. That person was not apt to indulge vague and 
 chimerical speculations inconsistent with practice and 
 expediency : yet he personally knew that it was the 
 opinion of the late Lord Chatham, that without re- 
 curring to first principles in this respect, and esta- 
 blishing a more solid and equal representation of the 
 people, by which the proper constitutional connexion 
 should be revived, this nation, with the best capacities 
 for grandeur and happiness of any on the face of the 
 earth, must be confounded with the mass of those 
 whose liberties were lost in the corruption of the 
 people. The means of accomplishing the end he 
 would not pretend to dictate, and to obviate all dis- 
 union of sentiment among those who were equally 
 anxious with himself to secure the object, he moved 
 only for a committee in which the question might be 
 discussed, and a remedy meeting the approbation of 
 all mio^ht be devised." 
 
 William Pitt upon this day occupied a glorious 
 position. Exulting in youth and eloquence, his mind 
 stored with the overflowings of the perennial fountain 
 of his father's wisdom, the repository of the private 
 thoughts of the revered statesman whom England 
 had not yet ceased to mourn, he stood forward bear-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. J09 
 
 ing his father's mantle, pursuing the path which he chap. 
 knew he would have delig-hted to have trod, and dis ^"-^ 
 
 1 • , 1 r. . , A.D. 1782. 
 
 pensing to his countrymen those oracles oi wisdom 
 which had been confided to him for his country's 
 good. He was supported by those who had known 
 and honoured his father ; Sir George Saville, one of 
 the few who had acted with the first William Pitt in 
 his days of power and glory, welcomed the promise 
 of another Chatham ; Sawbridge and Byng were not 
 absent from the debate ; Alderman Townshend still 
 advocated the principles of his youth : while, on 
 behalf of the Whig party. Fox and Sheridan paid 
 their tribute of encomium to the young orator, and 
 exerted all their eloquence in favour of his cause. 
 On the other side, Mr. Thomas Pitt, the head of the 
 family, and the proprietor of Old Sarum, defended 
 the system which gave him a seat in the house. He 
 objected that every innovation is an experiment, and 
 all reformation to be effectual must be gradual ; that 
 ancient and valuabh; rights should not be lightly 
 violated upon the fanciful grounds of theory and 
 speculation ; that the ])urposc of a parliament was to 
 be a balance to the crown, and the aristocratical 
 weight of property in the commons had alone enabled 
 it to efF(!ct that purpose ; and that the princij)le of 
 representation inevitably 1(m1 to universal suffrage, 
 and must be either carried through to that point, 
 or abandoned. Defects he admitted to (wist ; if
 
 A. D. 178-2. 
 
 810 THE HISTOKY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, specific remedies were proposed for specific defects, 
 he would seriously consider them ; but so general, 
 so undefined a measure would be an act of madness 
 and infatuation tending only to tumult and disorder. 
 Such were the arguments of an honourable man, 
 who had no wish hostile to the object in view, but 
 whose immediate interest unconsciously biassed his 
 judgment as to the means. Such also was Sir Horace 
 Mann, who opposed the motion as ill-timed. Men 
 who had not themselves misused their borough 
 interest for selfish purposes could not discover that it 
 was dangerous, or that their country should call upon 
 them to resign a power that had never been detri- 
 mental to her interests. Many other Whigs, unac- 
 customed to take any enlarged view of party questions, 
 and still more who preferred their private interest to 
 their party principles, defended their boroughs. The 
 Tories opposed the motion with consistency, using 
 the same arguments, but with a different object, and 
 fighting not only for their borough property, but for 
 their party power. Mr. Dundas, the lord advocate 
 of Scotland, and Mr. Rigby, were, however, the only 
 eminent speakers of that party who appeared in the 
 debate. Upon the division the motion was negatived 
 by 161 to 141.* 
 
 * This debate is reported in xxii., pp. 1418 to the end of tlie 
 the Parliainentary History, vol. volume.
 
 A.D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 311 
 
 Complaints were rife that this defeat was accom- chap. 
 
 A. 11. 
 
 pHshed by the insidious hostility of ministers who 
 had privately opposed a measure they had openly 
 supported. But this accusation was unjust. Fox 
 and his friends were earnest in support of the motion, 
 and even prevailed upon Burke and the anti-reform- 
 ing members of the "WTiig party to absent themselves 
 from the debate. This is tested by the closeness of 
 the division, where the majority was so small, that it 
 offered, if the Whigs remained in office, a sure and 
 speedy prospect of triumph to the minority. 
 
 Such were the events of four months of Whig 
 government. While parliament was still sitting, and 
 several of the government measures still in progress, 
 the existence of the ministry was untimely terminated 
 by the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, who 
 died on the first of July, having sustained during 
 a life spent in his country's service, the reputation of 
 an honourable, consistent, and moderate statesman. 
 
 The Whig party were still divided upon the 
 subject of America. Lord Shelburne and his friends 
 retaining the opinion they had held with Lord 
 Chatham, were extremely unwilling to acknowledge 
 her independence, and the king saw in their reluct- 
 ance a hope that he f-hould not. be compelled to 
 abandon the war. Lord Shelburne, therefore, was 
 iunncdiatc^ly appointed successor to the marquis, 
 upon the condition that some hold upon America
 
 S\Q THE HISTOKY OF PARTY. 
 
 ^CHAP. shoiiltl be retained.* Fox and his friends, who saw 
 XII. 
 — ;77- no hope of ])eaee while such a condition was imposed, 
 
 and no hope for the country while the war continued, 
 
 resigned. 
 
 The Shelburne government was now formed, con- 
 sisting of the Earl of Shelburne, first lord of the 
 treasury ; Hon. William Pitt, chancellor of the 
 exchequer ; Lord Grantham and Thomas Towns- 
 hend, secretaries of state ; Lord Thurlow, lord 
 chancellor ; Lord Keppel, first lord of the admiralty ; 
 Lord Camden, president of the council ; Duke of 
 Grafton, lord privy seal ; Duke of Richmond, master- 
 general of the ordnance ; Lord Ashburton, chancellor 
 of the duchy of Lancaster ; Sir George Yonge, 
 secretary at war ; Henry Dundas (afterwards Lord 
 Melville), treasurer of the navy ; Colonel Barre, 
 paymaster of the forces ; Lloyd Kenyon, attorney- 
 general ; Richard Pepper Arden, solicitor-general ; 
 Earl Temple, lord lieutenant of Ireland ; Hon. 
 William Wyndham Grenville (afterwards Lord 
 Grenville), secretary. 
 
 The party must be strong indeed in talent, which 
 could afford to exclude such men as Fox, Burke, and 
 Sheridan, and yet hope to carry on the government. 
 The division was the more singular since both the 
 remaining and the seceding parties differed more 
 
 ' Dr. Franklin.
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 313 
 
 amono^ themselves than they did from the friends CHAP, 
 " -^ XII. 
 
 from whom they separated. Thus Fox and Burke 
 
 had now very few opinions in common, while Fox 
 agreed with Pitt, Sir George Yonge, Lord Ashbur- 
 ton, and many other members of the Shelburne 
 government, upon the great question of parliamentary 
 reform, and upon every other question except that 
 upon which they divided. With all our admiration 
 of the character of Fox, it is difficult to pronounce 
 that some personal jealousy, of which he was probably 
 even himself unconscious, did not influence his judg- 
 ment and prompt his resignation. 
 
 The prorogation of parliament prevented any 
 display of the strength or weakness of the new 
 ministry. During the recess, it is said, that Lord 
 Shelburne made overtures to Lord North* without 
 success, and set on foot negotiations for a general 
 peace. 
 
 • Annual Register. But it is their own coalition. Burke still 
 
 not impossil)le that this rumour held some influence over the An- 
 
 was invented by Burke or his nual Register, 
 friends to cover the disgrace of
 
 311. THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 State of parties in the commons — Debate on the prehminaries of peace 
 — Coalition of Lord North and Mr. Fox — Fox's defence of his con- 
 duct — Defeat of the minister — Premiership offered to WilHam Pitt 
 — He dechnes — Formation of the coahtion cabinet — Relative strength 
 of Whigs and Tories — Mr. Fox's India bill, nature and policy of this 
 scheme — opposed by Pitt — Passes the commons — Is rejected by the 
 lords — Dissolution of the coalition ministry. 
 
 CHAP. Upon the meeting of parliament in December, 
 
 ■Y" I T T 
 
 1782, it was discovered that the question which had 
 
 A. D. 1782. 
 
 formed the ostensible cause of the schism in the 
 Rockingham cabinet had been abandoned, and that 
 the minister had at length resolved to concede the 
 absolute independence of America. That Fox should 
 feel injured by the manner in which he had been thus 
 turned out of office, upon a point which his opponents 
 themselves abandoned as soon as it was gained, was 
 but natural ; a dignified resentment and a distant
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 315 
 
 deportment towards those by whom he had been chap. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 supplanted, were called for by the occasion and had 
 
 A. D. 1783. 
 
 been worthy of his character. Such appeared for a 
 short time to be his policy. According to the com- 
 putation of a person likely to be correct, Fox num- 
 bered about 90 followers. Lord North 120, and the 
 minister 140, the rest being unattached. But Fox 
 found that his followers were not so devoted as he 
 supposed ; in a division which he ventured upon 
 his own strength he found himself supported only by 
 46 votes against 219. 
 
 The nation confused by the distracted state of par- 
 ties awaited the issue with some curiosity, not unmin- 
 gled with fear lest the dissensions of the Whigs should 
 again let in the Tories. On the 17th of February, 
 the house of commons assembled to take into consi- 
 deration the preliminaries of peace that had been now 
 signed, and curiosity was at once changed into 
 astonishment. Charles Fox and Lord North sat 
 upon the same bench, their followers intermingled 
 around them, they proposed the same amendment, 
 adopted the same arguments, spoke, voted, acted in 
 all things as one united ])arty. They succeeded, the 
 amendments were carried by a majority of 1(), the 
 numbers being 224 to 208.* 
 
 The debate was well contested. When the members 
 
 • I';iil. IlisL, vol. xxiii.col. 4'.W.
 
 3i(\ 
 
 Tin: IIISTOKY OF I'AIMV. 
 
 A. D. 1783. 
 
 CHAP, of the new opposition attacked the ministers on 
 xiii. . 
 
 account of a peace which was certainly as disadvan- 
 
 tasreoiis as even the disastrous nature of the contest 
 could have promised, they were answered by bitter 
 sarcasms against the unnatural coalition from which 
 those attacks proceeded, and by repetitions of the 
 violent expressions of hatred or contempt with which 
 the new allies had been accustomed to assail each 
 other. A few days later, the coalition brought for- 
 ward resolutions of censure upon the preliminaries, 
 and after a debate of great power and interest carried 
 them by a majority of I7. The Earl of Shelburne, 
 upon this defeat, immediately quitted his office, and 
 Pitt announced that he only held his place as chan- 
 cellor of the exchequer until a successor should be 
 appointed. 
 
 The occurrence of this coalition is greatly to be 
 deplored, as an example to men, who, without any of 
 the power, may nevertheless feel inclined to imitate 
 the errors of Fox. It is to be deplored as a blot upon 
 the character of a great man ; as a precedent which 
 strikes at the foundation of political morality ; and as 
 a weapon in the hand of those who would destroy all 
 confidence in the honesty of public men. 
 
 It would, however, be unfair to refuse insertion 
 to the defence which Fox made for this alliance in 
 the house of commons. *' I am accused," he said, 
 ** of having formed a junction with a noble person
 
 A. D. 1783. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 317 
 
 whose principles I have been in the habit of opposing CHAP, 
 for the last seven years of my life. I do not think it 
 at all incumbent upon me to make any answer to this 
 charge : first, because I do not think that the per- 
 sons who have asked the question have any right to 
 make the inquiry ; and, secondly, because if any 
 such junction was formed, I see no ground for ar- 
 raignment in the matter. That any such alliance 
 has taken place I can by no means aver. That I 
 shall have the honour of concurring with the noble 
 lord in the blue ribbon on the present question is 
 very certain ; and if men of honour can meet on 
 points of general national concern, I see no reason 
 for calling such a meeting an unnatural junction. It 
 is neither wise nor noble to keep up animosities for 
 ever. It is neither just nor candid to keep up 
 animosity when the cause of it is no more. It is 
 not my nature to bear malice or to live in ill will. 
 My friendships arc perpetual, my enmities are not 
 so. Amiciticp sempiferncp inimiciticp placabiles. I 
 disdain to keep alive in my bosom the enmities 
 which I bear to men, when the cause of those enmi- 
 ties is no more. When a man ceases to be what he 
 was, when the opinions which made him obnoxious 
 are changed, he then is no more my enemy but my 
 friend. The American war was the cause of the 
 enmity between the noble lord and myself. The 
 American war and th(! American (piestion is at an
 
 A.D. 1788. 
 
 318 Tin-: history of party. 
 
 CHAP. end. The noble lord has profited from fatal experienec. 
 
 XIII 
 
 ^Mlile that system was maintained, nothing could be 
 
 more asunder than the noble lord and myself. But 
 it is now no more, and it is therefore wise and 
 candid to put an end also to the ill will, the animo- 
 sity, the rancour, the feuds which it occasioned. I 
 am free to acknowledge that whcm I was the friend 
 of the noble lord in the blue ribbon, 1 found him 
 open and sincere ; when the enemy, honourable and 
 manly.- I never had reason to say of the noble lord 
 in the blue ribbon that he practised any of those little 
 subterfuges, tricks, and stratagems, which I found in 
 others, and of those behindhand and paltry manoeuvres 
 which destroy confidence between human beings, and 
 which degrade the character of the statesman and 
 the man."* 
 
 The last sentence of this defence is a confession 
 of guilt, intimating too plainly that it was personal 
 disgust, which more powerfully than patriotism im- 
 pelled Fox towards Lord North. 
 
 The coahtion had so completely mingled the 
 two parties, had so shaken together the vinegar 
 and oil, that it will be some time before they can be 
 separated, or can assume their relative positions. 
 
 The king's strongest antipathy was to Fox, his 
 next was to his party. Among the latter, however, 
 
 * Purl. Hist., vol. xxiii., col. 487.
 
 A.D. 1783. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 319 
 
 he thouo-ht he had discovered a man who might be CHAP. 
 
 XTII. 
 
 converted to his service, and whose acquisition would 
 be worth any pains he could bestow. George II. 
 had been advised to trust the first William Pitt, and 
 he would find him tractable. George III. might 
 have received from Dundas the same advice with 
 respect to the second. When Shelburne was proved 
 unable to maintain his ground, Pitt was called into 
 the royal closet and offered the premiership. To a 
 young man of four-and-tw^enty, of brilliant talent and 
 high aspirations, the offer must have been almost 
 irresistible ; but the very fact of such a proposal 
 being made to one without age, experience, influence, 
 or followers, argues either the ignorance or the arro- 
 gance of him who made it ; — ignorance, if he saw not 
 in the then state of parties the difficulties of such an 
 undertaking ; arrogance, if he expected that these 
 difficulties should succumb at once to the royal will. 
 Pitt must have reluctantly admitted to himself that, at 
 this juncture, he could not stand a day. He declined 
 the dangerous honour. Lord North was then api)licd 
 to, but he refused to treat alone ; and after other 
 attempts to induce Pitt to assume the reins, the king 
 was at last compelled to admit Fox into the nego- 
 tiation. 
 
 Many difficulties and delays, however, occurred 
 before the arrangements could be completed ; and
 
 A.D. 1783. 
 
 ^'■20 THK IIlSTOllY 01' TAIITY. 
 
 CH A P. the country remained for six weeks without a ministry. 
 Those who were not in the secrets of the parties, 
 could not comprehend the delay, and distrusted the 
 intentions of the king. It was not until the house 
 of commons became impatient, and notices were 
 given of motions to address the crown for an 
 administration entitled to the confidence of the 
 people, that there appeared any immediate intention 
 of filling up the vacancies ; nor was it until the 
 motion was carried, and a strong resolution upon 
 the subject had been discussed, that the new mi- 
 nistry was settled. 
 
 On the 2d of April, the appointments were an- 
 nounced. The Duke of Portland was, by general 
 consent of the coalesced parties, constituted first 
 lord of the treasury ; North and Fox were secre- 
 taries of state ; Lord John Cavendish, chancellor 
 of the exchequer ; Viscount Keppel, first lord of 
 the admiralty ; Viscount Stormont, president of the 
 council ; the Earl of Carlisle, privy seal. These 
 seven formed the cabinet, in which it will be seen 
 that the Whigs had the majority.* 
 
 • Tlie inferior appointments sioners for the custody of the 
 
 were : great seal. 
 
 Lord Loughborough, Sir William The Earl of Surrey, Frederick 
 
 Henry Ashurst, and Sir Beau- Montagu, and Sir George 
 
 mont Ilotham, lords commis- Cooper, lords of the treasury ;
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 321 
 
 In a ministry thus composed, it is evident that 
 the great party disputes must either be suffered to 
 He dormant, or be discussed as open questions. Such 
 was the case with that of parliamentary reform. When 
 Mr. Pitt brought forward his annual motion upon 
 
 CHAP. 
 XIII. 
 
 A. D. 178a. 
 
 Hugh Pigot, Esq., Viscount Dun- 
 cannon, Hon. John Townshend, 
 Sir John Lindsay, Wilham 
 JolHife, and Whitshcd Keene, 
 lords of the admiralty ; 
 
 The Earl of Hertford, lord cham- 
 berlain ; 
 
 The Earl of Dartmouth, lord 
 steward of the liousehold ; 
 
 Right Hon. Cliarles Grevillc, trea- 
 surer of the housciiold ; 
 
 Viscount Townshend, master- ge- 
 neral of the ordnance ; 
 
 John Courtenay, surveyor-general 
 of the ordnance ; 
 
 Henry Strachey, storekeeper of 
 the ordnance ; 
 
 William Adam, treasurer of the 
 ordnance ; 
 
 Hon. Richard Fitzpatrick, secrc- 
 tary-at-war ; 
 
 Edmund Burke, paymaster tif tiu- 
 forces ; 
 
 Charles Townshend, ireasuni ol 
 lh»-_navy ; 
 
 The Earlof Cholmondeley, captain 
 of tlie yeomen of the guards ; 
 
 James Wallace, attorney-general ; 
 
 John Lee, solicitor-general ; 
 
 John Foley and Henry Frederick 
 Carteret, joint postniastei-s-ge- 
 neral ; 
 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and 
 Richard Burke, secretaries to 
 the treasury; 
 
 Hon. iMr. St. John and Hon. Co- 
 lonel North, under-secretaries 
 of state ; 
 
 The Earl of Sandwich, ranger and 
 keeper of St. James's-park and 
 Hyde-park ; 
 
 The Earl of Jereey, captain of the 
 hand of pensioners ; 
 
 Lord Hiiichinbrookc, master of 
 tlie buck-hounds; 
 
 The Earl of Manslicld, speaker of 
 the house of lords ; 
 
 The Earl of Northington,lord lieu- 
 tenant of Ireland ; 
 
 William Windham, secretary to 
 the li>rd lieutenant. 
 
 VOL. IN.
 
 A. I). 1783. 
 
 322 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, this subject he had Fox and his party speaking and 
 voting with him, North and his followers against 
 him. The resolutions moved this year were of a 
 very moderate character ; their objects were to 
 diminish the expense of elections, to disfranchise such 
 boroughs as should be proved notoriously corrupt, 
 and to make an add^ lion to the representation of 
 knights of the shire and burgesses for the metro- 
 polis. But they were negatived by a majority of 
 144,* very nearly two to one ; a division, which 
 contrasted with that which took place under the 
 Rockingham administration, sufficiently proves that 
 the Whigs of that cabinet were sincere. The 
 great superiority of the anti-reformers upon this 
 occasion seems to intimate that the question having 
 been made an open question, Burke, and his party 
 of anti-reforminsr Whiijs, considered themselves at 
 liberty to vote against their friends and colleagues. 
 
 The great undertaking of this coalition govern- 
 ment was the India bill, which monopolized its 
 energies, and at length became its destruction. 
 The aifairs of the East- India Company had, for 
 some time, employed the attention of the house of 
 commons. Two committees had been diligently 
 investigating the state of the country that had been 
 intrusted to the company's governance, and had 
 
 * Pari. Hist., vol. xxiii.,col. 873.
 
 A. D. 1783. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 3Q3 
 
 discovered abuses which required the prompt inter- chap. 
 ference of parliament. The pohcy of Mr. Hastings 
 was declared to be equally tyrannical to the Hindoos, 
 disgraceful to his country, and unprofitable to the 
 company ; yet the court of proprietors refused to 
 obey the vote of the house of commons which re- 
 quired his recal. Mr. Dundas was the chief agent 
 in this laborious investigation. In a series of one 
 hundred and eleven resolutions he set forth the 
 abuses of Indian government, provided remedies, 
 and punished the perpetrators of injustice. But the 
 effects of the mal-administration of the company were 
 felt as severely in the city as in the carnatic. All 
 India was united against them, the expenses of war 
 drained their coffers, and embarrassed their accounts. 
 In 1783, their debts were 11,200,000/. Their stock 
 3,500,000/. ; while two millions' worth of bills were 
 on their way to England, for which the company 
 were unable to provide. The company paid in taxes 
 to the nation an annual thirteen hundred thousand 
 pounds ; a consideration which coinciding with the 
 shock that its failure would give to our credit, for- 
 bade the government to allow it to proceed to bank- 
 ruptcy. Some interference, therefore, was abso- 
 lutely necessary. Fox thought he saw in the con- 
 juncture an opportunity of securing his party against 
 the power of the king, and In; seized it with a decision 
 worfhv of such a pnrtv le.ich'r. l?v tlie bill wliicli 1)(^ 
 
 V 'J
 
 sn 
 
 THE insToiiY or r.\UTY. 
 
 A. D. 17.s;3. 
 
 CHAT, introducod, he rolicvod the companv at the same 
 Xili. . , . '^ •' 
 
 time from their pecuniary embarrassments and their 
 
 political duties. He vested the supreme government 
 of India, and the distribution of all the patronage 
 connected with it, in seven commissioners, who, 
 being named by him, were, of course, his political 
 friends, and he placed their tenure of office upon the 
 same footing as that of the judges of England. 
 Other parts of the plan guarded against the injustice 
 of the governors, and provided for the protection of 
 the governed, but the institution of the commission 
 was the chief feature in the bill which demands our 
 notice. It was a master-stroke of policy ; having as 
 its intention to throw the whole patronage of our 
 vast possessions upon the continent of India, for at 
 least one entire generation, into the hands of the 
 Whigs. It was upon this occasion that Pitt, for the 
 first time, stepped forward as the chosen antagonist 
 of Fox. He made use of the weapon which Fox had 
 put into his hands, and declaimed against the 
 iniquity of the coalition ; although he, as well as 
 others of the Shelburne party who harped upon 
 this theme, took too much pains to show the incon- 
 sistency of Fox in coalescing with the man he had 
 condemned, and too little trouble to point out a 
 single point in which he had abandoned the prin- 
 ciples he had professed. Pitt attacked the bill upon 
 the ground that it was an entire abridgment of ancient
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 3'2j 
 
 A. D. 1783, 
 
 charters and privileges upon no other excuse than CHAP, 
 necessity : necessity the plea of every illegal exertion 
 of power or exercise of oppression ; the pretence of 
 every usurpation, the plea for every infringement of 
 human freedom, the argument of tyrants, the creed 
 of slaves. He opposed it also, because it increased 
 the influence of the crown to the destruction of the 
 liberties of Englishmen. That influence, he said, 
 had never, in its zenith, been equal to what it w^ould 
 be, when it should find itself strengthened by the 
 whole patronage of the cast, and in the possession 
 of such an extensive source of influence and cor- 
 ru})tion. The proposed system was, in his opinion, 
 nothing more than absolute despotism on the one 
 side, and gross corruption on the other — one of the 
 most bold and forward exertions of power that was 
 ever adopted by a minister.* 
 
 These arofuments, together with a discussion of 
 arithmetical details, which tended to prove that the 
 affairs of the company were not in so des})erate a 
 state as Fox had represented them, formed the 
 topics upon which the opposition descanted during 
 the long and powerful debates which marked the 
 course of this bill. Fox, on the other hand, defended 
 his bill u|)on the princij)les of the revolution. It was 
 
 ♦ i';iil. Ilisl., vol. xxiii., col. 121 1.
 
 A.D. 1783. 
 
 .3'^() THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, by neither side of the house denied that gross abuses 
 Xlll. 
 
 existed in the Indian government, and that the most 
 
 inflimous tyranny had marked the policy and practice 
 of the company. No man will tell me, said Fox that 
 a trust to a company of merchants stands upon the 
 solemn and sanctified ground by which a trust is 
 committed to a monarch ; yet every syllable urged 
 in behalf of this charter impeaches the establishment 
 by which we sit in this house, in the enjoyment of 
 this freedom, and of every other blessing of our 
 government. Sovereigns are sacred, and reverence 
 is due to every king ; yet with all my attachments 
 to the person of a first magistrate, had I lived 
 in the reign of James II., I should most certainly 
 have contributed my efforts, and borne part in 
 those illustrious struggles which vindicated an 
 empire fi'om hereditary servitude, and recorded 
 this valuable doctrine, that ' trust abused is revo- 
 cable.' " 
 
 Notwithstanding the opposition of Pitt and Dun- 
 das, the bill passed triumphantly through the com- 
 mons, by majorities of more than two to one, and 
 was, on the 9th of December, carried up to the 
 lords by Mr. Fox. 
 
 The first debate in the lords showed that the 
 opposition had been successful with the king. Lord 
 Thurlow, who retained the confidence of his master.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 3^7 
 
 although no longer in office, declared against the chap. 
 bill. " I wish," he said, " to see the crown great ^ ^ ^^ - 
 
 A. U. Ivoo. 
 
 and respectable ; but if the present bill should pass, 
 it will be no longer worthy of a man of honour to 
 wear. The king will, in fact, take the diadem from 
 his own head, and place it on the head of Mr. Fox."* 
 The effect of this manifestation of the royal will was 
 soon apparent. Upon the first division, the mini- 
 sters were beaten by a majority of eight : and upon 
 the second reading, the bill was rejected by a ma- 
 jority of 19. 
 
 The open use which had been made of the king's 
 namet upon this occasion attracted the attention of 
 the commons ; and produced a motion for a reso- 
 lution, declaring it to be a high crime and misde- 
 meanor to report any opinion of his majesty, upon a 
 bill before either house, with a view to influence the 
 votes of the members. This resolution was sup- 
 ported by ministers, and carried by a majority of 
 153 to 80. It was followed by a resolution depre- 
 cating a dissolution of parliament. 
 
 • I'arl. Hist., vol. xxiv., col. consider tlicni as his enemies,- 
 
 123. and if these words were not strong 
 
 t Tiie king commissioned Earl enough, Earl Temple might use 
 
 Temple to say, that whoever voted whatever words he might deem 
 
 for the India bill, were not only stronger or more to the purpose, 
 not his friends, but tliat he should
 
 3^28 THE IIISTOUY OF PAUTY. 
 
 CHAP. On the IDth of December, the king sent to de- 
 * — niand the seals from his secretaries ; dechninff an 
 
 A D 1783 
 
 interview. Thus ended the short existence of the 
 coahtion ministry, which had entered office a few 
 months previously with every prospect of its mem- 
 bers holding their places for life. The causes of its 
 fall were the hostility of the king, who having 
 avowedly received them upon compulsion sought 
 the first o])portunity to eject them, and their unpo- 
 pularity with a people who never countenance poli- 
 tical tergiversation. Against the sulky antipathy of 
 the king, the favour of the nation and the splendour 
 of his abilities might have maintained Fox as they 
 had maintained the first William Pitt ; but under the 
 odium of the coalition he fell. The great parlia- 
 mentary strength of the minister, the unequalled blaze 
 of talent by which he was surrounded, serve only to 
 render his fall the more instructive, and to deter 
 any statesman who may have his provocation, or his 
 ambition, from following his example. 
 
 Had the India bill proceeded from Fox in the 
 height of his popularity, unstained by any contact 
 with Toryism, it would probably have been a })opular 
 measure ; but it came from one who was denounced 
 throughout the kingdom as an apostate, one from 
 whom all those populous constituencies which had 
 formerlv idolized him had now withdrawn their con-
 
 A.D. 1783. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 329 
 
 fidence, whom London had repudiated, and even chap. 
 
 . . XIII. 
 
 Westminster had renounced. All the objectionable 
 points of this bill were now seen through a micro- 
 scopic medium ; it took its character from its author, 
 and reflecting back the colours it had received, 
 deepened the shades of his unpopularity.
 
 330 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Formation of the Pitt administration — Strength of the opposition — 
 The minister left in a minority — Mediation of the country gen- 
 tlemen — Unsuccessful — Perseverance of Pitt — Diminution of the 
 opposition majority — Dissolution of parliament — General election 
 — Adverse to the coalition — The Westminster election — West- 
 minster scrutiny — Pitt's motion for parliamentary reform — Debate 
 upon Mr, Beaufoy's motion for the repeal of the Corporation and 
 Test acts — Illness of the king — Contest upon the subject of the 
 regency — Conduct of Thurlow — Recovery of the king. 
 
 CHAP. Now, when the offer of the premiership was re- 
 
 ^^^' peated, Pitt no longer refused it. Lord Temple 
 
 to 1789. received the seals ; but alarmed by the storm, raised 
 by his imprudent declaration of the will of the king, 
 he resigned them three days after. The new pre- 
 mier was startled bv this stumble at the threshold, 
 and, when his own relations forsook him, appeared 
 to doubt the sincerity of others who were so eagerly 
 cheering him on. The night after this resignation was 
 passed in an anxiety which banished sleep ; but the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY, 331 
 
 morning found him resolved to persevere, " though CHAP, 
 very doubtful of the result."^ 
 
 A. D. 1783 
 
 He proceeded to fill up the offices in the best to 1789. 
 manner he could ; many who wished him success 
 declininff to share the hazard of the adventure. 
 Thurlow, the king's friend, of course, returned to his 
 old station as lord chancellor. Lord Gower, after- 
 wards Marquis of Stafford, without any previous ac- 
 quaintance with Pitt, sent to him to say, that al- 
 though he had wished to spend the remainder of his 
 days in retirement, yet in the present situation of 
 the king, and distressed state of the country, he 
 would cheerfully take any office in which it might be 
 thought he could be useful. He was made lord 
 president of the council, and his extensive Tory con- 
 nexions were of no small advantage to the youthful 
 minister. The Duke of Rutland was lord privy 
 seal. Thomas Townshend who, early in this year 
 had been created Lord Sydney, and Lord Car- 
 marthen, were secretaries of state. Lord Howe 
 was first lord of the admiralty.! 
 
 • Tomline's Life of Pitt, vol. afterwards Lord Grcnville, and 
 
 i., p. 174. Lord Mulgravc, joint paymasters 
 
 f The chief of those appoint- of tlie forces ; Dundas, treasurer 
 
 ments which did not confer a seat of the navy ; Sir George Yongc, 
 
 in the cabinet, were, the Duke of secretaiy at war ; George Rose 
 
 Richmond, master-general of tlic and Thomas Steele, secretaries of 
 
 ordnance; Kcnyoii, attorney-ge- the treasury. The Duke of 
 
 neral ; Arden, solicitor-general ; Rutland wits lord lieutenant of 
 
 William Wyudiiani (irenvillc, Ireland.
 
 '33'Z Tin: iiiSTOUY or paiity. 
 
 CHAP. Such was theccabinet at the head of which Pitt 
 
 \1 V 
 
 undertook to sustain a conflict with a party superior 
 
 to 178!). to his own in numbers, and headed by Fox, Burke, 
 Sheridan, and North. Upon scrutinizing this mi- 
 nistry, it will be seen that it was the result of a 
 coalition of parties as open and shameless as that 
 which Pitt professed himself resolved to punish. 
 When Fox and North coalesced, there was a frag- 
 ment of each party which refused to follow. These, 
 after raising a terrible clamour against the turpitude 
 of their late leaders, finding that they were of little 
 consequence individually, themselves coalesced, and 
 as they continued to sustain the cry against the unna- 
 tural coalition between Fox and North, the nation 
 forffot to scrutinize the materials of which this new 
 noisy party was composed. The complaint against 
 Fox was that he had taken to his bosom a man whom 
 he had denounced as the author of the miseries of 
 his country. The charge was just, but not so the 
 accusers. Pitt the parliamentary reformer, the hater of 
 the American war, the violent Whig, as he made the 
 the accusation, ranged himself with Lord Gower the 
 coadjutor of the Duke of Grafton, the promoter of 
 the American war, the personal antagonist of the 
 Earl of Chatham,* the violent Tory. Lord Sydney, 
 
 * The reader of the parha- tioiis of Cliathain and Gower 
 
 mentary debates during the Anie- assunicd a very personal cha- 
 
 ritan war, will recollect many racier, 
 instances in which tlie altcrca-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 333 
 
 who had been accustomed to rank himself araonor CHAP. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Whiffs, sat beside the tory Lord Thurlow. The ^ — - 
 
 ■ . ^■^- i"^3 
 
 Duke of Richmond, violent in his Whisraism as he to 1789. 
 
 had always been, would readily have found among 
 his colleagues a Tory pair. Dundas, the new trea- 
 surer of the navy, whose zeal for the American war 
 had even outstripped that of Lord North,* might 
 have neutralized the Whiggism of the duke. The 
 Marquis of Carmarthen, whose unfrequent efforts at 
 oratory had been hitherto made on the Tory side, was 
 about to receive his AVhig equivalent in Lord Cam- 
 den, who stood at the door of the cabinet, and only 
 awaited a vacancy. The joint paymasters were 
 already well balanced in their party principles. 
 Wyndham Grenville, the able supporter of the Rock- 
 ingham administration, was prudently paired with 
 that vehement Tory, Lord Mulgrave.t Sir George 
 Yonge, the new secretary at war, the old compa- 
 nion of Fox and Byng, is without a pair. He may 
 be left at leisure to contemplate the chequered cha- 
 racter of his companions. 
 
 The Pitt ministry, therefore, like that of the Duke 
 of Portland, was the result of a coalition. Rut there 
 was this difference between them : In the coalition 
 
 • See his speech upon Lord motion for the sentence of (lie 
 
 North's concihatory propositions, court-martial on Sir Hugli Vul- 
 
 Parl. Ilitt., vol. xviii., col. .3.'12. liscr. — Parl.Hisl., vol. xx.,col. (i27. 
 
 \ Sec his speech on Mr. Fox's
 
 331 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, between Fox and North, Fox and the Whigs had tlie 
 \ I V 
 — ^ — '- — nredonii nance ; the principles of action would have 
 
 A. D. 178:3 r . • 
 
 to 1789. been Whiiigish, the sentiments of the chiefs would 
 have descended to the followers, the hostility of the 
 court and the opposition of a strong body of Tories 
 would gradually have effaced all Tory predilections, 
 and the followers of Lord North would have been 
 insensibly draughted into the Whig phalanx. 
 
 The coalition of Pitt and Gower, on the contrary, 
 gave the preponderance to the Tories. Weak in 
 parliament, such a party could only rely for support 
 upon a Tory king, and could only retain that sup- 
 port by adopting Tory principles of government. 
 Under such an influence it was to be expected 
 that the colours of Whiggism would speedily fade, 
 and the hue of Toryism become deep and uniform. 
 
 Upon the assembling of the house of commons, on 
 the 19th of December, Fox and North, Burke, 
 General Conway, Lord John Cavendish, Sheridan. 
 the late attorney and solicitor generals. Colonel 
 Fitzpatrick, and others of the coalition leaders were 
 seen sitting upon the opposition benches,* and sup- 
 ported by a plentiful attendance of adherents. The 
 treasury benches were nearly empty ; the ministers 
 
 * Fox, upon entering the house, siness have you on this ? Go 
 
 finding Dundas upon the oppo- over to tlie treasury bench." This 
 
 sition bench, jocularly took him raised a laugh, in which the coali- 
 
 by the arm, saying, " What bu- tion party very heartily joined.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 335 
 
 were gone to their re-elections. Among the few chap. 
 subordinates present, all was sfloom and distrust. '- — 
 
 . . . . A.D. 1783 
 
 Among the opposition, nothing appeared but gaiety to 1789. 
 and good humour. Fox's superiority was so evident, 
 that the Pitt party did not attempt a division. The 
 first attempt of the majority was to provide against 
 the possibility of an immediate dissolution of par- 
 liament, and, not trusting for this purpose to the 
 efficacy of addresses, they were careful to delay the 
 business of supply. 
 
 On the 12th of January, Pitt re-entered the house, A.D. 1784. 
 and at once found himself standing at bay against 
 the whole band of opposition. A majority of 39 
 against him convinced him at once of the temper of 
 the assembly. Fox was still the manager of the house 
 of commons. It was he, at the head of the opposition, 
 who fixed the day upon which the ordinary measures 
 of government should be brought on ; and who post- 
 poned, or suffered them to pass as they suited his 
 convenience. The minister could only offer his sug- 
 gestions upon the subject.* Resolutions were 
 passed, declaring a necessity for an administration 
 having the confidence of that house, and the 
 majority against the minister was now increased 
 to 5 1<. 
 
 The opposition appear to have been in perfect 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol. xxiv., col. 603.
 
 336 
 
 THE HISTORY OT PARTY. 
 
 ^IJ'^r* fi"oo(l-liuinour ; satisfied vvitli their strensi'th, and 
 XIV. o ' ft ' 
 
 . P j„^j rather amused by the embarrassment of the minister 
 to 1789. ii^r^Yi enraged at their own dismissal. Their return 
 to office was considered as certain, and there were 
 few persons who did not think with Fox, that the 
 usurpation of Pitt was a political absurdity totally 
 unparalleled in the annals of immature ambition. 
 
 An ordinary minister, beaten in one night, by 
 two such majorities, upon questions aimed against 
 the existence of his government, would either 
 have resigned or dissolved the parliament. But 
 Pitt was not in an ordinary position. George III. 
 looked upon the contest as one in which he 
 himself was one of the principals and his mi- 
 nister but a second. Every defeat in the com- 
 mons brought a more decided assurance of support 
 from the king. He declared himself ready to 
 stake his crown and his life upon the issue, and 
 Pitt knew that treachery to his servants was not 
 in the character of his master.* He neither resigned 
 his office, nor dissolved the parliament. The sense 
 of the nation was not yet sufficiently in his favour for 
 the latter expedient ; the former, his ambition, his 
 confidence in his own powers, and gratitude to the 
 master who had exalted him above his fellows, alike 
 forbade. In the course of a triumphant opposition, 
 
 • See this correspondence between Pitt and the king, in Tomline's 
 Life of Pitt.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 337 
 
 there must occur some errors — these mi^ht be exposed CHAP, 
 
 . XIV. 
 with success ; the violence put upon the will of the 
 
 ... A.D. 1784 
 
 king would become daily more plain — his powerless to 1789. 
 state would have a powerful effect upon the minds of 
 a loyal people. If Pitt fought the battle well, the 
 spectacle of a young and able leader, singly holding 
 out against such odds, would arouse the generous 
 feelings of the nation in behalf of the weaker party, 
 and draw the nation to his side. 
 
 These considerations influenced him to persevere. 
 He now introduced his India bill, which, in addition 
 to the other points of difference from that of Fox, 
 had this marked characteristic, that it left the 
 patronage in the hands of the company. On the 
 second reading, this measure was vehemently at- 
 tacked by the opposition, as a temporizing temporary 
 measure possessed of neither vigour or permanency ; 
 and, on the motion for its committal, it was thrown 
 out by a majority of 222 to 214. 
 
 Still, through all his defeats, the minister held on. 
 The country gentlemen, as those members who 
 h(;ld themselves disengaged from cither party arc 
 usually designatcMl, now undertook to interfere. A 
 meeting of about 7^ of these took place at the St. 
 Alban's Tavern, and an address signed by .03 
 commoners was presented to the Duke of Port- 
 land and Mr. Pitt, urging a lilxM-al and unreserved 
 intercourse between these two statesmen, as a preli- 
 
 VOl.. Ml. z
 
 338 
 
 THE IITSTOHY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, minarv to the formation of a ministrv which should 
 XIV. • -^ 
 
 ^ P j^g^ inchidc all those great and respectable characters 
 to 1789. ^vho were entitled to the support of independent and 
 disinterested men. 
 
 Both parties professed themselves anxious to show 
 deference to so respectable a meeting. The Duke 
 of Portland, however, added, that the chief difficulty 
 which he saw, and the greatest which he thought 
 must be experienced by Mr. Pitt was, Mr. Pitt 
 continuing to hold office.* Mr. Grosvenor, in the 
 house of commons, moved a resolution in accordance 
 with the address of the St. Alban's Tavern, and it 
 was carried unanimously.! The king now reluc- 
 tantly consented to allow Pitt to treat with the Duke 
 of Portland for the purpose of forming an administra- 
 tion upon a wide basis and on fair and equal terms. 
 The duke, before he would meet Mr. Pitt, required 
 an explanation of the sense in which the term equal 
 was used. Pitt refused any preliminary explanation, 
 and the treaty was at an end. Each party threw 
 the odium of the failure upon their opponents ; but, 
 from the terms of the letter in which the king con- 
 veyed his permission to treat, it is plain that no 
 equality could have existed, t His hatred of the 
 
 * Annual Register. Tomline's cation I feel at any possibility of our 
 
 Life of Pitt. again seeing the heads of opposi- 
 
 f Pari. Hist., vol. xxiv., col. 472. tion in public employments, and 
 
 J In this letter he says, " Mr. more particularly Mr. Fox * * * * 
 
 Pitt is well apprized of the mortifi- I confess I have not seen the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 839 
 
 AVTiig leaders was so great, that it could not be tHAr*. 
 restrained — it appears in every act. '- — 
 
 TVT 1 -1 1 T • A. D. 1784 
 
 Meanwhile the coalition proceeded with their to 1789. 
 attacks. They carried a resolution that the con- 
 tinuance of the present ministry in office was the 
 obstacle to the formation of such an administration as 
 might enjoy the confidence of the commons; and they 
 sent those members of the house who were also 
 members of the privy council, to lay their resolution 
 before the king. The king returned no answer to 
 this communication, and the house postponed the 
 supplies. This last expedient is a very dangerous 
 attempt in this commercial country ; and, unless the 
 people are at the moment very highly excited against 
 the minister, must infallibly prove the ruin of the 
 opposition which proposes it. Fox, with all his bold- 
 ness and decision of character, felt this, and carefully 
 repudiated any design of stopping the supplies. 
 To stop the supplies, he knew as w'ell as any man, 
 w^as an expedient which could be only justified by 
 the last extremity ; he, for one, was not yet ripe for 
 such a strong measure, and he solemnly and earnestly 
 
 smallest appearance of sincerity a message to be carried, in my 
 
 in till- leaders of opposition to name, to the Dnke of Portland." 
 
 come into the only mode by which With other expressions c(|ually 
 
 I conld tolerate them in my service dechirative of his dislike." — Tom- 
 
 « • * *. I will, though reluctantly, lini'x Life of Pitt, vol. i., p. '2f)4. 
 go personally so far as to authorize
 
 340 THE IIISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, protested against the imputation of any such design.* 
 
 — '— ^ — The sui)i)lios were nevertheless ])ostponed, while the 
 A.D. 1784 ' ' . ... ^ ^ 
 
 to 1789. coalition carried, by majorities of 20 and (;il, a resolution 
 
 expressing the confidence of the house that the 
 king would give effect to the wishes of his faithful 
 commons ; and an address founded upon this resolu- 
 tion. The king, in his answer, declined to dismiss 
 his ministers, and demanded the charge against 
 them. Another address was proposed and carried by 
 a diminished majority of 12. Symptoms of waver- 
 ing had now appeared in the coahtion camp. The 
 result which Pitt had anticipated had occurred. The 
 people had taken the part of the king. Addresses 
 were pouring in from all parts of the kingdom. t At 
 a public meeting in Westminster Hall, Fox was 
 saluted with cries of " No great mogul !" — " No 
 India tyrant !" — " No usurper !" — '* No turncoat !" — 
 "No dictator!"— "No Catiline !"1: When Sir 
 Horace Mann accompanied his house to St. James's 
 to present their address, he met the lord mayor, 
 with several others of his constituents, who had 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol. xxiv., col. 603. the Grocers' Company, walked in 
 
 •)• Pitt's biographer found among procession to their hall, and re- 
 
 his papers thirty-six addresses of ceived all the usual testimonials of 
 
 congratulation upon his appoint- civic popularity. 
 
 ment as minister. He received I Lord Mahon's speecli on Mr. 
 
 the freedom of the city, was com- Powys's motion for a united and 
 
 pliraented by Wilkes, dined with efficient administration.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 341 
 
 come up to present an address. On seeing them chap. 
 he was surprised, not having been consulted on the ^ ^^ 
 business ; but said to them, "I am among my to i789. 
 friends." To which they answered, " We were 
 your friends once, but you have joined with those 
 who have set up a lord protector." Sir Horace re- 
 lated this anecdote in the house of commons. 
 
 These popular demonstrations were not without 
 their effect ; the answer to the present address was 
 no less firm than that returned to the former. Fox 
 then postponed the ]\Iilitia bill ; and his majority fell 
 to nine. He moved a representation in reply to the 
 king's answer, and his majority dwindled to one.* 
 
 The crisis had now arrived — the victory was won. 
 This division took place on the 8th of March. The 
 necessary business of the session was rapidly 
 despatched ; and on the 25th the parliament was 
 dissolved. 
 
 Never, since the accession of the house of Hano- 
 ver, had a general election excited such enthusiasm, 
 as that which now prevailed. An unpopular minister 
 would probably have procured a majority ; but a 
 ])()pular minister was irresistible. No one enter- 
 tained distrust of Pitt — of Pitt, the parliamentary 
 reformer — the son of the Earl of C'liathani. They 
 looked upon him as the stone which should break in 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol. xxiv., tol. 7n-J.
 
 :il2 TIIH HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 (HAP. pieces the image of aristocratic rule; as the young 
 apostle of reform, who had snatched the standard of 
 
 A.D. 1784 
 
 to 1789. A\'hig j)rinciples from the hands of an exclusive party, 
 and threw it among the nation for protection and 
 support. No one entertained distrust of Pitt ; con- 
 stituencies flocked around him with petitions ; first, 
 that he would be himself their representative, and when 
 this was impossible, that they might be represented 
 by a candidate of his choice. That he would sup- 
 port the minister was now the unusual pledge every 
 where extorted from the popular candidate. Every 
 successive election tolled the knell of the late opposi- 
 tion. Pitt was, himself, seated for Cambridge, 
 against John Townshend. Lord John Cavendish 
 lost his election at York. Mr. Coke, who may be 
 almost termed the hereditary representative of Nor- 
 folk, shared the same fate. George Byng was beaten 
 in Middlesex ; General Conway, Earl Verney, Mr. 
 Thomas Grenville, all disappeared from the house. 
 
 The rejection of men like these — men of ancient 
 family, extensive possessions, and spotless character 
 — is the strongest instance that can be given of the 
 violence of the popular feeling ; but Pitt thought his 
 success yet incomplete, and sullied his triumph in an 
 attempt to crown it. While the leader of the oppo- 
 sition sat for a constituency so conspicuous as that of 
 Westminster, his party might point to his position as 
 a ready answer to any taunt of their unpopularity.
 
 THE HISTORY OF TARTY. 848 
 
 No effort, therefore, was to be spared to drive Fox chap. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 from that city. The old members had been Fox 
 
 ^ -' ^ A. D. 1784 
 
 and Sir Cecil Wray. Lord Hood was put forward by to 1789. 
 Pitt, and immediately stood at the top of the poll. 
 The contest was between Wray and Fox. Upon this 
 
 struggle the eyes of the whole nation were fixed 
 
 while this remained in suspense the interest of all 
 minor elections was absorbed. Fox and Wray were 
 the watchwords of the two parties, the words which, 
 for successive weeks, rendered Covent-garden a scene 
 of outrage and even bloodshed. 
 
 The election commenced on the first of April, and 
 Fox saw himself at the bottom of the poll ; during 
 twenty days of polling, the most intense exertion on 
 behalf of his party, aided by the influence of the 
 Prince of Wales, could not alter his position ; he was 
 still a few votes behind. In this critical state of the 
 contest the victory was decided by a woman. The 
 beautiful and enthusiastic Duchess of Devonshire 
 stei)pcd forth from the brilliant circle that had formed 
 her sphere, and mingled with the electors as a can- 
 vasser for Fox. Political enthusiasm in so fair a 
 form could not fail to gather converts. The duchess 
 appeared frequently at the hustings, with her carriage 
 full of electors; and Fox overtook and, at length, 
 passed his competitor. It was in vain the ministerial 
 party redoubled their efforts; in vain they brou«rht 
 forward Lady Salisbury to combat the Whig heroine.
 
 341< 
 
 riii; iiisTouv or i'auty. 
 
 CHAP. The duchess was found irresistible, and Fox's maio- 
 XIV. . . . 
 
 —— IT rity increased. At the close of the poll, on the Kith 
 
 to 1789. of May, he stood '235 votes above Sir Cecil Wray. 
 
 Lord Hood and Fox, therefore, were the members 
 elected ; but Corbett, the high bailiff, being in the 
 interests of the administration, thought proper to 
 grant a scrutiny of the votes, and thus delay the 
 return to an indefinite extent. 
 
 The Prince of Wales had now broken all bonds of 
 delicacy, in the manifestation of his adherence to the 
 opposition. He met the procession which celebrated 
 Fox's victory ; gave fetes upon the occasion, in the 
 gardens of Carlton-house ; and was conspicuous at 
 every banquet which celebrated the victory.* 
 
 Parliament met on the 1 8th of May. Fox, who 
 took his seat for Kirkwall, must have looked around 
 him with very different feelings to those which he 
 had enjoyed when he last sat in that house ; while 
 Pitt found himself no longer the powerless expostu- 
 lator against the acts of a hostile majority, but the 
 leader of an overwhelming party. Ten creations 
 
 • Blue and buff was still the well as the men, appeared dressed 
 
 livery of the opposition. " True in the party colours. The hostess 
 
 blue and Mrs. Crewe," was the expressed her hospitality and her 
 
 toast given by the prince, after party zeal with equal brevity; 
 
 supper, at an entertainment at that drinking in return, " True blue 
 
 lady's liouse, at which the ladies, as and all of you,"
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 345 
 
 amono^ the peers had riveted his influence in that chap. 
 
 * ^ XIV. 
 
 assembly. 
 
 A. D. 1784 
 
 The first division in this house of commons was to 1789. 
 upon a clause in the address, returning thanks to the 
 king for dissolving the last parliament. It was 
 carried by a majority of l68 ; a sufiicient indication 
 of the prostration of the coalition leaders. 
 
 Throughout the first two sessions of this parlia- 
 ment, the Westminster scrutiny supplied the principle 
 topics of opposition eloquence. The manifest danger 
 of intrusting a returning officer with the power of 
 evading the right of representation, should have in- 
 fluenced the house to put an end at once to a prece- 
 dent so obnoxious to abuse ; but the hope of a party 
 triumph outweighed all considerations of public safety. 
 Large majorities supported the minister in his ap- 
 proval of the scrutiny ; and it appeared evident that 
 Westminster must remain for three years unrepre- 
 sented. The common sense of the country, however, 
 revolted from such a proposition. Fox, with indefa- 
 tigable perseverance, kept the subject continually 
 before the house. The ministerial majorities gradu- 
 ally decreased. They had never been so great upon 
 this as upon other questions. From 30 they now fell 
 to ; and, at last, Pitt had a majority of 38 against 
 him. IJut although the house thus resolved to put 
 an end to the scrutiny, with whimsical inconsistency, 
 they rrfu.s<>d to dcn-lnro it illegal. A very large ma-
 
 rA6 TIIK HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, ioritv voted \vith ministers upon this occasion, to 
 XIV J J 
 
 prevent the vote they had ah-eady passed* being con- 
 
 A. D. 178j . • • • 1 
 
 to 1789. sidered a decisive opposition triumph. 
 
 I pass hghtly over the early contests between Pitt 
 and the coahtion parties, because they are no longer 
 contests between Whigs and Tories. The national 
 inditi-nation apparent during the general election was 
 not against Whig principles, but against the exclu- 
 sive and aristocratic spirit that had attached itself to 
 Whiggism — not against the essence but against the 
 accident. Thus, W^ilkes and all his supporters, who, 
 continuing to hold their extreme opinions, denounced 
 the coalition, retained the popular favour and their 
 seats. Pitt, himself, had not renounced his Whig 
 principles when he became the king's favourite mini- 
 ster ; and although he found himself in an atmosphere 
 in which they could not but languish, he still remem- 
 bered that he was pledged to a parliamentary reform. 
 Upon this subject Pitt acted with the energy worthy 
 of a high and honourable man. Knowing the repug- 
 nance of the king to any measure which might " open 
 the door to parliamentary reform," he intimated, in 
 terms which, though guarded, were sufficiently intel- 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vols. xxiv. and that George III. bitterly resented 
 
 XXV. It appears from some of the the defection of many of the usual 
 
 notes from the king to Mr. Pitt, supporters of government upon 
 
 publiblied iuTouihuc'sLife of Pitt, this occasion.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 347 
 
 ligible, that any attempt on the part of his majesty to CHAP, 
 defeat his motion would be followed by his resiofna- — '- — 
 
 ^, . . JO A. D. 1783 
 
 tion. The king, regretting that he was committed to 1789. 
 to the measure, acquiesced, and promised to confine 
 his sentiments upon the subject to his own breast. 
 
 Pitt's project of reform was to form a fund to buy 
 up the franchises of thirty-six decayed boroughs, add- 
 ing their representatives to the counties ; and to form 
 a standard of the number of houses which should be 
 held to form a healthy borough. When the number of 
 houses should fall below that standard, parliament would 
 buy the franchise upon the application of the borough. 
 The scheme also comprised a provision for the buying 
 up the exclusive privileges of corporations, and extend- 
 ing the suffrage to substantial householders ; and for 
 giving representatives to four large unrepresented 
 towns. Its author computed that it would give 100 
 representatives to the public ; and enfranchise 99,000 
 householders.* 
 
 This debate called forth the natural party divisions. 
 Lord North ridiculed the measure, the means which 
 had been used to get up some excitement in its favour, 
 
 • Mr. Wyvil, chairman to the lie attention to this subject, gave, 
 Yorkshire committee, with whom at one of these meetings, a " sum- 
 Mr. ritt conferred on the forma- mary explanation of tlie priii- 
 tion of his plan, and who, hy cir- ciplcs" of the measure from which 
 ciilar letters and public meetings, the abstract in the text is taken, 
 took every means of arousing pidj-
 
 Jl-S THE HISTOKY OF I'AIITY. 
 
 CHAP, and their total failure. Ho said, Mr. Pitt, listening 
 \ r V 
 
 for pop\ilar plaudits for his reform, and terrified by 
 
 A. D. 1783 ,. - , . ^ r. • 
 
 to 1 789. the i)opular discontents at the present state ot misre- 
 presentation, might well say with the man in the 
 rehearsal, 
 
 " What horrid sound of silence doth assail mine ear!" 
 
 In London, out of 8000 electors 300 persons had 
 attended ; and throughout the country the apathy 
 was the same. He opposed the introduction of the 
 bill because it was uncalled for, and because it formed 
 a precedent for innovation and experiment. Mr. 
 Powis, Lord Mulgrave, Mr. Yonge, Mr. Burke, Lord 
 F. Campbell, Mr. Rolle, and Mr. Bankes, were the 
 speakers against the motion. Bankes, the college 
 friend and constant companion of Pitt, although 
 avo\^^ng himself a reformer, denounced the ministerial 
 scheme as absurd. He seized upon the real objection 
 to the plan, and exposed, in animated terms, the in- 
 consistency of buying a property which the spirit and 
 letter of our laws had alike forbidden to be made the 
 subject of traffic ; of voting money to purchase what 
 the constitution had declared should never be sold. 
 Pitt could only reply that this was a tender point, and 
 a necessary evil. 
 
 Mr. Wilberforce, who, as the great enemy of 
 slaver^' and author of its abolition, will be regarded 
 by distant posterity as a greater man than either Pitt
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^ 
 
 or Fox, supported the motion. Fox declared that he ^"iv^' 
 would not be seduced by objections to details to vote a. D. 1783 
 against the principle. The attorney-general eulo- 
 gized the scheme ; and Mr. Dundas threw the house 
 into convulsions of laughter, by suddenly declaring 
 himself a sincere friend to this question. Thus we 
 have, upon the only question which involved a party 
 principle, a total relaxation of the usual divisions of 
 ministerial and opposition parties, and a return to the 
 old Whig and Tory contests. The motion was nega- 
 tived by a majority of 74. 
 
 I find few instances, in the early portion of Pitt's 
 administration, of contests which involved the rival 
 principles of government. The debates upon his 
 India bill, and even those upon the Irish propositions, 
 were the contests of heterogeneous masses associated 
 in the pursuit of power, the different sections of which 
 accasionally accommodated each other with their 
 votes, as Dundas voted alternately for and against 
 parliamentary reform. Even the memorable impeach- 
 ment of Warren Hastings, tempting as is the occa- 
 sion to dwell on the unrivalled display of eloquence 
 which it drew forth, and to exhibit the group of Whig 
 orators, the greatest and best our country has pro- 
 duced, in their proudest moment— even this temple 
 in our })atli off(!rs no excuse for delay. The im- 
 peachment of Hastings was founded upon no party 
 princii)lc \ and, although the whole body of the
 
 350 THE HISTOUY OV PARTY. 
 
 rUAP. coalition supported the measure, and even Pitt voted 
 -r-TT for the impeachment, Burke and Francis were pro- 
 
 A. D. 17H5 ^ ^ 
 
 lo 17^9. bably the only men who were hearty and zealous in 
 the cause. 
 
 In 1787 the Protestant dissenters renewed their 
 claim to be relieved from the disabilities of the Cor- 
 poration and Test acts. They had supported Pitt 
 and denounced the coalition ; and they considered 
 themselves entitled to some consideration from the 
 minister whom they had supported, and the sovereign 
 whose prerogative they had defended. 
 
 The dissenters had, for some time, observed the 
 custom of annually appointing two deputies from each 
 of their congregations in the metropolis audits neigh- 
 bourhood, for the management of their affairs. They 
 thus formed a compact and influential body, whose 
 assistance at any political crisis was very sensibly 
 felt. At this general assembly it was resolved to 
 agitate the repeal of the laws which excluded them 
 from office under such dreadful penalties. They put 
 forth and extensively circulated a statement of their 
 case ; and when this had made some impression upon 
 the public mind, they instructed Mr. Beaufoy to bring 
 the question, by motion, before the house. 
 
 The speech of Mr. Beaufoy, upon this occasion, 
 contains a luminous exposition of the history of these 
 acts, and a fair statement of the arguments for their 
 abolition. *' The Corporation act," said the mover,
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^"^ ^ 
 
 ** declares that no person shall be elected into any ^^iv^* 
 corporation office who shall not, within one year be- 'X'dTtsI" 
 fore such election, have taken the sacrament accord- *° ^^^^* 
 ing to the usage of the church of England. The 
 Test act declares that every person who accepts a 
 civil office, or a commission in the army or navy, and 
 who does not, within the time prescribed by the act, 
 take the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to 
 the usasre of the church of Endand, shall be disabled 
 in law, to all intents and purposes whatever, from 
 occupying any such civil office, or from holding any 
 such military commission ; and if, without taking the 
 sacramental qualification within the time prescribed 
 by the acts, he does continue to occupy a civil office 
 or hold a mihtary commission, and is lawfully con- 
 victed, then, sir (and I beg leave to entreat the 
 attention of the house to this most extraordinary 
 punishment), then, he not only incurs a large pecuni- 
 ary penalty, but is disabled from thenceforth for ever 
 from bringing any action in course of law, from 
 prosecuting any suit in any court of equity, from 
 being guardian of any child, or executor or adminis- 
 trator of any person, as well as from receiving any 
 legacy. 
 
 After exemplifying with considerable effect the 
 dreadful fate which thiscnactmentpropared for any dis- 
 senter who should venture, in his zeal for his country, 
 to bear arms in her defence j the stigma it inflicted
 
 352 
 
 TIIK HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 C H A I', upon the merchant who having' added to the kiuirdom's 
 XIV. ^ . ^ . , ^ 
 
 wealth, swelled its customs, increased its manu- 
 
 A. D. 178j 
 
 to 178!). lectures, and aofrrandized its power, was still alien- 
 ated from the common rights of citizenship, and 
 bore the same stamp of dishonour, the same mark of 
 rejection and infamy, as attached to men who had 
 been publicly and judicially convicted of being per- 
 jured; the orator proceeds to show that these con- 
 sequences were by no means prevented by the annual 
 act of Indemnity. 
 
 " But I am asked, does not the act of Indemnity, 
 (an act which for the most part is annually passed), 
 protect from the penalties of the Test and Corporation 
 laws, all such persons as have offended against them ? 
 Sir, if the Indemnity act does protect from the 
 dreadful penalties of those statutes, all such persons 
 as have executed civil offices, or have held com- 
 missions in the army or the navy without the sacra- 
 mental qualification, then, what inconvenience can 
 arise from a repeal of the statutes themselves ? If 
 by the annual Indemnity act, the execution of the 
 law is relinquished, where is the objection to a repeal 
 of the law itself. To preserve the claim to a test 
 from the dissenters, when the exercise of the claim 
 is abandoned, may answer the purposes of irritation, 
 but cannot answer the purposes of power. The 
 claim, in that case, operates merely as a corrosive to 
 a wound that otherwise would heal j it stimulates
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 353 
 
 jealousies that otherwise would sleep, it agitates chap. 
 passions that otherwise would be at rest. — 
 
 ^ , A.D. 1785 
 
 " But, in truth, sir, the Indemnity act does not to 1789. 
 protect the dissenters from the Test and Corporation 
 laws ; for its only effect is, that of allowing further 
 time to those trespassers on the law against whom 
 final judgment has not been awarded. Should, for 
 example, a prosecution have been commenced but 
 not concluded, the Indemnity act does not discharge 
 the proceedings, it merely suspends them for six 
 months ; so that if the party accused does not take 
 the sacrament before the six months allowed by the 
 Indemnity act shall expire, the proceedings will go 
 on, and long before the next Indemnity act will come 
 to his relief, final judgment will be awarded against 
 him. Thus it appears that the Indemnity act gives 
 no effectual protection to the dissenter who accepts 
 a civil office or mihtary command, for he who cannot 
 take the sacrament at all, cannot take it within the 
 time rctjuired by that act. The penalties of the 
 Test act will consequently follow : he becomes inca- 
 pable of receiving any legacy, of executing any trust, 
 of serving in any court, or of appealing on any occa- 
 sion for justice. He is i)laced in the dreadful situation 
 of an outlaw." 
 
 After showing the tyranny and injustice of these 
 laws, Mr. Beaufoy proceeded to extract from their 
 history' arguin(!nts for their repeal. The Corporation 
 
 VOL. in. 2 A
 
 354 Tin: ihstoiiy or party. 
 
 CHAP, act was imposed at a time wlien the kingdom was 
 
 XIV 
 
 still agitated with the effects of those storms that had 
 
 A. U. 178.^ 
 
 to 178!). so lately made a wreck of the monarchy — at a time 
 when the act of Uniformity not having passed, the 
 dissenters, as a distinct and separate class from the 
 established church, had not an existence. Such was 
 the spirit of despotism in which the act was drawn, 
 that one of its clauses gave power to the king's com- 
 missioners to remove at their discretion any corporate 
 officers, even though they might be willing to take 
 the oaths prescribed. This power had expired with 
 the commission which held it ; but this was the 
 character of the law, the remnant of which was still 
 suffered to harass the dissenters. 
 
 The Test act passed, under very similar circum- 
 stances of temporary alarm, in 167^, when the 
 people were alarmed with an apprehension that the 
 sovereign had formed the design of subverting the 
 established religion of his country. They had long 
 known that his confidential friends were Catholics, 
 that the prime minister. Lord Clifford, and the 
 king's brother, the heir presumptive to the throne, 
 were of this persuasion, and that the king himself was 
 suspected of having secretly embraced the same 
 hostile faith. But superadded to these different 
 circumstances of alarm, they now saw an army under 
 Catholic officers, in the depth of winter, encamped at 
 the gates of London. A fact so extraordinary —
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 355 
 
 which admitted but of one interpretation — filled chap. 
 their minds with uneasiness and extreme dismay ; — ^- — '- — 
 
 A. D. 1785 
 
 and in the panic of the first impression induced the to 1789. 
 legislature to pass the law that bears the title of an 
 act for preventing the dangers which may happen 
 from popish recusants, but which is better known by 
 the shorter name of the Test act. The minister, 
 Lord Clifford, who was himself a CathoKc, attempted 
 to persuade the dissenters to oppose the bill upon 
 the ground that its provisions were so worded as to 
 extend to them, who were not in any respect the 
 objects of the bill ; and that nothing could be so 
 unjust as to subject to the penalties of the law a 
 description of men who were not within the meaning 
 of the law. The dissenters admitted the force of 
 the argument, but waved their right to its benefit ; 
 and one of the members of the city of London who 
 was himself a dissenter, declared on their behalf that, 
 in a time of public danger, when delay might be 
 fiital, they would not impede the progress of a bill, 
 which was thought essential to the safety of the 
 kingdom ; but would trust to the good faith, to the 
 justice, to the humanity of ])arliamcnt, that a bill for 
 the relief of dissenters should afterwards be passed. 
 The lords and commons admitted, without hesitation, 
 the equity of the claim. 'J'hey considered the dol)t 
 they had contracted to the dissenters as a debt of 
 honour, the ]xayment of which could not be refused ; 
 
 '2 A 2
 
 356 THE IIISTOIIY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, and aecortliiiolv a bill for tlicir relief was passed, but 
 XIV. . 
 
 its success was defeated by the sudden prorojration 
 
 A. D. 1785 , 1 • 
 
 to 1789. of the parliament. A second bill was brought in 
 with a view to the same object, though by a different 
 title, in the year iGSO, and })assed the two houses in 
 consequence of the same im})lied compact. But 
 while it lay ready for the royal assent, Charles II., 
 who was much exasperated with the dissenters for 
 refusing to support the Catholics, and who always 
 delighted to obtain the most unwarrantable ends by 
 the most despicable means, prevailed upon the clerk 
 of the crown to steal the bill, and overreach the 
 the ])arliament. 
 
 From this statement of the case the speaker passed 
 into the more general topics of liberty of conscience 
 — the profanation of a sacred rite to secular and 
 unimportant objects — the inefficacy of the test to 
 exclude the irreligious and the sceptical — the danger 
 of vesting a clergyman with power to put a veto 
 upon a royal appointment, and the hardship, on the 
 other hand, of compelling a clergyman to administer 
 the sacrament to a man whom he may know to be 
 profligate in his principles and immoral in his con- 
 duct — the absurdity of admitting to the legislature 
 men who were excluded from the smallest office in 
 the customs, and the injustice of legislating at all 
 upon subjects upon which no law can justly operate. 
 "Thus," concluded the speaker, " I have shown the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 357 
 
 various bearings of these pernicious statutes. To cHAP. 
 the judgment of the house, to your wisdom as se- 
 
 . . . . , r> T A.D. 1785 
 
 nators, to vour patriotism as citizens, to your reelings to 1789. 
 as men, I now submit the consideration of the pro- 
 posed repeal, perfectly convinced that you will not 
 permit the continuance of laws unjust in their prin- 
 ciple, unwise in their political effect, inconsistent 
 with all religious regards, and, therefore, every way 
 hostile to the interests of the state." 
 
 As this question became one of the leading sub- 
 jects of party contest, a somewhat copious abstract 
 has been given of this speech. It will be necessary 
 to bear in mind the facts upon which the demands of 
 the dissenters were made. 
 
 Lord North, whom a deprivation of sight had 
 kept from the house, came down, for the first time, 
 to lead on his followers in defence of the church. 
 Disclaiming all bigotry and intolerance, and de- 
 clarinfT himself a friend to the fair and free exercise 
 of the rights of conscience, he, nevertheless, rose to 
 protest against the repeal of an act which was the 
 great bulwark, of the constitution, and to which we 
 owed those inestimable blessings of freedom which 
 this nation so happily enjoyed. He denied that 
 any indignity was offered to the dissenters by not 
 admitting them to offices. " If govcrnuient finds it 
 prudent and necessary to confine the admission to 
 public offices to men of particular principles, it has a
 
 35S THE IIISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, rioht to adhere to such restriction ; it is a privilege 
 belonging- to all states, and all have exercised it ; all 
 
 A. D. I78j 
 
 to 17S9. do exercise it, and all will continue to exercise it. 
 Let us not then," he concluded, " confound tole- 
 ration of religious principles with civil and military 
 appointments. Universal toleration is established : 
 let us be on our guard against any innovation on 
 the church. The constitution was always in danger 
 when the church was deprived of its rights." 
 
 From Lord North this opposition was expected, 
 but it was confidently anticipated that Pitt would 
 rejoin his old associates, and testify his adherence to 
 the Whig principle of toleration. Hitherto, upon 
 questions of party principle, Pitt had voted with the 
 Whigs, but his conduct upon this occasion disco- 
 vered that he had caught the infection by which he 
 was surrounded, and that we must henceforward 
 expect to find him daily withdrawing himself from the 
 principles to which he had been attached by the Earl 
 of Chatham. He now came forward to compliment 
 Lord North upon his defence of the church, and re- 
 fused the repeal, not as Walpole had done, because 
 the popular prejudice was so strong that it would be 
 impossible to effect it ; but because, in his opinion, 
 the enactment was just and necessary. Pitt drew a 
 distinction between political and civil liberty, and 
 spared no pains to point out some difference in the 
 exercise of these two rights. Unfortunately the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. S5[) 
 
 arguments with which he decked out this — the ii^rand chap. 
 
 XIV 
 
 fallacy of Toryism in all questions of toleration — have '- — 
 
 not been recorded. The church and state," he * to 1789. 
 said, *' were united upon principles of expediency ; 
 and it concerns those to whom the wellbeing of the 
 state is intrusted, to take care that the church 
 should not be rashly demolished. The bulwark 
 must be kept against all, and I am endeavouring to 
 take every prudent and proper precaution. It is 
 the right of every legislature and every state, to 
 make those tests which they think will be most con- 
 ducive to the public good, and I cannot vote for the 
 repeal without alarming a great body of the legis- 
 lature." 
 
 Pitt's declaration that the church and state were 
 united upon principles of expediency, showed that 
 he had not yet thoroughly learned the language of 
 Toryism, and the last reason he gave for his vote 
 was probably that which chiefly influenced him. Fox 
 rose immediately after Pitt ; demolished his distinc- 
 tions between political and civil liberty, and accused 
 him, while lie disclaimed persecution in words, of 
 admitting the whole extent of it in principle. After 
 reiterating and enforcing the arguments of the mover, 
 he remarked upon his own situation with respect to 
 the dissenters. "No person could suspect him," he 
 said, " of being biassed by any improper partiality 
 towards the dissenters. Their conduct in ;t late
 
 ;3tJ0 THE HISTOllY OF I'AllTY. 
 
 CIIAF. political ivvolution was well known ; but he was 
 XIV. 
 '■ — willing to lot them sec that though they lost sight of 
 
 A. 11. 1785 '^ 
 
 to 1789. the principles of the constitution upon that occasion, 
 he should not, upon any occasion, lose sight of his 
 principles of toleration." The motion was rejected 
 by a majority of 178 to 100. 
 
 Walpole, with a strong opinion in favour of this 
 repeal, had resisted it because the temper of the 
 people would not bear it. Pitt found the prejudices 
 of the king as strong as Walpole had found those of 
 the people. George III. made the exclusion of the 
 dissenters a point of conscience ; and where conscience 
 only enjoins restrictions upon others, she is seldom 
 disobeyed. 
 
 From the odium he had acquired among the dis- 
 senters by his opposition to their claims, Pitt betook 
 himself to financial arrangements and economical 
 reforms, measures in which the voice of the people 
 followed him, and to which the opposition gave a 
 candid and manly support. He was interrupted in 
 1788 by the sudden illness of the king, which re- 
 vived a hope that had been long sleeping in the 
 breast of Fox, and introduced a vigour and energy 
 into the parliamentary contests. When Fox declared 
 the absolute right of the heir apparent to take upon 
 himself the functions of royalty during an incapacity 
 in the king, and Pitt replied that he had no more 
 right than any other individual subject, they each
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 361 
 
 took the side of the question favourable to their own chap. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 party : the question in dispute was a mere point 
 
 A. D. 1785 
 
 of constitutional law — a point relating only to the to i789. 
 forms, and in no manner affecting the essence of the 
 constitution.* Fox wished the prince to assume the 
 regency as of right, that he might be able to exert all 
 the powers of royalty in favour of the coalition. Pitt 
 wished the prince to receive the regency from the 
 parliament, that he might be fettered by limitations, 
 which, although they would not prevent him from 
 bringing the coalition party into office, would pre- 
 vent them fi-om consolidating their power, and leave 
 his own return to the cabinet open upon the recovery 
 of the kinof.t 
 
 * Tlie Pitt party pretended that ceal his motive. " If," he said, 
 
 they upon this occasion defended "persons who possessed these prin- 
 
 the principles of the revolution, ciples were, in reality, likely to 
 
 Nothing could be more absurd, be the advisers of the prince, in 
 
 Fox may have been, and probably the exercise of those powers which 
 
 was, wrong in contending tliat the were necessary to be given, during 
 
 heir apparent has a right to exer- the present unfortunate interval, 
 
 cise the functions of royalty during it was the strongest additional 
 
 the incapacity of the sovereign; reason, if any were wanting, for 
 
 but sucli a doctrine is no more being careful to consider what the 
 
 inimical to the constitutional rigiits extent of those powers ought to be. 
 
 of the people, than that of the he- It was imi)ossibIe not to suppose, 
 
 rcditar}' succession of tlie crown, that l)y such advisers those powers 
 
 Fox readily admitted, that if such would be perverted to a purpose 
 
 a right existed, it was derived which it wai;, indeed, impossible 
 
 from, and might be resumed by, to imagine that the Prince of 
 
 the nalioii. Wales could, if he was aware of it, 
 
 f Pitt did imA pretend to con- ever enduK' fui a moment." —
 
 S6^2 THE IlISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Diirino- the iiiUigues and negotiations which 
 XIV 
 
 occui)ied tliis brief interval of strong excitement, 
 
 to 1789. a circumstance occurred decisive upon the question 
 of Thurlow's honesty. Sheridan, whose confidence in 
 his own talent for political intrigue, frequently, as his 
 biographer romarks, prompted him to branch off from 
 the main body of his party upon secret and solitary 
 enterprises of ingenuily, had conceived the idea that 
 Thurlow, whose uncouthness so many thought ho- 
 nesty, was to be bought. A negotiation was com- 
 menced with the concurrence of the prince, and Fox, 
 when he returned from Italy, where he was when 
 the king's insanity broke forth, found his friends and 
 the chancellor in correspondence. Fox had formed 
 a just estimate of Thurlow's character, and he was 
 convinced the negotiation could only end in embar- 
 rassment. " It gave him," as he wrote to Sheridan, 
 *' more uneasiness than any political thing he could 
 remember: and it deranged all the plans he had 
 formed for future operations. " Fox was right. 
 Thurlow received the overture with readiness, en- 
 tered with apparent cordiality into the views of the 
 Whigs, abused his colleagues to Sheridan and Fox, 
 and only held off from an absolute engagement. 
 But, suddenly, his manner changed ; whether from 
 his access to the king he had ascertained that a 
 
 Pari. Hist., vol. xxvii., col. 773. sentiment, that the opposite party 
 A mere reiteration of the common are unfit to be trusted with power.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 36S 
 
 recovery was become certain, or whether he had chap. 
 marked the antipathy which Fox could not disguise, ^ ^ ^ 
 and had construed it as treachery, we must be con- to 1789. 
 tent to conjecture, but the result is certain. He 
 suddenly broke off all negotiation, and, secure in the 
 honour of the Whigs, rose a few hours after in the 
 house of lords, and poured upon them one of his 
 most violent storms of invective ;* dwelling with an 
 appearance of honest enthusiasm, which had its full 
 effect upon the public, upon the favours he had re- 
 ceived from the sovereign, and the debt of gratitude 
 
 he owed him.t 
 
 During this year the Earl of Mansfield retired 
 
 from the court of King's Bench, and was succeeded 
 
 by Sir Lloyd Kenyon, who, upon this occasion, 
 
 received a peerage, an honour which Pitt lavished 
 
 with no sparing hand. 
 
 George III. had early set his heart upon changing 
 
 the character of the upper house. If we scrutinize the 
 
 votes of the peers from the period of the revolution 
 
 to the death of George II., we shall find a very great 
 
 majority of the old English nobility to have been the 
 
 • " His debt of gratitude to his who was standing in the house, 
 
 majesty," he said, " was ample for " he'll see you d d first." 
 
 the many favours he had graci- t See tlio correspondence on 
 
 ously conferral \ipon him, wliich, this sulijcct in Moore's Life of 
 
 when lie forgot, might (iod forget Slieridnn, p. 400. 
 Iiimi" — "Forget you," said Wilkes,
 
 364 
 
 THE HISTORY OK PARTY. 
 
 CllAl'. advocates of Whig principles. The spleiuloiir of 
 
 tlieir name enabled them to espouse po])ular doctrines 
 
 A.D. 1785: '. ^ / 
 
 to 1789, without fear of being herded with the ignorant dema- 
 gogues of the day : the party creed was generally as 
 hereditary as the family estates ; and as these ancient 
 titles were commonly created by writ, and conse- 
 quently descended to lieirs general, there appeared 
 but little chance of the Whigs being extinguished in 
 that house. As the tide of royal favour gradually 
 drifted Pitt away from Whiggism, he also saw the 
 advantage of having a stable and indissoluble majority 
 of his owTi party in the house of peers. He wisely 
 divined that the surest way to accomplish this object 
 was to fill the house with men whose descent was not 
 such as to enable them to take liberties with their 
 dignity ; who would vote popular doctrines vulgar, and 
 think that their new nobility compelled them to be ex- 
 clusive. George III. had kept the doors of the house 
 of peers cautiously closed against the coalition ; but 
 he threw them wide open to Pitt. The change was to 
 be effected, not by a sudden inundation, but by turn- 
 ing a streamlet into the house. Without shocking 
 the ancient nobles the aggregate of the Pitt peers 
 soon became considerable. Within four years after 
 he had assumed the government Pitt could reckon 
 42 of his own creations in that house. The present 
 creation, that of Sir Lloyd Kenyon, is one of the 
 best of these. Kenyon had earned his peerage by
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 305 
 
 A. D. 1785 
 to 1789. 
 
 achieving an honourable eminence in his profession ; ^^^' 
 but he would never have obtained it if the minister 
 had not been able to confide in his fidelity. Pitt 
 never lost sight of this object : the chief scope of the 
 Regency bill was to deprive the regent of an oppor- 
 tunity of interfering with his plan, by creating some 
 Whio- peers. The house was to be increased to such 
 an extent that it would be almost impossible to make 
 further additions ; and these creations were to be the 
 rewards of Tories in the commons, and the retain- 
 ing fee of Tories in the lords. 
 
 The sudden recovery of the king destroyed at 
 once all the budding hopes of the coalition party, and 
 fixed them again to the opposition benches. .
 
 ^^*^> TIIK IlISTOllY or PARTY. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The French revohition — Effect upon the state of parties — Conduct of 
 Burke — Speech in the house of commons and breach with Slieridan 
 — Expiration of the parhament. 
 
 CHAP. The petty character of* the contests which had 
 been lately carried on in parliament — contests which, 
 
 A.D. 1789 1 . , 
 
 and 1790. for the most part, nothing but the talent of the com- 
 petitors can rescue from contempt, was, in this year, 
 entirely changed. France was no longer the ally of 
 Toryism. That slumbering volcano, enthroned upon 
 which despotism had sat so long secure, at length 
 exploded : the blast was deafening and destructive ; 
 but it purified the atmosphere. Sharp and sudden 
 was the retribution which overtook the court of France, 
 for their first act of treachery to their natural allies 
 the Tories of England. From Whig governments
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. SG? 
 
 France had always experienced war and disaster; chap. 
 
 " XV 
 
 disaster which could scarcely be compensated by the 
 
 '' ^ A.D. 1789 
 
 ( 
 
 facility of the Tories in granting terms of peace. and 1790. 
 To them and their projects she was justly hostile ; 
 but when she attacked the Tories, and declared 
 against the Tory crusade in America, she broke 
 through all her ordinary rules of policy, and declared 
 ao^ainst her most constant friend. Soon were the 
 seeds sown in America manifest in France. The par- 
 liament of Paris, for ages the unresisting instrument 
 of despotism, suddenly laying claim to a will of their 
 own — the extraordinary expedient of assembling the 
 notables, serving no other purpose than the over- 
 throw of the minister — the king's right of taxation 
 disputed ; the judges of his courts arrayed against 
 him ; and he alternately threatening and submitting 
 to all that was demanded ; arresting and releasing 
 the most conspicuous demagogues ; banishing and 
 recalling his parliament ; striving by sudden jerks 
 to guide the ship that had ceased to answer to her 
 holm ; his ministers shrinking from his side, and the 
 stonn incrcasinjT — these arc a few of the events 
 that i)ass rapidly before us as we look towards 
 France, and mark the return of her troops from 
 America. But these were only the heavings that 
 preceded tlie coming convulsion. It was not until 
 the present year — wlien the states-general, called 
 together for the first time for a century and n half,
 
 368 THK HISTORY OF PAllTY. 
 
 CHAP, hroakinfj tlieir orio-inal constitution, became a sing-lo 
 
 XV. >^ t=, f-< 
 
 body ; when the tiers efaf, the commons, declared 
 
 A.n. I7S9 '' . ' , 
 
 and 1790. themselves the real representatives of the nation, 
 assumed the exclusive power of legislation, and the 
 title of *' The National Assembly ;" when the as- 
 sembly thus formed, contemning the authority of 
 the king, began to devise constitutions and to rege- 
 nerate France ; when riotous mobs grew into dis- 
 ciplined bands of republican soldiers, and the regular 
 soldiers degenerated into mobs ; when the bastille was 
 demolished, its officers massacred, popular vengeance 
 let loose, and the sway of a ferocious populace unre- 
 sisted ; when a voice was heard to cry " To Ver- 
 sailles," and the armed multitude rolled onward in 
 obedience ; when that multitude returned, and the 
 king and queen of France entered their capital as 
 prisoners — it was not until the year 1789, when 
 these events crowded in rapid succession upon each 
 other, that the mountain opened, and the French 
 monarchy, girded by its two hundred thousand 
 nobles, sank into the abyss. 
 
 The tyranny had disappeared, and the nation was 
 to devise some new form of government. But the 
 French had obtained their liberty too suddenly, and 
 with too little trouble, to feel for it a proper respect. 
 Unlike England, under similar circumstances, they 
 had no guide to follow ; no forms of a free constitution 
 to retain ; no magna charta and petition of rights to
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 369 
 
 recur to as standards of rational liberty they were chap. 
 
 XV. 
 
 sufficiently emancipated from all precedent to be '- — 
 
 able to follow the most promising theory, and to and 1790. 
 lay the foundations of a perfect government. A 
 perfect government in theory is an impossible govern- 
 ment in practice. It can only be maintained by 
 perfect citizens, and these, unhappily, are not be 
 found. When the revolutionary inundation of 1688 
 spread itself over Britain, it found a channel and 
 a vent in the fosses and ditches of the old con- 
 stitution, and it irrigated and fertilized the land. 
 In France, there was no such vent : there it 
 stao-natcd in the hollows and fermented into pes- 
 tilence. Men, who for the first time in their lives 
 were allowed to think upon political matters, made 
 awkward attempts to exercise their liberty ; they met 
 in debating clubs, adopted among themselves a cant 
 of liberty more disgusting even than the cant of 
 fanaticism, promulgated their trashy crudities as 
 philosophical deductions, and although these dis- 
 coveries invariably turned out to be very old truths 
 exaggerated into falsehoods, yet they were at first 
 received as genuine, and the discoverers magnified 
 each other as original thinkers. 
 
 Where a nation was without a government, these 
 discussions however absurd were not without an 
 assignable object, but these apostles of liberty were 
 anxious to evangelize their neighbours and to ex- 
 
 VOL, III. 2 IJ
 
 370 riiK HISTORY oi' tarty. 
 
 CHAP, tend tlio benefit of their discoveries to all other 
 
 ^^^ nations. Similar societies sprung up in England, 
 
 " and /t'jo, but fortunatcly the middle class here had been now 
 accustomed to think upon political subjects, and 
 they received the new philosophy either with ridicule 
 or horror, as their terror or contempt predominated. 
 
 Events which thus absorbed the attention of the 
 nation were not without their influence upon the 
 professors of politics. While the contest lay between 
 the king of France and the parliament of Paris, the 
 Tories alone expressed their detestation of the 
 audacity of the rebels ; the Whigs regarded the day 
 of resistance as one other spot, among the cala- 
 mities and crimes which blacken human annals, on 
 W'hich the eye of humanity might with complacence 
 dwell.* Fox hailed the omen as the harbinger of 
 universal liberty ; Pitt beheld the struggles of the 
 patriots, and wished for their success. Burke alone, 
 of all men who professed the principles of Whiggism, 
 gazed with astonishment, and knew not whether to 
 blame or applaud.t The scene moved on, the con- 
 test between the tiers etat and the other estates was 
 beheld, and Burke had resolved to blame, and Pitt 
 had ceased to sympathize. The states-general became 
 the national assembly, and commenced, with the 
 assistance of Jefferson, the American minister, to 
 
 « Vindiciae Gallicae. leville — Prior's Life of Burke, vol. 
 
 t Burke's Letter to Lord Char- ii.., p. 42.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 37 1 
 
 demolish and reconstruct ; the bastille fell ; the CHAP. 
 
 XV. 
 
 people became the captors of their king ; and Burke T"5~T7rr- 
 grew more furious against those who used their and 1790. 
 liberty unwisely, than he had been against those who 
 had made their power be felt as tyranny. Pitt, also, 
 had perfected his recantation, and these two able 
 men who had commenced their career with prin- 
 ciples that would readily justify all that the national 
 assembly had yet attempted, thus early stood for- 
 ward as the champions of monarchical prerogative, 
 and the enemies of a people in rebellion against 
 despotism. 
 
 On the 5th of February, 1790, Fox first alluded A.D. 1790. 
 to this revolution in the house of commons. In a 
 debate on the army estimates he said, that the new 
 form which the government of France was likely to 
 assume would, he was persuaded, make her a better 
 neighbour, and less disposed to hostility than when 
 she was suljject to the cabal and intrigues of ambi- 
 tious and interested statesmen. In resisting the 
 estimates proposed, he acted from a motive of eco- 
 nomy, not from fear of danger. The example of a 
 neighbouring nation had proved that former impu- 
 tations on armies were unfounded calumnies ; and it 
 was now universally known throughout Europe, that 
 a man by becoming a soldier did not cease to be a 
 citizen.* 
 
 • V:n\. U\<.t., vol. xxviii., rol. .1.(0. 
 2 B Q
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 .S7:2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. On the 9tli, when the debate was resumed, 
 
 XV. 
 
 he predieted that in three years France would be 
 
 more formidable than ever. 
 
 Upon the first occasion of Fox delivering his 
 opinion in favour of the French revolution, Burke 
 was not present. Upon the second he came pre- 
 pared to answer. After speaking for some time 
 upon the subject immediately before the house, he 
 suddenly seized upon the real point of interest in 
 the debate. "France," he said, "is^atthis time, 
 in a political light, to be considered as expunged out 
 of the system of Europe. Whether she can ever 
 appear in it as a leading power is not easy to de- 
 termine ; but at present France is not politically ex- 
 isting, and most assuredly it will take up much time, 
 to restore her to her former active existence. Gal- 
 los qaoque in hellis floruisse audivimus, may pos- 
 sibly be the language of the rising generation. It 
 is said that as she has speedily fallen she might 
 speedily rise again. I doubt this. The fall from an 
 height is with an accelerated velocity, but to lift a 
 weight up to that height again is difficult, and 
 opposed by the laws of physical and political gravi- 
 tation. In a political view France is low indeed. 
 She has lost every thing even to her name — 
 
 • ' Jacet ingens littore truncus, 
 
 Aviilsumque humeris caput, et sine nomine corpus.'
 
 A.D. i7ao. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 373 
 
 ** I am astonished at it — I am alarmed at it — I chap, 
 
 XV. 
 
 tremble at the uncertainty of all human greatness. 
 
 " Since the house was prorogued in the summer, 
 much work has been done in France. The French 
 have shown themselves the greatest architects of ruin 
 that have hitherto existed in the world. In that very 
 short space of time, they have completely pulled 
 down to the ground their monarchy, their church, 
 their nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, 
 their navy, their commerce, their arts, and their 
 manufactures. They have done their business for 
 us as rivals in a way which twenty Ramilies or Blen- 
 heims could never have done. 
 
 *' In the last age we w^rc in danger of being 
 entangled by the example of France in a net of 
 relentless despotism. That no longer exists. Our 
 present danger arises from the example of a people 
 whose character knows no medium : it is with regard 
 to government, a danger from anarchy, a danger of 
 being led, through admiration of successful fraud and 
 violence, to imitation of the excesses of an irrational, 
 unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, })lundcring, 
 ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy. On 
 the side of religion, the danger of their example 
 is no longer in intolerance, but atheism — a foul, 
 unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation 
 of mankind, which seems in France, for a long time, 
 to have been imbodicd into a faction, accrctlited and
 
 ;?74 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP almost avoAvod. These are our i»resent dangers from 
 \v. 
 
 r ranee. 
 
 A.D. 17<»0. 
 
 *' But the very worst part of the example set is, 
 in the late assumption of citizenship by the army, 
 and the whole of the arrangement of their military. 
 I am sorry that my right honourable friend has 
 dropped even a word expressive of exultation on that 
 circumstance. I attribute this opinion of Mr. Fox 
 entirely to his own zeal for the best of all causes — 
 liberty. It is with pain inexpressible I am obliged 
 to have even a shadow of a difference with my 
 friend, w'hose authority would be always great 
 with me and with all thinking people. My con- 
 fidence in Mr. Fox is such and so ample as to be 
 almost implicit. I am not ashamed to avow that 
 degree of docility, for when the choice is well made, 
 it strengthens instead of oppressing our intellect. 
 He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding, 
 doubles his own. He who profits of a superior un- 
 derstanding, raises his power to a level with the 
 height of the superior understanding he unites with. 
 I have found the benefit of such a junction, and 
 would not lightly depart from it. I wish almost on 
 all occasions my sentiments were understood to be 
 conveyed in Mr. Fox's words, and wish, amongst the 
 greatest benefits I can wish the country, an eminent 
 share of power to that right honourable gentleman, 
 because I know that to his great and masterly un-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 375 
 
 derstanding he has joined the greatest possible chap. 
 degree of that natural moderation, which is the best 
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 corrective of power. Heisof the most artless, candid, 
 open, and benevolent disposition, disinterested in the 
 extreme ; of a temper mild and placable even to a 
 fault, without one drop of gall in his whole constitu- 
 tion. The house must perceive from my coming 
 forward to mark an expression or two of my best 
 friend, how anxious I am to keep the distemper of 
 France from the least countenance in England, 
 where some wicked persons have shown a strong 
 disposition to recommend an invitation of the French 
 spirit of reform. 
 
 " I am so strongly opposed to any the least tend- 
 ency towards the means of introducing a democracy 
 like theirs, as well as to the end itself, that much as 
 it would afflict me if such a thing could be attempted, 
 and that any friend of mine should concur in such 
 measures, I would abandon my best friends and join 
 irifk nil) worst enemies to oppose either the means or 
 the endr 
 
 Having thus fulminated his threats of eternal sepa- 
 ration against all his friends, who should dare to mani- 
 fest any sympathy for the triumph, or indulgence for 
 the intemperance of a people who had just overthrown 
 the most noxious despotism in Europe, Burke 
 piirised on to an eulogium upon our own revolution ol' 
 1688. He dwelt with justice upon the prudence
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 :i'}C) Till': iiisTOKV or rAUTV. 
 
 c HAP. which had in that case sacrificed the man, but prc- 
 
 XV. 
 
 served tlie constitution ; but he broached an egre- 
 gious fallacy when he attempted to establish the 
 analogy of the occasions. He did not speak the 
 sentiments of a Whig when he mourned the over- 
 throw of the despotism of the Bourbons as the 
 destruction of the monarchy. He did not speak as 
 a philanthropist when he lamented the overthrow of 
 a tyrannical hierarchy as the destruction of the 
 church. In England these institutions were good, 
 the man alone, who sought to subvert them, was the 
 object of national indignation. In France the insti- 
 tutions were worse than the monarch ; they were the 
 most legitimate objects of hostility. 
 
 Burke, while opposing the cause of reform, insisted, 
 like many others, that he was a reformer, and appealed 
 to his past career as the voucher of his title ; but he 
 appears to have, in some degree, doubted the pro- 
 priety of his former conduct, since, in the last sen- 
 tence of his speech, he stated that, with regard to the 
 constitution itself he wished few alterations in it : 
 happy if he left it not the worse for any share he had 
 taken in its service.* 
 
 Such were the topics of the important speech 
 which marked Burke's defection from the Whig party. 
 The charge of interested apostacy so generally ap- 
 
 * Pail Hist., vol. xxviii., col. 363.
 
 A.D. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 377 
 
 plicable to men who suddenly change their poHtical chap. 
 views was not yet, however, incurred by Burke. 
 Burke, although a Whig from political connexion — 
 from a coincidence of views upon certain great 
 questions, and from a disapproval of the Tories, was, 
 nevertheless, never, in his heart, a friend to popular 
 government. With the most extended views of 
 philanthropy he hated the people. His philosophic 
 mind shrunk from a contact with the vulgar. To 
 him nothing was so disgusting as the mob. He 
 would labour for the advantage of the crowd, but he 
 must be allowed to dispense his blessings from above ; 
 and if the recipients would refrain from dictating what 
 he should give he scarcely required their thanks.* So 
 genuine an aristocrat in heart was, with great diffi- 
 culty, kept within the pale of Whiggism. It is 
 difficult to conjecture how he could have persuaded 
 himself to espouse the cause of the revolted Ameri- 
 cans ; it is hardly to be conceived how he could 
 reconcile himself to the formation of their republic. 
 Upon all other subjects he was consistent with the 
 general tenour of his feelings. Economical reform 
 he laboured to effect — it was a boon thrown to the 
 people. Triennial parliaments he strenuously op- 
 
 • " Satis est eqiiitcm milii plaw- peal from the new to the old 
 dere," was a sentiment in whieh he A\'higs. 
 avowedly concurred. Sec liis ap-
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 3/8 THE HISTORY or tauty. 
 
 CUM', posed — those would have brought the people nearer 
 ^^" to himselt". Religious disabilities he was ready to 
 remove ; for whatever phil()so})hy sanctioned, and 
 aristocratic feeling did not forbid, Burke was willing to 
 accord : but reform in parliament gave power to the 
 people : and even the possession of office under a cabi- 
 net pledged to reform could only extort from him a 
 sullen and reluctant neutrality. The French revolution 
 was an event which, under any circumstances, would 
 have taxed to the utmost Burke's powers of compli- 
 ance. In earlier times he might have forgotten all 
 scruples, in his attachment to his party and friend- 
 ship for the men with whom he had acted through 
 life, and he might have embraced the first republicans 
 of France as he had embraced the republicans of 
 America. But Burke was now grown old and less 
 compliant ; he had become less powerful with his 
 party ; less an object of wonder in the house. He 
 knew that the Prince of Wales neglected his society 
 for that of Sheridan ; and he had cause to conjecture 
 that, in the arrangements contemplated during the 
 king's illness, the companion of the prince was to 
 have taken precedence in his office. Burke also 
 was poor ; he had passed the greater portion of his 
 life on the opposition benches, and he was at present 
 without hope of removal. These are not motives 
 that would have determined the conduct of such a 
 man as Burke ; but they are considerations which
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 379 
 
 will have a, perhaps involuntary, effect in the delibe- ^^^^• 
 rations of the most honourable mind. They would "^377^ 
 strengthen the view he w^ould naturally take of the 
 question, and diminish his incentives to compliance 
 with his party. 
 
 When Burke sat down, after the deUvery of his 
 philippics against the French revolution. Fox rose. 
 All eyes were turned upon the great party chief, 
 and expectation strained to hear how he would treat 
 the defection of his friend. He deplored, in terms of 
 deep feeling, the necessity that had arisen for differ- 
 ing with one whose friendship was so dear to him ; 
 he passed a high eulogium upon his virtues and 
 his talents, he hailed him as his master, and declared 
 that all the political knowledge he had gained from 
 books, all. he had gained from science, all he had 
 gained from knowledge of the world and experience 
 of mankind, was not greater than that he had ac- 
 quired from the conversation and instruction of the 
 friend who now left his side. He vindicated himself 
 from the charge of participating in the wild and 
 visionary projects of all the rabid revolutionists both 
 of France and England ; but he, at the same time, 
 defended the revolution itself, avowed a community 
 of feelino- with its authors, and denounced only those 
 who would abuse the liberty it had created. He 
 insisted that there was a strong analogy between the 
 present revolution in I'Vauee and that of lOSS in
 
 o80 THE IlISTOllY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. England, and that if excesses had occurred during 
 the former that liad not (Hsjrraccd the latter, it was 
 
 XV. ^ 
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 because there was so much despotism to destroy in 
 France, and there had been so little that required 
 destruction in England. He reserved, however, the 
 full discussion of the question to some future time, 
 cautiously abstaining from any topic that could widen 
 the breach, and evidently looking forward to some 
 private arrangement by which it might be closed. 
 
 But Burke had taken his party, and from this 
 moment he appears, far from being actuated by mo- 
 tives of tenderness or even delicacy towards his 
 former friends, to have sought out opportunities for 
 stating and magnifying their points of difference. 
 At this moment, the approval or disapproval of the 
 French revolution was a mere speculative question, 
 which might divide the opinions of able men, but 
 could scarcely be expected to sever sincere friend- 
 ships, or separate political allies ; yet, when 
 Sheridan arose and defended the revolution, con- 
 cluding his speech with an expression of his reverence 
 for the rights of men, Burke replied with violence, 
 that *' Henceforth he and his honourable friend, as 
 he had been accustomed to call hiin, were separated 
 in politics." He kept his word — thenceforward Burke 
 could never be persuaded to meet or speak of Sheri- 
 dan as a fi-iend. 
 
 Sheridan's declaration, as it was supposed to ex-
 
 A.D. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 381 
 
 press the sentiments of the heir-apparent, was consi- chap. 
 dered as important as that of Fox. It is said, that - 
 when it was known that a breach between Fox and 
 Burke must occur, Sheridan ^^Tote a short note to 
 Carlton House for instructions. ** Follow Fox," 
 was the laconic reply. 
 
 The alarm occasioned by the acts of the revolutionists 
 was early seen in the house of commons. The coun- 
 try-gentlemen deserted the Whigs in a body. They 
 who had been so liberal in the former year, that the 
 repeal of the Test act had only been rejected by a 
 majority of 20, now voted in a mass against it ; and 
 so well did Pitt note the temper of his supporters, 
 that he abandoned all coquetry upon the subject of 
 parliamentary reform, and opposed the agitation of 
 the question. 
 
 At the close of the session of 1790, this parlia- 
 ment expired.
 
 38'2 TIIK IIISTOliY 01' PAliTY. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Review of the last parliament — Biographical anecdotes of John Scott 
 —Of Henry Addington— Of Charles Grey— Of William Wyndham 
 —Of Samuel Whitbrcad— Of Erskine— Leaders of the democratic 
 party — Reflections on the French revolution — Meeting of the new 
 parliament — Rupture between Burke and Fox— The Whigs decide 
 against Burke. 
 
 CHAP. The election of a new parliament affords a halting- 
 
 ^^^' . place whence we may review the state of the party 
 contests ; a point of view whence we may look back 
 upon the time we have passed, and mark the changes 
 produced upon the combatants. 
 
 Seven years of power had changed Pitt from an 
 adventurous and ardent youth to an experienced 
 and calculating politician ; from a democrat, whom 
 even Tooke could trust, to a Tory, in whom even 
 George III. could find no fault. Seven years of op- 
 
 A.D. 1790.
 
 A, D. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 383 
 
 position had seen the decline of Burke's influence, chap. 
 and the extinction of his Whio-orism. The time had 
 not passed unnoted either over Fox and Sheridan. It 
 had produced that full maturity to their powers and 
 to their fame whence men begin to look for a decline. 
 Throughout this period we have seen Pitt sitting 
 between his humble instruments, Dundas and Yonge, 
 backed by a host of obedient supporters, the repre- 
 sentatives of treasury boroughs and courtier peers ; 
 and having upon the cross benches a goodly array of 
 country-gentlemen, who, though not to be depended 
 upon like his disciplined troops, were very serviceable 
 while they could be retained as volunteers. Opposite 
 sat the triumvirate of Whiggism, Fox, Burke, and 
 Sheridan, backed by a slender troop of followers ; 
 but these all picked men ; men who had joined the 
 Whigs either because patriotism was the sole motive 
 of their conduct, or because they possessed a con- 
 sciousFKiss of ability to acquire popularity, and to 
 storm the cabinet at the head of the people. Such 
 were the parties within the house, while Tooke and 
 his democrats raffed without. But in each of these 
 parties some change had occurred ; and, while the 
 leaders were manifesting symptoms of age, and in 
 one instance giving suspicion of desertion, others 
 were rising into reputation, ready to supply their 
 places and perpetuate the contest. 
 
 Upon the Tory side the development of talent
 
 384 TIIK IIISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, was not very oroat. Pitt did not want it. Where 
 XVI. 
 
 parties are equally balaneed talent will decide the 
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 preponderance ; but the minister probably found 
 that one ekxiuent speech, when multiplied by the 
 ciphers of a large majority, was sufficient for 
 every purpose. Among the most conspicuous, how- 
 ever, of those who became conspicuous in the service 
 of this party, was John Scott, whose perseverance 
 and devotion have since been rewarded by an earldom. 
 Contemporary accounts of public characters are sel- 
 dom correct. John Scott is described to have been 
 the third son of a tradesman of no great opulence at 
 Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was born in the year 
 ly-l'Qj and, having obtained an exhibition from the 
 Grammar-school at Newcastle, was entered at Ox- 
 ford in 17^7" At this university he appears either 
 to have manifested talent or propitiated favour, since 
 we are told that his promotion was prevented by an 
 elopement and improvident marriage. After this 
 union, which was equally offensive to both the famihes, 
 it was determined that the lost young man, as his 
 brother called him, should be entered as a student at 
 the Middle Temple. Here he continued for some 
 time in very straitened circumstances, until, at length, 
 accident threw into his hands a very important case 
 upon the circuit. It now appeared that, while he 
 waited his opportunity, he was diligently qualifying 
 himself to improve it. His superiority, however.
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 38J 
 
 was more apparent as a lawyer than as a speaker, chap. 
 In the court of chancery he was timorous in his ad- 
 dress, and submissive to the court. Thurlow, who 
 had just assumed the chancellorship, was interested 
 in behalf of one who bowed himself so meekly before 
 his footstool. He soon manifested great partiality 
 to Scott, and even offered him a mastership in chan- 
 cery ; a situation which, as it was looked upon as the 
 grave of ambition, he ventured very thankfully to 
 decline. The barrister was quite right. It soon 
 became known that he had the ear of the court, and 
 his practice prodigiously increased. Thurlow re- 
 mained his friend; in 1783 he obtained for him a 
 patent of precedency ; and in the same year Scott 
 was returned to parliament for Weobly, a borough 
 under the influence of Lord Weymouth. Upon en- 
 teringparliamenthe attached himself to the party of his 
 patron, and made his first essay in a speech against 
 Fox's India bill ; a speech which was remarkable 
 neither for point nor argument, and which appeared 
 to justify the remark of Pitt to Thurlow, that he 
 could see nothing in his protege. Scott continued 
 to attend the house, and to speak in behalf of his 
 party, but without any extraordinary success. His 
 speeches, however, althougli they never pretended to 
 clo(juence, were always characterized by considerable 
 tact ; and his reputation at the bar procured him at- 
 tention in the house. In I788 he was appointed 
 
 VOL. HI. 2 c
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 .iS6 TIIK IIISTOKY or I'Ain'Y. 
 
 CHAP, solicitor-c^oiioral. It is said that when, upon this 
 XVI. . ' 
 
 occasion, tlic attorney and solicitor general kissed 
 
 hands upon their ap})ointments, Mr. Scott wished to 
 decline the customarv honour of knio'hthood, " Pho, 
 pho, nonsense," said the king, " I will serve them 
 both alike :" and the lawyer was obliged, reluctantly, 
 to submit to the accolade. 
 
 Another man risen into consequence with the 
 Tory party, was Henry Addington, by the favour of 
 Pitt, speaker of the late house of commons. Ad- 
 dington was the son of an eminent physician, who 
 being especially skilful in cases of insanity, had 
 steadied Pitt's political faith during the king's illness 
 by his sanguine anticipations of recovery. He was 
 as much attached to politics as to physic,* but, as his 
 account of an abortive negotiation between the Earl 
 of Chatham and the Earl of Bute proves, he was not 
 
 * It is related of him that being absorbed in an argument with the 
 
 called in to consult upon the case physician, who was a Foxite, upon 
 
 of a person very dangerously ill, the subject of the India bill, 
 
 he and the apothecary proceeded " Dear sir," said the young man, 
 
 together towards the sick man's impatiently, " there is no one in 
 
 chamber, while the family awaited this house denies the transcendent 
 
 in great suspense their opinion merits of the heroes of Burton- 
 
 below. After a very long and PjTnent (the Pitts), but my poor 
 
 painfid pause, the brotlier of the brother will, I am afraid, be dead, 
 
 patient was despatched to learn before you get through the India 
 
 the cause of the delay. He found bill. Upon entering the chamber, 
 
 the doctor still on the staircase, the event he dreaded had occurred
 
 A.D. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 38? 
 
 equally successful in their treatment. He retired CHAP. 
 
 XVI. 
 from practice with a fortune of 100,000/. 
 
 His son was born about the year 17<56. He was 
 fortunate enough to be intrusted to a tutor who, 
 discovering in him the germs of considerable ability, 
 advised that he should be taken from his care, and 
 placed at a public school. Winchester was chosen, 
 and thence he proceeded to Brazen-nose college, 
 Oxford, where we have no record either of his 
 studies or his proficiency. His father's politics had 
 acquired for him the friendship of the Earl of Chat- 
 ham and obtained for the son the intimacy of Wil- 
 liam Pitt. Their pursuits were the same, for 
 Addington was become a member of the Inner 
 Temple, and their companionship now became strict. 
 When his friend suddenly started from this sphere, 
 and soared towards the highest offices of state, 
 Addington followed with a feebler flight. The re- 
 cordership of Devizes, obtained for him by his friend, 
 assisted him to a seat in parliament for that borough, 
 and opened to him the path to preferment. In 1789 
 when, on the occasion of some alterations in the 
 cabinet, Mr. Grcnville was taken from the chair of 
 the house of commons to be made secretary of state, 
 Addinixton was his successor. He filled his office 
 with a ])ro])('r dignity, but did not forget liis obli- 
 gations to \\u'. minister, when th(^ hous(; being in 
 comniitfce cnaljlcd liim to mix in the debate. 
 
 o ^• o
 
 388 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. The circumstance of Acldlngton's powers having' 
 " T^ ., , proved clearly unequal to the hiffh station which he 
 
 A. u. I iVO. * ' ^ '^ 
 
 achieved, will be unfortunate for his reputation : the 
 contemporaries of his feeble government deny him 
 any ability whatever, and admirers he had none. 
 But to this judgment the station he held is a suf- 
 ficient refutation. A fortunate concurrence of cir- 
 cumstances may give the highest honours to one 
 not possessed of the highest talents, but no plebeian 
 ever acquired political distinction in England without 
 talent which would have rendered him eminent in 
 an ordinary station. 
 
 These two members of the house of commons 
 were the most prominent acquisitions of the Tory 
 party in that assembly. On the Whig side there 
 are higher names to introduce. 
 
 The Honourable Charles Grey was by far the 
 most valuable of the recent acquisitions to the Whig 
 party. Descended of an old Norman family which 
 had produced many men illustrious in the field and 
 in the senate, heir to the large possessions of his 
 house and to the parliamentary interest these gave, 
 and possessed talent of a very high order, Charles 
 Grey commenced his career with every advantage 
 that could promise success. In 1786, soon after he 
 had become of age, the accession to the peerage of the 
 Earl of Beverley left a vacancy in the representation 
 of Northumberland. This was the county in which
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 389 
 
 the interest ot his family peculiarly lay, and Mr. CHAP- 
 Grey was returned without opposition. Upon en- ^ j^ ^ ^^ 
 terin^ the house of commons he placed himself 
 behind the bench whence Fox and Burke and She- 
 ridan spoke to present and to future ages. He had 
 arrived upon the arena of party contest, at a time, 
 when Toryism was growing more faint in the coa- 
 lition, and when the zeal of opposition gave a daily 
 increase to the vigour of Whiggism. He attached 
 himself especially to Fox, and when he made his first 
 essay as a speaker, which he did in the debate on 
 the treaty of commerce with France, he received a 
 high and merited comphment from his political 
 chief.* This speech appears to have established 
 his im}X)rtance with his party. We find him, soon 
 after, taking a conspicuous part in the debate upon 
 the Prince of Wales's debts, and calling forth the 
 immediate attention and reply of the minister. From 
 this time he appears in every debate of importance, 
 zealous in the cause he had espoused, and forward 
 upon every occasion where a M'hig principle could be 
 asserted. He was listened to with respect by the 
 house, and cherished by the older chiefs of his party 
 as a valuable ally and a worthy successor. 
 
 The admiration of J'ox and the attentions of 
 Burke were not inisphifcd. 'J^he character of a 
 
 ♦ Pari. Hi>t., vol. xxvi,, col. 171—607.
 
 A.D. 1790. 
 
 >JK) THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, politician cannot be finally judged while ho exists; 
 
 A V I. ^ 
 
 but if the general voice of his contemporaries can 
 avail with posterity, the historian of a future gene- 
 ration will point to Grey as a name second to none 
 among the best and most illustrious of England's 
 ministers. An undeviating consistency of prin- 
 ciple which none of the lights of the last generation 
 could boast, a solidity of character which many of 
 them so lamentably wanted, unremitting assiduity in 
 his attendance in parliament, and a persevering zeal 
 in the service of his country ; these are qualities 
 which entitle him to our unqualified respect, and call 
 for a repetition of the applause which was drawn from 
 us by the patriotism, the steadiness, and the con- 
 sistency of the Byngs. But Grey added the high 
 talent, the power of oratory, the political empire, 
 which they did not possess, and compels our admira- 
 tion as strongly as our reverence. But we are too 
 near the events of this statesman's career to estimate 
 his character with confidence. If we would view a 
 temple correctly, we may not stand beneath its 
 shadow. 
 
 Similar to Charles Grey in ability, but differing in 
 every other characteristic, was William Wyndham, 
 who sat by his side upon the opposition benches, and 
 now shone as one of the minor stars in the Whig 
 firmament. Wyndham inherited a small patrimony 
 in Norfolk, and after Eton, Oxford, and a course of
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 THE IIISTOIIY OF PARTY. 391 
 
 travel had entitled him to be ambitious, he applied CHAP. 
 
 XVI 
 
 himself to acquire notoriety as an opponent of the 
 North administration. Zealous in any cause he un- 
 dertook, and warm and violent in his temperament, 
 he was soon successful. At county meetings, and 
 at public dinners, from the hustings at elections, 
 from the tops of carts and waggons, at popular as- 
 semblies in town and in country, Wyndham poured 
 forth his indignation against the robbers of our 
 rights, and the spoilers of our wealth, the cor- 
 rupters of our constitution, and the despots of our 
 people. 
 
 These oratorical exercises were interrupted by a 
 design of visiting the North Pole. An expedition, in 
 which Nelson took part, was at this time, despatched 
 by government. Wyndham accompanied it, but 
 finding the sea sickness intolerable, he was put on 
 shore in Norway, and returned home in a Greenland 
 whaler. 
 
 In 1782 Wyndham was returned to parliament 
 for Norwich, and, consistently with his former decla- 
 rations, took his station among the AVliigs. Here 
 he soon discovered that he had profited by his prac- 
 tice of public speaking. In the words of Earl Grey, 
 he appeared "a man of great, original, and com- 
 manding genius, with a mind cultivated with the 
 richest stores of intellectual wealth, and a lancy, 
 winged to llic highest flights of a most ciptivnting
 
 A.D. 1790. 
 
 3(jO THE IIISTOllY OF I'ARTY. 
 
 CHAP, iniao-ory."* This, however, must be received witli 
 ^I!: abatement as a posthumous panegyric. He had cer- 
 tainly an eloquent although a very metaphysical 
 style of speaking ; but his reputation and his oratory 
 were the result of some experience and practice in 
 
 the house. 
 
 In 1783 Wyndham was appointed principal secre- 
 tary to the Earl of Northington, who was then lord 
 lieutenant of Ireland. The government of Ireland 
 was, at that time, understood by both parties to be 
 the proper theatre of unquestioned jobbing and cor- 
 ruption. When about to leave England he called 
 upon his friend Dr. Johnson, and in the course of 
 conversation, lamented that his situation would com- 
 pel him to sanction practices he could not approve. 
 "Don't be afraid, sir," replied the doctor, *' you 
 will soon make a very pretty rascal." Wyndham 
 was much esteemed by Johnson, for he was a 
 thoroughly accomplished man ; his mind was stored 
 with the most varied information, and his conver- 
 sation was perfumed by the sweets he had collected. 
 
 Johnson was accustomed to say, that even in the 
 regions of literature (he meant London) Wyndham 
 was inter sfellas Luna minores ; and many other of 
 his contemporaries, have testified to the extent of his 
 acquirements. t 
 
 * Gentleman's Map., vol. Ixxx. ham (prefixed to his Speeches) — 
 f Amyot's Memoir of Wynd- Gent. Mug., vol. kxx.
 
 A.D. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 393 
 
 111 health, or as his biographer would insinuate, CHAP. 
 conscientious scruples, caused him to resign his 
 secretaryship, and, in the following year, he appears 
 in the house of commons seconding Burke's motion 
 for a representation on the state of the nation. 
 Henceforward we find him frequently taking part 
 in the debate, not concentrating the attention of the 
 house — for what star could hope for admiration in a 
 hemisphere where so many rival suns were already 
 raining light? — but gradually making his way up- 
 wards, and speaking with ability and effect. 
 
 To this parliament also, was returned Samuel 
 Whitbread, who soon proved himself no mean acqui- 
 sition to the Whigs. He was born in 1758, the son 
 of a rich brewer of London, and was educated at 
 Eton and Oxford. He made the tour of Europe 
 under the tutelage of the celebrated William Coxe, 
 whose biographical labours have been so frequently 
 quoted in these pages, and who afterwards dedicated 
 one of his works to his pupil. Soon after his return 
 to England, he married the daughter of Sir Charles, 
 afterwards Earl Grey, and was at once enrolled 
 among the Whig aristocracy. During the general 
 election of this year, he became a candidate for Bed- 
 ford, in which borough and county he possessed 
 large landed property ; and, after a sharp contest, 
 he was returned. His elo(juence was by no means
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 391 THE IIISTOIIY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, brilliant, but liis speec-lies were replete witli fact and 
 
 XVI. 
 
 argument : lie addressed himself to the judgment of 
 
 his hearers, and he succeeded in convincing them, 
 because he made it evident that he was himself 
 convinced. 
 
 Erskine's name can no longer be delayed : it must 
 have appeared long ago, had the house of commons 
 been the chosen scene of his triumphs. The Ho- 
 nourable Thomas Erskine, third son of the Earl of 
 Buchan, was born in the year 1750. In his youth, 
 he appears to have manifested all the impetuous en- 
 thusiasm which marked his later character. He 
 entered with ardour into the naval service, to which 
 be had been brought up, and outstripped the rules 
 of the service in the rapidity of his promotion. But, in 
 his 1 8th year, he grew disgusted with the navy and 
 obtained a commission in the army, proceeded with his 
 regiment to Minorca, and served there for three years. 
 An imprudent marriage,* and a very restricted fortune, 
 left him neither taste nor opportunities for pursuing 
 
 * The contemporaneous exam- his wife's. Then let him be called 
 pies of Scott and Erskine appear to the bar ; he cannot fail to sue- 
 to countenance the advice given ceed." Erskine and Scott were 
 by Thurlow to a father who asked placed at once in the proper pre- 
 thc chancellor's advice as to his dicament, without the trouble and 
 son's education for the bar. " Let delay attendant upon spending tlie 
 your son," said Thurlow, "spend two fortunes, 
 his own fortune, marry, and sj)end
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 395 
 
 this his second profession. In 1772 he returned to chap. 
 
 . . . XVI. 
 
 England, and resided for some time in London, 
 
 where he speedily became distinguished in society. 
 In the company of Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds, and other distinguished characters who were 
 accustomed to assemble at the house of Mrs. Mon- 
 tague, he tested his own powers ; and among these 
 celebrated men, he attracted, says Boswell, par- 
 ticular attention. It is said that the advice of his 
 mother determined him ultimately to apply himself 
 to the law. The custom which prevails at Cam- 
 bridge, of granting a very early degree to the con- 
 nexions of noblemen, shortened Erskine's road to the 
 bar ; he was called in the year 177^> and, unlike 
 nearly all of his illustrious predecessors in the same 
 career, immediately started into practice. An ac- 
 quaintance with Captain Bailey, then under prosecu- 
 tion for a libel, placed in his hand a case of considerable 
 public interest, and the use which Erskine made of 
 this opportunity established his reputation. His 
 speech on this occasion, in the lucid order of its 
 arrangement, the intimate admixture of argument 
 and passion, the energy of its language, and the 
 vehemence of its invective, yields to none of those 
 masterpieces which emanated from him in the zenith 
 of his fame. 
 
 The re})utati(»n he accjuired by this first effort was 
 sustained by his ;iftor prrffirmanccs. in all ronstitu-
 
 396 
 
 Tin: HISTORY or party. 
 
 A.D. i7yo. 
 
 CHAP, tional cases, whore the liberty of the subiect was in 
 XVI. , . , , , 
 
 . danfT-er or the Hlx^l law ot the judges was to be de- 
 nounced, Erskine was retained, and the courts of 
 Westminster Hall teemed with the triumphs of his 
 eloquence. 
 
 Upon the formation of the coalition ministry he 
 was introduced by Fox into parliament for the trea- 
 sury borough of Portsmouth, and throughout the 
 contest upon the India bill, he strenuously supported 
 his political patron. It soon, however appeared that 
 the house of commons was not his element. The 
 splendid declamation which had aroused the passion 
 and led captive the judgment of juries, was heard 
 with indifference by men accustomed to the voice of 
 eloquence ; he no longer carried his audience with 
 him, and his confidence and his powers together fell. 
 Upon the dissolution which followed Pitt's assumption 
 of the government Erskine surrendered his seat; nor 
 does he again appear as a speaker in the house of 
 commons until after the meeting of the parliament, 
 which was now in process of election. 
 
 The services of Erskine to the Whig party, and 
 these were many and great, were performed rather in 
 the courts of law than in the house of commons. To 
 his defences against prosecutions for libel, and espe- 
 cially to his speech in defence of the Dean of St. 
 Asaph, which Mr. Fox repeatedly declared to be the 
 finest argument in the English language, we hold
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY.' 397 
 
 the universality of the feeling which forced through chap. 
 the legislature Mr. Fox's Libel bill. His proudest ^ ^ ^^^^ - 
 position was as a Whig advocate : to see him in his 
 pride of place, he should be viewed as the defender 
 of those mistaken patriots with whose blood Pitt at- 
 tempted to celebrate his full alliance with Toryism. 
 
 The democratic party which clamoured without, 
 had also acquired increase of strength and additional 
 leaders. The leaders, or rather the organs, of this 
 party, are usually either calculating knaves, or reck- 
 less enthusiasts. Wilkes, the first of the race who 
 now proceeded through the hissings and groans of 
 the multitude to the hustings in Covent-garden, to 
 vote for Hood and Tooke,* was an unmitigated 
 scoundrel. Home Tooke's honest enthusiasm was 
 beginning to ebb, and there was rather a suspicious 
 sediment left when it vanished. Cartwright proceeded 
 as he had commenced, intent upon the one object of 
 his life, the one idea which perpetually possessed him, 
 the absolute right of personal representation. John 
 Jebb, whom Cartwright valued as the friend of his 
 bosom, and proposed as the pattern of his conduct,! 
 had espoused the same theory, and pursued it with a 
 zeal equal in pur})osc, although not in efficiency, to 
 the dogged perseverance of the great reformer. 
 Thelwall, who having In early life passed through 
 
 • Mrs. Sheridan's LctU-r to lier Ilusliami, pnitcd in Moore's Life 
 ofSlu-ridan. f Life of Major Cartwriglit.
 
 398 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 A. D. I7f)0. 
 
 CHAP, the various situations of a shopman, a poet, an actor, 
 
 AVI, 
 
 a tailor's apprentice, and an attorney's articled clerk; 
 and who, during all these transitions, had continued 
 a determined Tory, renounced his Toryism, and 
 brought the aid of his activity and inflexible resolu- 
 tion to the same cause. Gerald — poor Gerald ! the 
 favourite pupil of Dr. Parr, the elegant scholar, 
 skilled in the sciences, gifted with eloquence, 
 thoughtless, generous, and unsuspicious, who spent 
 his talents as he dissipated his fortune ; he also 
 fixed his enthusiasm upon the new creed. Muir, 
 Palmer, Skirving, Margarot, Hardy, and many 
 others, might be enumerated as eminent either for 
 the influence they possessed, or the persecution 
 they suffered.* 
 
 Such were the three divisions of politicians who, 
 at the meeting of the parliament of 1790, stood 
 prepared to renew the contest. This parliament, 
 elected during the alarm, inspired by the successes 
 of the French, soon proved themselves, by their 
 votes, as favourable to the minister as the last. 
 
 Within a few days of the meeting of the parlia- 
 ment, Burke put forth his celebrated work, the 
 *' Reflections upon the French Revolution;" the work 
 in which he proclaimed aloud his diflerence with his 
 party, and made his defence before the country. 
 
 * There is considerable in- formers collected in the rcceiitly- 
 formation npon these early re- published Life of Thehvall.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 399 
 
 All that extreme care, highly-polished style, and ^^^\^' 
 vivid imagery, could accomplish was effected ; no- ^ ^ 1790. 
 thing that genius, knowledge, or observation, could 
 supply was omitted, to give popularity to this work. 
 Its success was equal to the author's hopes, 30,000 
 copies were sold in England alone. Nearly all the 
 crowned heads in Europe awarded him their thanks. 
 The Emperor of Germany and Catherine of Russia 
 sent their ministers to express their approbation. 
 Stanislaus of Poland sent him his likeness on a gold 
 medal. And George III. had a number of copies 
 bound, and distributed them among his friends, say- 
 ing, ** That it was a book which every gentleman 
 ouo-ht to read." — Such are the honours in store for 
 those who advocate the right divine of kings. 
 
 It may still, however, be questioned, whether this 
 work was very advantageous to the party for whom 
 it was written. It was well calculated to kindle or 
 sustain the enthusiasm of the Tories ; readers, whose 
 zeal reiuired no spur: it may, perhaps, have fright- 
 ened a few timorous Whigs. But it called forth in 
 answer the ''VindicicpGaUiccp" and the "Rights of 
 Man ;" the first the offspring of an intellect that 
 mi<rht stand unabashed even before that of Burke ; 
 the last, a fountain of evil, whose poison would pene- 
 trate where J]urk(;'s antidote could not follow. To 
 an inquiring Whig, whose head was dizzy with the 
 o-orcrcousness of the reflections, the answer of Mr.
 
 400 THE IllSTOUY OF I'ARTY. 
 
 CHAP. JMackintoj^h was a sufficient restorative ; but the ras^- 
 
 XVI. _ _ ' ^ 
 
 \ y. god deinocratfi, to whom, in tens of thousands, the 
 
 " Rights of ]\Ian" was distributed, knew nothing of 
 the *' Reflections" beyond its title, while they greedily 
 devoured the licentiousness and impiety it had called 
 forth.* 
 
 Fox and Sheridan every where expressed their 
 disapprobation of the principles defended by Burke. 
 The feebleness of the tie which bound Burke and 
 Fox together, was manifested during the first session 
 of the new parliament. When a violent petition, 
 reflecting upon the constitution of the house of com- 
 mons, was presented from Home Tooke, Burke was 
 the first to call for punishment upon the libeller, and 
 could hardly be restrained by Pitt from making 
 some intemperate motion upon the subject.! The 
 occasion of the introduction of a bill to repeal some 
 of the sanguinary statutes which inflicted the pe- 
 nalties of high treason upon Catholics, discovered 
 Fox and Burke at variance upon the principles of 
 toleration ; Fox maintaining that a state had no 
 right whatever to inquire into the religious opinions 
 of the subject on any occasion, and Burke asserting 
 that it had an uncontrollable superintending power 
 
 * A common toast at the club to Mr. Burke for the discussion he 
 dinners at this time was, " Thanks has provoked." 
 f Pari. Hist., vol. xxviii., col. 921.
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 401 
 
 in all cases and on all occasions.* Burke was now, chap. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 having made one move backwards, gradually re- - 
 treating at all points, and apparently seeking an 
 opportunity of open quarrel. This, the AVhigs took 
 a method of avoiding. Fox never scrupled to ha- 
 rangue in favour of the French revolution ; in the 
 debate upon Mr. Baker's motion respecting the 
 armament against Russia, he declared that he 
 admired the new constitution of France, and con- 
 sidered it altogether as the most stupendous and 
 glorious edifice of liberty which had been erected on 
 the foundation of human integrity, in any time or 
 country.! Burke, upon this, as upon other similar 
 occasions, rose to reply, but his voice was imme- 
 diately drowned in loud cries of question from the 
 opposition benches, and after a vain attempt to 
 obtain a hearing, he was obliged to give way to the 
 division. 
 
 From this moment an explosion, although it might 
 be procrastinated, could not bo avoided. There 
 was in the conduct of Burke, as Fox justly re- 
 marked, " manifest eagerness to seek a difference of 
 opinion and anxiety to discover a cause of dispute." 
 The debates upon the Quebec (iovernment bill ; 
 a bill which settled the constitution of Canada, fur- 
 
 • Pari Hist., vol. xxviii.. col. f Pail. IIi»t.. vol. xxix , col. 
 
 1JJ73. '249. 
 
 VOL. in. '2 U
 
 i'0'2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, nished the occasion. Fox objected to many por- 
 — — r tions of the bill, especially to that which introduced 
 
 A. D, 1790. ^ •' 
 
 into the Canadian legislature an estate analogous to 
 our liouse of peers. Such a question naturally intro- 
 duced a discussion of the principles of government. 
 On the morning of the 21st of April, the day ap- 
 pointed for the recommitment of the Quebec bill, 
 Mr. Fox, for the last time, paid Mr. Burke a visit 
 accompanied by a common friend. Mr. Burke talked 
 over with them the plan of all he intended to say, 
 opened the different branches of his argument and 
 explained the limitations which he meant to impose 
 on himself. Fox in return, entered with candour 
 into a statement of the prospects of the Whigs and 
 of circumstances which appeared to promise them a 
 return to office.* The two friends walked down to 
 the house together, where they found that Sheridan 
 
 * Tlie newspapers of the day advantage to the country, Burke, 
 
 had stated, that while the subject in his appeal from the new to the 
 
 of the Russian armament was old Whigs, cites a passage from 
 
 under discussion, the king had the " Argus " to this effect, with- 
 
 been heard to say, that he was out confirming or denying it : but 
 
 not so wedded to Mr. Pitt, as not it is vei-y improbable. If true, it 
 
 to be very willing to give his con- conveys one of the most severe 
 
 fidence to Mr. Fox, if the latter reflections yet cast upon the cha- 
 
 should be able, in a crisis like the racter of George III, Was he so 
 
 present, to conduct the govern- ready to abandon the patriot he 
 
 ment of the country with greater had debauched ?
 
 A.D. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 403 
 
 had adjourned the debate.* Upon its resumption, CHAP, 
 at an after date, it appeared from some observations 
 made by Mr. INIichael Angelo Taylor that the 
 Whigs were still determined to prevent Burke from 
 speaking on the French revolution. He, never- 
 theless, commenced the speech he had prepared, but 
 was immediately interrupted by the members by 
 whom he was surrounded, and who, at the conclusion 
 of every sentence, rose one after the other to call 
 him to order. Persevering in spite of these inter- 
 ruptions, a formal motion was at length made, that 
 dissertations on the French revolution were irre- 
 levant to the question before the house. Upon this 
 motion the final separation between Burke and his 
 party took place. Fox supported the motion, and 
 accused Burke of favouring the insinuation which 
 had been made against him that he was an advocate 
 of republican principles. He set forth the absurdity 
 of friends, who agree upon all practical points, sepa- 
 rating upon a mere abstract and historical question. 
 He was sorry to find that his friend, wlio during the 
 American war, had declared that he- could not draw 
 a bill of indictment against a whole people, had since 
 learned to draw such a bill of indictment, and to 
 crowd it with all the tcM-hnical cpitlu^ts of abuse 
 which disgraced our statute-book. He had been 
 
 ♦ Aiimial Rpt?istfT 
 
 '^ \) '2
 
 A.D. 171)0. 
 
 401 THE HISTORY OF PAIITY. 
 
 CHAP, tauolit by his friend that no revolt of a nation was 
 caused without provocation ; he felt a joy ever since 
 the constitution of France became founded on those 
 same rights of man on which the British constitution 
 was founded, and not all the eloquence of his friend, 
 cither in writing, or in debate, could alter his opinion. 
 These sentiments he was prepared to defend when- 
 ever the house should set apart a day for the dis- 
 cussion, but he objected to the introduction of such 
 a debate in an incidental manner. 
 
 Fox having thus imitated the conduct he con- 
 demned, the house could no longer refuse to hear 
 Burke in reply. He commenced in a grave and go- 
 verned tone of voice. He complained that his words 
 and his conduct throughout had been misrepresented, 
 and a personal attack had been made upon hira from a 
 quarter he never could have expected, after a friend- 
 ship and an intimacy of more than two-and-twenty 
 years. Thence he burst forth into the subject which 
 had now so entirely possessed him, the French 
 revolution. The readers of history are already suf- 
 ficiently acquainted with Burke's opinions upon this 
 subject — it is the manner in which he made them the 
 cause of ru})ture with his party with which we have 
 now to do. Giving the reins to his passion, he 
 plunged with such reckless violence into the subject, 
 that, at last, his vehemence startled even himself, 
 and, stopping suddenly, he drew himself up in an
 
 A. U. 1790. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 405 
 
 attitude of calmness, and, addressino- the chairman, chap. 
 
 XVI 
 
 said, " I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak 
 the «-ords of truth and soberness." He then alluded 
 to his situation — standing in opposition to the friends 
 of a long life. He spoke of former differences, upon 
 the reform question especially. He had differed with 
 Mr. Fox upon several occasions ; but, in the course 
 of their long acquaintance, no one difference of opi- 
 nion had ever before, for a single moment, interrupted 
 their friendship. It certainly, he said, was indiscre- 
 tion at any period, but especially at his time of life, 
 to provoke enemies, or give his friends occasion to 
 desert ; yet, if firm and steady adherence to the Bri- 
 tish constitution placed him in such a dilemma, he 
 would risk all ; and, as public duty and public pru- 
 dence taught him, with his last words exclaim, " Fly 
 from the French constitution !'' 
 
 Here Mr. Fox said, " There is no loss of friend- 
 ship." 
 
 *' Yes," replied Burke, turning to confront him, 
 " there is loss of friendship. I know that is the 
 price of my conduct ; I have done my duty at the 
 price of myTriend. — Ourfn'endsliip is at an end.'' 
 
 So sudden, so violent a renunciation of an ancient 
 friendship, can only be accounted for by ascribing it 
 to an ebullition of temper, or a determination to 
 secede from an unprofitable ])arty. Modern writers
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 UK) THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, arc accustomed to reject all suspicion of interested 
 motives in statesmen, as illiberal. They extend to 
 them when dead the same courtesy which they main- 
 tain towards each other when alive, assuming that 
 they are indifferent to that which all other classes 
 most eagerly seek. But, protesting against so mis- 
 chievous a delicacy, we would not, nevertheless, re- 
 present Burke as materially influenced by pecuniary 
 interest. Disappointment and adversity had soured 
 his temper ; he complained, even in this speech, that, 
 latterly, Fox's visits had been rare and short, and his 
 confidence in him had been shaken. It could not 
 have been a sense of duty that caused him to declare 
 in public, "Our friendship is at an end;" for they 
 had differed before upon practical points, even upon 
 points which Burke deemed vital ; nay, Burke had, 
 himself, in deference to the opinion of his friend, left 
 the house when these were discussed ; yet, these 
 differences " never, for a single moment, interrupted 
 their friendship," a friendship which snapped with the 
 strain of a pettish word and a speculative opinion.* 
 Fox, when he heard himself included in the renun- 
 
 • Yet Burke could declaim any thing, superior to the love of 
 
 eloquently upon the subject of one's country, the animating soul 
 
 friendship. " It is," he said in whence originated every other 
 
 his speech against the abatement virtue." 
 of Hastings's impeachment, " if
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 40? 
 
 ciation which had before gone forth against Sheridan, chap. 
 was deeply affected. Manly as was his bearing, and ^ ^ ^,^^ 
 commanding as was his eloquence, Charles Fox was a 
 man of a warm heart and sensitive feelings. Upon 
 this occasion his voice faltered, and the house beheld 
 him shed tears as he attempted to recal the departed 
 friendship of his old associate. But as he proceeded 
 in his reply, he seemed to remember the absence of 
 all cause for the anathema pronounced ; he expostu- 
 lated with Burke for turning his eloquence upon his 
 party as well as upon his friend ; repeated his opinion 
 upon the French revolution, recapitulated the events 
 of the career they had pursued together, and con- 
 cluded by an offer of oblivion of the past, which was 
 conciliating, but by no means submissive. 
 
 Burke's rejoinder, repudiating all such pretences 
 of friendship, seemed to manifest an anxiety not to 
 spoil the quarrel, and was eminently successful. 
 
 When the breach became thus public and irrepar- 
 able, a meeting of the Whig party took place to 
 decide between the two chiefs, and in the Morning 
 Chronicle of the 12th of May, 1791, appeared the 
 following account of the decision : 
 
 " The great and firm body of the Whigs of Eng- 
 land, true to their princi})les, have decided on the 
 dispute between^ Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke ; and the 
 former is dc^clared to hav(i maintained tlic^ i)ure doo 
 trincs by which th(;y are bound together, and Lq)()n
 
 iOS 
 
 THE HISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. 
 XVI. 
 
 A. D. 1790. 
 
 ^vhic'h they have invariably acted. The consequence 
 is, that Mr. Burke retires from parhament."* 
 
 Burke did not retire from parliament, but he ab- 
 sented himself upon ordinary occasions, coming down 
 to the house occasionally to support any local or 
 petty amendment, or to oppose any enlarged measure 
 of reform. 
 
 * This paragraph is inserted as 
 a species of leading article, a fea- 
 ture in a modern newspaper which 
 was only beginning to appear in 
 that of 1791. Burke cites this 
 exposition of the sentence of the 
 party he had deserted, in his 
 " Ajjpcal from the new to the old 
 Whigs." We have seen, in the 
 course of this work, that no distin- 
 guished Whig has hitherto desert- 
 ed his party without appealing to 
 the old Whigs as the true Whigs, 
 
 and abusing the Whigs of his own 
 day. Burke is no exception. 
 Pulteney thought Walpole a de- 
 generated new Whig. Burke ap- 
 peals to Walpole as an old Whig, 
 and brings the charge of novelty 
 and degeneracy against Fox and 
 his friends. There have been 
 deserters since Burke's day who 
 would appeal to Fox as an old 
 Whig, and future generations of 
 apostates will probably find future 
 generations of old and new Whigs.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. '1*09 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Mr. Fox's Libel bill— Dismissal of Thurlow— Political clubs— Their 
 insignificance — Commencement of the Tory war for the re-establish- 
 ment of the Bourbons — Opposition of the Whigs — Mr. Grey's mo- 
 tion in favour of parliamentary reform — Prosecutions for high 
 treason against parliamentary reformei-s — Hardy — Home Tooke — 
 Thelwall — Secession of the Duke of Portland and his adherents — 
 Zeal of the apostate Whigs in the cause of Toryism — Prevalence of 
 liigh Tory sentiments among Pitt's followers — Death of Burke — Mr. 
 Grey renews his motion for parliamentary reform — Biographical 
 anecdotes of George Canning— Of Tierney — Of Sir Francis Burdett 
 — Corruption of Pitt's government — Mr. Grey's motion of 1798 — 
 Catholic emancipation question arising out of the union with Ireland 
 — Advocated by Pitt — Refused by the king — Resignation of Pitt. 
 
 In 1792 Mr. Fox succeeded in his attempt to CHAP, 
 restore the trial by jury in cases of libel, a privilege -7-3-^^ 
 of which the subject had been, for many years, in to 1801. 
 effect, deprived. Twenty years before a similar 
 attempt had been made by Burke, and had failed. 
 The Declaratory bill now passed the commons with 
 the approbation of Pitt ; escaping an insidious attempt 
 at amendment, by Sir John Scott, in the commons, 
 and the open opposition of Thurlow in the lords. 
 Thurlow made the modest ])roposition that, if the
 
 110 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, judge should be disscatisficd with a verdict of acquittal, 
 — '- '. — he should have power to order a new trial.* 
 
 A.D. 1792 ^ 
 
 to 1801. This was the only attempt in which Fox was, this 
 year, successful. When he proposed to repeal some 
 of the obsolete penal laws against the dissenters, 
 Curke objected that those people were little entitled 
 to the favour of parliament, as they held up the pro- 
 ceedings of the French as examples for imitation.! 
 In an amendment moved to the ministerial address 
 upon the proclamation against seditious doctrines, he 
 found many even of his own party, and, among others, 
 Wyndham, following in the trail of Burke, and voting 
 with the minister. 
 
 In the lords a singular scene occurred. During 
 the progress of a bill for continuing the sinking fund, 
 a bill which had met with no opposition from the 
 Whigs, Thurlow suddenly left the woolsack, loaded his 
 colleagues with every epithet of abuse, denounced the 
 bill, and, dividing the committee against its principal 
 clause, was beaten only by a majority of six. He 
 re-enacted the same scene in a debate upon a bill 
 for encouraging the growth of timber in the new 
 
 ♦ Pari. Hist., vol. xxix., col. ed Mr. Paine's book alibel on tlie 
 
 153G. There are few things more constitution of Great Britain, he 
 
 impudent than this upon record. would now observe, that he 
 
 t Annual Register. Fox, in thought Mr. Burke's book to be 
 
 reply to Burke's invectives against a libel on every free constitution 
 
 Paine, said, " He had before term- in the world."
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 411 
 
 forest, and was so violent and abusive that the seere- ^^^\^- 
 tary of state was compelled to rise to answer the ^^^^-[^ 
 lord chancellor. Pitt immediately offered the king to 1801, 
 a choice between the chancellor's dismission or his 
 own retirement ; and Thurlow, who had found that 
 Pitt had withdrawn all confidence from him, and who 
 probably relied on the favour of the king, was dis- 
 missed. 
 
 A proposition was now made to the Whigs to join 
 the cabinet ; but, since it was evident that the Tories 
 were to retain the majority, and Pitt the supremacy, 
 Fox refused to treat. 
 
 A notice given by Mr. Grey, that he would, in 
 the next session, bring forward a motion in favour of 
 parliamentary reform, had occasioned some conversa- 
 tion, in the house of commons, upon the subject of 
 political clubs — institutions which existed to an ex- 
 tent before unknown in England, and exercised an 
 influence unprecedented in our history. In these 
 assemblies the demagogues without and the ultra- 
 Whigs within the house met, and arranged all the 
 details of popular agitation. In I78O " The Society 
 for Constitutional Information" was founded by Ma- 
 jor Cartwright and Mr. Grey, and proposed, as its 
 object, the diffusion of such works as should afford 
 political information to the multitude, and arouse them 
 to the pursuit of parliamentary reform. " The Quin- 
 tuple Alliance," founded in 17SC\ was composed
 
 'l-l^ TIIIC HISTORY OF I'ARTY. 
 
 CHAP, of men who all soiiirht for anniuil parliaments and 
 XVII. . T, . . 
 
 — -— — universal suffraffe. This society numbered the Duke 
 
 A 1). 1792 » ^ ^ _ •' 
 
 to \^o\. of Richmond (or citizen Richmond, as he then took 
 pleasure in being called), among its members. Many 
 others sprang into being, or increased into im})ort- 
 ance, at the breaking out of the French revolution. 
 These associations were superseded in popular favour 
 by " The Society for Free Debate," which was esta- 
 blished in 1791, and which met in Coachmakers* 
 Hall, for the discussion of political and polemical 
 questions. At this debating club the most violent de- 
 mocratic doctrines were debated and approved of; and 
 speakers might be nightly heard eulogizing the most 
 frantic of the French revolutionists, and advocating 
 the execution of the French king. A general pas- 
 sion for oratorical display appeared to have taken 
 possession of the lower classes ; the debaters in 
 Coachmakers' Hall found imitators in every corner 
 of the metropolis, and the rooms in which they met 
 were always crowded by a propitious audience. Both 
 speakers and hearers being commonly persons without 
 property in the country, or influence beyond their own 
 society, naturally looked with longing towards the 
 state of France, where the ringleaders of the mob 
 were the ministers of the state. The influence of 
 these discussions was seen in the importance sud- 
 denly acquired by the " Corresponding Society," 
 which was originally an obscure club, composed of a
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 413 
 
 few mechanics and inferior tradesmen, set on foot by CHAP. 
 
 ' XVII. 
 
 Hardy, in 1792, and professing, as its object, the ^ 
 
 attainment of equahty, and the vindication of the to isoi. 
 rights of man. These revolutionary principles soon 
 obtained for the Corresponding Society an immense 
 accession of numbers and influence ; it ramified 
 throughout the kingdom, and, in a little time, there 
 was not a populous town in England which had not 
 a club in active correspondence with the parent 
 society. This society dispersed, in every hamlet, the 
 writings of Paine, levied contributions for mutual 
 defence, corresponded with the national assembly of 
 France, and ostentatiously published their proceed- 
 ings. The leaders avowed, as their practical object, 
 nothing further than annual parliaments and universal 
 suffrage ; but they were tampering with a power they 
 could not govern. The wishes of the major part of 
 their followers tended to anarchy and pillage ; and 
 the cry for annual parliaments and universal suffrage 
 soon became a demand for a national convention to 
 reform the constitution.* 
 
 This was a mere movement of the lower classes 
 which required to be watched, but was by no means 
 necessary to be feared. The few educated men whom 
 ambition, enthusiasm, or vanity had placed among 
 
 • Sec tlic State Trials of 1793-4. us from ruin ;" and indeed all the 
 Gerald's tract, called " A Con- democratic writings of tlio time, 
 vention the only means of Saving
 
 414. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, them, were reinarkablo excei)tions to the general 
 XVII. ' ^ 
 
 ^ ^ j^^^., ignorance, and were, in very few instances, exempt 
 to 1801. {'j'Qin the general poverty.* The middle classes of 
 England, the repository of the real power of the state, 
 abhorred alike the clubbists and their doctrines. The 
 disgusting cant of republicanism which appeared in the 
 writings and conversation of the democrats, led mo- 
 derate men to confound this nauseous affectation with 
 the genuine language of liberty, and to shun them both. 
 All desire for parliamentary reform ceased among the 
 
 * Even Burke, who was so 
 anxious to magnify the terrors of 
 revolution, and to draw from the 
 excesses of English democrats an 
 excuse for his own defection, some- 
 times betrayed his own contempt 
 for the power of these clubs. 
 Upon one occasion he calls them 
 low intriguers and contemptible 
 clubbists. In the opening of his 
 " Reflections," he speaks of the 
 " Society for Constitutional Infor- 
 mation" as a society whose pro- 
 ceedings have never been account- 
 ed, except by some of its members, 
 as of any serious consequence — a 
 poor charitable club ; and of the 
 " Revolution Society," as a club 
 of dissenters, who, until they were 
 noticed by the French national 
 assembly, had never occupied a 
 moment of his thoughts, nor, he 
 
 believed, of any person's out of 
 their own set. 
 
 To the same purpose I may 
 quote a very celebrated passage 
 from the same work. " The vanity, 
 restlessness, petulance, and spirit 
 of intrigue of several petty cabals, 
 who attempt to hide their total 
 want of confidence in bustle and 
 noise, and puffing and mutual 
 quotation of each other, makes 
 you imagine that our contemptu- 
 6us neglect of their abilities is a 
 general mark of acquiescence in 
 their opinions. No such thing I 
 assure you. Because half-a-dozen 
 grasshoppers, under a fern, make 
 the field ring with their importu- 
 nate chink, whilst thousands of 
 great cattle repose beneath the 
 shadow of the British oak, chew 
 the cud and are silent — pray do
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 415 
 
 middle classes ; Toryism never was so strong ; ^JlftT' 
 "Whiggism, nay democracy, never was so weak as ~]~^~[:^ 
 while Thelwall was haranguing from his tribune, to 1801. 
 Gerald declaiming among the friends of free debate, 
 and Condorcet congratulating the Corresponding So- 
 ciety, that the throne of George III., founded in 
 sophistry and error, was nearly sapped through by 
 republican truths. 
 
 The A\Tiigs strove in vain against the current. 
 Finding that their usual supporters among the people 
 were either rabid with republicanism or frighted into 
 Tory-ism, they attempted to concentrate their remain- 
 ing strength. For this purpose they established a 
 club, under the title of " The Friends of the People," 
 to which Mr. Grey, first of the influential Whigs, 
 gave in his adherence ; but which Fox, and some 
 others of the party rather reluctantly countenanced. 
 Amid the gusts of Toryism and democracy which 
 swept around her, it was not easy to keep the Whig 
 vessel precisely straight in her course. The Society 
 of the Friends of the people was the scene of many 
 discussions, nor did it survive through its first year 
 without several secessions. 
 
 not imagine that those who make though loud and troiiblcsomo iii- 
 
 the noise are the only inhabitants sects of the lioiir. 
 
 of the field ; that, of course, they " I almost venture to affirm, that 
 
 are many in number ; or that, not one in a l)undred amongst us 
 
 after all, they are other than the participates in the 'triumph' >^f 
 
 little, shrivelled, meager, hopping, tlx' Revolution Society."
 
 4lG 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. The commencement of the session of 1793-4 
 XVII. 
 occurred wliile tlic country was excited by the exr- 
 
 A.D.1792 / -^ 
 
 to 1801. pectation of war with France. The parties have 
 been remarkably consistent in their policy towards 
 that country. While she retained her old govern- 
 ment, the Whigs, from Russell to Chatham, waged 
 war to the knife against her, as the plague-spot of 
 despotism which threatened infection to Europe ; but 
 no sooner did she become a republic than their 
 enmity ceased, and now the fury of the Tories broke 
 forth. The speech from the throne gave a presage 
 of war, which was responded to with delight 
 throughout the nation, but which was heard with 
 rage by the democrats, and sorrow by the Whigs. 
 These last saw that the country was falling into the 
 temper which it was the minister's interest to excite ; 
 that Burke's contortions of horror had produced 
 some effect, and that the property classes, always so 
 easily terrified, were eager, at any sacrifice, to kindle 
 a fire between themselves and the object of their 
 fear. Burke, upon this occasion, put himself in the 
 van of the ministerial array. When Fox moved an 
 amendment to the address, importing that an am- 
 bassador should be sent to Paris, he appeared, for 
 the first time, upon the treasury bench. He looked 
 upon sending an ambassador to Paris, as a suing for 
 peace. " Yield to traitors to their king ? to a nation 
 of murderers ? Stain the illustrious pages of history 
 with such profanation and impiety ? May God, in
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 417 
 
 his infinite mercy, add vio^our to our arm, and enable CHAP, 
 us to check the encroachments of those monsters of 
 
 A. D. 1/92 
 
 society!'' Thus did Burke conclude a speech, which to isoi. 
 Mr. Courtenay who, after Sheridan, was the most 
 caustic of the Whig speakers, correctly analyzed as 
 consisting of three proportions ; first, that we were 
 at war with France ; secondly, that to send an ambas- 
 sador to that country would be suing for peace ; and 
 thirdly, that we ought to make war in order to exter- 
 minate the French metaphysicians. Windham and 
 several other members who called themselves Whigs, 
 but who had lately, with many expressions of re- 
 gret, voted upon all important occasions with the 
 Tories, inclined to the popular side. The speech of 
 Fox was desponding and apologetic. He would not 
 even venture upon a division.* ' 
 
 Recent circumstances had shown that the demo- 
 cratic clubbists had not all the elements of dis- 
 turbance upon their side. The Tories were not 
 behind their opponents in assembling in dinner- 
 parties and clubs. Riots had occurred at Bir- 
 mingham, at Cambridge, at Manchester, and at 
 other places. Church and king mobs had insulted 
 the dissenters, attacked their houses, and destroyed 
 their pro{)erty. Strip})cd of their popularity the 
 \Miig party was beconie again a mere nucleus, num- 
 
 • I'iirl. Hist., vdl. XXX. 
 VOL. III. '2 E
 
 418 TlIF HISTORY OF TARTY. 
 
 CHAP, beriiiff scarce sixty members in the house of com- 
 
 XVII. 
 
 mons. The arrival of the news of the murder of the 
 
 AD. 1793 
 
 to 1801. French king quickened the zeal of the Tories, 
 caused some dissension of opinion even among the 
 democrats, and utterly abashed the Whigs. When 
 the king declared in effect that the war in which we 
 had plunged, was a war of opinions, that it was " to 
 oppose an effectual barrier to a system which struck 
 at the security and peace of all independent nations" — 
 in other words, to a system of government without a 
 king. Fox and Sheridan protested ; but Burke 
 sneered at the smallness of their numbers, and they 
 could not venture to show their poverty by a divi- 
 sion. In the lords, Earl Stanhope appeared as 
 frantic a democrat as any in Paris. He loudly con- 
 demned the war, and refrained from all public disap- 
 proval of the execution of the king. He was the 
 sole representative of his party in that assembly. 
 The Whigs were not much more numerous. Lough- 
 borough had lefl his party, and vaulted at once into 
 the chancellor's seat, and the Duke of Portland and 
 many of his friends were only waiting an oppor- 
 tunity to follow his example. Lansdowne, Lauder- 
 dale, Derby, and Stanhope are the only names fre- 
 quently found as speakers in opposition to the war. 
 
 Before England was irrevocably committed in a 
 league with the kings of Europe to force the Bour- 
 bons back upon France, the Whigs determined to
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 419 
 
 enter a solemn protest against the projected crusade, chap. 
 On the 18th of February Fox brouo^ht forward five '- — ■ 
 
 . , A.D. 1792 
 
 resolutions, declaring that it was not for the honour to isoi. 
 or interest of England to go to war with France, to 
 suppress or punish any opinions or principles, how- 
 ever pernicious in their tendency, or for the purpose of 
 establishing in France any particular form of govern- 
 ment. That the complaints made against France 
 were not of a nature to justify hostilities in the first 
 instance. That negotiation had not been sufficiently 
 tried ; and that it was the duty of ministers to take 
 care that this country was involved in no engage- 
 ments which might prevent her from making a sepa- 
 rate peace, or compel her to continue the war for the 
 unjustifiable purpose of compelling the people of 
 France to submit to a form of government not 
 approved by that nation. 
 
 Fox enlarged upon the topics which these resolu- 
 tions introduced. Looking towards Burke, he said 
 that ministers had suffered themselves to be im- 
 posed upon and misled, by those who wished to go 
 to war with France, on account of her internal go- 
 vernment ; that while disavowing such a motive in 
 debate, they evidenced it by their conduct ; that 
 their negotiations had been illusory, calculated only 
 tor the public eye, while all their private endeavours 
 iiad been to render them abortive and to foment the 
 quarrel. Ho ])ointed to I*oland, lately seized upon 
 
 O I.' o 
 
 ^ Jrf -^
 
 dviO THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, by the despots of Russia, Austria, and Prussia. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 ^ — Enoland, diiriiio- this e^rco-ious act of rapine, stood 
 
 A.D. 1702 ^"" ^ o ft ^ 1 
 
 to it^oi. by unmoved ; for it was done by kings, it was only 
 against the minor irregularities of an infant republic 
 that she felt called upon to brandish her thunders. 
 He deprecated very strongly any thing so infamous 
 as our being supposed to be a party to the abominable 
 confederacy of kings now forming against France. 
 If we had quarrels, let us fight them by ourselves, or 
 if we were to have allies, let us keep our cause of 
 quarrel completely separate from theirs. Let us 
 never meddle with the internal concerns of the 
 French repubHc, nor burden ourselves with stipula- 
 tions which should prevent us from making a sepa- 
 rate peace, without the concurrence or approbation 
 of those sovereigns." 
 
 Pitt left his defence entirely to Burke, who poured 
 forth one of his usual shining and lava-like torrents 
 of abuse upon the conductors of the French govern- 
 ment. In Burke's speeches at this period, we see 
 none of that compass of mind which he was wont to 
 exhibit ; he appears in the debates as a man of one 
 idea, as an enthusiast unable to withdraw his mind 
 for one moment from the favourite object of its con- 
 templation. In reading some of these speeches, we 
 may occasionally suppose for a moment that we have 
 lighted upon some of the intemperate trash of Mr.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 4^1 
 
 Drake, or a similar orator,* until some passage of cHAP. 
 overbearing eloquence, some image of exquisite 
 
 ^ n . , . A.D. 1792 
 
 beauty, arrests the attention, and forces us to admit to isoi. 
 with regret that the speaker could only be Burke. 
 
 The debate called up Grey, who vindicated the 
 arguments of his friend from the misrepresentations 
 of Burke, Adam (who was an egregious example of 
 the efficacy of the coalition, in converting the Tory 
 followers of Lord North into Whigs), Jekyll, Mait- 
 land, Lambton^ and, lastly, Sheridan ; all of whom 
 directed their attacks against either Burke or Wind- 
 ham, as their most powerful opponents. The latter, 
 as Sheridan remarked, treated his friends with a sort 
 of French fraternity, and did them more real injury 
 than their open enemies. Of the avowed Tories, Jcn- 
 kinson was the only man having any pretension to 
 talent who came forward in the debate. Pitt and 
 Dundas were silent. 
 
 Upon the division, the numbers were 44 to 270- 1 
 
 • What, for instance, could be served, and the list is worthy of 
 
 in worse taste than his theatrical insertion, as an illustration of the 
 
 exhibition of the dagger, in the condition of the Whig party in the 
 
 debate upon the Alien bill. It is commons, 
 
 said by an eyewitness, that the Antonie, W. Lee. 
 
 house estimated this stage trick at Bouverie, Hon. E. 
 
 its proper value, and felt more in- Burch, J. R. 
 
 rlined to lauqh than to shudder. Baker, Wilham. 
 
 f The names of the minority Courtcnay, .1, 
 
 iipon this occasion have been pre- Coke, T. W.
 
 
 THE HISTORY OV rAUTY. 
 
 CHAP. It was in circumstances so adverse as these, that 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Mr. Grey undertook to resuscitate in the house of 
 
 A. D. 1792 •' 
 
 to 1801. commons the question of Parliamentary Reform. He 
 
 Coke, E. 
 Church, J. B. 
 Colhoun, W.- 
 Crespigny, J. C. 
 Ei-skinc, T. 
 Fox, C. J. 
 Fitzpatrick, U. 
 Francis, P. 
 Grey, Charles, 
 Hare, James. 
 Howard, Henry. 
 Hussey, W. 
 Harrison, J. 
 Howel, D. 
 Jekyll, Joseph. 
 Maitland, T. 
 Macleod, Col. 
 North, Dudley. 
 Plumer, W. 
 Powlett, W. Powlett. 
 Russell, Lord John. 
 Russell, Lord William. 
 Sheridan, R. B. 
 St. John, St. Andrew. 
 Smith, William. 
 Spencer, Lord R. 
 Sturt, Charles. 
 Taylor, M. A. 
 Taylor, C. 
 Thompson, T. 
 Vaughan, B. 
 
 Wycombe, Earl of. 
 Wyndham, P. C. 
 Whitbread, S. 
 NVilbraham, R. 
 Western, C, C. 
 Whitmore, T. 
 Wennington, Sir E. 
 Tellers. 
 Adam, W. 
 Lambton, W. H. 
 
 Many Whigs, however, who were 
 favourable to Fox's resolutions 
 were accidentally absent. Upon 
 comparing the lists of the minori- 
 ties, it is found that no less than 2 1 
 members who voted with Fox in 
 the minority of 50 upon the ad- 
 dress were absent upon this occa- 
 sion; the names of these members 
 are : 
 
 Aubrey, Sir John. 
 Bentinck, Lord Edward. 
 Bingham, Richard. 
 Byng, George. 
 Cavendish, Lord G. A. II. 
 Damer, H. 
 Edwards, J. N. 
 Fletcher, Sir Henry. 
 Grenville, Thomas. 
 Harecount, John. 
 Jervis, Sir John.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 423 
 
 was appointed to this post of honour by the society ^^-f-^- 
 of the friends of the people, and the prayer of the 
 
 A. D. 1792 
 
 petition upon which he founded his motion may be to I80i. 
 looked upon as a declaration upon which the general 
 body of the AMiigs were agreed. This prayer ran 
 thus : 
 
 " That your honourable house will be pleased to take such measures 
 as to your wisdom may seem meet, to remove the evils arising from the 
 unequal manner in. which the different parts of the kingdom are ad- 
 mitted to participate in the representation. To correct the partial dis- 
 tribution of the elective francliise, which commits the choice of repre- 
 sentatives to select bodies of men of such limited numbers as renders 
 them an easy prey to the artful, or a ready purchase to the wealthy. 
 
 " To regulate the right of voting upon an uniform and equitable 
 principle. 
 
 " And, finally, to shorten the duration of parliaments, and by removing 
 the causes of that confusion, litigation, and expense, with which they 
 are at this day conducted. To render frequent and new elections what 
 our ancestors at the revolution asserted them to be, the means of a 
 happy union and good agreement between the king and the people." 
 
 Mr. Grey declined to bring forward any specific 
 plan of reform, and moved only for the appointment 
 of a committee. A debate of two days' duration 
 ensued ; a debate interesting chiefly from the for- 
 
 Lee, Anthony. Stuart, John Shaw. 
 
 Milton, Viscount. Tarleton, B. 
 
 Martin, .lames. Wharton, .lohn. 
 
 Mihu-s, U. S. Whilmoic, Thoinii>i.
 
 4'24 TIJE IIISTOllY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, titude with wliicli a mere handful of Whites bore up 
 XVII. . .... 
 
 against the overvvhohnino- majority of Tories, and the 
 
 A.D. 17f)i 
 
 to 1801. eloquence with which Fox, Sheridan, Grey, Cour- 
 tenay, and Whitbread bore back all the eloquence of 
 their apostate opponents. But what cared Pitt for 
 charges of apostacy, while he could look around upon 
 the numbers who cheered him in his avowal, and 
 eulogised his infamy — while Burke sat by his side, 
 and Yonge, with a long train of inferior deserters, 
 felt that his cause was their own. No one who 
 reads this debate, without turning to the division, 
 could imagine that the eloquence which convinces 
 him proceeded from a party consisting only of 43 
 members, while that which was employed in the 
 defence of corruption, came from a majority of 284, 
 nearly the whole of this being contributed by 
 apostate Whigs.* The cause of Whiggism was 
 now desperate indeed. 
 
 Pitt, however, was still unsatisfied. Having 
 given himself to the kings of Europe, he thought 
 that nothing had been accomplished, while a voice 
 could be raised against his efforts to work their will. 
 The king, the parliament, the frightened people 
 were with him : the democrats were contemptible 
 from their fewness and their impotence, the Whigs 
 were annihilated. Yet while the grasshoppers were 
 
 * See this debate in the Pari. Hist., vol. xxx.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. "^^^ 
 
 still suffered to chirp beneath the fern, he could not CHAP. 
 
 ^ X V 1 1 . 
 
 think himself secure. The year 1794 gave him all -XTdTTtoT 
 he wished, placed the constitution in abeyance, and ^^ ^^^'^• 
 the liberties of his countrymen at his feet. With a 
 decision always necessary to successful tyranny, he 
 seized the leaders of the democratic clubs, closed 
 the debatino- societies in which fooUsh mechanics 
 harmlessly vapoured about equality, made spoil of all 
 their papers, and having cautiously collected all the 
 rubbish of resolutions and correspondence, placed it 
 with a ludicrous simulation of horror and alarm upon 
 the tables of the houses of parliament. A secret 
 committee of twenty-one of his trusty adherents 
 examined the mass, and although nearly the whole 
 of it had been many months before printed in all the 
 newspapers in the kingdom, they did not fail to dis- 
 cover in it much reason for consternation and proof 
 of projected rebellion. Scotland, where the law was 
 more tractable than in England, was the scene of 
 the first prosecutions ; the paid spies of the minister 
 proved the treasonable projects they had themselves 
 suggested, and they alone had ap^n-oved, and al- 
 though one of them was caught in the meshes of his 
 own net, and abandoned by his masters,* others 
 
 • See the correspondence be- the lord advocate, by whicli it ap- 
 
 iween Robert Watt and Mr. Dun- peared that Watt had failed in 
 
 Aiis.—Stnir 7V;rt/j», vol. xxiii., col. sonic of his attempts to sell his 
 
 l'.y22. And also the evidence of information.
 
 .[,26 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, were not wanting to succeed to the task. Gerrald 
 '■ — died in a transport ship, ruined in fortune, and heart- 
 
 A. D. 1792 
 
 to 1801. broken by long confinement with common felons ; 
 commending with his last breath, his infant daughter 
 to the protection of the friends of freedom ; others, 
 as guiltless as he, were exiled from their country, 
 and expiated their crime of advocating the reform 
 that Pitt once deemed so necessary, under the task- 
 masters of a penal colony — but the required sen- 
 sation was created, the Habeas Corpus act was 
 suspended, the gaols were filled with political delin- 
 quents, and no man who professed himself a reformer 
 could say, that the morrow might not see him a pri- 
 soner upon a charge of high treason. 
 
 What could the slender minority of Whigs do 
 against a power now grown so terrible. They 
 debated, they reasoned, they threatened, they at- 
 tempted all that their puny strength could justify, 
 but they were bent like twigs before the blast ; thir- 
 teen times they divided the house against the Sus- 
 pension bill, but the utmost number to which they 
 could raise their minority was 39, and even this 
 decreased as their opposition continued. But the 
 rush towards despotism against which the Whigs 
 could not stand, was arrested by the people. 
 Although the Habeas Corpus had fallen, the Trial by 
 Jury remained^ and now, as it had done before, when 
 the alarm of fictitious plots had disposed the nation
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 4^27 
 
 to acquiesce in the surrender of its liberties, it CHAP. 
 opposed a barrier which Toryism could not pass. 
 
 A. D. 1792 
 
 When the minister attempted to prosecute his poll- to 1801. 
 tical opponents to the death, it became necessary to 
 adduce evidence before an audience less tractable 
 than a house of commons, composed of the deputies 
 of men whom he had bribed with a peerage. Hardy 
 was the first selected for destruction. For nine 
 hours did Sir John Scott labour in an opening 
 speech to substantiate some charge of treason, 
 evincing by the nature of his exertions the poverty 
 of his case. Then came the proofs ; sufficient 
 proof of a design to levy war against the king 
 was sworn to by men who avowed themselves as 
 government spies, but their testimony received no 
 corroboration. Of all the witnesses called by the 
 attorney-general, upon a trial which lasted through 
 eight days, not one who possessed a credible cha- 
 racter could depose to a single important fact against 
 the prisoner. All their answers, upon cross exami- 
 nation, tended to prove that although the prisoner's 
 political views were visionary, yet his means of pro- 
 pounding them had been perfectly legal. The jury 
 acquitted him. 
 
 Home Tooke came next. Home Tookc, the early 
 friend of Pitt — with whom he had sat at the Thatched 
 House, and drawn up his own propositions of reform. 
 — He liad been seized upon in his old age, and was
 
 .[.^28 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, now brouoht forth from a (lamp dungeon to contend 
 
 ^^'^^' tor his life, liiit there was less proof against him than 
 A. D. i7yj , • IT 1 TT 1 
 
 to 1801, there had even been agamst Hardy, lie also was 
 
 acquitted. After two such checks the multitude 
 supposed that the ministers would have desisted from 
 the chase ; and when they heard that several indict- 
 ments had been abandoned, they thought the pro- 
 secutions were at an end ; but Scott still clung to 
 the hope that his spies might be believed. He had 
 obtained a knowledge of Thelwall's line of defence ;* 
 he had learned from this which of his own witnesses 
 could be discredited, and he hoped, with this chart, 
 to avoid the rocks upon which he had formerly split. 
 The grounds of accusation were much the same as 
 those alleged against Hardy and Tooke, with the 
 addition only of certain violent expressions which 
 were sworn to by two reporters, as the ministerial 
 spies were now delicately termed, but disbelieved by 
 the jury. Thelwall also was acquitted. 
 
 These trials caused many men to pause. Some 
 even of the active supporters of the minister could 
 not look \Yithout alarm at the dreadful jeopardy in 
 which these men had stood : accused by a power 
 which could command every facility for collecting 
 evidence, all the legal skill necessary for its arrange- 
 ment, all the eloquence by which it could be enforced ; 
 which moreover produced, by its accusation, a pre- 
 
 • Life of Thelwall, vol. i., p. 247.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 429 
 
 judice of the prisoner's guilt, and appeared almost CHAP, 
 omnipotent when arrayed against him ; it appeared ^^ 
 
 scarcely possible that any man who had ever inter- to isoi. 
 fered in pohtics could escape. Many men asked 
 themselves whether an Englishman should be put 
 through such an ordeal, upon the uncorroborated 
 report of a hired spy, or the occurrence of a ministe- 
 rial suspicion.. — The public joy was very general at 
 these acquittals.* 
 
 During the campaign against the parliamentary 
 reformers, the Whig party suifered a still further di- 
 minution — a diminution, however, which was rather 
 nominal than real. That section of the Whig party 
 which, headed by the Duke of Portland in the lords, 
 and Windham in the commons, had been, for some 
 time, withdrawing themselves from their party, at 
 length, urged forward by Burke, passed the rubicon, 
 and took office under the present Tor)^ minister. In 
 July, ]794<, the duke received a blue ribbon and the 
 office of the third secretary of state, with the manage- 
 ment of Ireland — the very office which Burke, as an 
 economical reformer, had succeeded for a time in 
 abolishing. Earl Fitzwilliam became president of the 
 council, and afterwards lord lieutenant of Ireland. 
 
 • For thcso trials and tlio facts wriglit," by his niece— and cspc- 
 
 conncctcd with them I have used cially the " Life of Thelwall." 
 
 " Tlie Sutc Trials," vols. xxii. to There is no fvill-lcngth report of 
 
 xxvi.— "The Life of Major Cart- the trial of Tlielwall.
 
 430 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Earl Spencer was lord privy seal, and, by an after- 
 - arrangement, first lord of the admiralty. Windham 
 
 A. D. 179-2 
 
 to 1801. was secretary at war. 
 
 Our prescribed limits must be indefinitely enlarged 
 were we to yield to the temptation so often presented, 
 of resting upon every brilliant passage of arms in the 
 house of commons. The recent desertions were, of 
 course, followed by many bitter accusations from the 
 remaining Whigs, and defended by many declara- 
 tions of disinterestedness from the deserters them- 
 selves. Sheridan attacked the seceders with merci- 
 less severity. The debates throughout the session 
 were replete with personal acrimony ; and Pitt was 
 not always perfectly successful in his defence of the 
 recent converts. 
 
 It has been sometimes asserted that Fox was, at 
 this time, the deserter ; and that the Duke of Port- 
 land, who was the acknowledged head of the party, 
 had a right to lead the Whigs to a coalition with 
 Pitt. The Duke of Portland had certainly been 
 looked upon as the nominal chief of the Whigs. As 
 an individual of the highest rank he had been put 
 forward by a party never insensible to the claims of 
 rank, as their prime minister ; but of all those who 
 thus readily yielded to the duke precedence in office. 
 
 ♦ It was upon this occasion that umphs, and rendered his best ser- 
 Erskine achieved his highest tri- vice to Whiggism and the Whigs.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 4<31 
 
 there was not one who thouo^ht that he was the man chap. 
 
 XVII. 
 to declare the sentiments or guide the conduct of the 
 
 ^ A.D. 1792 
 
 party. The Duke of Portland is indeed far more to I801. 
 deeply involved than either Burke or Windham in 
 the charge of desertion. In 1793, long after Fox 
 had opened his views upon the French revolution, 
 and Burke had seceded, Fox published his letter to 
 the electors of Westminster, explaining and justify- 
 ing his views. To this manifesto, which was chiefly 
 directed against Burke, the Whig club responded by 
 a resolution, "That their confidence in Mr. Foxw^as 
 confirmed, strengthened, and increased, by the 
 calumnies against him." In this resolution the Duke 
 of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam concurred,* while 
 others who dissented from the vote seceded from the 
 club. These noblemen, therefore, not only aban- 
 doned their party, but renounced their former opi- 
 nions. To contend that Fox was bound to follow 
 them in this renunciation is an evident absurdity. 
 
 In their subsequent conduct, the Whigs who now 
 seceded, manifested all the ardour of apostacy, and 
 soon discovered a proficiency in the doctrines of 
 Torj'ism which left Pitt far behind. If attempts 
 to destroy political opponents, by means of construc- 
 tive treasons, failed, it was Windham who stood 
 forth to brand the intended victims with the name of 
 
 • Burke's Observations on tho Conduct of flic Minority.
 
 43-2 THE HISTORY of party. 
 
 CHAP. " Acquitted Folons," and who joined Dundas in 
 xvii. 
 
 sigliing- for tlic more efficacious procedure of the 
 
 A.D. 17<V) 
 
 to 1801. Scotch courts. If the war with France was de- 
 nounced, it was Windham who threw off all disguise, 
 and boldly stated the real object of the war. " With 
 a government so feeble, so precarious, so insecure, 
 we can have no stability."* It was Windham and 
 his friends who emboldened Pitt to declare that " he 
 would not acknowledge such a government even to 
 treat with it.'* If a dependant of the minister, and 
 the organizer of Tory clubs, put forth a doctrine that 
 the government of England is a monarchy of the 
 ancient stock, which may go on in all its functions 
 without lords or commons, it is Windham, the secre- 
 tary at war, who steps forward to assert, that ** pos- 
 sibly it was wrong, but as far as he could judge, the 
 sentiment was innocent."t It was W^indham, the 
 seceding Whig, who stood forth to defend the ex- 
 humed absurdities of the Stuart Tories, and attempted 
 to do openly, what Pitt, more modest, was contented 
 to accomplish by a display of tactics — to retain the 
 author in the service of the government. 
 
 • Pari. Hist., vol. xxxii.,col. 15. conduct of this gentleman deprived 
 
 But the minority against the war liim of a peerage, 
 increased to 86, and even Mr. + See the Debate upon Reeve's 
 
 Banks, who never voted against Libel on the British Constitution, 
 
 Pitt but with extreme reluctance, Pari. Hist., vol. xxxii., col. 612. 
 was in the minority. The upright
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 433 
 
 Notwithstanding this accession of violent partisans, chap. 
 
 the war lost its popularity ; bread g-rew scarce ; — ^ '- — 
 
 • ^ ^ i ur A. D. 1795 
 
 commerce was crippled; the young republic put to isui. 
 forth resources that Burke* never dreamt she had 
 possessed, and the easy success that had been anti- 
 cipated, was replaced by reverses. t The people 
 clamoured and threw stones at the king, and Pitt 
 eagerly took advantage of their violence to tear 
 
 * It is very much the fashion eight milhons and a half, has al- 
 to extol the prescience of Burke ready swelled to the enormous 
 in that he foretold that great vio- sum of three hundred and ten 
 lence and bloodshed would follow millions ; the annual burden of 
 the revolution. But it is not suffi- taxes, customs and excise, wliich^ 
 cient for a prophet who deals at the same period, was no more 
 largely in predictions to be occa- than seven millions, cannot be 
 sionally right, and we cannot for- computed at less than twenty mil- 
 get that Burke spoke of the glory lions ; while the poor-rates, which, 
 and the power of France as gone, during the space of two hundred 
 and intimated that the next gene- years to the middle of the present 
 ration would listen with astonish- century, had been found to in- 
 ment to the tradition that French- crease only in a regular progrcs- 
 men had once been formidable sion of between four or five tliou- 
 cncmies. sand a year, have been swelled 
 
 f An extract from the address during the former part of the pre- 
 
 of the Corresponding Society re- sent reign by an annual increase 
 
 capitulates the results of Tory go- of between twenty and thirty thou- 
 
 vernmcnt in the year 1795. — "The sand, and, during the latter part, 
 
 national debt which oven at the of between fifty and sixty tliou- 
 
 commencemcnt of tlic jircsent sand pounds, 
 rt'ign amount»;d only to ciglity- 
 
 VOL. III. ^ F
 
 4.'3i TIIK HISTORY OF PAIITV. 
 
 CHAP, away the few shreds of the constitution which yet 
 
 XVI 1. 
 
 covered them. He brouoht forward the Seditious 
 
 A. D. 1795 
 
 to isui. j\Ieetino's bill, and the Treasonable Practices bill. 
 Bills which, among other provisions, placed the con- 
 duct of every political meeting under the protection 
 of a magistrate, and rendered disobedience to his 
 command a felony. These outrageous propositions 
 produced meetings and petitions throughout the 
 country, and the most stormy debates of the session 
 in parliament. Finding the ministerial majority 
 compact and unscrupulous. Fox declared, that if 
 those bills passed, and were enforced, " the pro- 
 priety of resistance, instead of remaining any longer 
 a question of morality, would become merely a ques- 
 tion of prudence."* Sheridan advised the nation 
 " to acquiesce in these bills only as long as resist- 
 ance was imprudent.'' t Grey asserted that " the 
 people should . only be induced to refrain from re- 
 sistance from motives of prudence." t And Whit- 
 bread assented implicitly to the opinion of Fox. || 
 Some of these Whig leaders explained away this bold 
 declaration, and spoke of the resistance they con- 
 templated as a passive resistance — the resistance of 
 the anvil to the hammer ; but Fox repeated his ex- 
 pression, and justified it in one of the most argu- 
 
 * Pari. Hist., vol. xxxii., col. 385, J Ibid., 387. 
 t Ibid., .386. II Ibid., 39.3.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 435 
 
 mentative and constitutional speeches, which even CHAP. 
 
 Ill IT • XVII. 
 
 he has bequeathed to posterity.* 
 
 ^ . . A.D. 1795 
 
 In the house of lords the sentiments of the majo- to isoi. 
 rity was well expressed by Dr. Samuel Horsley, one 
 of Pitt's bishops. This prelate admitted, that if any 
 man should be twice guilty of the crime of publishing 
 a work upon the representation, which should suggest 
 the general conclusion that the government was cor- 
 rupt, he would be under one of these bills liable to 
 transportation. But he could see no injustice in the 
 enactment, '* he, in fact, did not know what the 
 mass of the people in any country had to do with 
 the laws hut to obey them."" The minority in the 
 lords against the third reading amounted to 5, which 
 was increased by proxies to 7- 
 
 In the debates in the commons we now miss the 
 presence of Burke. In June, 1794, that great man 
 had retired from the house, and awaited his promised 
 peerage. This honour before so coveted, was, how- 
 ever, soon afterwards rendered valueless by the death 
 of his son, and consequently declined. The death 
 of this young man, whom Burke considered to have 
 inherited all his genius, and whom he hoped to place 
 in a far happier position for its development than he 
 himself had (!njoy(Ml, destroyed his most cherished 
 hope, and hift his life without an object. Upon 
 
 • In tlie (Jrbiiti- on tlie third col. 4'2'2. Tlio largest minorities 
 reading. — Pml. lint., \ol xxxii., npainst ilicso hills wen- 13 and 1.) 
 
 o I.- O
 
 'K>G THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CIIAI' retiring into private life, he found his affairs by 
 no means prosperous. A pension of 3700/. which 
 
 A. D. 1795 
 
 to 1801. he now received, was necessary to his comfort, but it 
 was loudly condemned in parliament. This pension 
 has been compared with that of Chatham.* Burke 
 was a great man, a man to whom much inconsistency 
 and error may be pardoned. Let us not dwell upon 
 his faults. But such comparisons are injudicious, — 
 they should never be made. 
 
 On the 8th of July, 1797> Burke died, leaving a 
 void among our public characters which has never 
 since been filled up. In those days there were 
 giants on the earth ; Burke was the first of these to 
 fall, and those who alone seemed worthy to contend 
 with him have since followed. The rising gene- 
 ration looks on the remains of these mighty minds as 
 upon the bones of the mammoth, and turns in vain 
 in quest of evidence that the race is not extinct. 
 
 While even that portion of the constitution which 
 protected personal liberty was suspended, it was to 
 little purpose to attempt to repair older breaches. 
 The question of Parliamentary Reform was suffered 
 to He dormant until the session of 1797* It was 
 then again brought forward by Mr. Grey, who pro- 
 posed a specific plan, having as its scope, to increase 
 the county representation, and the number of the 
 county constituency ; to divide the borough repre- 
 
 * Prior's Life of Burke.
 
 A. D. 1795 
 to 1801. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 4-37 
 
 sentation more equally throughout the kingdom ; to ^^^^' 
 extend the suffi-age to all householders ; and to - 
 render parliaments triennial. 
 
 The arguments advanced in the debate offer no- 
 thing especially worthy of notice ; they were gene- 
 rally on the side of the Whigs, such as Pitt had him- 
 self advanced when he was a reformer, with the 
 addition of instances of extravagance, jobbing, and 
 oppression, derived from the acts of his administra- 
 tion ; on the side of the Tories, they were such as 
 Lord North had used against Pitt, with the addition 
 also of topics derived from the democratic spirit pre- 
 valent in the nation. On the division the numbers 
 were, 2.56 to 91, showing some increase in the num- 
 bers of reformers, or at least some increase of interest 
 in the question.* 
 
 Among the members on both sides of the house, 
 who divided upon this question, there were several 
 who require some introductory notice ; there was 
 one who was almost worthy to fill the seat vacated 
 by Burke. George Canning had entered the house 
 of commons in 1793, and had now taken his natural 
 station in the house. 
 
 George Canning was the only son of a barrister of 
 good family but slender means, who having offended 
 
 • I'arl. Hist., vol. xxxiii., fol- hut Whigs and Tories were nlike 
 
 I'M. Tlic iniitiiiy at the Norc mianimoiis iti forwarding tlic niia- 
 
 occasioncd some parliamentary siircs r«'q\iisitp at tliis daiigcrou.s 
 
 proceedings during this session, rrisis.
 
 'l-i^S Tin: iiisrouv of pahty. 
 
 CHAP, his family by marrying a portionless wife, was dis- 
 carded with a pittance of 150/. a year. A specu- 
 to lyoi. lating disposition and improvident habits, quickly 
 dissipated this annuity ; the first birthday of* George 
 Canning witnessed the death of his father, who died 
 in penury and misery of a broken heart. The widow 
 and her infant were left in a state of utter destitution, 
 and the former was obliged for her maintenance to 
 attempt the stage. She appeared as Jane Shore, 
 but failing to satisfy a London audience, she was 
 compelled to accept provincial engagements, and, at 
 length, married a person of the same profession. In 
 youth she was beautiful and accomphshed. In after 
 life little more is known of her than that she re- 
 ceived, to the last hour of her existence, the most 
 assiduous and affectionate attentions of her illustrious 
 son.* 
 
 ' • Mrs. Hunn, for that was the 500/. a year, to which he was 
 
 name she acquired by her second entitled: he paid an annual visit 
 
 marriage, soon became a second to her at Bath, and made it a rule 
 
 time a widow, and settled at Bath, with which no engagements were 
 
 Her son took the earliest oppor- allowed to interfere, to write to her 
 
 tunity of withdrawing her from every Sunday. Even during his 
 
 the stage ; he applied to her sup- embassy to Lisbon, when there 
 
 port a considerable portion of the was usually an interval of several 
 
 means allowed him by his family weeks between the mails, the Sun. 
 
 for his college expenses, and when day letter was never omitted, and 
 
 he came forth to the world, his the packet frequently brought four 
 
 mother shared every success. At or five together. These letters 
 
 his retirement from the office of the delighted parent read with no 
 
 under secretary, in 1801, he little pride in tlie circle of her 
 
 settled upon her the pension of friends at Bath.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 439 
 
 The education of the infant was undertaken by chap. 
 
 the father's family, and George was placed at Eton — ^ '- 
 
 by the liberality of his uncle, and it is said, at the ' to i8ui. 
 recommendation of Fox. Here his surprising powers 
 were quickly developed : at the age of sixteen he 
 was not only one of the senior scholars, but the 
 scholar to whom no other boy in the school thought 
 it shame to yield precedence. When, in I786, the 
 Eton boys determined to put forth a periodical, the 
 general feeling voted George Canning for its editor. 
 Nor was that homage unworthily paid : a remark- 
 able purity of style and happiness of expression soon 
 distinguished those essays in the '* Microcosm" 
 which w^ere signed *' B.," and rescued that periodical 
 from the ordinary fate of the puerilities which issue 
 in vagrant numbers from our public schools.* 
 
 In his eighteenth year. Canning left Eton for 
 Christ Church, Oxford, where he fully sustained the 
 reputation that had preceded him from Eton. He 
 carried off several of the university prizes, any one of 
 which will build a little re])utation, and what was of 
 more importance, he cultivated the friendship of the 
 most able among his contemporaries. Among these 
 was young Jenkinsou, the son of the Earl of Liver- 
 pool. The intimacy between these two young men 
 became strict. The son of the nobleman could ap- 
 
 • .\ikI Sfunctinics from our uiiivrrsitics.
 
 'll-O THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, preciatc the genius of the commoner, who in return 
 
 XVII 
 
 discerned the talent, and bowed to the rank of his 
 
 A. D. 1795 
 
 to leoi. friend. In politics, however, they were altogether 
 opposed. Jenkinson adhering to the Toryism in 
 wliich he had been educated, and Canning espousing 
 Avith enthusiasm the cause of the Whigs. Jenkinson 
 preceded Canning in their entrance into public life, 
 and made his first essay with so much applause in the 
 house of commons, that Sheridan could not forbear 
 telling the house that great as were the talents of 
 the young speaker they had just heard, they were 
 about to be eclipsed by those of his friend who would 
 shortly appear upon their side of the house. 
 
 From Oxford Canning became a student of Lin- 
 coln's Inn, but he appears to have applied himself 
 more diligently to the practice of oratory in the dif- 
 ferent debating societies in the metropolis than to 
 the study of the law. At that time, the leaders of 
 the parties attentively watched the universities, and 
 lost no opportunity of enlisting talent in their ranks. 
 Canning had been known to Sheridan as a schoolboy ; 
 when he left the university, he was introduced by his 
 uncle to Fox, Burke, Fitzpatrick, and other leading 
 Whigs. What were the immediate intentions of 
 that party with regard to a man of whom every one 
 who knew him had already conceived such hopes 
 does not appear ; but while they were, perhaps, de- 
 liberating, Jenkinson was gently leading his friend
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 4-4 1 
 
 beyond their influence and discovering to him CHAP. 
 
 rS, • 1 XVII. 
 
 the honours and emoluments of office. The period ^ ^^^^ - 
 was favourable for the revisal of opinions; the toisoi. 
 Whigs were abandoning Fox in flights, and clat- 
 tering round his rival. Under the mighty shadow 
 of Burke's apostacy, a thousand ordinary deserters 
 might lurk undiscovered. An opportune message 
 from Pitt, desirinsr an interview, decided the 
 question ; Mr. Canning had an explanation with 
 Sheridan,* concurred in the pohcy which govern- 
 ment was pursuing, and took his seat for New- 
 port. 
 
 • It has been said that Sheri- unprofitable set of principles for 
 (Ian, with more individual friend- others more marketable, in other 
 ship than public honesty, under- words, of going over to the mini- 
 took to convince theyoung aspirant ster; and that Sheridan, after he 
 that Whiggism was productive of had listened to the communica- 
 nothing but empty fame and vul- tion with all due gravity, instead 
 gar admiration ; and that a poor of replying to the private ear of 
 man, if he would enter the house the querist, broke forth in a loud 
 of commons without ruining him- and humorous appeal to the lady 
 self, must become a Torj- and sup- hostess, demanding her judgment 
 port the minister. Anotlier story on a point of so much consequence 
 told upon the same subject is, that to the ciiaracter and consistency 
 at one of .Mrs. Crewe's suppers, of the scrupulous and conscicn- 
 wlierc all the W liigs and wits in tious young gentlem;ui wlio re- 
 town were accustomed to asseml)le, quested his advice. Niitlicr of 
 
 Canning having contrived to draw these anecdotes appear, however, 
 
 Sheridan aside into private con- to rest upon any adccjuate autho- 
 
 versation, formally consulted liim rity. 
 
 on the expediency of giving up an
 
 44'^ THE HISTORY OF I'AKTY. 
 
 CHAP. Throughout his first session Canning-'s attention 
 
 wii , ^ , "^ 
 
 was active and his attendance constant, but he never 
 
 A. D. 1793 
 
 to 1801. spoke ; he was employing himself in the acquisition 
 of a thorough knowledge of the forms of the house ; 
 and no opportunity, and many offered themselves, 
 could induce him to break his resolution. In Janu- 
 ary, 1794, he made his maiden essay in reply to Fox, 
 upon the subject of the King of Sardinia's subsidy, 
 and elicited applause which sustained but did not 
 increase his reputation. His oratory, however, im- 
 proved as his confidence became established, and he 
 soon became the greatest master of the declamatory 
 style of eloquence that modern times had heard. He 
 was a most able and entertaining speaker, with much 
 acuteness and even subtlety ; with admirable inge- 
 nuity, and powers of fancy perhaps never surpassed, 
 clothing his images in rich and even gaudy diction, 
 and casting all his language in sentences exquisitely 
 polished. With such powers Canning was able to 
 become an orator of the highest order: but this he 
 was not. An orator who remembers himself while he 
 is speaking can never persuade his audience to think 
 only of his subject ; there was, in Canning's oratory, 
 a striving after point, a sacrifice of argument to effect 
 a hurrying over the business parts of the speech, to 
 dwell upon passages of brilliancy, all of which tended 
 greatly to increase the admiration of the audience, 
 but did not contribute to their conviction. This was
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 443 
 
 a splendid specimen of the Asian style of eloquence, chap. 
 rich in ornament, delicate in tissue, and elaborately ~ ^ — 
 
 A. D. 1795 
 
 finished, but frequently containing very little sub- to isoi. 
 stance. No speaker could excel Canning in the 
 address with which he shaped his own case, and the 
 unscrupulous dexterity with which he exhibited and 
 contrasted the propositions to which he was opposed. 
 This declamatory style is little adapted for defence, 
 and Canning, therefore, was most brilliant when de- 
 livering a show speech in the house of commons, a 
 speech to dazzle the cross benches, and afterwards, 
 when distributed through the country, to allure the 
 many to admire his eloquence and believe his facts. 
 When the rough Whigs attempted to demolish his 
 airy fabrics, he had a ready and copious tide of wit to 
 pour around them, and abundantly stinging sarcasm 
 to launch against their assailants. 
 
 The character of Canning's oratory was, probably, 
 the produce of his situation, not of his taste. All his 
 early sympathies had been given to the cause of 
 liberty. All his boyhood's efforts had been made 
 upon that side. After-events discovered that these 
 early impressions were never entirely effaced. When 
 he found himself standing in the house of commons, 
 defending, or at any rate engaged to defend, any 
 measure upon which a Tory cabinet might resolve, 
 can we wonder that he avoided the strict lines of 
 argument, that he cultivated a skill lor weaving
 
 441" THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, beautiful meshes, or that his eloquence appeared to 
 ^ ^^^ ^^'^^ proceed only from his head when he could not ven- 
 to 1801. Jure to trust his heart. 
 
 I believe that, whatever may have been Canning's 
 opinions of the isolated acts which he advocated, he 
 had no love for the general principles whence they 
 sprung. Canning was the second Bolingbroke of 
 Toryism ; he was a Tory from position, but his fun- 
 damental convictions were those of a Whig. Of all 
 his party his eyes alone were opened to see the power 
 of the newly-evoked spirit of public opinion. To 
 him alone was it given to see that resistance to this 
 adversary w^as vain. He saw as Bolingbroke had seen 
 before, that the post which Toryism then held was 
 untenable ; and he dragged rather than led her to a 
 stronger point, a few paces in advance. But this 
 appeared afterwards, when he had a voice in the 
 deliberations upon the measures he defended — now 
 he implicitly followed the minister.* 
 
 As some counterpoise to the advantage gained by 
 the Tories in the accession of Jenkinson and Canning, 
 we may mention the acquisition of Tierney by the 
 Whigs. George Tierney was born at Gibraltar, in 
 I7GI, where his father was then resident as prize 
 agent, and whence he afterwards retired to Paris 
 
 • Life of Canning, by Dr. John Edinburgh Review, vols, xxviii. 
 Styles. Memoir by R. Therry, and xxxvii., &c. 
 Esq. Moore's Life of Sheridan.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 445 
 
 with a handsome fortune. George was educated at chap. 
 Eton, and at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where, in 1784, ^ ^ ^^'^^ 
 he graduated in laws, and whence he repaired to Lon- to isoi. 
 don, in order to apply himself to the study of the law. 
 Tiemey adds another to the continual instances of 
 men who have deserted the bar for the senate. The 
 death of three brothers afforded him the means of 
 gratifying his inclination towards politics. In I788 
 he contested Colchester, a borough renowned for the 
 ruinous nature of its contests, and an election com- 
 mittee reported that he was duly elected. In 1790, 
 however, the case was reversed ; his opponent was 
 returned, and Tierney's petition was voted frivolous 
 and vexatious. It was said that the Duke of Port- 
 land had engaged to defray the expense of this 
 severe contest ; but the arrangement being delayed 
 until the duke had changed is party, he chose to 
 forget his promise ; and when Tierney's agent at- 
 tempted to refresh his memory by means of a bill in 
 chancery, the chancellor stayed the proceedings upon 
 the ground of public policy. A sacrifice of twelve 
 thousand pounds was of some importance to a man 
 who did not look forward to retrieve his losses from 
 the public purs(\ Tiemey now confined himself to 
 pamphlet writing until the general election of 179^), 
 when he was invited to stand for South wark. lie 
 was beaten upon the poll, but ousted his antagonist 
 by a petition, and was at length fairly seated in the
 
 4i-6 TUF, IIISTOHY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, house of commons by the operation of the treating 
 act. 
 
 A. 1). 1795 
 
 to 1801. In private hfe Tierney is described, by one of his 
 noble friends, as dehghting his associates by his ever 
 ready and playful wit, and endearing himself by the 
 purity of his mind and the kindness and benevolence 
 of his heart.* In party he was a Whig of the Fox 
 school, equally removed from Toryism on the one 
 hand or levelling democracy on the other. In the 
 house of commons he was the shrewd and sagacious 
 man of the world. As a speaker he was exceedingly 
 original^ and singularly unostentatious. His speeches 
 were more like colloquial good sense spoken in a par- 
 lour than lofty or studied eloquence uttered in the 
 senate. His argument was generally sound ; but his 
 real power consisted in the cutting sarcasms which, 
 expressed in language level to the most ordinary 
 understandings, escaped from him as if he himself 
 were not aware of their terrible effect. Under these 
 the most haughty of his opponents frequently winced. 
 There was scarcely another man in the house of 
 commons who could provoke Pitt to descend from the 
 pedestal of his dignity .t 
 
 • Memoir in the New Monthly "Times" and other newspapei-s, 
 
 Magazine.for March, 1830, under- immediately after Mr. Ticrney's 
 
 stood to be from the pen of a dis- death in 1830 ; from the Annual 
 
 tinguished Whig nobleman. Obituary for 1830, and from the 
 
 t This sketch is derived from Memoir already quoted, 
 the notices which appeared in the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 447 
 
 Sir Francis Burdett also voted in the minority chap. 
 
 upon this proposition for reform. He had, when very ! — 
 
 young, become, somewhat unexpectedly, the inheri- to I801. 
 tor of the ancient baronetcy attached to his family ; 
 and, after the usual routine of education and travel, 
 he purchased, of the Duke of Newcastle, a seat for 
 Borouo-hbridofe. Sir Francis's first effort in the house 
 was made in seconding a motion made by Fox. His 
 present speech in favour of Mr. Grey's motion, con- 
 sisting chiefly of commonplaces upon liberty, was his 
 second effort ; but he does not appear to have attracted 
 any very great attention by his early speeches, until, 
 with a humanity and perseverance highly honourable, 
 he addressed himself to the exposure of the iniqui- 
 tous system of secret imprisonment under which 
 Pitt and Dundas had now filled all the gaols with 
 parliamentary reformers — men who were cast into 
 dungeons without any public accusation, and from 
 whom the Habeas Corpus Suspension act had taken 
 eveiy hope of redress. The zeal of Sir Francis en- 
 listed in his favour the sympathies of the people ; and 
 the leading democrats, who quickly perceived the 
 advantage they might derive from his rank and for- 
 tune, advanced him to the head of their party. At 
 this time Sir Francis spoke of universal suffrage as a 
 subject for future consideration, but he soon amalga- 
 mated with his allies. Sir Francis Burdett will pro- 
 bably be known to posterity rather for the extreme
 
 448 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, democracy of his early tenets, and for the power 
 — '- '■ — which, nroni])ted by those able men, Home Tooke 
 
 A. D. 179j I I j 
 
 to 1801. and WiUiam Cobbett, he wielded over the populace, 
 than for any traces of superior talent in his speeches 
 in parliament, or for any evidence of ability as a poli- 
 tician or a legislator. 
 
 Such were the chief additions made to the roll of 
 conspicuous public men about this time. 
 
 The momentous period through which we arc 
 now passing, studded as it is with scenes of absorbing 
 interest to the general historian, affords no resting- 
 place to the elucidator of party principles ; it is 
 crowded to confusion with events : our business is 
 almost entirely with opinions. When we have re- 
 lated that the Whigs protested against lavishing the 
 blood of their countrymen, and mortgaging the in- 
 dustry of unborn generations in order to force upon 
 France her ancient dynasty of despots, we can only 
 pass over the struggle that ensued, or repeat in 
 chronological regularity the repetition of their argu- 
 ments and their defeats. 
 
 Pitt had effected what the wildest idolater of cor- 
 ruption, who ever preceded him, would have started 
 at as an extravagant dream. He had bribed the 
 whole of the middle class of the country. Never did 
 England know such prosperous times, never was the 
 road to affluence so open. By a species of financial 
 necromancy, Pitt had called up the produce of the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 4(<9 
 
 labour of their remote descendants, and poured it all CHAP, 
 m lavish wantonness amoncr his contemporaries. 
 
 ° ^ . A.D. 1705 
 
 Contracts and jobs and pensions, the pebbles which to i8oi. 
 make up the mountain of our national debt, rendered 
 enormous fortunes rife throughout the nation ; and 
 these again were partly spent among the lower 
 classes in exchange for their votes — in buying seats 
 by which the heap might be increased. The golden 
 Pactolus which rolled from the treasury had many 
 branches ; there was not a hamlet in the kingdom 
 so humble, as not to be visited by some streamlet 
 from the "•htterinsf tide. 
 
 The state of the Whig party is sufficiently shown 
 by the fact that during the years 1798 and 1799, 
 Mr. Grey, who although naturally possessed of con- 
 siderable aristocratic feeling had declared in the 
 house of commons that rather than have no reform, 
 he would vote for universal suffrage — Mr. Grey, who 
 was thus determined in favour of reform, abstained 
 from introducing the subject. The Irish rebellion 
 of 1798 produced tlie union of 1800, a measure 
 which was opposed by tlu; Whigs, on account of the 
 iniquity of the means by whicli it was attained and 
 the undisguised detestation of the whole Irish people. 
 During tlu* discussions on this (piestion, Mr. (Jrey 
 moved that it 1)0 an instruction to the committee to 
 take into tlieir consideration the most effi^ctual 
 means of jiroviding for and securing tlie inde- 
 
 VOL. Ill, '2 a
 
 4.)0 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 cilAi'. poiuloncc of parliament. This motion was rather 
 xvii. 
 
 directed aj^ainst Pitt's scheme of Irish rcpresenta- 
 
 A.n. nfjj 
 
 to ISO I. tion than founded on the ncessity of parliamentary 
 
 reform : it appears to have excited no great interest, 
 and found only 34 supporters. 
 
 The union with Ireland introduced a new topic of 
 party discussion, which quickly became only second 
 to that of parliamentary reform. In transplanting 
 the parliament of College Green to St. Stephen's, 
 Pitt had transplanted the questions which were there 
 debated ; and, of these, none had been more im- 
 portant than the demand of the Catholics to be 
 admitted to the common rights of citizens. Pitt, 
 whose Toryism was rather the imperiousness of a 
 haughty master, than the cautious cowardice of the 
 miser of power, thought their complaints were just. 
 In his private negotiations with the Irish popular 
 leaders he probably promised that emancipation 
 should be the sequel to the union. In his place in 
 parliament he certainly gave an intimation, which 
 from the mouth of a minister could receive no second 
 interpretation.* 
 
 * Pitt's observations upon this doni, full concessions could be 
 
 subject are well wortiiy of in- made to the Catholics without en- 
 
 sertion. dangeriiig the state and shaking 
 
 "No man can say that in the the constitution of Ireland to its 
 
 present state of things, and while centre. On the other hand, 
 
 Ireland remains a separate king- without anticipating the discus-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 451 
 
 Pitt was not a minister who governed by petty 
 stratagems, by ambiguous professions, and by skilful 
 shuffles : he was at least an honourable enemy. He 
 prepared to fulfil the pledge he had given, and to 
 admit the Catholics within the pale of the consti- 
 
 CHAP. 
 XVII. 
 
 A. D. 1795 
 to 1801. 
 
 sion or the propriety of agitating 
 the question, or saying how soon or 
 how late it may he fit to discuss it, 
 two propositions are indisputable ; 
 Hrst ; when the conduct of the 
 Catholics shall be such as to make 
 it safe for the government to 
 admit them to the participation of 
 the privileges granted to those of 
 tho esrtablished religion ; and when 
 the temper of the times shall be 
 favourable to such a measure — 
 wlitMi these events take place, 
 it is obvious that such a question 
 may be agitated in a united 
 imperial parliament with much 
 greater safety than it could be 
 in a separate legislature. In the 
 second place, I tliink it certain, 
 tliat for whatever period it may 
 be thought necessary after the 
 union to withhold from the Ca- 
 tholics the enjoyment of those 
 advantagof), many of the objections 
 wliicli at present arise out of their 
 situation would be removed if the 
 Protobtant legislature were no 
 longer sc|)arate and local, but 
 
 <2 
 
 general and imperial ; and the 
 Catholics themselves would at 
 once feel a mitigation of the most 
 goading and irritating of their 
 present causes of complaint. IIow 
 far, in addition to this great and 
 leading consideration, it may also 
 be wise and practicable to accom- 
 pany the measure, by some mode 
 of relieving the lower orders from 
 the pressure of tithes which, in 
 many instances, operate at present 
 as a great practical evil, or to 
 make, under proper regulations, 
 and without breaking in on the 
 security of the present Protestant 
 establishment, an effectual and 
 adequate provision for the Catho- 
 lic clergy, it is not now necessary 
 to discuss. It is sufficient to say 
 that tiiefc and all other subor- 
 dinate points connected with the 
 same subject arc more likely to 
 be permanently and satisfactorily 
 settled by a united legislature, 
 tiian by any local arrangements." 
 — Pari. Jlist., vol. xxxiv., col. 
 27.'3. 
 
 r. Q
 
 4o'2 TIIK HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 ciiAT. tution. It lind been better for the character of 
 Georiro III. had he imitated the candour of his 
 
 A. n. 1795 
 
 to 1810. minister ; had he told him that he had made a pro- 
 mise he would not be suffered to fulfil, before he had 
 obtained the advantage to gain which that promise 
 had been made. When Pitt ])roposed Catholic 
 emancipation as one of the topics of the king's 
 speech, for the session of 1801, the royal negative 
 was at once interposed, and when Dundas persisted 
 in his attempt to overcome his master's objections, 
 the king abruptly terminated the conference, saying, 
 *' Scotch metaphysics cannot destroy religious obli- 
 gations."* 
 
 Pitt immediately tendered his resignation, but 
 remained in office, at the request of the king, until 
 the supplies had been voted, 
 
 # GifTord's Lite of Pitt, vol. iii., p. 037.
 
 THE HISTORY OF TAUTY. 453 
 
 CHAPTER XVllI. 
 
 The Addington administration — Peace of Amiens — Resignation of 
 Mr. Addington — Pitt returns to office — Secession of the Grenvilles 
 — Death of Pitt — Lord Grenville's administration, comprising " All 
 the Talents" — The Catholic question — Death of Fox — Consequent 
 ministerial arrangements — Dissolution of parliament — Refusal of 
 the king to grant indulgence to the Catholics — Dismissal of mi- 
 nisters — Formation of a Tory cabinet under the Duke of Portland — 
 Biographical anecdotes of Spencer Perceval — Of Lord Castlcreagh 
 — Irish policy of this ministry — Resuscitation of the question of 
 reform— Curwen's bill— Bohlness of Canning and the Tories in 
 resisting every inquiry that might lead to reform — Motion of Sir 
 Francis Burdett — Duel between Canning and Castlereagli — The 
 Perceval administration — Committal of Sir Francis Burdett to tlif 
 Tower — Incapacity of the king— The Regency bill. 
 
 All tliat was brilliant in Toryism passed from the chaiv 
 cabinet with the late minister. When Pitt and 
 Canning were withdrawn, with their satellites, nothing t,) iwic 
 remained of the Tory ])arty but the mere courtiers 
 who lived upon the favour of tlie king, and the in- 
 sipid lees of tln^ ])arty ; uwu who voted upon every 
 subject in accordance with their mic ruling idea — the
 
 454 THE iiiSTOuY of party. 
 
 CHAP, certain ruin wliich must follow the first particle of 
 
 XVIII. . 
 innovation. 
 
 A.D. ISO! 
 
 to 1810, Yet from these relicts the king was obliged to 
 form a new cabinet, for application to the Whigs was 
 out of the question. These were more strenuous 
 for emancipation than Pitt.* Henry Addington, 
 Pitt's speaker of the house of commons, was the 
 person upon whom the king's choice fell ; and he 
 succeeded, with the assistance of the late premier, 
 in filling up the offices at his disposal. We are not 
 now surprised to find the Duke of Portland gazetted 
 as president of the council in a ministry formed upon 
 a triumph of religious bigotry. 
 
 The peace of Amiens was the great work of this 
 feeble administration, and formed a severe com- 
 mentary upon the boastings of the Tories. " Unless 
 the monarchy of France be restored," Pitt had said, 
 eight years before, " the monarchy of England is 
 lost for ever." Eight years of warfare had succeeded, 
 yet the monarchy of France was not restored, and 
 the crusade was stayed. England had surrendered 
 
 * As appeared in the debate mendation (as it was reported it 
 
 upon the address at the com- would do), to consider of taking 
 
 mcnccment of the session. "1 off those disabilities to which the 
 
 should, indeed, have augured Catholics of Ireland are subject.*' 
 
 more favourably of the union, — Mr. Grci/x Speech on the Ad- 
 
 had I found that the speech from dress. Pari. Hist., vol. xxxv., col, 
 
 the throne contained a recom- 893.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. <t55 Q 
 
 her conquests, France retained hers ; the land- CHAP, 
 marks of Europe had been in some degree restored ; ^ ^^^^^ 
 England, alone, remained burdened with the endur- to i8io. 
 ing consequences of the ruinous and useless strife. 
 
 The peace was approved by the Whigs, who were 
 glad of any respite from such a war, and by Pitt, 
 who gave his support to the Addington admini- 
 stration. But he could not control his adherents ; 
 Windham stig-matized it as an armed truce, and 
 Canning was only restrained by his personal obli- 
 gation to Pitt from throwing his weight into the 
 siame scale. Pitt's influence in the house of com- 
 mons continued as great as ever ; and when an ill- 
 advised motion was made to censure his administra- 
 tion, an amendment, conveying an express vote of 
 approval, was carried by a majority of '211 to 52. 
 
 As the instability of the peace grew manifest, the 
 incompetency of the administration became gene- 
 rally acknowledged : with Pitt* sometimes chiding, 
 Windhamt and Canning, and Lords Spencer and 
 Grenville continually attacking, and Pox and the 
 Whigs only refraining from violent opposition from a 
 knowledge that if Addington went out Pitt would be 
 
 • Sec liis spercli on Mr. Tat- Kci^istcr w.is now in lu-ing. He 
 
 ten's motion.— /V//. //w/ , vol. said that writer merited u statue 
 
 xxxvi., coi. 1J7(). of gold for iiis conihict in Anic- 
 
 •f- A debate in tlie committee rica ; tliat lie liad re.solutely op- 
 
 (III tiic Military Servire iiill, intro- po-sed all the bad jiriixiplcs wliieh 
 
 iliuid Mr. W iiidliMiii paiicfiyri/in^ Mr. Fox had s<. -'I'l.n m-cil in 
 
 William Coltbett, whose Political ih. hnnsc.
 
 'k5() THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, his successor, the conduct of the government was 
 
 XVlll. , f. 1 , 
 by no means an easy or a ffrateiul task to a man 
 
 A.D. 1804 "^ . . 
 
 to 1810. destitute of commandinof talents. When to these 
 parHamentary difficulties were added a recommence- 
 ment of the war, and a popular panic at Bona- 
 parte's threatened invasion, Addington's embar- 
 rassments became inextricable. He had performed 
 the business which Pitt had assigned him ; he had 
 made an cxj)erimental peace, and had saved Pitt's 
 honour with the Roman Catholics. The object of 
 his appointment he had unconsciously completed, 
 and no sooner did his predecessor manifest an in- 
 tention of returning to office, than the ministerial 
 majorities began to diminish, and Addington found 
 himself without support. On the l'2tli of April it 
 was announced that Mr. Addington had resigned, 
 and Pitt appeared to resume his station as a matter 
 of course.* 
 
 During his temporary retirement, Pitt had, how- 
 ever, lost one section of his supporters. The Gren- 
 ville party and the Whigs had gradually a})proximated, 
 and the former now refused to come into the new 
 
 • In a memorandum circu- these papers in the Pari. Hist 
 
 latcd in Ireland, and sent in the vol. xxxv,, col. 906. In the sc- 
 
 name of the Marquis Cornwallis, cond, Pitt is alluded to as pledged 
 
 Pitt promised the Catholics " to not to embark in the service of 
 
 do his utmost to estahhbh tlieir government except on terms of 
 
 cause in the public favour, and the Catholic privileges being ob- 
 
 prepare the way for their finally tained. 
 attaining their objects." See
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 457 
 
 arranorements unless Fox was introduced into the chap. 
 
 . . XVIII. 
 
 cabinet. To this Pitt offered no objection, but the ~ '- — 
 
 \ , A.D. 1804 
 
 king was firm — or obstinate, and Pitt did not consider to isio. 
 the refusal as any insurmountable impediment to 
 his own resumption of the government. The 
 changes, therefore, were not considerable. Pitt, 
 attended by Dundas, now created Lord Melville, 
 Canninof and Pluskisson, infused into the cabinet 
 the talent of which it had been so lamentably defi- 
 cient ; and in the following year, Addington himself, 
 now created Viscount Sidmouth, returned to oftice 
 with the subordinate appointment of president of the 
 council. 
 
 The conflagration had again spread through 
 Europe. England again strained herself to pull 
 down the greatness of France, and to arouse, at any 
 sacrifice, the energies of her torpid allies. But 
 although checked upon the ocean by the heroism of 
 Nelson, by land the wonderful man, who now as her 
 emperor guided her destinies, was still omnipotent, 
 and Pitt had the mortification to sec his grand con- 
 tinental coalition, the produce of such immense 
 expense and the object of such ho})e, shattered in 
 one campaign. At home, Lord Melville, his most 
 faithful political supi)orter, was attacked by a charge 
 from which he could not defend him, and undcrutMit 
 the impeachment of the connnons for malpractices in 
 his office as treasurer (•!' tlic navy. Lord Sidmoufli 
 atid scNcral (ither.-? seceded tioiu llie cabhict, and
 
 K')8 TIIIC IIISTOHY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Pitt, broken in health, and dispirited by reverses, 
 
 xviii. , , . 
 
 — had lost nuieh ol' his wonted encrp^y. 
 
 A.l). 1804 ^•' 
 
 to 1810. Thus i)assed away the year 1805. On the '23d 
 of.lanuary, 180G, Pitt expired. — At a time when the 
 whole political horizon was enveloped in darkness, 
 when little hope appeared of the ultimate attainment 
 of his dearest objects, and when the whirl of events 
 around him might well call forth his last patriotic 
 aspiration, " O save my country, Heaven !'' 
 
 Pitt was a man of high ambition and strong lust of 
 power ; qualities which, according to the situation of 
 the possessor, will make either a patriot or a tyrant. 
 Untainted by the suspicion of a sordid vice, indif- 
 ferent to the wealth and titles for w^hich his followers 
 were scrambling, Pitt appeared to move apart from 
 the herd of men, and, wrapped in his own dignity, to 
 look with contempt upon their petty ambition. His 
 ability was great, but it was inferior to his confi- 
 dence ; that confidence rendered him intolerant of 
 opposition ; it induced him to undertake an unwise, 
 but, as he evidently thought, an easy project, and 
 to persevere through disasters which would have 
 deterred any other statesman. Let those states- 
 men who hope to gild over disastrous policy by 
 shining talents, peruse the speeches of Windham 
 and Fox, upon the motion for bestowing upon Pitt 
 national honours.* The deliberate judgments of a 
 
 • Hansard's Vail. Debates, \o\ Cobbett's Pailiameiitary History ; 
 vi. We have now taken leave of the most valuable historical work
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 459 
 
 colleague and an opponent scarcely vary. They CHAP, 
 both deem him unworthy of national latitude, or of 
 
 •^ f . A.D. 1804 
 
 the title of an excellent statesman. The veneration to I810. 
 which, in the minds of those who gained fortunes and 
 titles during his lavish administration, attached to the 
 name of Pitt, is now fast fading. We begin to look 
 upon him as a statesman whose lofty bearing and 
 personal integrity cloaked a system fraught with 
 corruption and ruin ; and wc abandon his shrine to 
 men, who, in their anxiety to claim the protection of 
 some one historical character, adopt, as their tutelar 
 saint, a man whose best title to the respect of pos- 
 terity is, that he opposed their policy and detested 
 their principles. 
 
 The death of Pitt was the dissolution of his admi- 
 nistration. The Tory party was scattered in divi- 
 sions and subdivisions innumerable. Canning now 
 recognised no political leader, but retained his old 
 contempt for Sidmouth and his friends, and his hosti- 
 lity to the Grcnvillcs for their breach with Pitt. 
 Castlercagh, William Dundas, llawkcsbury, or Bar- 
 ham, although sufficiently efiective when Pitt was 
 present to direct and to defend, would have made a 
 
 in o\ir language. It requires no the debates of this century as little 
 little resolution to sink a shaft known as those of the time of 
 into that solid mass of mixed ore Queen Anne. These voluminous 
 and rubbish wiiich succeeds it, and reports of iinimport^nit debates 
 which, however valuable for the will, in time, form rather an em- 
 purpose of detectiiii: individual in- barrassing mnnuiiinif of tlio vanity 
 consistenrifs, will, perhaps, londrr i>f our M-nators.
 
 ifH) THE HI STORY OF I'AIITY. 
 
 ( llAP. lioneless figure without him in face of such an opim- 
 XVlll. 1 o ' » 
 
 — ^ sition as the house of commons now afforded. 
 
 A. 1). 1806 
 
 to 1810. The administration, which was ironically designated 
 by its opponents as *' All the Talents," succeeded. 
 Lord Grenville was first lord of the treasury. Fox 
 chose the office of secretary for foreign affairs with 
 the hope of putting an end to the war. Windham 
 was colonial secretary. Earl Spencer had the seals 
 of the home department. Erskine was lord chan- 
 cellor. Mr. Grey was first lord of the admiralty. 
 Sheridan, treasurer of the navy. Lord Sidmouth was 
 privy seal. Lord Henry Petty, who,* although now 
 only in his 26th year, had already acquired consider- 
 able distinction as an eloquent Whig speaker, was 
 advanced to the post of chancellor of the exchequer, 
 the vacant chair of Pitt. 
 
 Such were the men who now assumed the reins 
 under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty ; their 
 policy detested by the majority with which Pitt had 
 packed the house of peers, and themselves in some 
 instances labouring under the personal antipathy of 
 the sovereign. Unfortunately for the popularity of 
 these illustrious men, they found a war, which the 
 majority of them had ever deprecated, in full activity, 
 and they did not think fit to copy the ancient prece- 
 dents established by Tory ministers, of making an 
 immediate peace at any sacrifice. The people, who 
 
 * Tlic present Manmi.s ol Laiisdowiio.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 461 
 
 expected a prompt reduction of taxation, were disap- CHAP, 
 pointed ; the Tories, who knew how little the king- 
 
 " A. D. 1806 
 
 and his ministers agreed upon the Catholic question, to •^•o 
 raised the cry of " No Popery," and Canning, in the 
 house of commons, lost no opportunity of attacking 
 them with all his powers of wit and eloquence. 
 
 The acts of this administration offer no prominent 
 subjects of remark ; we may notice, however, that 
 Fox, even under the pecuHar circumstances of the 
 time, did not tamper with his principles of religious 
 toleration. Knowino- that his tenure of office de- 
 pended upon the non-agitation of the Catholic claims, 
 he nevertheless stated in reply to a question put to 
 him in the house of commons, that he was ready to 
 advocate them, as he always had advocated them, 
 whenever the subject should be brought forward. 
 
 I have made little mention of the continued con- 
 tests upon the abolition of the slave trade, for that 
 was not a party question. Pitt and Fox, Sheridan 
 and Canning, Windham and Whitbread, were all 
 agreed upon the })rinciplc of this measure. It is 
 j)leasing to find it making some real advancement 
 under this administration ; and to see the kind and 
 openhearted Charles Fox making almost his last 
 speech in j)arliament a successful effort in its favour. 
 
 This great man did not long survive his rival. 
 When he assumed the duties of office he was evi- 
 dently ill a declining state. The onerous labours of
 
 I(^'2 THE IIISTORV OF PARTY. 
 
 ('HAP. the house of commons, which he never couhi be pre- 
 
 XVllI. . .11 1 1 r. 
 
 vailed upon to nitcrmit, and the ceaseless attacks oi 
 
 A D. 1806 
 
 to 1810. (^aniiing, and other less worthy antagonists, wore 
 him out. A dropsy, to which medicine could give 
 no alleviation, made rapid progress ; and his danger- 
 ous illness and dissolution were announced in quick 
 succession. He expired on the 13th of September, 
 bequeathing to after British statesmen an example of 
 noble simplicity of conduct, of high and disinterested 
 motives, of comprehensive and liberal policy, and of 
 active and zealous philanthropy, which the best and 
 brightest leaders of future generations may be proud 
 to imitate. 
 
 The two rival statesmen who had so long divided 
 the suffrages of the nation now slept in peace side by 
 side ; and with them passes away that surprising 
 brilliancy which gives such interest to the political 
 contests of the North and Pitt administrations. 
 Sheridan, indeed, still remained ; but Sheridan, 
 broken in spirit, involved in inextricable embarrass- 
 ments, and incapable of that laborious application by 
 ■which his apparently impromptu efforts were always 
 preceded, was no longer the same man who had so 
 cruelly lashed Dundas, and had so pertinaciously tor- 
 mented Pitt. He now appeared as a speaker much 
 less frequently. His dearest friends and his most 
 worthy foes were gone, and he now evidently took 
 little interest in party politics.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 463 
 
 By the ministerial arrangements consequent upon CHAP, 
 the death of Fox, Mr. Grey, who, by reason of 
 
 A. D. 1806 
 
 his father having been created Earl Grey, was to isio. 
 now become Lord Howick, succeeded to the vacant 
 secretaryship. Mr. Grenville received the admiralty ; 
 Tierney succeeded him as president of the board of 
 control ; and Lord Sidmouth exchanged his office of 
 lord privy seal for that of president of the council. 
 By this arrangement only one cabinet office was left 
 vacant. This was bestowed upon Lord Holland, the 
 nephew of Fox, who had already, in the house of 
 peers, taught those who had sneered at him for his 
 youth to respect him for his talent. He had been, 
 for' some time, one of the few Whig noblemen who 
 persevered in their attendance in the house of lords, 
 and who had so vainly opposed argument and elo- 
 quence to the proxies of Pitt's peers.* The unwa- 
 vering consistency of this eminent member of the 
 Whig party may be ap])lauded even by a contempo- 
 rar}', for the journals of the house of lords are its 
 vouchers ; but his importance as a party man, and 
 his powers of light and graceful oratory, cannot be 
 
 • Tlie possessors of Sir Egcrton barons created, by this minister, 
 
 Brydges's edition of " Coliiiis's within sixteen years, and wlioso 
 
 Peerage," have a striking example titles were all in l)(;ing when the 
 
 of the rapidity of Pitt creations, work was piil)lished. — This was 
 
 Tlie eighth vohimc of that work one order of the peerage, 
 consists of an account of sixty-one
 
 4r)4 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, historicallv ostimatod hv one who sees them in full 
 XVIII. 
 
 . T^ . operation. 
 
 A. D. 1806 ^ 
 
 to 1810. A dissolution of parliament followed the completion' 
 of these arrangements, and the Whigs, of course, 
 gained considerably. Sheridan succeeded Fox for 
 Westminster. Mr. Paull, the democrat candidate, 
 was rejected ; and even Sir Francis Burdett, his 
 patron, having commenced his canvass with a slur 
 upon the memory of Fox,* and a sneer at the 
 patriotism of Lord lIowick,t was unseated for 
 Middlesex. 
 
 In the following year the cabinet of which Fox 
 had formed so conspicuous a member, perished in an 
 attempt to pursue his policy ; the ministers having 
 supposed they had obtained the king's consent, intro- 
 duced a bill, extending to all British subjects, with- 
 out distinction of religion, the privilege of serving in 
 the army and navy. It was vehemently opposed by 
 the Tories ; but was, nevertheless, carried through 
 its earliest stages by a considerable majority. At this 
 juncture the king interposed, withdrew his consent, 
 insisted that the bill should be abandoned, and re- 
 quired a pledge from his ministers that they would 
 never advise any similar measure. To such a pledge, 
 
 • Address to the Middlesex f Speech reported in Cobbett's 
 Electors, in the " Morning Political Register for 1806, p. 
 Chronicle" for October 29, 180C. 742.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 465 
 
 as unconstitutional in itself, and inconsistent with chap. 
 
 XVIIl. 
 
 their oaths as privy councillors, the Whio-s refused '- — 
 
 , ° A. D. 1807 
 
 to subscribe, and, determined that the cause of their to isio. 
 retiring from office should be well defined, they, 
 instead of resigning, waited for a formal dismissal. 
 
 Under a monarch thus determined in his resolve, 
 and holding in his own hands the majority of the 
 house of commons, all interest in party struggles 
 must be at an end. It is evident that nothing but 
 a revolution could have procured toleration to the 
 principles of the Whigs. Nothing can more clearly 
 prove the subserviency of the house of commons as at 
 this time constructed, than that the same assembly 
 which had pronounced in favour of the Grenville 
 Catholic bill readily turned over to a Tory admini- 
 stration, and refused, by a majority of 32, to vote that 
 it was contrary to the duties of a minister to restrain 
 himself by a pledge as to the advice he should offer 
 to the king. 
 
 The composition of a new ministry was confided 
 to the Duke of Portland, who replaced Lord Eldon 
 upon the woolsack ; committed Ireland to Karl Cam- 
 den, and the admiralty to Lord M nigra ve ; a])})ointed 
 Lord Castlereagh, Lord Ilawkesbury, and Canning, 
 the thr(;e secretaries of state, and Mr. Perceval 
 chancellor of the exche([uer. 
 
 Among the meml)ers of this cabinet are two men 
 who require some particular notice, chietlN on .iccoiint 
 
 vol.. III. '-? II
 
 Am 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 Cli.vr. of tlio conspicuous place they successively held as 
 ^ -^ . ,,^ leaders of their party. Spencer Perceval, the new 
 
 A. D. 1807 I J I ' 
 
 to 1810. chancellor of the exchequer, was born in 1J6% the 
 second son of the Earl of Egmont ; he was educated 
 at Harrow, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where 
 his ability and unwearied assiduity procured him 
 deserved distinction. In I78I Perceval was called 
 to the bar, and soon acquired the character of a timo- 
 rous speaker, but a diligent lawyer. His professional 
 success does not appear to have been very great ; 
 since a biographer, who shows every disposition to 
 glorify his memory, does not estimate his income, 
 even after he had been attorney-general, at 3000/. 
 a year.* But Perceval lived at a time when even 
 moderate talent was eagerly sought. A clever pam- 
 phlet upon the question as to the abatement of War- 
 ren Hastings's impeachment made him known to Pitt. 
 He received the appointment of deputy recorder of 
 Northampton ; and at the next vacancy was returned 
 to parliament for that borough. In parliament Per- 
 ceval became conspicuous for his extreme horror of 
 popery, and his violent advocacy of what the Tories 
 called the Protestant interest. These qualities ren- 
 dered him dear to his master and useful to the mi- 
 nister. Under the Addington ministry he became 
 solicitor-general and attorney-general successively. 
 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. Ixxxii., p. 591.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 467 
 
 He was now allured, by the offer of the chancellorship CHAP. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 of Lancaster for life, to abandon his profession alto ^ 
 
 1-11 '^•^- ^^^^ 
 
 gether. Mr. Perceval was ready in debate, well to I810. 
 
 acquainted with parliamentary tactics, a placid and 
 not ungraceful speaker, and an excellent man ; but 
 those who believed a story circulated after his death, 
 to the effect that Pitt, when proceeding to the 
 ground on the morning of his duel with Tierney, 
 mentioned Perceval as the only other man who could 
 cope with Fox, and recommended him as his succes- 
 sor in case he should be killed — must either have 
 forgotten that Canning had appeared, or must have 
 a poor opinion of the judgment of Pitt. The esti- 
 mation in which Perceval was held by his party, was 
 produced less by his parliamentary ability, in which 
 he surpassed very few of his colleagues, than by his 
 knowTi influence with the king. That influence was 
 obtained by his conscientious zeal in swelling the 
 shout of " No po})ery," and his undeviating hostility 
 to every thing which was disapproved by the esta- 
 blished church. 
 
 A second member of this administration, having 
 a])lacc among the minor lights of the Tory party, is 
 Lord Castlcrcagh, the new secretary at war. 
 
 Lord Castlcrcagh was born in 17^9, and is said 
 to have oxhil)itcd, as a boy, many instances of that 
 ])crsonal intrepidity which lie, upon all occasions, nm- 
 nif(^^tcd in mnnliood. II(; discovered an early lasl.e 
 
 'J n '2
 
 4Gs 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 x!vm' ^^^ ^ l)6litical life ; and soon after ho became of age 
 A.D. 1807 ^^^ father spent 30,000/. in obtaining for him a seat 
 to 1810. jjj |.jj^3 li'lsli parhament, for the county of Down. 
 Having gained his election the young nobleman 
 made his entrance upon this stage as a parliamentary 
 reformer ; cultivated a friendship v^^ith the most deter- 
 mined patriots of that country ; and, if not a mem- 
 ber, was certainly an approver and a patron of the 
 Society of United Irishmen, established at Belfast in 
 179^. It would be vain to speculate upon the causes 
 of the conversion of so sanguine an Irish patriot ; but 
 in 1795 we find him seated among Pitt's supporters 
 in the British house of commons, and seconding the 
 ministerial address. Having acquired the requisite 
 experience under Pitt's tuition, he was, in 1797, 
 again transferred to the Irish parliament, and he was 
 made chief secretary to the lord lieutenant. In this 
 situation he was very active in all the negotiations 
 which produced the Irish union, and when the object 
 had been accomplished, he returned to England. 
 Under the Addington administration, he obtained 
 the post of president of the board of control, which 
 he retained when Pitt returned, but relinquished in 
 180.5, for the more honourable office of secretary for 
 the war and colonial departments. Lord Castlereagh 
 was a man of considerable ability, a debater of some 
 tact, and a Tory of great determination. In private 
 life, he is said to have exhibited unassuming man-
 
 I 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 469 
 
 ners, simple tastes, and a kind and generous dispo- chap. 
 
 . . o 1 XVIII. 
 
 sition. 
 
 A. D. 1807 
 
 Durino- the debates which followed the entrance of to I810. 
 this ministry upon office, the recriminations were hot 
 and frequent. The Whigs accused the Tories of 
 having bought their return to power by a sacrifice of 
 the constitution. The Tories replied, "No popery!" 
 and designated the Whigs as persons under the con- 
 trol of the White-boys of Ireland.* " Concessions," 
 said Perceval, " only serve to keep Ireland in an un- 
 settled state. There is only this alternative, to esta- 
 blish the Catholic church in Ireland, or to preserve 
 the Protestant establishment in its full streno'th."t 
 The difference between the last and the present ad- 
 ministration was well drawn by a speaker upon the 
 motion for approving the conduct of the Grenville 
 administration. " There was," he would admit, 
 " much shrewdness, great dexterity, and consider- 
 able talent among the present administration. But 
 as to those great and commanding qualities which 
 should characterize the government of a country, 
 maintaining the pre-eminent situation that tliis did, 
 they were removed from their predecessors to an in- 
 calculable distance."! 
 
 The persevering resolution of the king in refusing 
 
 * Amiiial KogistcT for 1807, p. f Hansard's Debutes, vol. ix,, 
 152. Haiisiml's Debates, vol. ix., c«l. n-20. 
 col. ;i01. I il)itl., Mil. ix., rol. .JDJ.
 
 170 THE HISTORY OI" I'AllTY. 
 
 CHAP, to hear of any proposition of Catholic emancipation, 
 had reduced Ireland to a state bordering on rebcl- 
 
 A, D. 1807 . . • J 1 
 
 to 1810. lion; and serious apprehensions were entertained, that 
 if any body of French troops should effect a landing 
 in that island they would be joined by the great mass 
 of the population. This ministry, instead of a mea- 
 sure of conciliation, inflicted a Coercion bill, disarm- 
 ing the people in the disaffected districts, and direct- 
 ing the arrest of those who should be found out of 
 their houses between sunset and sunrise. That bill 
 was introduced upon the motion of Sir A. Wellesley, 
 and bore his name — a name which was not yet known 
 to England as her second and her greater Marlbo- 
 rough. Since all ideas of concession were repudiated, 
 this measure was, doubtless, become necessary, and 
 Sir Arthur Wellesley's bill was well adapted to the 
 object proposed — that of ruling Ireland by the sword. 
 In the session of 1808 several distinct cases 
 brought forward by the Whigs, of interference with 
 the independence of electors seemed to promise 
 some resuscitation to the question of reform. These 
 complaints received importance from the contem- 
 poraneous accusations against the Duke of York, 
 and from a general sentiment which now prevailed, 
 that every department of the government was 
 crowded with abuses. While the feeling was yet 
 fresh, Mr. Curwen, an old Whig member, brought 
 forward a bill, not lor altering the repi'csentation, but
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 471 
 
 for discouraging bribery, and suppressing the at pre- chap. 
 sent notorious marketino- for seats, by imposinor an — ^ '- — 
 
 . . ' , ^ ° A.D. 1807 
 
 oath upon the sitting member. The arguments to isio. 
 against the introduction of this measure were from 
 Windham, that it was a project of parliamentary re- 
 form, and from Mr. Perceval, that it held out to 
 the people hopes of reform that would never be real- 
 ized. The latter, nevertheless, consented to its in- 
 troduction, reserving his opposition to its future 
 stages. 
 
 Mr. Curwen's bill was aided by a charge brought 
 by Mr. Maddocks against Perceval and Castle- 
 reagh, of having compelled Mr. Quintin Dick, who 
 sat for a treasury borough, to resign his seat in con- 
 sequence of his known intention to vote against the 
 Duke of York during the late inquiries into his con- 
 duct. Into this charge the Tories refused to enter. 
 Canning denouncing it as the first step towards par- 
 liamentary reform, and calling upon the house to 
 make a determined stand against the encroachments 
 of the factious. A majority of 310 to 85, encou- 
 raged the ministers to continue to deride the idea of 
 purity of election. 
 
 The disclosures and consequent agitation which 
 had taken place were, nevertheless, })roductive of 
 some fruits. Mr. Curwen's bill, after sufrciiiig coii- 
 
 * llaiiijard's UubaU-s, vol. ix., cul. .V20.
 
 17'2 THE IIISTOIIY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAT. -^idiM-ablo imitilation* from the hands of the Tories, 
 was suffered to pass into a law, and the words 
 
 ^•D 1807 . . 11 1 
 
 to 181U. parliamentary reform were attain occasionally lieard m 
 parliament. Sir Francis Burdett at last reproduced 
 the question before the house. The plan which Sir 
 Francis submitted, included — the extension of the 
 suffrage to all who were subject to direct taxation — 
 the subdivision of counties into districts according to 
 the number of electors ; the votes of each district to 
 be taken by the parish officer upon one and the 
 same day, and — that parliament should be brought 
 back to a constitutional duration. 
 
 These propositions Sir Francis enforced in a 
 speech of considerable length, bearing marks of 
 careful preparation ; and he was seconded by Mr. 
 Maddocks. But the debate which ensued is by no 
 means of important interest. The house was so 
 evidently hostile to the mover, that Perceval felt 
 himself able to treat the motion with levity, and 
 excused himself from replying at any great length, 
 
 * Windham said that the bill proposition to change its title to 
 ■was so completely changed, that " A bill for more effectually pre- 
 a man who had voted against it in venting the sale of seats in par- 
 the first instance might incur a liament for money, and for pro- 
 charge of inconsistency in voting moting a monopoly thereof to 
 against it when it came out of the treasury, by means of pa- 
 committee. Lord Folkestone ac- tronagc." — Pari. Deb,, vol. xiv., 
 tually divided the house upon a col. 1015.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 473 
 
 from an apprehension " lest he might thereby chap. 
 raise the plan of the honourable baronet into an im- ^^• 
 
 portance which it did not deserve." There were no ' ^^ /gjo. 
 illustrious names among the Whigs who spoke, to 
 give it splendour. Of those who had mingled as 
 equals with Fox and Burke, Sheridan was grown 
 indolent and silent, and Lord Howiek, as Earl Grey, 
 had taken his seat among the peers.* Whitbread, 
 Tierney, and the ^\^ligs, could not forget that the 
 present mover had profaned the memory of Fox, 
 and had ridiculed the patriotism of his surviving 
 friend. A line of conduct which would probably have 
 been treated with disregard by Earl Grey, was re- 
 sented by his friends : the Whigs absented them- 
 selves ; and Sir Francis obtained but fifteen votes in 
 favour of his motion. 
 
 The present administration of the Duke of Port- 
 land was terminated by a dispute between Lord 
 Castlereagh and ]\Ir. Canning. Canning thinking 
 Castlereagh unequal to the war department, a judg- 
 ment which the disastrous expedition to W^alcheren 
 in this year too fatally confirmed, had demanded his 
 dismissal, and had received a promise that he should 
 
 • Earl Grey succeeded liis the peers, having been created 
 
 father in his peerage, November Lord Hawkcsbiiry in November, 
 
 14, 1807. On the other side, 1808, and succeeding his father 
 
 Jenkinson, tiie early friend of in the earldom of Liverpool 
 
 Canning, was also seated among within a month after iiis creation.
 
 474 THE HISTORY OF TAllTY. 
 
 CHAP, be removed, so soon as it could be done upon terms 
 which would be satisfactory to himselt. Lannintr 
 
 A. D. 1807 
 
 to 1810. disapproved the delay, but continued to transact 
 business with Castlereagh, who had no intimation 
 of what had taken place. At length, Canning grew 
 imperative ; the Duke of Portland found he could 
 not fulfil his promise and resigned. Castlereagh 
 discovered what had been arranged, threw up his 
 appointment, called Canning to an account, and 
 wounded him in a duel. Canning also resigned, 
 and the administration was thus dissolved.* 
 
 The Tory party appeared now so destitute of men 
 of eminence to form a ministry, that proposals were 
 made to Lords Grey and Grenville to coalesce with 
 Perceval. But to these statesmen the terms upon 
 which the late ministry had been appointed were an 
 insurmountable objection : they refused to treat. 
 Perceval, therefore, received the high office, and 
 the Marquis of Wellesley, the Earl of Liverpool, 
 Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Ryder, were his principal 
 associates. Lorld Eldon and several others of the 
 old ministers retained their appointments. 
 
 At the meeting of parliament, in January 1810, 
 the Perceval administration was fully formed, and it 
 soon appeared that the house of lords would now be 
 
 * The correspondence upon be read in all the periodicals of 
 tliis subject, and especially Can- tlic time, 
 ning's letter to Earl Camden, ma\
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 475 
 
 the theatre of the severest conflict. Not that the CHAP. 
 minister had any cause to fear the numbers of the 
 
 AMiigs in that assembly ; but they had there arrayed ' to isio. 
 against them all the remains of the Augustan age of 
 British eloquence — Grey, Grenville, Erskine, with 
 Holland and Lansdowne,* who, although they had 
 not fought as equals with the great men of the last 
 generation, had arisen in turn to kindle their 
 torches from theirs — these men now from the oppo- 
 sition benches of the lords, pointed their indignant 
 eloquence against the weakness, the incapacity, and 
 the bigotry of this administration, and, save the 
 Earl of Liverpool, could find none to answer them 
 but by their votes. 
 
 The subject of the debates in the lords were gene- 
 rally the conduct of the war, and the causes of dis- 
 asters ; but the commons soon found means to em- 
 broil themselves with the people. When the mi- 
 nistry were compelled to grant some species of in- 
 quiry into the expedition to the Scheldt they also 
 determined to close the strangers' gallery during the 
 investigation. Sheridan, Lord Folkestone, Tierney, 
 and the rest of the Whigs, assisted also by Sir 
 Francis Burdett, protested against this proceeding, 
 and proposed to modify the standing order. Pcr- 
 
 • Lord HiMiry Pi-tty succccdftl his Itrotlicr jus Marquis of Lans- 
 downe in 1H09.
 
 ij6 THE HISTOliY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, ceval persevered, and was aided by Windham, who 
 — '— tlioiio-ht the maintenance of the standing order pro- 
 
 A. D. 1807 " 1 • 1 1 J 
 
 to 1810. tected the nation from that despotism which had so 
 lately desolated other countries. Windham spoke 
 of the contributors to the daily press as bankrupts, 
 lottery- office keepers, footmen, and decayed trades- 
 men, and of the press itself as an engine always to 
 be purchased by the highest bidder. Windham, 
 like his great Apollo, Burke, when it was his cue 
 to speak Toryism, soared beyond all bounds, and 
 left the regular professors of the creed in admiration 
 at his superior boldness. Upon this occasion, Per- 
 ceval availed himself of his aid, and negatived She- 
 ridan's motion, but he did not repeat Windham's 
 anathema against the press. 
 
 John Gale Jones, the president of a debating 
 society, held a discussion, and published some reso- 
 lutions upon this debate, and the Tories of the house 
 of commons thought it consistent with their dignity 
 to call him to their bar and commit him to Newgate. 
 This Mr. Gale Jones was a person of considerable 
 authority among the frequenters of the British forum 
 and similar institutions ; and now that his importance 
 became increased by the persecution of the commons, 
 his popularity threatened to eclipse that of more 
 established demagogues. Sir Francis Burdett pre- 
 vented this : he delivered in the house of commons 
 a speech denying the power of the commons to com-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 477 
 
 mit to prison any but their own members ; but find- CHAP. 
 
 , , . , ^ , . . XVIII. 
 
 ma: only thirteen members to support rum m so 
 
 flagrant an attack upon the existence of the house, to isio. 
 he repeated his arguments in a letter to his consti- 
 tuents, pubUshed in " Cobbett's Weekly Register," 
 and this letter being- broug-ht before the house, he 
 was ordered to the Tower. 
 
 The offence of Sir Francis Burdett was indis- 
 putable. The power of committal in the commons 
 is essential to their efficiency ; but it is a power 
 which will not bear to be imprudently or violently 
 used, or to be exercised at all by an assembly in 
 which the people have not confidence. Crowds sur- 
 rounded the house of Sir Francis, who affected to 
 resist the warrant by force, and barricadoed his 
 doors. Twenty police officers, assisted by detach- 
 ments of cavalry and infantry, were necessary to 
 execute the warrant. Burdett still resisted ; and lest 
 the theatrical display should be incomplete, the con- 
 stables, when they broke into the house, found him 
 teaching his infant son to read and translate Magna 
 Charta. As he was borne along to the Tower, the 
 crowds assembled attacked the soldiery ; pistol-shots 
 
 • The Whigs also voted for tlic pressed himself anxious to rescue 
 
 release of Jones, but upon a dif- the house from its contest with 
 
 ferent principle. He had, before the British i'orum. — Purl. l)c- 
 
 the house, exprc-ssed contrition bales, vol. xv. 
 for his offence, and Sheridan ex-
 
 4-78 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, were fired on each side, and the troops did not re- 
 tnrn from their ungrateful (Uity without a sanguinary 
 
 A. D. 1807 , . A 
 
 to 1810. conflict in which several people were slain. A more 
 useless, or unnecessary provocation of a scene of 
 carnage does not occur in our history. 
 
 Sir Francis brought an action against the speaker ; 
 and being defeated, thus had the merit of formally 
 establishing the important principle of the constitu- 
 tion which he had attacked. 
 
 During this session no other subject obtained at- 
 tention except the imprisonment of Sir Francis Bur- 
 dett. The Whigs made motions against sinecures,* 
 for CathoHc emancipation, t and for parhamentary 
 reform ;t but neither of these questions had any 
 chance within doors, and the whole attention without 
 was monopolized by the democratic party. 
 
 In November the parliament which lay under 
 prorogation, was suddenly called together by the ill- 
 ness of the king, whose grief, occasioned by the death 
 of his youngest and favourite daughter, had produced 
 a recurrence of the malady that had before suspended 
 his reason. A repetition of the contests which had 
 taken place in I788 now took place. Perceval, who 
 feebly sustained the part of Pitt, was armed with a 
 
 * By Mr. Bankes. 234 to 115. The minority is in- 
 f By Grattan. The division creased tliis year, because tlie pro- 
 was 213 to 109. position was such as the Whigs 
 X By Mr. Brand. Division could vote for.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 4<79 
 
 precedent, and the celebrated answer of the prince, cHAP. 
 
 • • XVIII 
 
 formerly composed by Burke, was again brought into 1_ 
 
 use by Sheridan. The claim of right, so imprudently ' to I810. 
 advanced by Fox, was not, however, renewed. Ex- 
 perience of what had before occurred, and the ex- 
 pectations of recovery held forth by the physicians, 
 rendered the opposition feeble. The principal re- 
 strictions upon the authority of the regent were to 
 cease in February, 1812 ; and, satisfied with this 
 early period, the Whigs appeared contented to let 
 the bill pass. 
 
 At the passing of this Regency bill, the reign of 
 George III. may be said to have terminated. 
 Henceforward George IV. reigned, although for 
 some years under the title of a regent. 
 
 At the death of George II. we took a review of a 
 long period of Whig rule. The term of Toryism is 
 not yet accomplished ; but the fifty years which have 
 elapsed since the death of that monarch, and during 
 which the Tories, if not in the commons, yet in the 
 peers and in the court, have been uniformly dominant, 
 offer a retrospect unhappily contrasting with the pic- 
 ture we then drew. The burdens of the country 
 increased to an amount which our forefathers would 
 have deemed incredible, and their descendants find 
 almost intolerable ; the heroism of our countrymen 
 shining as it always has done, yet without any per-
 
 4S0 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, ceptiblc effect ; the nation still involved in a war 
 
 XVIII 
 
 which threatened its existence, and committed to a 
 
 A.D. 1807 . . 11 
 
 to 1810. dispute with a maritime power which was then de- 
 pendent, but was now a rival — and all these contests 
 commenced against the opposition of the Whigs, for 
 tyranny in America and despotism in Europe — these 
 were the effects of Tory influence upon our foreign 
 and colonial policy. At home we have to view a 
 long period of popular discontent restrained by trea- 
 son — trials, and military slaughter ; or of popular 
 applause gained by universal corruption ; the sus- 
 pension of the safeguards of English liberty; the 
 continuance of religious discord; the undisguised 
 disaffection of Ireland; and the accumulation of 
 abuses which clogged every wheel of government ; 
 a penal code the most bloody in Europe; and a go- 
 vernment the most expensive that history had ever 
 known — these were the effects of the reign of a 
 Tory monarch, who was lauded by the Tory party 
 as the best of kings, and who was, in his private 
 relations, amoral and respectable man. 
 
 If we compare the characters of George II. and 
 George III., we shall seek in vain for the superiority 
 in that of the former, which rendered his reign so 
 prosperous, while that of his successor was so disas- 
 trous. The solution of the problem must be sought 
 in the principles of their government. Under the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 481 
 
 one monarch, the counsels of the nation were di- chap. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 rected by "Whigs, who guided the progress oi"r~p; — ~~ 
 liberty, under the other by Tories, who in at- 
 tempting to extinguish liberty gave birth to licen- 
 tiousness. 
 
 VOL. III. 2 I
 
 48'.^ 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Views of the two parties — Tlie Prince Regent abandons the Whig 
 party — Lord Morpeth's motion for Catholic emancipation — Robert 
 Peel — Refusal of the Whigs to coalesce with the Tory ministry — 
 Assassination of Perceval — Ministerial negotiations — The Liverpool 
 administration— Canning's motion for Catholic emancipation — Con- 
 clusion of the war — Revival of popular interest in domestic questions 
 — Scarcity and riots of 1716 — Suspension of the Habeas Corpus act 
 — Coercion bills — Massacre at Manchester. — Indignation of the 
 people — Shared by the Whigs— Castlereagh's Six Acts — Lord John 
 Russell's motion on the subject of parliamentary reform — Death of 
 Georfire IIL 
 
 'o^ 
 
 CHAPt That very ambig-uous phrase, " the British con- 
 
 XIX. 
 
 '- — stitution," has two distinct meanings ; and its inter- 
 
 A. D. 1810 . , , , p , 
 
 to 1820. pretation must depend upon the party oi the person 
 by whom it is pronounced. In the mouth of a Whig 
 it is a democracy tempered, but not controlled, by 
 the prerogatives of a sovereign and the intervention 
 of an aristocracy — in the mouth of a Tory, since the 
 accession of the house of Hanover, it is an aristo-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 483 I 
 
 cracy fortified with all the prerogatives of the crown, CHAP, 
 and tempered, but not controlled, by the admixture — ^—^ — 
 
 \ -^ A. D. 1810 
 
 of a portion of popular influence.* to i8-20. 
 
 According to the Tory idea of perfection the con- 
 stitution was now perfect. The peers, by virtue of 
 their nomination boroughs, could direct the exercise 
 of the prerogative ; and, with the sovereign's assist- 
 ance, they could command a majority in the house of 
 commons ; yet there was still a strong minority 
 returned to that house by the popular voice, which 
 had an influence on its deliberations althouQfh it could 
 not direct its decisions. 
 
 The Whigs, of course, thought the British consti- 
 tution destroyed ; and they had decided upon the 
 measures necessary to its restoration. These were, 
 by stri})ping the aristocracy of their nomination bo- 
 roughs, to restore the democracy of the house of 
 commons, and by depriving the church of its mono- 
 poly of political power, to further weaken the aristo- 
 cracy by diminishing the political influence of its 
 (after the house of commons) most powerful engine. 
 
 rractically, therefore, it was, by the Whigs, deemed 
 necessary to the restoration of the constitution, that 
 
 • Many theorists amused tlicm- occasionally talki'd of our l);ilaii(((l 
 
 selves with the idea of an inipos- constitution, l)ut ucitlicr li;is ever 
 
 sible equipoise of power ; luil I .ictcd willi ;i view to jil.in- the 
 
 deduce the principles of the parties scales exactly even, 
 from their ruts. \v.h-\\ party has 
 
 '2 I <Z
 
 484" THE HISTORY or party. 
 
 CHAP, a repeal of the Test aet, an emancipation of the Ca- 
 tholics, and a reform in parliament, should take place. 
 
 A.D. KMO 
 
 to 1820. It was upon these questions that the parties really 
 contended. It is to the progress and conclusion of 
 these contests that we must now hasten. 
 
 The Prince of Wales had been long associated 
 with the Whigs, because they had long opposed his 
 father's government. From that party he had re- 
 ceived protection and derived consequence, and while 
 he placed himself under the guidance of Fox he 
 avowed himself " a party man." But of the principles 
 of his party he probably knew little, and liked still 
 less. 
 
 When the Regency bill had passed, the prince 
 intrusted Lords Grenville and Grey with the task of 
 drawing up his answer to the address of the houses 
 of parliament. One of the embarrassing consequences 
 of coalition now appeared. In the discussions upon 
 the regency question in 1789, these political allies 
 had been opponents ; and it was a necessary, but 
 very difficult, part of their commission, to preserve 
 the consistency of the prince and Earl Grey, without 
 palpably betraying that of Lord Grenville. This 
 difficulty, the answer submitted to the prince did not 
 very skilfully surmount, and his royal highness ob- 
 jected to almost every part of it. Sheridan then, by 
 command of the prince, drew up a second answer, 
 and he and Mr. Adam were sent with the new draft
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 485 
 
 to Holland House. A warm discussion ensued; Sheri- CHAP. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 dan's answer was adopted : but Lords Grrey and -— 
 
 ^ ' _ •' A. D. 1811 
 
 GrenvHle presented a joint representation to the to i82u. 
 king, severely reflecting upon Sheridan's inter- 
 ference. 
 
 This remonstrance was quite sufficient to disgust 
 the prince with Whiggism. Counsellors were not 
 wanting to strengthen his displeasure, and after al- 
 lowing them to go on for some time in daily ex- 
 pectation of their dismissal, he at length, to the 
 surprise of the Tories, signified to Perceval and 
 his colleaofiies his resolution of retainino: them as 
 his ministers. 
 
 During the debates of this year many instances 
 occurred to exemplify the impunity with which 
 injustice may be committed under the Tory con- 
 stitution. Sir Francis Burdett^ Mr. Brougham, and 
 Colonel Wardle brought the sulycct of military 
 flogging before parliament. Colonel Wardle detailed 
 the case of a man, who being found guilty of speaking 
 disrespectfully of his colonel was sentenced to receive 
 1000 lashes. When ho received his sentence he 
 was so weak that he was obligcul to Ix; suj)ported at 
 the halberds, and having received '200 strokes was 
 confined to the hospital under the endurance of ex- 
 cruciating agony from August to November, when 
 he was offered th(! alternative of i)eing taken ti»rth to 
 be again mangled, or to scivc for life in ;i condciuntMl
 
 4Sr> TIIF, IIISTOKY OK TAUTY. 
 
 CHAP. ro«»imont in the West Indies. Rather than expire 
 
 XIX. 
 
 — -' — under the lash he chose the latter punishment. Out 
 
 A.D. 1811 ^ 
 
 to 18-20. of the whole house of commons no member could be 
 found to second Colonel AVardle's motion for inquiry 
 into this horrible case except the colonel of the re- 
 giment in which it had taken place. He was con- 
 fident that no more had been done than was ne- 
 cessary to military disciphne. Such an atrocity 
 might have occurred under the Whigs, but that 
 party would not have had the boldness to refuse an 
 inquiry. 
 
 While Perceval and his party continued in power, 
 the progress of any one of the three Whig measures 
 could not be expected. The complaints of Ireland 
 could not be stifled, but they were punished, and 
 Wellesley Pole's efforts in this way form the frequent 
 subject of parliamentary discussion. The Catholic 
 question was brought forward by the Earl of Do- 
 nouffhmore in the lords, and Grattan in the com- 
 mons, but both motions were rejected by large majo- 
 rities.* The question of parliamentary reform fared 
 
 • Lord Sidmouth introduced a with petitions against it. Lords 
 
 bill to amend the act of Tole- Holland and Erskinc powerfully 
 
 ration, by placing restrictions enforced these petitions, and even 
 
 upon the licences of dissenting the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 
 teachers. But the dissenters im- and Lord Eldon, although highly 
 
 mediately took the alarm ; and the approving of the bill, thought it 
 
 table of the house was covered unwise to press it.
 
 I 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 487 
 
 I 
 
 no better, and it was evident that the Tory mmistry CHAP, 
 of Perceval, and the once ^yhlg Prince of Wales ^ ^ ^^^^ 
 were now thoroughly consentient. to ^^-^• 
 
 Early in 1812 an important attempt was made to 
 achieve Cathohc emancipation. The regent was un- 
 derstood to be favourable to the measure, and it was 
 imagined that upon this subject he and his new 
 friends might disagree. The motion was brought 
 forward in the commons by Lord Morpeth. During 
 the debate some wavering w^as observable in the 
 Tory ranks. Canning, who had always treated the 
 question as one of expediency, although he still 
 voted with the Tories, began to prepare the way for 
 a change. " When," he said, "I look to the pre- 
 sent state of Ireland, with a great and growing popu- 
 lation — a population growing not in numbers only 
 but in wealth and intelligence, and aspiring from 
 what they have already tasted of freedom, to a more 
 enlarged and etjual enjoyment of privileges from 
 which they are still excluded ; when I consider that 
 to this situation they have been gi-adually raised 
 from a condition wherein no class of people had ever 
 before been placed by the laws of a Christian country; 
 I cannot think it probable that in this situation they 
 should long contentedly continue : neither can I 
 think it wis(^ if it were practicable, to dctcnuiiie 
 upon permanently shutting tiiein out from the pale
 
 488 
 
 TIIK HISTORY OF rARTY, 
 
 ruAP. of the constitution.'' Even AVellcsley Pole, after 
 A D isio setting forth at full length the violent things the 
 to 1820. Catholics had said against him, in return for his pro- 
 clamations and prosecutions, as his reason for voting 
 against them, found it expedient to conclude with a 
 promise, that if at any time he should see a proper 
 temper and disposition actuating the body of the 
 Catholics, he should be the last man in the house to 
 oppose their pretensions. A speaker also, who was 
 often alluded to in the debate as a young member, and 
 who had recently appeared among the Tory party, 
 declared that although he then gave his vote against 
 a motion, which in the present instance was, at least, 
 unnecessary, he would by no means pledge himself 
 with regard to the Catholic question. This was 
 Robert Peel, the future leader of the Tory party, 
 the future instrument of the triumph of the great 
 question which he now opposed : a man, who in par- 
 liamentary tact and thorough knowledge of the 
 house of commons, yields to no Tory chief who has 
 preceded him ; who in eloquence yields only to 
 those of the highest order, and who, had he been 
 trusted by his party in council, as he has been relied 
 on by them in action, would probably have ob- 
 tained for them a long monopoly of power ; yielding 
 
 * Pari. Debates, vol. xxi., p. 230.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 489 
 
 gradually, but gracefully, to the force of public opi- chap. 
 nion, and even wresting from the Whigs the honour 
 
 A. D. 1812 
 
 of those reforms which were the natural offspring of to 1820. 
 their exertions. J\Ir. Peel was already a man far in 
 advance of his party ; a man whose intellect and poli- 
 tical views belonged to the same class as those of 
 Pitt and Canning. 
 
 The sentiments of the Tory party are, however, 
 rather to be read in the speech of the premier. '* I 
 have before said, and I see no reason to alter my 
 opinion, that I could not conceive a time or any 
 chansre of circumstances which could render further 
 concession to the Catholics consistent with the safety 
 of the state.'"* This was the speech which drew 
 forth the loudest cheers from the treasury benches, 
 and formed the theme of no popery sermons, and 
 the rallying cry of no po})cry mobs. This was 
 recognised as orthodox Toryism. 
 
 The Whigs were not wanting in argument or 
 eloquence. Lord George Grcnville powerfully 
 contrasted the demeanour of the Catholic with 
 the petulance of his persecutor. Sheridan laughed 
 at the absurdity of a man's violently abusing 
 another for incivility of language, and Whitbread 
 fixed with considerable ])ertinacity upon the in- 
 consistencies of Canning. " Is this," he said, 
 
 • Pari. Dchatfs, vol. xxi., p. 663.
 
 \,[)0 TIIK IIISTOliy OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAI\ "really the man who has hitherto been the enemy 
 of the Catholic claims — who when in office distin- 
 
 A. D. 1812 . ,. 
 
 lo 18J0. (Tuished himself as the strenuous opposer ot Catholic 
 
 concession — who concurred in the vote which went 
 to disqualify a Catholic from being a bank director in 
 Ireland — who was of opinion with his late colleagues 
 that it was dangerous for a Catholic to become an 
 admiral or a general ? Alas ! such is the inconsis- 
 tency of human nature, this is the very man!'* 
 Other speakers showed the insufficiency of replying 
 to a demand for justice that the claimant was im- 
 portunate and loud; and Grattan protested against 
 the protection of the established church being made 
 the pretext for refusing liberty to Ireland. *' The 
 church," he said, *' was not made for the ministry or 
 the king, but for the people. It had been thought 
 proper to give the religious establishment of Eng- 
 land to the people of Ireland ; in which, perhaps, 
 they were right : but they were wrong if they im- 
 posed upon the people of Ireland the English church 
 and then made that a reason for disqualifying them 
 from the enjoyment of their rights. Was it to be 
 said that the establishment of the English church 
 was not compatible with the liberties of the people ?'* 
 On the division, Lord Morpeth's motion was re- 
 jected by a majority of 229 to 135. 
 
 The expression of Tory sentiments made by Per- 
 ceval upon this occasion, instead of precipitating his
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 491 
 
 dismissal, was followed by the commuriication before CHAP. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 alluded to, which was made throus^h the Duke of . ^ ,,.; 
 
 '=' A. D. 1812 
 
 York, and at the same time expressed an anxiety to 1820. 
 that Lords Grey and Grenville should be included 
 in future arrangements. The consequent proposition 
 made to these noblemen was rejected. Disclaiming 
 all personal exclusion, they, however, replied, that 
 their differences of opinion w^ere too great and too 
 important to admit of union ; they alluded to the 
 opinions of the present ministers upon the Catholic 
 question, and added, *' To recommend to parliament 
 a repeal of the disabilities under which so large a por- 
 tion of his majesty's subjects still laboured, on ac- 
 count of their religious opinions, would be the first 
 advice which it would be their duty to offer to the 
 prince regent ; nor could they, for the shortest time, 
 make themselves responsible for any further delay in 
 the proposal of a measure with which they could en- 
 tertain no hope of making themselves useful to his 
 royal highness, or to the country."* 
 
 The Whigs being thus impracticable, Perceval 
 found a more congenial ally in Sidmouth, who took 
 office as president of the council, and introduced his 
 party. 
 
 Meanwhile Grattan again brought forward the 
 Catholic {[ucstion, and Canning not only spoke, but 
 
 • New Aiiiiuul Register for lyi'i.
 
 4i)'2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, voted in favour of the motion ; ])ublic interest be- 
 XIX. 
 
 ~ — came fixed upon the subject, and the division was 
 
 A.D. 18P2 ^ '' 
 
 to 1820. 300 to 215. 
 
 In May this administration was destroyed by the 
 assassination of its chief, who was shot by a crazy 
 bankrupt as he entered the lobby of the house of 
 commons. The private worth of this unfortunate 
 statesman neither Whigs nor Tories disputed ; and 
 when it w^as stated that he had died poor, both par- 
 ties agreed to grant 2000/. a year to his widow, and 
 50,000/. to his children. When, however, the Tories 
 thought this insufficient and proposed an additional 
 pension to his sons, the Whigs resisted the grant as 
 only to be justified by services very different from 
 those which Perceval had performed. The Tories 
 nevertheless persevered and obtained a party triumph. 
 The Tories are a grateful party ; the posthumous re- 
 wards obtained by them for Perceval were nearly 
 equal to those with difficulty obtained by the Whigs 
 for Chatham ; yet, what historian will ever place 
 these names together, except for the purpose of 
 strong contrast ? Who now dissents from the judg- 
 ment passed upon Perceval in the house of lords by 
 his colleague the Marquis of Wellesley? " With 
 all my respect for the virtues and excellencies of 
 the late minister," said that nobleman, " I still feel 
 it my duty to say that I did not consider him a fit 
 man to lead the councils of this great empire."
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 493 
 
 Upon the death of Perceval, Lord Liverpool was, ^^ix^* 
 in the first instance, authorized by the prince regent 
 
 A. D. 1812 
 
 to form an administration. The earl's first applica- *« ^^-^• 
 tion was to Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning ; but 
 these influential men, finding that Lord Castlereagh 
 was to retain the secretaryship for foreign affairs and 
 the lead in the house of commons, and that the 
 Catholic question was still to remain unsettled, re- 
 fused to treat. When this failure became known, an 
 address was carried by a small majority against mi- 
 nisters, praying the prince regent to appoint an effi- 
 cient administration. The arrangements were now 
 consigned to the Marquis Wellesley, who undertook 
 to construct a coalition government upon the princi- 
 ples of moderate concession to the Catholics, and the 
 vigorous prosecution of the war in the peninsula. 
 With Wellesley, however. Lord Liverpool and the 
 Tories refused to treat, and Earl Grey and the \VTiigs 
 were still deliberating, when the commission of the 
 marquis was withdrawn. An attempt to form a cabi- 
 net, of which Lords Grey and Grenville should name 
 four members out of twelve, was of course unsuccess- 
 ful ; these noblemen rejecting a compromise which 
 excluded their principles. The marquis expressed 
 in the house of lords his deep regret that the most 
 dreadful personal animosities, the most terrible diffi- 
 culties, arising out of (juestions the most complicated 
 and important, should have interposed obstacles to
 
 4<)4 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 *"\V\^' pi'^^'vont that. aiTaiio-ement vvliich was so desirable tor 
 ^ P jj^j., the interests and welfare of the country. 
 
 to 18-20. It was plain that the prince regent avoided all in- 
 timate connexion with his ancient friends, and was 
 unwillintr to admit them into any cabinet in which 
 he should not have sufficient power to control their 
 conduct. He afterwards, through Lord Moira, 
 offered them more extensive powers; but refusing to 
 give them power over those great offices of the court 
 which, if occupied by opponents, take from a ministry 
 all character of efficiency and stability ; this overture 
 was also declined.* 
 
 On the 8th of June Lord Liverpool rose in his 
 place in the house of lords, and stated that he had 
 accepted the appointment of first commissioner of the 
 treasury. The arrangements were soon completed. 
 Eldon, lord chancellor ; Harrowby, president of the 
 council ; Westmoreland, lord privy seal ; Vansittart, 
 chancellor of the exchequer ; Melville, first lord of 
 the admiralty ; Mulgrave, master-general of the 
 
 * It appears, however, that a appointments was the result of an 
 
 knowledge of the confidence re- intrigue set on foot by Sheridan, 
 
 posed in Sheridan by the prince and of which Lord Moira became 
 
 regent, and a well-founded distrust the dujjc. — Sec Moore s Life of 
 
 of the sincerity of the proposals Sheridan — and the Correspondence 
 
 made to them, had equal effect dining those involved negotiations 
 
 upon the Whigs. Even the rupture in the Slate Papers for 1812. 
 upon the article of tiie houseiiold
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 495 
 
 ordnance ; Sidmouth, home secretary ; Castlereagh, CHAP. 
 
 foreign secretary ; Earl Bathurst, colonial secretary ; 
 
 the Earl of Buckinghamshire, president of the board to i82o. 
 
 of control ; and the Marquis of Camden, who held 
 
 no office — these were Lord Liverpool's colleagues in 
 
 the cabinet. Without, his chief supporters were 
 
 Lord Palmerston, secretary at war ; Mr. Robinson, 
 
 treasurer of the navy, and Mr. Peel, secretary for 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 The Perceval administration has been mentioned 
 with regret by the Tories even of the present day, 
 as the last administration formed upon pure Pro- 
 testant principles. That of Lord Liverpool was 
 formed upon the understanding that the question of 
 Catholic emancipation should be an open question. 
 The effects of this relaxation of ministerial discipline 
 were immediately visible. Scarcely were the mi- 
 nisters appointed when Canning moved a resolution, 
 that the house would, in the next session, take into 
 consideration the laws affecting the Roman Catholics, 
 introducing his motion with one of those brilliant 
 speeches, radiant with all the force and beauty of his 
 early feelings, which always carried captive the minds 
 of his audience when he spoke upon this subject. In 
 the constantly repeated debates upon the Catholic 
 question, others repeated the same ideas, and retrod 
 their old track ; but Canning was always Drigiiial ; 
 his fruitful mind appeared to teem with arguments in
 
 49(3 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, favour of that religious liberty which he now defended. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 — ~ Of him alone can it be said that, upon this loner con- 
 
 A. D. lyi-j -J 
 
 to 18-20. tested question, he never repeated himself. Lord 
 
 Castlereagh now used his freedom to redeem the 
 
 pledge he had been the first to give and break ; and 
 
 upon the division the numbers apy)eared 9,55 to 106 
 
 in favour of the resolution. 
 
 In the following week the same question was in- 
 troduced into the house of lords by the Marquis 
 Wellesley ; to the horror of Lord Eldon, who said, 
 that, while fighting side by side with that noble 
 marquis he had entertained little suspicion that such 
 opinions as these existed in his mind. Of the cabi- 
 net ministers Lords Harrowby, Mulgrave, Camden, 
 and Melville, spoke in favour of the motion ; and 
 Lords Liverpool and Sidmouth against it. The mo- 
 tion was lost by one proxy, the numbers being 12G 
 to 125. 
 
 After such an unequivocal recognition of the Ca- 
 tholic claims by the commons, and so very equivocal 
 a refusal of them by the lords, the question might 
 have been considered as decided, as only await- 
 ing the next opportunity for its final arrange- 
 ment. But a long interval must still elapse before 
 the Catholic could taste the cup which appeared to 
 be almost at his lips. To the session of 1812 suc- 
 ceeded a general election ; and the zeal of the clergy, 
 calling forth the reprimand even of one of their own
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 497 
 
 bishops, and the exertions of the high Tories, had chap. 
 made the "No popery" cry productive. In the ' ^' 
 
 I 
 
 A D I S 12 
 
 next year, when Grattan introduced a bill granting a to I820. 
 comprehensive measure of emancipation, the resolu- 
 tion upon which it was founded was carried in the 
 commons, after a debate of four days, by a majority 
 of but 40. The bill was introduced and passed 
 through the early stages. In the committee, how-- 
 ever, the speaker threw all his weight and ability 
 into the scale against it ; declared that if that bill 
 passed, the crovm itself might become Catholic, and 
 moved the omission of the clause by which Catholics 
 were admitted to parliament. Upon a division he 
 succeeded by a majority of four, and the bill was im- 
 mediately abandoned. 
 
 Thus did the coveted success vanish from the Ca- 
 tholics as they attempted to clutch it. The bright- 
 ness of their prospects had proceeded from the 
 dangerous state of Ireland during the supremacy 
 of Napoleon, and the general belief as to the senti- 
 ments of the prince regent, rather than from any real 
 progress of libcjral principles in the nation. The 
 disastrous issue of the invasion of Russia had de- 
 stroyed the former motive to conciliation ; and more 
 recent observation of the inclinations of the prince 
 had removed the latter. With the moment of dan- 
 ger passed away the idea of concession. 'I'lu^ Toric^s 
 were again strong and intolerant ; and the advocates 
 
 VOL. iir. 2 K
 
 498 THE HISTORY Ol' PAUTY. 
 
 CHAP, of Catliolic emancipation became again a small mi- 
 
 XIX. 
 
 noritv in the Icirislaturc. W' hile the armies of the 
 A.n. isi-2 •' ^^ 1 1 • • 
 
 to 18-20. allies were marching upon Pans, and were achievmg 
 
 the triumph of Toryism in the restoration of the 
 Bourbons, the popular exultation was too great to 
 allow even a momentary interest to mere domestic 
 questions ; and the great events which ensued, and 
 which were terminated by the battle of Waterloo, 
 sustained the excitement, and fixed it upon external 
 objects. 
 A. D. 1815. The termination of the mighty struggle, which 
 so few of the great men who were flourishing at 
 its commencement had survived to see decided, was 
 indeed glorious to us as a nation ; but even glory 
 may be too dearly bought. In a war commenced, 
 from no dictates of sound policy, but from the mere 
 motive of humouring a Tory king and vindicating a 
 Tory principle, we had spent energies that should have 
 been reserved for some crisis of extreme necessity, 
 and had made efforts which can never be repeated. 
 The success and ambition of Napoleon, which was 
 found so ready and so valuable an excuse for the 
 later periods of this war, can afford none for its com- 
 mencement, of which they could not be the cause, 
 but were probably the effects. 
 
 During this year the nation w^as deprived of 
 Samuel Whitbread, whose brain reeled beneath the 
 pressure of constant and laborious mental application.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 499 
 
 The duties of the house of commons, and the still CHAP. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 more unorrateful task of settlins" the involved accounts 
 
 A. D. 1815 
 
 of the Drury-lane theatre, overthrew a noble mind. to 1820. 
 He died by his own hand. 
 
 Early in 1816 Canning joined this administration, A. D. isie. 
 as president of the board of control. His motives, 
 as he interpreted them to the people of Liverpool, 
 were, of course, very lofty and disinterested ; but 
 when he condescended to place himself again under 
 Castlereagh, he could not but feel himself degraded 
 by his office. 
 
 No sooner was the country returned to a state of 
 
 (peace than those domestic questions which had, for 
 so long, been the objects of very secondary interest, 
 became the chief subjects of popular attention. The 
 Catholic question was re-produced, and although 
 ^ with no immediate success, hopes were again held 
 out that it would be more favourably entertained in 
 
 tthe next session. The re-agitation of the subject 
 also produced its effect, in the speech of the Bishop 
 of Norwich, who stood forth from among his brethren 
 to disavow the objection that the emancipation of the 
 Catholics would be the destruction of the church 
 of England : observing that the only way to secure 
 permanently the existence of any establishment, civil 
 or ecclesiastical, was to evince liberal and conciliatory 
 sentiments to those who dillered from us, and to lay 
 its foundation in tho love, afFertif)n, and esteem, of 
 
 o K- o
 
 'H)0 Tin: insToiiY or pautv. 
 
 CHAP, all within its influence. This, he said, was the true 
 loundation of our church ; with this it was secure 
 
 A D. 181(5 
 
 to I8J0. from all clanger, without this every other was futile 
 and fallacious. 
 
 The first effect of that peace, which had been 
 looked forward to by the younger portion of the 
 nation, as the harbinger of an age of undefined 
 prosperity, was to throw the labouring classes out of 
 employ, and to produce discontent and riot through- 
 out the kinsfdora. While war stores were in constant 
 consumption, employment abundant, and wages high, 
 the operatives having no time to listen to dema- 
 gogues, ate their meals in peace ; or, if they thought 
 of politics at all, echoed the " church and king" 
 doctrines of their employers. Even thus low had 
 Pitt's bribery reached. For five-and-tw^enty years 
 these men had been earning the purchase-money 
 of their own and their children's future industry. 
 When tliis expenditure ceased, and the dreadful 
 scarcity of 181(3 pressed, they became hungry and 
 discontented, and were ready to listen to the evils 
 of the system which, as they before thought, 
 worked so well. Choosing to themselves a leader, 
 in the person of Mr. Henry Hunt, whose stento- 
 rian voice, farmer-like appearance, and impertur- 
 bable powers of face, enabled him to retail, with 
 great effect, the ordinary common-places of hus- 
 tings oratory, the crowds of unemployed artisans
 
 THE HISTORY OF PAUTV. 501 
 
 held meetings, drew up petitions, and passed resolu- chap. 
 tions ; and as their zeal or their necessities increased, 
 
 . , A. D. 1817 
 
 passed from deliberation to action, sacking gunsmiths' to i8-2o. 
 shops, and taking possession of different parts of 
 the city. 
 
 The conduct of a prudent party, "which had rioted 
 so long in a lavish expenditure, should have been, at 
 this moment of reaction and depression, to reduce 
 the public burdens to the lowest possible scale, and 
 to carry economical reforms into every portion of the 
 state — to foresee that such reforms must be called for, 
 and to avoid the necessity of submitting the inquiry 
 to a hostile party. Had there been, at this time, 
 any leader of the Tory party worthy of the name, 
 perhaps such would have been his policy, although 
 even Pitt might have found some difficulty in calling 
 
 P off the pack from their prey. Castlereagh and Liver- 
 pool suspended the Habeas Corpus act, re-enacted 
 
 _ and strengthened with the penalty of death similar 
 bills to those which Pitt had called for when the 
 
 ft nation was stunned by the noise of the French revo- 
 lution ; and adopted, generally, every measure of 
 coercion, but none of conciliation. These acts were 
 vehemently opposed by the Whigs, who denied their 
 necessity, and expatiated uj)on their atrocious cruelty. 
 A low estimation of the value of human life has 
 been remarked to be a ccu'tain svmptom of despotic 
 
 lb tendency In ;i government. If we are to apj»ly this
 
 502 THE HISTORY OF PAUTY. 
 
 CllAi'. maxim closely, looking at the enactments of the 
 ' ■ ■ Tories, and their constant advocacy of sanguinary 
 
 to 18-20. punishments, we should judge the other principles of 
 that party to be fitted rather for the meridian of 
 Constantinople than for that of England. On this 
 occasion the Whigs, headed by Sir Samuel llomilly 
 and Sir James Mackintosh, men whose names will 
 always be illustrious among the friends of liberty and 
 humanity, proposed numberless amendments, and 
 offered a protracted opposition. But the Tories were 
 now in earnest to put down the mobs that were at- 
 tackino- all that rendered office desirable. Cannino^ 
 came forth in great power on the occasion, and their 
 bills passed by large majorities. 
 
 Meanwhile the Catholic question made no pro- 
 gress ; every year brought its vernal promise and 
 autumnal disappointment ; every successive session 
 appeared to give promise of some measure in that 
 which should succeed it ; but when this arrived, 
 Mr. Peel in the commons, and Lord Liverpool in 
 the lords, still talked in general terms of the insuf- 
 ficiency of the securities offered, and called upon 
 the members " to weigh the substantial blessings 
 which they know to have been derived from the 
 government that is, against all the speculative 
 advantages which they are promised from the go- 
 vernment that is to be." This year the majorities 
 were 2-1' in the commons, and 52 in the lords;
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 503 
 
 nor was the question renewed until the meetino^ of a chap. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 new parhament in 1819, when the event was the '- — 
 
 . . . . A. D. 1817 
 
 same ; the leofislature asreeino^ wnth Lord Liver- to \s-20. 
 pool, who said, he fully subscribed to that system 
 which maintained itself by a protestant religion with 
 a protestant monarchy and a protestant parliament. 
 
 The years 1816 and 1817 made some havoc among 
 the Whig party. On the 7th of July, 1816, death 
 released poor Sheridan from his sufferings. The 
 last days of this illustrious man are disgraceful to 
 the nation whose history he adorns, disgraceful to 
 the Whigs whom he so long and so faithfully served, 
 but still more disgraceful to the heartless and selfish 
 voluptuary to whom he sacrificed every other friend- 
 ship. Were history altogether silent upon the cha- 
 racter of George IV., were the biographer of She- 
 ridan alone admitted to relate his story, we should 
 look upon the deathbed of Sheridan, observe 
 his misery, nay his absolute want, the sheriff^s 
 officers surrounding his pillow, and almost con- 
 tending with death for his prey ; we should mark 
 with disgust the prince who owed him so much 
 looking from a distance on his misery, extending to 
 him a paltry pittance in so paltry a manner that it 
 was refused with scorn, and we should admit that 
 George IV. was worthy of all the contempt that 
 has been poured upon his memory. 
 
 Sheridan had outlived his political importnnco,
 
 )0l THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, but (ieorgc Ponsonby, who survived him but one day, 
 died while he was nominally at the head of the Whi<^ 
 
 A.D. 1817 
 
 to 18J0. party. Ponsonby was the second son of a speaker of 
 the Irish house of commons ; he had risen from the 
 Irish bar, by the favour of the Whig party to which 
 he faithfully attached himself, to the chancellorshij) 
 of Ireland. "When Lord Howick became Earl Grey, 
 Ponsonby succeeded him for thcborough of Tavistock, 
 and was immediately installed as the ostensible 
 Whio" leader in the house of commons. He is emi- 
 nent rather for the office of trust he held than for 
 the talent he manifested. As a statesman, a de- 
 bater, and an individual, he was a respectable man. 
 He was seized by an apoplectic fit in the house of 
 commons, and died a few days afterwards.* 
 
 Early in 181 7 died Francis Horner, another 
 valuable member of the Whig party. Horner's par- 
 liamentary career had been run at a time when little 
 attention was fixed upon the race, when the penin- 
 sula attracted more interest than the houses of par- 
 liament. He was brought into parliament by his 
 college friend. Lord Henry Petty. His strength 
 seemed to lie in political economy ; it was in the 
 numerous debates which arose out of the report of 
 the bullion commerce that he made the most con- 
 spicuous figure. Horner was a good debater, an 
 
 * Cicntlfman'? Magazine, vol. Ixxxvii.. j>nrt 2, p. 83.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 505 
 
 honest politician, and a consistent Whig. The CIIAP. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 closeness of his application to his early studies had 
 
 ^* •; A. D. 1817 
 
 laid the foundation of a consumption which at length to i^-^- 
 destroyed him. 
 
 In compensation for these losses the party had 
 obtained several new members who could w^ell supply 
 every other loss save that of Sheridan ; — but these are 
 generally the distinguished party champions of the 
 present day, men of whom a contemporary cannot 
 speak with the freedom of history. 
 
 The year 1819 witnessed events that, by bringing 
 forth into view the most odious of the characteristics 
 of Toryism, gave some hope of a change in the situa- 
 tion of parties. The large towns which were, under 
 the present system of representation, without repre- 
 sentatives, resolved upon the wild experiment of 
 choosing each at a public meeting a legislatorial 
 attorney who should claim his scat in the house. 
 Sir Charles Wolseley w-as unanimously chosen for 
 Birmingham ; and a meeting was convened for a 
 similar purpose at Manchester : but the magistrates 
 having denounced the })roposed object as illegal, the 
 election was abandoned, and the meeting was sum- 
 moned avowedly for the legal object of petitioning 
 for parliamentary reform, lliis meeting took place 
 in an open space in the town, called St. Peter's 
 Field ; the ground was kept by special constables 
 sworn in for flio purpose^; Hunt was in the chair, 
 and sixtv thou-and men and wdhicu were asMniil'lci]
 
 50i) TllK IIISTOKY Ol' PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, around the hustinofs. The multitudes had advanced 
 
 XIX. 
 
 — - — ^ — to the place of meeting in a kind of \)rocession. Each 
 
 A. I). 1S17 ^ ^ ^ 
 
 to 1820. reform club contributed its company and its banners, 
 and two companies of women preceded by white silk 
 banners led the march. This assembly was not 
 more formidable than many others which had been 
 recently held, and had dispersed without any breach 
 of the peace ; but wherever we find liberal princi- 
 ples popular and predominant, we may look for a 
 nucleus of Toryism which concentrates all the bitter- 
 ness of the party, and compensates for its smallness 
 by its intensity.* The authorities of Manchester 
 were Tories of this description, eager to do good 
 service to the minister on whom they fawned, and to 
 wreak their vengeance on the populace whom they 
 hated. Scarcely had the proceedings begun when a 
 body of yeomanry cavalry appeared charging through 
 the crowd and advancing towards the hustings. 
 The multitude offered no resistance, they fell back 
 on all sides, while men and women, members of the 
 clubs, and mere spectators, were stifled in the crush, 
 or trampled to death by the horses. Still, however, 
 there was no resistance, the troops attained the hust- 
 ings, dashed dow^n the flags which hung there, and 
 seized the chairman and others who appeared active 
 in the business of the meeting. When thus much 
 had been accomplished their work appeared done ; 
 
 * An Irish Toy, for instance, is an English Tory run mad.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PAUTY. 507 
 
 but the people began to hoot. A cry was raised chap. 
 among- the yeoraanrv of " Have at their flaffs !" and '- — 
 
 ^ J J to A. D. 1817 
 
 the troop dispersed among the crowd, each man to i820, 
 hewing his way with his sabre through the compact 
 and powerless human mass, and spurring towards the 
 banner, he intended to strike down. In ten minutes, 
 four hundred persons, killed, maimed, or wounded, 
 lay upon the ground ; the crowd had disappeared, 
 and the soldiers were in possession of the spot they 
 had so chivalrously won. 
 
 The people of England heard of this terrible 
 catastrophe with that thrill of indignation which 
 must ever vibrate through a free country at the idea 
 of the slaughter of fellow-citizens by the soldiery ; 
 this feeling was not decreased when it was added 
 that the bodies of women and children were found 
 among the slain, and that one woman had received 
 her death-wound from a sabre ; but it was not until 
 the party in power had avowed and justified the 
 massacre that the cry for justice or revenge became 
 loud and terrible. The coroner's jury was carefully 
 composed of men who would return verdicts upon which 
 no legal proceedings could be founded. According 
 to their decisions, some of the victims died " an ac- 
 cidental death ;" a child died " by a fall from his mo- 
 ther's anus ;" and a third victim, " by the pressure 
 of the military, being und(U' the civil ])ower." The 
 exultation of the authorities of the district Ibund vent
 
 iOS rilH IIISTOHV OF PAKTY. 
 
 CHAP, in an address of thanks from the united maoistraey 
 XIX. 
 
 of Lancashire and Cheshire to the officers and sol- 
 
 A. 1). 1817 
 
 to 18*20. diers engaged, and these Tory squires did not forget 
 especially to remark " the extreme forbearance exer- 
 cised by the yeomanry when insulted and defied by 
 the rioters." At Lancaster, the grand jury threw 
 out every bill preferred by the sufferers, and at Man- 
 chester depositions against the yeomanry or police 
 officers were altogether refused. The people were 
 cut down by the soldiery, and the courts of justice 
 were closed against their complaints. 
 
 Even thus far the Tories of the district were not 
 unsupported by the rulers of their party. The answer 
 to a despatch forwarded to London, contained a let- 
 ter from Lord Sidmouth, conveying the regent's 
 high approbation of the exemplary conduct of the 
 officers and men who had assisted and supported the 
 civil power of the county palatine of Lancaster. This 
 formal approval of the slaughter set the country on 
 fire. The Whigs, who had strongly disapproved of 
 the conduct of the democrats, disapproved still more 
 strongly of that of the Tories. The meetings con- 
 vened throughout the kingdom were no longer com- 
 posed of mere rabble ; men of rank and education 
 headed the movement, and the county of York peti- 
 tioned under the sanction of one of the lords lieute- 
 nant, the Earl Fitzwilliam. The city of London 
 presented a strong remonstrance, which was responded
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 509 
 
 to by what Earl Grey justly designated as an imper- chap. 
 tinent and flippant answer ; many cities and counties — ^—^ — 
 
 ^^ . A. U. 1S17 
 
 followed the example, while the Tories on the other to i8-20. 
 hand besieged the throne with counter addresses, 
 and were importunate in their offers to form them- 
 selves into yeomanry corps, that they might imitate 
 the heroism of their brethren of Manchester, and 
 perhaps attain to equal honours. 
 
 Upon this subject, therefore, the parties were at 
 issue, and it was a question in which blood had al- 
 ready been spilt — wantonly* spilt, and loudly exulted 
 in. The battle of Manchester, as it was called by 
 some of the demagogues, called into being a spirit 
 of fierce hostility between the labouring and the pro- 
 perty classes ; a spirit of revenge for the slaughter 
 of their kinsmen and companions, a spirit which 
 never should or does exist under a just and free go- 
 vernment — which at once exemplified the impracti- 
 cability of the Tory system, and more than the 
 tongues of an hundred orators, enforced the neces- 
 sity of reform. Castlereagh attempted to eradicate 
 or repress this settled desire of revenge by penal 
 
 ♦ Wantonly, for in no instance they should be subjected to its 
 
 did any of the great reform meet- attacii. Tbc Spafields riots were 
 
 ings terminate in a breacii of tiic l)y no means occasioned by tiic 
 
 jjcace, unless the magistracy inter- dcclani.iti. f Hunt, tlu- buiii;ry 
 
 fercd. It is well tliat such meet- and desperate conspirators merely 
 
 ings should know tlial a military came to this rendezvous to recruit 
 
 force is near , it is not well that tlicir numbers.
 
 510 TIIL 111 STORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, statutes. Now it was that he introduced and car- 
 
 XIX. 
 
 ried those coercive measures which, under the title of 
 
 A.D. 1817 
 
 to 1820. "The SixActs," and "The Gagging Bills," are so cele- 
 brated in the speeches and writings of the demago- 
 gues of the day; fettering the press with heavy stamps, 
 and onerous securities ; introducing the punishment 
 of banishment for libels ; empowering the magistracy 
 to disarm the people, and subjecting the homes of 
 Englishmen even to nightly visitations : restricting 
 the exercise of the right of meeting to petition, and 
 contracting, to an alarming extent, that personal 
 liberty which Englishmen are educated to consider 
 as their birthrig-ht. These were the measures which 
 persistence in the principles of Tory government 
 rendered almost necessary, and in which the Tories 
 were supported even by the Grenvilles, and were 
 fruitlessly opposed by the Whigs.* The Marquis of 
 Lansdowne and the Whig party refused to surrender 
 the constitution even to avert the consequences of 
 Tory mismanagement ; but the timorous property- 
 classes thronged around the minister, and all opposi- 
 tion was vain. 
 
 Meanwhile the question of parliamentary reform 
 
 • The eloquence of Sir James great advantage in the debates 
 Mackintosh, whom Fox, in the vipon these measures. See espe- 
 liouse of commons, claimed as his cially his speech against the News- 
 friend, and whose Vindicia: GaUicce paper-tax bill, 
 has been before noticed, is seen to
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 511 
 
 was gently agitated. It had found in Lord John chap. 
 Russell an efficient and a persevering advocate. 
 How many great men passed away from the house of to 1820. 
 commons leaving this question undecided I We now 
 have those in sight who have lived to witness its 
 triumph and enjoy its fruits. Lord John Russell's 
 proposition of reform was exceedingly moderate : it 
 extended no further than to grant facilities for prov- 
 ing bribery against electors ; and to transfer the 
 franchise of any borough thus proved to be corrupt 
 to some populous town. From this plan the Whigs 
 could not promise themselves any increase of popu- 
 larity. " There are," said Lord John Russell, " two 
 p'arties dividing the country, both greatly exas- 
 perated, and both going to extremes ; the one making 
 unlimited demands, and the other meeting them with 
 total and peremptory denial : the one ready to en- 
 counter any hazard for unknown benefits and imagi- 
 nary rights ; the other ready to sacrifice, for present 
 security, those privileges which our ancestors thought 
 cheaply purchased with their blood." The man who 
 interfered between such combatants could not hopo 
 for favour. The Whigs were, accordingly, more de- 
 tested by the democrats — the radicals, as they were 
 about this time first called — than the Tories. 
 Cobbett, so fi.'licitous in attaching nicknames to his 
 opponents, lampooned tliem as '* shoy-hoys ;"* and 
 
 * " ITii' Ilampsliirr word for tl)ipvi>li sparrows, and lookint; 
 a scarecrow, |jiif ii|> to friplitcn vrry R)rriiiilalil(' al a distaiicc, Imt
 
 «51'2 THE IIISTOUY Ol' I' ARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Cannino- addressed tliein as " tlie mud-bespattered 
 Xi\. ^ . '^ . , , \ 
 
 — j — ^ — Wliio's, who, w itli laurels iu their hats and brickbats 
 
 to i8i>o. at their heels, bedaub(;d with ribbons and rubbish, 
 were forced to be rescued from their overpowering 
 po])ularity by a detachment of his majesty's horse- 
 guards.''* Each party, bold in their own unbridled 
 principles, agreed to look upon the men who pro- 
 fessed the principles of each modified until they could 
 blend in harmony, as a base and truckling faction. 
 Yet the Whigs were not diverted from their steady 
 course. Lord John Russell, in speaking of the 
 apostles of universal suffrage, was not afraid to cha- 
 racterize Major Cartvvright as a man who resembled 
 Nestor in nothing but his age, or to laugh at the 
 natural rights of men to meet in their parishes and 
 choose members of parliament by putting white and 
 black beans into a box : even Tierney congratu- 
 lated the house upon the opportunity afforded of 
 unanimously and decidedly discountenancing the 
 wild and visionary doctrines of reform that had lately 
 agitated the country. The Whig party appears to 
 have been alarmed at the recent demonstrations, and 
 although they retained their characteristic repugnance 
 
 soon discovered to be perfectly crown of the liat of a sham man 
 
 harmless. The boroui'limonjiers that liad been stuck to frijihtcn the 
 
 care no more for su'ch men than sparrows away." — Register, vol. 
 
 the sparrow in my neighbour Mor- xxxv., p. 22. 
 
 rel's garden at Botley, which sat * Canning's speech in the de- 
 
 hammcring out the pna? upon the bate on the state of the nation.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 513 
 
 to repressing the people by the strong arm of power, CHAP. 
 
 and preserved their partiahty for conciliation and — 
 
 concession, they advanced with great caution, alto- to i820. 
 gether refusing to argue the question of reform upon 
 the principle of reconstruction. 
 
 Castlereagh opposed Lord John Russell's resolu- 
 tions, but offered a compromise, by engaging to throw 
 no impediment in the w^ay of a bill for the disfran- 
 chisement of Grampound, and the transfer of its fran- 
 chise. The offer w-as accepted. Lord John Russell 
 withdrew his resolutions and introduced his bill. 
 
 The little interest attached to this gradual and 
 partial measure of reform was quickly dissipated. 
 Early in 1820 George II L died_, and although the 
 change of title of the reigning prince, from that of 
 regent to that of king, appeared at first to be the 
 only consequence of this event, yet, that change 
 brought in its train other questions which gave full 
 occupation to the parties, and excitement to the 
 nation. 
 
 vol.. III. 2 L
 
 v511« THE HISTORY OV I'AUTY. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Thistlewood's conspiracy — The queen's trial — Unpopularity of the 
 Tories — Efforts of the Whigs to undermine their power — Education 
 — Hume's motions — Progress of the Catholic cpiestion — Mr. Plun- 
 kett's bill passes the commons — Canning's bill — State of Ireland — 
 Death of Lord Londonderry — Accession of Canning to the ministry 
 — Its effect upon the Catholic question — Cabinet changes of 1823 — 
 Irish Catholic Association — Burdett's Catholic bill of 1825 — Re- 
 jected by the lords — Question of parliamentary reform — Mr. Lamb- 
 ton's motion of 1821 — Lord John Russell's — Lord John Russell's 
 motion of 1822 — Petitions in its favour — Canning's speech against it 
 — State of the question in 1826 — General election of 1826 — Illness 
 and retirement of Lord Liverpool — The new house of commons 
 decide against the Catholics — Formation of the Canning administra- 
 tion — Secession of the high Tories — Canning is supported by the 
 Whigs — Death of Canning — Appointment of Lord Goderich as his 
 successor — Resignation of Lord Goderich. 
 
 CHAP. If example were wanting of the ferocious spirit of 
 hostility to the higher classes which pervaded the 
 
 A.D. 1820 . . 
 
 to 1828. populace, since the slaughter at Manchester, it would 
 be abundantly found in the desperate conspiracy 
 headed by Thistlewood, which was discovered and 
 suppressed early in this year. Such a number of 
 men could not be gathered for such a purpose ; nor
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 515 
 
 could the secret have been kept even so well as it chap. 
 
 XX 
 
 was, unless the band of union had been the strong and 
 
 A. D. 18-20 
 
 bitter hatred only engendered by oppression. The to 18-28. 
 cheer with which the rabble met the prisoners when 
 they appeared on the scaffold and expressed their 
 sorrow only that they had failed to revenge the 
 Manchester massacre, showed that the feeling whence 
 this conspiracy sprung was widely diffused. The 
 midnight training in Yorkshire, the rising at Hud- 
 dersfield, and the riots at Paisley and Glasgow, 
 showed that it was not confined to the metropolis. 
 
 While the kin^^ and his government were thus the 
 objects of popular hatred, the Princess of Wales, now 
 the Queen of England, returned to the capital,, and 
 claimed to share her husband's throne. This hiffh- 
 spirited woman was very unfit to be the wife of 
 George IV. She could not tutor her spirit to 
 acquiesce with humble fidelity, while her husband ran 
 his course of shameless and undisguised debauchery. 
 Irritated with his infidelity, and, if the anecdotes of 
 the day have any truth, disgusted with himself, she 
 did not disguise her sentiments. Before she left Eng- 
 land for the continent, the prince had declared his 
 fixed determination never again to meet her either in 
 public or in private. Cast off by lier husband, and 
 left to roam the; eontiiuuit at h(>r will, it had been 
 wonderful indeed if her conduct had been, in every 
 instance, correct; but it had been still more wonder- 
 
 Q \. 'I
 
 ."iK) iiii: lusTOKV oi' rAiirv. 
 
 CHAP, ful if slander had allowed it to be so reported. Spies 
 
 XX. 
 
 ' — '- — were placed upon her actions ; her most confidential 
 
 A. 1). 18-20 ^ \ 
 
 to 18-28. servants were in the pay of her husband, and every 
 act was known in England through the interested 
 report of her own menials. Such a mass of crimina- 
 tion had been thus accunuilated that the king thought 
 it out of the question that she should ever return to 
 England ; and took no steps to relieve her from the 
 distresses and indignities to which she was subjected 
 abroad. Her bold resolution to confront her enemies, 
 confounded him. All negotiation was fruitless ; he 
 was compelled to assert his dishonour before the 
 world, and to adduce his proof. In support of Lord 
 Liverpool's bill of pains and penalties, this proof was 
 given at the bar of the house of lords. She stood 
 the trial dauntlessly, while the king himself shook 
 beneath the terrific denunciations which were poured 
 upon him by her counsel. The infamous hirelings 
 who had watched Caroline's conduct, and now testi- 
 fied to her guilt, were, upon cross examination, so 
 utterly destroyed as to their credit, that no honest 
 jury could receive their evidence. The majorities 
 upon the bill continually decreased, until, upon the 
 third reading, it amounted only to nine. Another 
 question remained to be put — the house of commons 
 had yet to be encountered — nine cabinet ministers 
 were in the minority. The bill was abandoned. The 
 king had thus succeeded in conveying to all the 
 reasoning part of his subjects, a moral conviction of
 
 THE HISTORY OT PARTY. 517 
 
 his wife's sfuilt, while he failed to obtain any release CHAP. 
 
 ? . XX. 
 from the tie which bound him to her. ^ 
 
 A. D. 18-20 
 
 But the principal feature of this contest was the to 18-28. 
 universal popularity of the queen. From the instant 
 of her arrival in England she became the rallying- 
 point for the disaffected. Her cause was one which 
 would lend an air of chivalry to the hatred with 
 which the recollections of Manchester, and the 
 tyranny of Castlereagh, had inspired the people. 
 In her they saw a victim to the same king and the 
 same party who had protected the murderers of their 
 friends. They knew that, even if guilty, she was 
 less guilty than her prosecutor — they saw her friend- 
 less and persecuted, and they espoused her cause 
 with enthusiasm. Addresses, expressive of absolute 
 confidence in her innocence, and of vehement indig- 
 nation at the unmanly conduct of her oppressors, en- 
 cumbered her by their numbers ; and so widely did 
 the feeling spread, that the counter addresses which 
 were presented to the king, scarcely ventured to ap- 
 prove his conduct, but dwelt chiefly upon the violence 
 of hers. The Whigs, headed, upon this occasion, by 
 Brougham and Denman, the queen's principal coun- 
 sel, led the ])eople. Had the house of commons been 
 less absolutely dependent upon the pro])rietors of bo- 
 roughs, had it been one degree less the property of its 
 shareholders, the Tory ministry could not have stood 
 before the storm, ]^\\t the ciroiimstances of this trial 
 are onlv n))pr(>priate to (»ur subject as they exemplify
 
 >18 Tin: iiisToiiY oi" taiity. 
 
 CHAP, the (lisatlected state of the nation under this Tory 
 government. 
 
 A. D. 18-20 " , . 1 , 1,7, . 
 
 to 18-28. One noble means by which the Whigs undertook 
 to restore the democratic principle to the government, 
 was the general diffusion of education. A party de- 
 pending for its existence upon popular support, could 
 not be too anxious for the enlightenment of the people 
 — they could not be too diligent in preparing them for 
 the comprehension of the arguments they addressed 
 to them — in conferring upon them that knowledge 
 which is power. In this department laboured Henry 
 Brougham : a man whose prodigious talents and un- 
 wearied industry, whose multitudinous acquirements, 
 indomitable perseverance, and enlightened philan- 
 thropy, rendered him worthy to be the apostle of the 
 new creed of universal education. At first he was 
 feebly supported and fiercely opposed. Many Whigs 
 thought his views chimerical — all Tories thought he 
 was demoralizing the people. Still he pressed on, and 
 light remained upon the track he had trod. Alarmed 
 at his progress, the Tories (although such arguments 
 are still heard in private) no longer talked publicly of 
 the danger of education to the people. They at- 
 tempted to rival the course they could not stop. 
 The National Society sprang into being — schools 
 multiphed, and education spread. But while the 
 Tories were obliged to follow the movement, they 
 execrated its author. His design had been to spread 
 education among every class, among the followers of
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 519 
 
 every creed ; to treat it as an affair utterly distinct CHAP, 
 from reliffion, and to remove it from the custody of -'-^ — 
 
 » ... "^ A.D. 1820 
 
 those who had carefully confined it within the pale of to i828. 
 the church. Their maxim had always appeared to 
 be, " Ignorance or orthodoxy ;" his was, " Universal 
 education." Mr. Brougham objected to the admix- 
 ture of religion in a national plan of. education, 
 because it must render the operation of that plan par- 
 tial instead of universal. He would teach the chil- 
 dren of the poor to read and write, and leave their 
 rehgious instruction to their parents : he would 
 teach men to think and reason, but leave to them 
 the choice of subjects upon which they should 
 exercise their powers. The Tories have always 
 looked upon education as an instrument of pro- 
 selytism in the hands of the establishment. 
 They thought the church in danger from the new 
 theories of education, and instituted schools in which 
 it was rendered subservient to the dissemination of 
 the doctrines of the church of England. Thus, from 
 the opposition of the parties arose an important pub- 
 lic good ; and while the Edinburgh and Quarterly* 
 Reviews, the organs of their several parties, were 
 exchanging the epithets, *' bigot" and "infidel,'' the 
 general cause was advancing, and the public attention 
 was fixed upon the subject. 
 
 • Tlie article in No. 38 of the ever, be received as genuine Tory- 
 Quarterly Review must not, how- ism, foi it was written hv f'nnnini;.
 
 520 Tin: HISTORY of I'akty. 
 
 CHAP. But the labourers were still far from equal to the 
 
 XX. 
 
 extent of the vinevartl. In 181G the metropolis 
 
 A. n. lS-20 -^ ^ 
 
 to 1618. alone contained 120,000 children destitute of the 
 means of education, a promising mass of ignorance to 
 act as an incubus upon the advance of civilization 
 among their contemporaries. Brougham now ob- 
 tained a parliamentary committee, which laid open 
 instances of entire misappropriation and bold embez- 
 zlement of educational funds, such as no man could 
 have imaa^ined who had heard the declamation of the 
 Tories upon the sacredness of such institutions, and 
 upon their vital importance to the prosperity of the 
 church. He carried through, against every opposi- 
 tion,* a bill for a commission of inquiry into the 
 abuses of public charities ; but his discoveries had 
 already been too embarrassing, and the minister pre- 
 ferred the odium of excludinsr him from the commis- 
 sion he had originated, to the exposures which must 
 infallibly follow his appointment. Still, however, the 
 subject never slumbered in Brougham's active mind ; 
 through the press from his place in parliament, 
 through the Edinburgh Review, by popular and 
 
 * " Under the flimsy pretence," poor ; and I w ill tell those shame- 
 said Mr. Brougham, " of great ten- less persons tliat the doctrine they 
 de.'ness for the sacred rights of promulge of charitable funds in a 
 property, I am well aware that the trustee's hands being private pro- 
 authors of this outcry conceal their perty, is utterly repugnant to the 
 own dread of being themselves whole law of England." 
 dragged to iiglit as robbers of the
 
 THE HISTORY OV PARTY. 521 
 
 widely-read pamphlets, the object was kept before CHAP, 
 the country. AVithout abandoning for a moment the 
 
 A. D. 1820 
 
 education of children, he comprised in his endeavours to 1828 
 the improvement of adults ; he resuscitated an idea, 
 which owed its origin to Dr. Birkbeck so long ago 
 as the year 1800, of forming classes of labouring 
 mechanics, and lecturing them in the rudiments 
 of natural philosophy and mathematics. Societies, 
 under the title of " Mechanics' Institutes," were 
 formed, libraries were collected, laboratories pro- 
 cured, professors appointed, and cheap publications 
 on scientific subjects were published and found ex- 
 tensive sale. The Tories saw the change with 
 alarm ; and their oracles, unable openly to denounce 
 the abandonment of sensual for mental enjoyment, 
 turned their violence upon the author of the change. 
 Party abuse, unless it degenerates to private ca- 
 lumny, seldom injures any man. Brougham ap- 
 peared to luxuriate in it. His powers of ready 
 eloquence, fierce invective, and withering sarcasm, 
 left hirn nothing to fear from an opponent. When 
 the barking of the pack which has so long surrounded 
 him is forgotten, and a future generation comes to 
 analyze and compare the powers of mind of those who 
 have ])receded them, Brougham will probably be placed 
 at the head of contemporary statesmen ; he, will cer- 
 tainlv be reirarded with admiration, as th(* leader of 
 the littlo hntid of ])ioti('ci's who first entered tlic forest
 
 5'2^ riiK HISTORY or party. 
 
 CHAP, and cleared a space throuo;'h which the sunbeams, that 
 
 XX. 
 
 had hitherto rested upon the topmost branches, de- 
 
 A.D. 18-20 '■ ' 
 
 to 1S28. scended to dissipate the darkness that reigned below. 
 
 While Brougham was teaching his countrymen to 
 reason, Mr. Hume was diligently supplying them 
 data. The necessity of covering corruption and 
 concealing extravagance had led to a designed con- 
 fusion of the national accounts. Items of expendi- 
 ture could never be obtained, totals only were 
 brought forward, and these were communicative of 
 little more than the extent of the ministers demand. 
 Perhaps there was not another man in England, 
 except Mr. Hume, who could have reduced these 
 accounts to an intelligible state. Gifted with no extra- 
 ordinary talent, although a shrewd and sensible speaker 
 yet by no means an orator, he discovered neverthe- 
 less an imperturbable perseverance, an indifference to 
 defeat, a disregard, appearing like unconsciousness, of 
 the invective by which he was assailed, and of the 
 wit by which he was ridiculed. Equally undisturbed 
 by the jeers of Canning, the indignation of Huskis- 
 son, and the majorities of Castlereagh, he was nightly 
 at his post calling for explanations, and demanding 
 returns. Whenever his importunity was successful — 
 to perseverance like his, all things are possible — and 
 he was admitted to inspect the details of a suspicious 
 item, he almost invariably discovered the grub, around 
 which the mysterious web had been woven, in the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 523 
 
 shape of a sinecure, a pension, or something equally cHAP. 
 
 XX 
 
 desirous of concealment : and picking it out and hold- — 
 
 11 PI- J . A. D. 1820 
 
 ing it up to the house ot commons he passed on to to 182S. 
 the next. At first the house laughed, and the pub- 
 lic echoed the laugh ; but at length the affair became 
 serious, the examples became numerous — an impres- 
 sion was made — the agriculturists who felt present 
 distress were inclined to listen to tales of extrava- 
 gance — in the debate upon Mr. Curwen's motion for 
 a repeal of the agricultural horse-tax, Mr. Hume's 
 laborious exertions became the subject of praise in- 
 stead of ridicule, and Castlereagh, after a vehement 
 opposition to the motion, w^as left in a minority. 
 These successes afterwards became frequent, Castle- 
 reagh was beaten upon many minor subjects of 
 economical reforms, and he at last was compelled to 
 form a compact with Mr. Hume, by which he granted 
 him all the returns he immediately wanted. 
 
 These unintermitted and wearying motions were 
 far more formidable to the ministry than those which 
 involved general principles of government. Of these 
 the Catholic cpicstion appeared to be advancing. 
 Early in the session of 1821, Mr. Plunket intro- 
 duced a bill by which the Catholics were proposed 
 to be admitted to all offices except the lord chancel- 
 lorship and the lord lieutenancy of Ireland. After 
 protracted debates, in which the balance of eloquence 
 may bo readilv assi^-ncd fo tlm libcnil party, since
 
 524 THE IIISTOKY OF I'AUTY. 
 
 CHAP. Peel was the only Tory orator of note, and Plunket, 
 
 XX. 
 
 - Mackintosh, Wilberfbrce, and Canning, were his op- 
 ti) i8"j8. ponents, the second reading was carried by a majority 
 of 11. This bill nltimately passed the house — a 
 considerable step in the progress of the question. 
 In the lords it met with less success, and b^ing op- 
 posed by the Earl of Liverpool, Lord Colchester, th e 
 chancellor — but above all, by the Duke of York, it 
 was thrown out by a majority of 39. 
 
 The failure of this bill was succeeded by an attempt 
 at legislation made by Mr. Canning, who proposed 
 that the Catholic peers should be restored to their 
 plaees in the house of lords. This was opposed by 
 Mr. Peel, and still more vehemently by Mr. 
 Wetherell, an eccentric speaker, who admirably 
 represented the real Tory party in the commons, as 
 Eldon represented it in the lords. It passed the 
 commons by a small majority, but was lost in the 
 house of lords. 
 
 Peel opposed this bill as home secretary ; an 
 office which he held in consequence of the mini- 
 sterial arrangements made at the commencement of 
 the year. By these arrangements the Grenvilles, 
 abandoning the only distinctive principle which di- 
 vided them from their brother Tories, consented to 
 join a cabinet which contemplated no concessoin to 
 Ireland. Lord Grenville, indeed, retired from 
 public life, but the Marquis of Buckingham was
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. t)Q,5 
 
 created a duke, and his immediate followers were CHAP. 
 
 XX 
 
 provided for. One beinof made president of the board 
 
 ^ ... . A. D. 18-20 
 
 of control, and another receiving minor appoint- to i828. 
 ments to the amount of 4000/. a year. By this 
 arrangement the Tory ministry gained but little, 
 either in interest, popularity, or talent ; a few votes 
 in the house of commons secured, a few loud-tongued 
 agricultural members silenced, and the name of a 
 noble family detached from opposition, constituted all 
 their advantao^e. Mr. Peel's advancement was 
 brought by no such dereliction of principle. Lord 
 Sidmouth resigned, retiring altogether from official 
 duties, but retaining his seat in the cabinet. Peel 
 was his successor. "This gentleman's political 
 predilections, sympathies, principles, and prejudices," 
 says a writer in the Annual Register,* "were 
 very much the same with those of Lord Sidmouth ; 
 so that the substitution of the one for the other 
 could have no effect in the course of administra- 
 tion." Mr. Peel certainly appeared at this time 
 worthy the friendship of Sidmouth, Eldon, Liverpool, 
 
 * In IH'21 we lose tlie An- the Annual Register is worthy 
 niial Register, which has heen so of a worit wiiicli could count 
 long our companion, and which Kdniuiid; Ruiive among its con- 
 must form the foundation of every trihutors. The contiiniation is a 
 history of the period it compre- syllabub of frotliy and flippant 
 hcnda. The grave and temperate Toryism, 
 tone of the historical articles of
 
 5'2G TiiK iiisroiiY OF I'AUTY. 
 
 CHAP. Wetlierell, and tlie other magricates of high Toryism ; 
 but ho wanted the dogged and impracticable obsti- 
 
 XX, 
 
 A. D. 18-20 '^'^ 
 
 to i8~2e. nacy which that class seemed to have caught, by 
 contact, from George III. Even while he fought 
 with his party against all concession, there is reason 
 to think that he believed the time to be near at 
 hand, if not present, when the point in dispute 
 should be conceded.* 
 
 The Marquis of Wellesley was now lord lieutenant 
 of Ireland where he was sincerely hated by the 
 Oransremen for discouramnor their ferocious toasts, 
 and for discountenancing the party processions by 
 which they taunted the Catholic majority with their 
 subserviency. He was little more popular with 
 the Catholics when they found that he, in common 
 with the other Tories who were pledged to the 
 
 * Since this was in print I in his new position. Yet, at that 
 
 have seen the following passage, in very moment. Sir Robert had in 
 
 an article upon the state of par- his writing-desk the letter which 
 
 ties, in the Edinburgh Review : he had himself addressed two 
 
 "In 1827 Sir R. Peel told Mr. years before to Lord Liverpool; 
 
 Canning and the house of com- having stated therein that in his 
 
 mons, that his unlocked for oppo- opinion the time was come when 
 
 sition to the administration of the measure of Catholic relief 
 
 which Mr. Canning was the pre- ought to be conceded, and having 
 
 mier, was grounded solely on the proposed that he should retire 
 
 effect which Mr. Canning's well- from office while it was carrying 
 
 known operations in favour of through." — Edinburgh Review, 
 
 Roman Catholic relief must have No. cxxxii., p. 281.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 527 
 
 question, had taken office without any stipulation in CHAP, 
 their favour. That unhappy country was still the '- — 
 
 ^^•^ -' A. D. 18-20 
 
 scene of continual outrage, the Protestants there were to i828. 
 enraged tyrants ; the Catholics were exasperated 
 rebels. Where the arm of the law could be felt it 
 was the instrument of vengeance upon the Catholic ; 
 where it was not feared, opportunities were seldom 
 neglected of inflicting a fearful retaliation upon the 
 Protestant. Canning's fragment of legislation was in- 
 tended as his last brilliant display previous to leaving 
 England for India, whither he was about to proceed 
 as governor-general, having been excluded from the 
 cabinet on account of his refusal to join in the pro- 
 secution of the queen. While he was yet preparing 
 for his departure the suicide of Lord Londonderry 
 occasioned an important breach in the cabinet, and, 
 notwithstanding the disinclination of the king, and 
 the objections of Eldon, it was felt that he alone 
 could fill it. Canning became foreign secretary. 
 
 The administration thus formed, although con- 
 taining so strong a party in favour of the Catholic 
 claims was their most strenuous opponent. It was 
 soon noticed that Canning, and Plunket, nowattorney- 
 general for Ireland, were less earnest in the cause. 
 Their conduct was severely arraigned in the com- 
 mons. Broufj-hain desio-natin<r that of Canning as 
 the most incredible specimen of monstrous truckling 
 for the purposiwtP obtaining office, that the whole his-
 
 5'-28 THE HISTOUY OF rAllTV. 
 
 CHAP, tory of political toririvcrsation could iurnisli.* This 
 was partially true : the iutluencc of the lord chan- 
 
 A.D. 18-JO I J . , Tir 1 
 
 to 1828. cellor was greater than any coadjutor who dmered 
 from him should have borne ; the high Tory peers 
 looked upon him as the real minister ;t and confiding 
 in his protection threw out some bills granting a 
 trivial indulofence to Eno-lish Catholics, which had 
 passed the commons with the approbation even of 
 Peel, and which in the lords had the support even of 
 Liverpool. 
 
 In 1823 some further change occurred in the 
 cabinet, Mr. Vansittart beino; raised to the house of 
 lords as Lord Bexley, was succeeded by Mr. Ro- 
 binson, and Huskisson became president of the board 
 of trade. The latter gentleman was of no great 
 importance as a party man. Although an adherent 
 of Canning, and favourable to the Catholics, he only 
 once spoke in favour of their claims. Huskisson's 
 
 * Canning exclaimed, " That is of a man who was possessed of 
 
 false !" and a scene ensued, which nearly absolute influence in the 
 
 ended according to the approved councils of a nation for a quarter 
 
 fashion of house of commons of a century, and of whom it can 
 
 quarrels. be said, that he never originated 
 
 f Posterity will probably pass one measure that the next genera- 
 a severe judgment upon the me- tion judged to be beneficial to his 
 mory of tliis statesman. Ministers country, and never allowed one 
 who would have aided Castle- such measure to be discussed 
 reagh in his violence and tyranny, without his strenuous and gene- 
 have existed before Eldon ; but I rally fatal opposition, 
 believe there is no other instance
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. o29 
 
 value was as a political economist. Finance, cur- chap. 
 
 XX. 
 
 rency, and commerce, were the departments in which '- — 
 
 ... A. D. 1820 
 
 he stood unrivalled. Canning truly described him as to i82a 
 the best practical man of business in England. 
 
 The Catholics ceased not to cry from their bond- 
 age, but their friends among the Tories had ceased 
 to listen, and the Whig's thouo^ht the annual debate 
 a mere farce ; never intended to have any serious 
 event. Deserted by their former advocates, the 
 Irish now began to threaten; the Catholic Asso- 
 ciation under the guidance of Daniel O'Connell — one 
 of those commanding spirits which come forth when 
 a national crisis calls, had assumed an almost par- 
 hamentary form. Enjoying the full confidence of 
 their countrymen, this assembly ordered a census, 
 levied taxes, and assumed to themselves in every 
 respect the representation of the wrongs and wishes 
 of Catholic Ireland. 
 
 The session of 1825 commenced with an attempt 
 to put down this dangerous Association. In sup- 
 port of the bill brought in for this purpose, the 
 cabinet were unanimous. Canning, Plunket, Peel, 
 Ooulburn, were all consentient in its praise. 
 Brougham, Tierney, Mackintosh, supported by a 
 troop of Whigs, many of whom were now first rising 
 into notice, pointed to emancipation as the true 
 iSuppression bill, and prolonged the debate during 
 four nights. I'he bill, when ])assed, was laughed at 
 
 VOL. m. 2 m
 
 530 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, by the Irish, and successfully evaded by the bold 
 and skilful man who now held the destinies of this 
 
 A. 1). IH'-iO 
 
 to 18-28. country. 
 
 Sir Francis Burdett broug-ht forward the question 
 of emancipation, and introduced a bill which passed 
 the commons by a majority of 21, and was rejected 
 by the lords by a majority of 48. 
 
 Upon this occasion the Duke of York de- 
 livered that memorable declaration which the 
 Tories printed in gilt letters, and hung up in 
 their libraries. They now exulted in the con- 
 viction that the conscientious scruples of the heir 
 presumptive would rival those of his father. 
 
 The question was not again agitated in this par- 
 liament, which having completed its sixth session 
 was dissolved on the 2d of June, 1 826. 
 
 In the parliament now dissolved we see consi- 
 derable advance made tow^ards the settlement of the 
 Catholic claims. The Whigs but feebly assisted by 
 the people, who were generally either apathetic or 
 hostile, joined by a portion of the Tories whom their 
 more influential companions disavowed, had forced 
 a full measure of emancipation twice through the 
 house of commons. Let us now turn to the question 
 of parliamentary reform. 
 
 In 1821 two motions w^ere made upon this sub- 
 ject. The first by Mr. Lambton, member for Durham, 
 a man of great energy, talent, and honesty of pur-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. o31 
 
 pose, and one whose large property exempted him chap. 
 from all suspicion of wishing the destruction of the 
 
 • i.-i i.- 1 1 n ^T ^ , A. D. 1820 
 
 institutions he proposed to reform. Mr. Lambton to 1828. 
 proposed to divide the borough representation 
 equally among the householders of the kingdom, to 
 extend the county suffrage to copyholders and lease- 
 holders, and to render parliaments triennial. The 
 second, made by Lord John Russell, was the mo- 
 derate measure of reform proposed by the Whigs. 
 Both were rejected. iVIr. Lambton's in a house 
 containing only 98 members, and Lord John Rus- 
 sell's in a house of 279. Grampound was, how- 
 ever, this year disfranchised against the strong oppo- 
 sition of the chancellor and of Lord Lauderdale, who 
 now came forward to recant all his former decla- 
 rations in favour of parliamentary reform. 
 
 In the following year Lord John Russell's annual 
 motion w^as preceded by numerous petitions in its 
 favour from all parts of the country, and was intro- 
 duced by a most elaborate speech, in which, from 
 statistical tables, his lordship demonstrated a progress 
 in the state and condition of the people in one direc- 
 tion, and a change in the state of the house of an op- 
 posite tendency. The awakening intelligence of the 
 lower classes he evinced by the increased numbers 
 and circulation of newspapers. In the year 1782, 
 seventy-nine newspapers were published throughout 
 the British dominions; in 1821 that number was 
 
 2 M 2
 
 5S2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, become '2Si>. The tendency of the house of com- 
 mons he exemplified from an analysis of divisions. 
 
 A. D. 1820 • , 1 . 1 1 1 
 
 to 18-28. Taking a question of economical reduction, he showed 
 that, of the members for places having less than five 
 hundred electors, nineteen opposed and one suy)ported 
 the reduction ; while, of the members for counties 
 and large towns, sixty-nine supported and thirty-four 
 opposed it. Canning, whose brilliant speeches at 
 Liverpool against parliamentary reform had called 
 forth universal admiration, now came forward to 
 dazzle its advocates in parliament, and, contem- 
 plating an immediate departure for India, to leave 
 behind him a speech upon the subject which should 
 be remembered. The close of this elegant piece of 
 oratory appeared to betray that Canning foresaw the 
 ultimate triumph of the question he was then oppos- 
 ing, " That the noble lord will carry his motion this 
 evening I have no fear ; but, with the talents he has 
 shown himself to possess, and with, I sincerely hope, 
 a long and brilliant career of parliamentary distinction 
 before him, he will, no doubt, renew his efforts here- 
 after. Although I presume not to expect that he 
 will give any weight to observations or warnings of 
 mine, yet, on this, probably the last opportunity 
 which I shall have of raising my voice on the ques- 
 tion of parliamentary reform, while I conjure the 
 house to pause before it consents to adopt the propo- 
 sition of the noble lord, I cannot help conjuring the
 
 THE HISTOllY OF PARTY. 533 
 
 noble lord himself to pause before he again presses it CHAP. 
 
 upon the country. If, however, he shall persevere, ^ — 
 
 and if his perseverance shall be successful, and if the to i828. 
 results of that success shall be such as I cannot help 
 apprehending — his be the triumph to have preci- 
 pitated those results, be mine the consolation that 
 to the utmost and to the latest of my power 1 have 
 opposed them." 
 
 The minority upon this occasion numbered 164. 
 
 In the following year they reached 169, and were 
 fortified by a petition from Yorkshire, signed by 
 17,083 freeholders, upwards of two- thirds of the 
 whole number in the county. The interest excited 
 by the more dubious divisions upon the Catholic bill 
 now caused some abatement in the cry for parliamen- 
 tary reform. In 1826, when it was again brought 
 forward, the house was less full, and the reformers 
 present were only 123. 
 
 Still, however the cause of Whiggism had made 
 some progress. Lord John Russell had rescued the 
 great question from the hands of the Cobbetts, the 
 Burdetts, and the Hunts ; under his protection it 
 became an object which moderate men would stop to 
 njgard, and which excited neither ritlicule nor horror. 
 It was no slight advantage that it had assumed a tem- 
 perate fonn, and had become the subject of serious 
 argument. Converts to the ])rinciple were contiiui- 
 ally coming over, and among tliem flic \\'hig.s ob-
 
 63i- THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, served, Nvith pleasure, many scions of noble families; 
 nor was it an evil sign that the people appeared, 
 
 A. 1). 1820 
 
 to I8J8. although equally resolved, to be more moderate ; 
 that they appeared to look up to the Whigs for guid- 
 ance, and sometimes refused to listen to the wild 
 schemes of representation, and infamous projects for 
 plundering the national creditor, which were put forth 
 by Cobbett and his crew. 
 
 The general election accomplished but little for 
 the Whiffs. Their efforts in favour of the Catholics 
 formed a powerful topic against them. In large 
 towns the self-elected corporation, filled exclusively 
 with Tories, formed a little Tory citadel. In the 
 counties the ignorant constituency blindly obeyed 
 their landlords. Thus, at Liverpool, the return of a 
 Whig was hopeless ; and Brougham had no chance 
 in Westmorland against the influence of the Low- 
 thers. In the rural districts, and in remote boroughs, 
 the *' No popery" cry had great success ; while in the 
 more populous and educated constituencies. Catholic 
 concession excited but little enthusiasm. The people 
 had too much to demand for themselves to bestow 
 much advocacy upon the claims of others. The 
 subject was never very popular, and they appeared 
 rather to consent to Catholic emancipation in return 
 for the support they received from Ireland in favour 
 of parliamentary reform. It is the Whig party, not 
 the people, the leaders, not the followers, who had
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 535 
 
 always laboured to obtain a free government for CHAP. 
 Ireland. '■ — 
 
 T^ 1 . . A. D. 1820 
 
 Early m 1 827 the Duke of York died. Soon after, to i828. 
 a fit of paralysis deprived the cabinet of its head ; 
 thus removing two of the most powerful opponents of 
 the Catholic claims, two of the most sturdy assertors 
 of genuine Toryism. Under these circumstances 
 Sir Francis Burdett brought forward the Catholic 
 claims, with considerable expectations of success. 
 In addition to the usual speakers upon this question, 
 Mr. Spring Rice, who had been rapidly rising into 
 notice with the ^\ hig party, appeared conspicuous 
 on the liberal side ; and Sir John Copley, the master 
 of the rolls, brought forth all his talent to aid the 
 Tories. The latter, however, who seemed to have 
 assumed the tone of the Earl of Eldon, was com- 
 pletely demolished by the raillery of Canning, who 
 held him up most mercilessly to the laughter of the 
 house.* Peel, although expecting to be left in a mi- 
 nority, and to see a cabinet formed by Canning, upon 
 the principle of concession to Ireland, showed no 
 sign of yielding. " I have stated," he said in con- 
 clusion of his speech, ** the princi})les which my 
 reason dictates, and which honour and conscience 
 compel me to maintain. The intiuence of some great 
 
 • Sir Jolin winced under tlie cians. It was not, liowcver, 
 
 infliction, and a twenty-four their interest to be ciioniies, so 
 
 hours' intermission of fricndsliip only one sun went down ufion 
 
 took place between the politi- tiieir wrath.
 
 '^>3() THE HISTORY OF TAHTY. 
 
 CHAP, names, of some great men, has lately been lost to the 
 cause I support ; but I never adopted my opinions 
 
 A.D. 1820 . . . 
 
 to 18-28. upon it from deference either to high station or to high 
 
 ability. Keen as the feelings of regret must be with 
 which the loss of these associates is recollected, it is 
 still a matter of consolation to me, that, in the ab- 
 sence of these individuals, I have now an opportunity 
 of showing my adherence to those tenets which I for- 
 merly espoused ; of showing, that, if my tenets be 
 unpopular, I stand by them still when the influence 
 and authority that may have given them currency is 
 gone." 
 
 Mr. Peel was mistaken in his anticipations of eviL 
 NotwithstandinfT the loss of the Duke of York and of 
 Lord Liverpool, the high Tories were still so strong, 
 that Sir Francis Burdett's resolution was rejected by 
 a majority of two — 276 to 274. 
 
 The arrangements which the incapacity of Lord 
 Liverpool rendered necessary, now absorbed the 
 public attention. Canning had caught a severe cold 
 by attending the funeral of the Duke of York, his 
 health had been since very precarious, and his exer- 
 tions upon the Catholic question had produced a 
 relapse and occasioned some further delay. When 
 the sentiments of the divided cabinet, as to their 
 future chief came to be gathered, it was found 
 that the Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, and Mr. 
 Peel, the chiefs of the anti-catholic party, had resolved 
 not to act under a minister favourable to the Catho-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 537 
 
 lie claims. Mr. Canning, upon learning this deter- CHAP. 
 
 mination, was equally resolved not to admit that the ! — 
 
 advocacy of those claims could disqualify a man for to 1828- 
 the station of minister. Since a division was un- 
 avoidable, and the Wellington and Peel party con- 
 fessed their inability to form a cabinet without the 
 assistance of their late colleague, Canning, who was 
 designated alike by the national voice, and the favour 
 of the king, became Lord Liverpool's successor ; the 
 kino- at the same time telling him that he would him- 
 self oppose any attempt at Catholic emancipation. 
 
 No sooner was this appointment made than the 
 late cabinet fell to pieces like a toy house of cards.* 
 The Duke of Wellington, Mr. Peel, Lords Eldon, 
 Bathurst, Melville, and Bexley, sent in their resig- 
 nations. They were followed by all those of the 
 
 * " On tlie l'2th of April," said Providence by relinquishing. The 
 
 the London Magazine, " being rest continue 'flints' 
 the day before Good Friday, seven " Musa viihi causns memora. — 
 
 cabinet ministers struck work What could have tempted seven 
 
 simultaneously, like so many jour- ministers,grave,reputable people — 
 
 neymen tailors, in consequence of four of the seven certainly as little 
 
 the appointment of Mr. Canning suspected of any exuberance of 
 
 to the premiersiiip. One of fancy or understanding as any men 
 
 them, Lord Bexley, iias since in the king's dominions; people 
 
 become a ' dung' and returned far too stupid, it was supposeri, 
 
 to his work, or rather to liis even for a freak like this — what 
 
 idleness ; for he enjoys a snug could have temj)ted them to throw 
 
 sinecure, wliich nothing but an their bread upon the waters in the 
 
 access of extraordinary fury rouM hdjir uf seeing it again after many 
 
 induce so pious a man to tempt days?"'
 
 538 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, high Tory party who loved Toryism better than 
 
 w 
 
 place. Sir Charles Wetherell, whose sincerity has 
 
 A. D. lyJO , .11 1 
 
 to 1828. never been questioned, threw up the attorney-gene- 
 ralship, and the Marquis of Londonderry ceased to 
 be a lord of the bedchamber. Many other subordi- 
 nates retired, but Lord Bexley retracted his resig- 
 nation. 
 
 Among those who remained, were Mr. Huskisson, 
 Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Wynn, all of whom be- 
 longed to Canning's school of Toryism ; the vacan- 
 cies were filled up by the appointment of Sir John 
 Copley as lord chancellor, now created Lord Lynd- 
 hurst ; Mr. Sturges Bourne, home secretary ; Mr. 
 Robinson, created Lord Goderich, colonial secretary; 
 Lord Dudley, foreign secretary ; the Duke of Port- 
 land, privy seal ; Mr. Canning retaining the offices 
 of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the 
 exchequer. Lord Melville's resignation was followed 
 by the popular appointment of the liberal Duke of 
 Clarence to be lord high admiral. 
 
 It may well be asked, why the Tory party, upon 
 this occasion, deserted Canning ? In the explanations 
 which ensued, Mr. Peel spoke of his opinions upon 
 the Catholic question ; but surely with no great 
 success, since the house could not but remember that 
 Sir John Copley, whose speech upon that question 
 was yet ringing in their ears, was now seated upon 
 the woolsack which Eldon had vacated. Mr. Peel 
 also was doubtless aware of the king's protest
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 539 
 
 against Catholic concession being made a cabinet CHAP, 
 question, and we who can recur to his after conduct ^^ 
 
 . . A. D. 1820 
 
 cannot avoid some scepticism as to the intensity of to 1828. 
 
 his horror of popery. But, admitting Mr. Peel's 
 
 justification, what shall we say to Lord Melville and 
 
 the Marquis of Londonderry, who voted with Mr. 
 
 Canning upon the Catholic question ? Does not their 
 
 retirement with the Wellington and Peel party, show 
 
 that other considerations than those connected with 
 
 the Catholic question prompted the party to abandon 
 
 Canning ? If the real reason was personal jealousy 
 
 in some and aristocratic pride in others, it was a 
 
 motive contemptible in some and absurd in others. 
 
 The most able of the seceders was doubtless Mr. 
 
 Peel, yet he would be a very injudicious friend who 
 
 should attempt to draw a comparison between him 
 
 and Canning. Jealousy in Mr. Peel of Canning 
 
 had been as absurd as aristocratic pride in the Duke 
 
 of Wellington* had been contemptible. Yet while, 
 
 remembering the disavowal of such motives, we admit 
 
 that such was not the inducement which led these 
 
 • TTie Duke of Wellington in order to be appointed to a sta- 
 
 forcibly denied that he had ever tion to the duties of which I was 
 
 aspired to the ortice of minister unaccustomed, in wiiicli I was not 
 
 himself. Alluding to his appoint- wished, and for wiiicii 1 was not 
 
 ment as commander-in-chief, and cpialified? My lords, I should have 
 
 to its congenial duties, he said, been worse than mad if I iiad 
 
 " Does any man believe that I tiioii>;ht of such a tliinj,'." — I)c- 
 
 would give up such gratification Aa/t«, A^. 5., vol. xvii,, col. 401.
 
 51.0 THE IIISTOUY 01' rAUTY. 
 
 CHAP, influontial men to abandon their illustrious friend, we 
 look at the circumstances which accompanied and 
 
 A. D. 18-20 . , ^ 1 1 , 1 ^ 
 
 to 18-28. followed the transaction, and find ourselves unable to 
 
 assign any other. 
 
 The Whigs, who saw in the hostility of the Tories 
 some hope of liberal measures, and who agreed with 
 Canning upon the subjects of Catholic emancipation, 
 foreign policy, and commercial regulation, extended 
 to him their support. A close and immediate coali- 
 tion was not advisable, nor perhaps practicable ; but 
 Mr. Scarlett, an active member of that party, became 
 attorney-general, and an arrangement was entered 
 into bv which Lord Lansdowne, Lord Carlisle, and 
 Mr. Tierney, were to have seats in the cabinet at the 
 end of the session.* 
 
 The appearance of the opposition soon showed 
 the homely materials of which the substance of the 
 Tory party was composed. Lord Londonderry, in 
 a burst of indignant eloquence, exclaimed, "When I 
 look at the building which has been erected, I find 
 it divested of all its main pillars, and it is composed 
 now of a sort of rubbish. The artificer has certainly 
 been dexterous in forming the building with respect 
 to its durability. Could he have found out such a 
 mass of rubbish in any other quarter, formed as it 
 was by the two parties ? The artificer has made a 
 
 * Stapleton's Political Life of Cunning.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 541 
 
 dexterous endeaTOur to unwhig a part of the Whigs, CHAP. 
 
 A. A.. 
 
 and untory a part of the Tories." Some of this ^ d.i820 
 nobleman's late colleagues objected to the con- to 18-28. 
 temptuous term " rubbish," by which, in the pride of 
 superior intellect, he designated them ; but the 
 marquis explained that he alluded only to the new 
 members of the cabinet, and Lord King cruelly sug- 
 gested that the rubbish is that which is sent away 
 from the building. The Duke of Newcastle thought 
 Mr. Canning " the most profligate minister that ever 
 was in power,"' and his retainers in the house of com- 
 mons did not fail to reiterate the opinion. In his en- 
 feebled state of health the constant recurrence of even 
 the most contemptible attacks would be wearying : 
 he could, indeed, call to his assistance the searing 
 eloquence of Brougham, and he could tell his ac- 
 cusers with an easy indifference that he had had to 
 endure the assaults of the opposition benches when 
 filled with other persons of a quality which he was 
 not likely soon again to experience ;* yet constant 
 labour and continual harassing increased his dis- 
 ease. He was employing himself t in gathering 
 
 • During the progress of the at the close, Lord Lansdowue 
 
 session, Lord Lansdowne took his became home secretary, and Lord 
 
 seat in the cabinet. Lord Car- Carlisle, privy seal, 
 
 lisle was made first commissioner f Life of Canning, vol. ii., 
 
 of woods and forests, and Mr. p. 434. 
 Tierncy, master of tbf mint ; and
 
 54*2 THE HISTORY of party. 
 
 CHAP. Information for an extensive economical reform when 
 he was seized with the ilhiess which became so 
 
 A D 1 8'^0 
 
 to 1828. rapidly fatal. Canning died on the 8th of August. 
 He reached the pinnacle of his ambition, and ex- 
 pired — perhaps happily for his fame; for the restric- 
 tions by which he was bound were so galling, the 
 state of parties so involved, the support he received 
 so equivocal, and the opposition which threatened 
 him so determined, that no fair opportunity was 
 afforded him for the development of the liberality of 
 his views of government, or for the unfettered ex- 
 ercise of his extraordinary genius. Standing between 
 the two parties, and differing more essentially from 
 that which gave him a disinterested support, than 
 from that which pursued him with unrelenting hos- 
 tility, he must probably have fallen a prey to the 
 cannibal pursuit of his own party, or have forfeited 
 his consistency by a thorough coahtion with the 
 Whigs. 
 
 The Whig party were wise and politic in ten- 
 dering to Canning their support in parliament. As 
 Canning himself admitted in the house of commons, 
 the circumstance of the prime minister being an 
 avowed advocate of Catholic emancipation gave a 
 moral support to that question which in its present 
 position ensured its success. How far the Whigs 
 were justified in taking office under a man who was 
 pledged to oppose all parliamentary reform, and
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 5if3 
 
 avowed his intention of upholding the Test act, is a CHAP, 
 more dubious question. It was differently answered - 
 
 ^ A. U. lo'Ju 
 
 by Earl Grey and Mr. Tierney ; and will be differ- to 1828. 
 ently resolved by all those who differ as to the right 
 of a statesman to make a temporary sacrifice of prin- 
 ciple to expediency. 
 
 Lord Goderich attempted to supply the place of 
 Canning as first lord of the treasury : and the chan- 
 cellorship of the exchequer having been refused by 
 Tierney, Huskisson, and Sturges Bourne, who 
 wished that Lord Althorp should take it, was at 
 last conferred upon Mr. Herries, who had been 
 secretary of the treasury under Lord Liverpool, and 
 was a Tory of that school. It very soon appeared 
 that Lord Goderich, although a man of respectable 
 ability, was unequal to the baton of Canning. The 
 spirits that had bowed before his genius, rose in 
 rebellion against the interference of his feeble sue- 
 cessor.* The Whigs, who wished to strengthen 
 the ministry with the high reputation and the solid 
 abilities of Lord Althorp, and Mr. Herries who had 
 as strong a repugnance to that nobleman's views, 
 
 « " Celsa sedct vEolus arcc, Nothing but the ascendancy of 
 
 Sceptra tenens ; mollitquc animos sucli a superior mind could hope 
 
 ct temperat iras," to restrain the discordant elements 
 
 is a quotation made by Canning he had cooped togctiicr in the 
 
 in reference to England. It is cabinet, 
 not ip«s applicable to himself.
 
 0l4 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAT, wore soon at open strife, each applying to Lord 
 — — Godericli and each threatening to resio;n. The prc- 
 
 A. I). I8-J0 _ ° , *^ . . 
 
 to 18-28. luier distracted between their rival applications, and 
 oppressed by domestic sorrows, took the step which 
 his colleagues threatened. On the 8th of January, 
 1828, he resigned his office.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 545 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Formation of the \Vellington administration — Beaten by the Whigs 
 upon the question of the Test Acts repeal — Debates upon the 
 repeal — Catholic question — State of Ireland— Emancipation bill 
 brought forward by the Duke of V\ ellington — Rage of the Tories 
 when they find themselves betrayed — Debates upon the bill — In the 
 commons — In the lords — Catholic bill passed — Resentment and 
 opposition of the Tories — Generosity of the Whigs, who support the 
 Duke of Wellington against his own party. 
 
 Upon the resignation of Lord Godcrich the king CHAP. 
 
 XXI 
 
 immediately confided the formation of a new ministry '- 
 
 to the Duke of W'cjllington ; and the duke, forgetting 
 
 &' 
 
 or repenting the [)ublic declaration he had made a few 
 months before, readily accepted the commission. The 
 Whigs beheld the appointment with the utmost dis- 
 may. Although no one of tli(; party doubted that 
 the duke was actuated by the most honest — by the 
 
 VOL. III. '2 N
 
 A. D. 18-28. 
 
 546 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, most patriotic motives ; yet, there was none who did not 
 x\i 
 
 anticipate dang-cr from his elevation. They saw in him 
 
 an iron-minded soldier, accustomed to hold in utter 
 scorn the opinions of the multitude ; habituated to form 
 his decisions in his own mind, and to act upon them with 
 rapidity and promptitude. They did not doubt that 
 he sincerely believed that the creed of the high Tories 
 was the belief of patriots ; but they feared that he 
 would attempt to use a soldier's argument to propagate 
 his creed, and govern England as he would rule a 
 camp. Their alarm was not lessened when they saw 
 him re-enter the cabinet surrounded by all those 
 veteran Tories who had admired Lord Castlereagh, 
 and idolized Lord Liverpool ; and they derived no 
 great consolation even from the fact that Huskisson 
 and Lord Palmerston were suffered to remain. Lord 
 Caernarvon prophesied a return to the policy of 
 Castlereagh, and anticipated "green bags again upon 
 their table, and red coats at the next popular meet- 
 ing."* Brougham, however, ridiculed such fears, and 
 defied the soldier. He thought the appointment of 
 the Duke of Wellington was bad in a constitutional 
 point of view ; but as to any violence being, in con- 
 sequence, directed against the liberties of the country, 
 the fear of such an event he looked upon as futile 
 
 * In allusion to the quren's trial. The papers were laid upon the 
 table in a sealed green bag.
 
 XXI. 
 
 A. D. 1828. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 547 
 
 and groundless. "These," said he, "are not the chap. 
 times for such an attempt. There have been periods 
 when the country heard with dismay that ' the soldier 
 was abroad.' That is not the case now. Let the 
 soldier be ever so much abroad, in the present age, 
 he can do nothing. There is another person abroad, 
 a less important person — in the eyes of some an insigni- 
 ficant person, whose labours have tended to produce this 
 state of thing's — the schoolmaster is abroad ; and I trust 
 more to the schoolmaster, armed with his primer, than 
 I do to the soldier in full military array, for upholding 
 and extending the liberties of my country.^^* 
 
 The confidence of Mr. Brougham was soon justi- 
 fied. Canning had destroyed the opinion that had 
 almost grown into a superstition, of the invulnera- 
 bility of the Tories ; and part of the nation had 
 become convinced that they had not an absolute pro- 
 perty in the places they had so long held. Many 
 persons thought the foreign policy of the new mi- 
 nister timid and irresolute ; nearly all agreed that his 
 plans looked like petty pieces of confusion, when 
 compared with the bold clear outlines traced by 
 Canning. The Whigs were seen mustering their 
 forces to the assault. Ireland, bound by a common 
 hatred of the party of Cabtlereagh, and giving to the 
 winds every hope she had cherished, swayed upon 
 
 • Debates, N. S., vol. xviii., cni. bH. 
 
 '2 N 'i
 
 A. D. lyJ8. 
 
 548 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, the verge of rebellion. There the relations of society 
 ' ' ' were gone, property had lost its influence, rank no 
 longer commanded respect, a tremendous organiza- 
 tion extended over the whole island ; the Catholic 
 gentry, peasantry, and priesthood, were all combined 
 in one vast confederacy, while, in England, O'Connell, 
 as their leader and representative, was thundering at 
 the doors of the house of commons, and struggling, 
 in defiance of law, to force a way into that assembly. 
 The onset against Toryism was led by Lord John 
 Russell, who, in the commons, gave notice of a mo- 
 tion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation acts. 
 The country, watchful and alarmed, answered the 
 call, and petitions poured in from all parts in favour 
 of the measure. On the 2Gth of February, a day 
 memorable in the history of the parties, the motion 
 was made. It was not the argument or the eloquence 
 which the occasion called forth, that rendered this 
 debate so remarkable. Upon the subject of the mo- 
 tion little more could be said than we have already 
 recorded. It was that the orators who advocated it 
 appealed with a newly-born confidence to the advan- 
 cing spirit of public opinion. They did not attempt 
 to wear away prejudice by argument, nor did they 
 attempt to win by conciliation. They spoke with a 
 consciousness of strength ; a confidence that they 
 were supported by a power which, like the wind upon 
 the waters was invisible but irresistible. ** I have
 
 A. D. 1828. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 549 
 
 heard," said Lord John Russell, " that it is the in- chap. 
 tention of the new ministry to array all the power 
 which influence can muster against this question. I 
 am sorry to learn this ; not on account of the ques- 
 tion itself, whose progress a minister may retard, but 
 whose ultimate success he never can prevent ; but 
 because it is an indication on the part of government 
 of a determination to resist those liberal sentiments 
 which are daily gaining ground in the great mass of 
 society. Kings and parliaments, however they may 
 estimate their power, must more or less submit to be 
 influenced by the spirit of the times in w^hich they 
 live. Even the illustrious person now at the head of 
 his majesty's government must consult that voice — 
 must conform to that standard. No matter how 
 great his achievements or his glory ; to the spirit of 
 improvement which has gone abroad he must bow. 
 It is wisdom to do so without reluctance or hesita- 
 tion — it is wisdom to take his lesson from the signs 
 of the hour." Among those who followed the mover, 
 himself an illustrious scion of one of England's most 
 illustrious houses, were Lord Althorp, Lord Nugent, 
 Lord Milton — names which gave earnest that some 
 of the aristocracy had not been left unvisited by the 
 spirit which was troubling the waters, and connected 
 with speeches which lose nothing when they an; read 
 even with that of Brougham. 
 
 Ou the other liaud, Sir Robert Inglis, a country
 
 A. D. 18-28. 
 
 .').'50 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, gentleman, whose character as a consistent, sincere, 
 and immovable Tory, merits our unqualified respect, 
 represented the squirearchy of the country, and 
 stanchly opposed all innovation. Mr. Peel opposed 
 it as the representative of the clergy, and as a mi- 
 nister of the crown. Mr. Huskisson and Lord Pal- 
 merston, who had both voted for Catholic emancipa- 
 tion, voted with their colleagues, and attempted to 
 explain away their votes. All the ministerial strength 
 had been gathered for the division, and the whippers 
 in upon the Tory side had been ironically compli- 
 mented by the Whig speakers upon their activity. 
 When the numbers were declared, there appeared 
 237 for the motion, and 193 against it, giving a 
 majority to the Whigs of 44i. 
 
 Whatever may be the differences of opinion as to 
 the general tendency of the Duke of Wellington's 
 principles of government, there can be none as to the 
 manliness and masculine decision of his domestic 
 policy. Defeated by that spirit of improvement 
 whose power he had so much undervalued, he wasted 
 no time and energy in petty skirmishes, but fell 
 back at once to a stronger position ; he would have 
 defended even the frontier of Spain had his force 
 been sufficient ; as it was not, he fell back at once 
 upon the lines of Torres Vedras. Finding the whole 
 interest of government in vain opposed to the eman- 
 cipation of the dissenters, he at once determined to
 
 A. D. 1828. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 551 
 
 concede the point. Sir Robert Peel said that he CHAP. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 should oflfer no further resistance to the declai'ed 
 wish of the majority, and the bill passed the commons 
 without further serious opposition. 
 
 It was introduced into the house of lords bv Lord 
 Holland, in a speech which proved that to him it was 
 a misfortune to have been born to a peerage. The 
 course of the debate immediately discovered the 
 power of the premier. The Archbishop of York rose 
 after the mover, but only to claim, on behalf of the 
 church, some securities in exchange for these acts, 
 and to give his voice for the second reading of the 
 bill. The Earl of Winchilsea impotently gnashed 
 his teeth against it as a bill for rejecting Christi- 
 anity, and quoted Burke to show that an infidel is 
 *' an outlaw of the human race never to be tole- 
 rated." The Earl of Eldon as the impersonation of 
 Toryism protested against the repeal. " He had 
 heard much, he said, of the march of mind, and the 
 progress of information, and of persons changing 
 opinions which they had held for years, but he did 
 not think it possible that the march of mind could 
 have been so speedy as to induce some of the 
 changes of opinion which he had witnessed within 
 the last year; least of all did he expect that such a bill 
 as that pro))Osed would ever have been received into 
 their lordship's house even under the idea of making 
 amendments on it. Forty years ago he had voted
 
 ~)5'2 THE IlISTOUY Ol' PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, airainst the repeal of those acts. He has thus voted 
 
 XXI . 
 
 — ' ' — at a time when a o^reat many noble lords whom he 
 
 A- »• 18-28. , - - . \ . 11-1. 
 
 then saw around him were not born, and he might 
 say the same of some of the reverend prelates who 
 now supported the measure before their lordships. 
 He had examined the question dehberately, and the 
 result of his deliberation was that he had been right. 
 He could not, therefore^ consent to give up the con- 
 stitution as well as the church establishment to the 
 extent that the present bill proposed. He could not 
 do this ; it must be the work of others. He would 
 solemnly say, as he then did, from his heart and 
 soul, non content to the present bill. The Duke of 
 WeUington, in answer to his old colleague, defended 
 the bill, not by any means as being a desirable mea- 
 sure, but as being a necessary concession. Several 
 orators followed, but there was more of reluctant 
 retreat than of defiance in the tone of the Tories, 
 and the bill was at length read a second time without 
 a division. In the committee there was considerable 
 conflict ; the Earl of Eldon grew violent and per- 
 sonally offensive, but fortunately wasted all his wasp- 
 ishness upon the Bishop of Chester. After he had 
 made an attempt to convert the declaration into an 
 oath, an attempt which signally failed ; after the Earl 
 of Winchilsea had been equally unsuccessful in an at- 
 tempt to exclude the Unitarians, by what the Bishop 
 of Chester designated as dogmatizing, and after Lord
 
 A. D. 1828. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 553 
 
 Tenterden had moved an amendment which certainly CHAP. 
 
 J XXI. 
 
 did not bear the impress of his customary good 
 sense, the bill passed. 
 
 Thus was the first outpost of Toryism carried, 
 and the artillery that had been used for its defence 
 was withdrawn to oppose the onset of the Catholics. 
 Catholic Ireland was still united, her population was 
 still perfectly organized and ably commanded, now 
 raging like the surges of their ocean, now silent as 
 the waters of their own dark lakes ; in each respect 
 obeying implicitly the voice of the chief upon whom 
 every eye was turned, and to whom every Irish heart 
 was devoted. '* I know not how to draw a bill of 
 indictment against a whole people," said Burke, 
 when the Americans were struggling in a bondage 
 which was freedom compared with that the Irish suf- 
 fered. The Americans were unjustly treated by a 
 distant and a powerful nation ; the Irish were ground 
 by the oppression and goaded by the insults of a 
 miserable minority who were present among them to 
 prevent their wrongs from sleeping, and whose 
 cruelty was in proj)ortion to their weakness. The 
 Duke of Wellington appeared to share this ignorance 
 of Burke's better days. Warrior and hero as he was, 
 he appeared stupificd with the scene which Ireland 
 now presented, 'i'he Brunswick Club had arisen 
 as the antagonist of the C'atholic Association, 
 which, bv the expiration of its Sii])pression bill, was
 
 A. D. 1828. 
 
 5.51. THE HISTORY OF I'ARTY. 
 
 CHAP, become affain endowed with life. The state of the 
 contest was well described by Mr. Shell, one of the 
 most eloquent of Irish orators. "The Catholic 
 Association owes its political parentage to heavy- 
 wrong operating on deeply sensitive and strongly 
 susceptible feelings. Oppression has engendered it. 
 The Protestant Association has its birth in the here- 
 ditary love of power and inveterate habits of domi- 
 nation, and thus two great rivals are brought into 
 political existence and enter the lists against each 
 other. As yet they have not engaged in the great 
 struggle — they have not closed in the combat ; but 
 as they advance upon each other and collect their 
 might, it is easy to discern the terrible passions by 
 which they are influenced, and the fell determination 
 with which they rush to the encounter. Meanwhile, 
 the government stand by, and the minister folds his 
 arms as if he were a mere indifferent observer, and 
 the terrific contest only afforded him a spectacle for 
 the amusement of his official leisure. He sits as if 
 two gladiators were crossing their swords for his 
 recreation." 
 
 The orator was wrong in supposing that the 
 minister looked on with apathy. Castlereagh would 
 have renewed his Coercion acts, suspended the 
 Habeas Corpus, imprisoned, perhaps hanged, O'Con- 
 nell, and poured in troops, and he would have had 
 his reward in a bloody and a doubtful contest, and
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 55.5 
 
 in a reaction in England which might have shaken chap. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 even the throne. The Duke of Wellington at 
 
 A.D. 1829. 
 
 tempted to moderate the violence of the combatants, 
 and made public an ambiguous promise in case the 
 question were buried for a short time in oblivion. 
 But the Catholics had experience of such promises. 
 Pitt's sense of honour was not less rigid than that of 
 the Duke of Wellington, yet they remembered that 
 the party which had allowed Pitt to promise took from 
 him the power to perform. The agitation continued, 
 and it remained to be seen whether the duke would 
 reconquer Ireland, or would suffer a Whig govern- 
 ment to come in and carry an Emancipation bill. 
 The high Tories, and especially the Irish Tories, 
 clamoured for the former course ; the Whigs were 
 not without hope that he would adopt the latter. 
 
 Such were the expectations of the parties,* when 
 they assembled to hear the king's speech at the com- 
 mencement of the session of 1829- With what sur- 
 prise then did they hear in a speech proceeding from 
 a Wellington cabinet, after an exhortation to put 
 down the Catholic Association, another to review the 
 
 • Tlie Tories refvised to listen tliat a desperate effort will be 
 
 to the sounds which were already made by the pro-popery faction 
 
 in the air. A few days before on the very first day of the ses- 
 
 the meeting of parliament, the sion. This is the key to the mul- 
 
 Standard, the most aide and ac- titii<l<' of false stories of conver- 
 
 rreditcd orpan of the Tory party, sions, an<l of minisl.ii.il rmanci- 
 
 said, "Thrrf is no doubt wljatever pat ion biJK."
 
 556 '•'HE HISTORY of party. 
 
 CHAP, laws which imposed civil disabilities upon his ma- 
 - iestys Roman Catholic subjects! 
 
 It now at length became indisputable that the 
 duke had deserted his party. Their rage knew no 
 bounds, nor was it unprovoked. The arguments by 
 which the Tories had combated every proposition of 
 Catholic emancipation were not such as could yield 
 to expediency, or could be replied to by a threat of 
 civil war. The arguments by which they justified 
 the exclusion of their fellow- subjects from the rights 
 of citizens, went to prove that the existence of our 
 church, the preservation of our religion, and the 
 integrity of our constitution, were involved in the 
 restrictions the Whigs sought to remove. The 
 sudden abandonment of these arguments, and of the 
 cause they supported, might preserve a ministry, or 
 add fame to a minister, but it could not but inflict a 
 fatal blow upon the party which followed him. What 
 security could the nation have that the party which 
 turned round thus readily at the command of their 
 chief had ever themselves been convinced that the 
 measure they withstood was noxious? How could 
 the people be called upon to put faith in any future 
 assertions, or to believe them in earnest in any future 
 contests ? In popularity, the gain was very doubtful, 
 for none would be so blind as not to award the prize 
 of valour to the party who had fought the whole of 
 the fight, and who had only been cheated of the 
 glory of victory. In character, the loss was inevitable
 
 A. D. 1829. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 557 
 
 and incalculable, it was a surrender of their principles, chap. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 an admission that so large a portion of them was 
 unsound, that the people who had once thought them 
 sacred looked on and applauded, while the Whigs 
 demolished the rest. 
 
 It was the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel, not 
 the Tory party, who carried this question, and the 
 latter was singled out as the especial object of their 
 vengeance. When the first whisper of his recreancy 
 reached the Tories, their organ exclaimed, " Why 
 has Mr. Peel in every case discouraged every rising 
 Protestant of talent in parliament? — Why have all 
 his official appointments in the church or in civil 
 offices been of pro-papists or of inferior men ? We 
 answer both questions at once : Because he is a little 
 man, and he has the miserable jealousy natural to 
 such a consciousness. Had the Duke of Wellington 
 thrown himself upon the country last year, the Pro- 
 testant cause would have triumphed ; but Mr. Peel 
 would have set for ever ; a general election would 
 have thrown into parliament 100 abler men than Mr. 
 Peel." To Peel they attributed the desertion of the 
 duke. " He spun his meshes round the Duke of 
 Wellington, threatened him with the Huskisson 
 party, and entangled him inextricably in that dubious 
 and dishonest line of policy from which it is impos- 
 sible for him to escape." 
 
 Again. " Mr. (banning is receiving a posthumous 
 vindication from the lips of those who wore his fiercest
 
 A. I). 18'20. 
 
 558 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, accusers. Not only do they go beyond his mis- 
 chievous poHcy in practice, but they renounce those 
 eternal principles upon which these accusations were 
 most hypocritically founded. Mr. Canning knew 
 the men ; he knew them more dishonest than him- 
 self, inasmuch as they affected an immunity from 
 ambition to which he never pretended ; they affected 
 an indifference to salary and patronage which, free 
 as he was from such sordid passions, he must still 
 have seen was falsely affected. He knew them more 
 dishonest than himself, and he knew them immea- 
 surably his inferiors in talent, and he scorned them 
 accordingly. The time has arrived which shows who 
 were they * who did that they did in envy of great 
 Ca3sar,' and who acted from ' a noble general prin- 
 ciple.* The test has been applied by which we can 
 distinguish the Greys from the Newcastles, the Peels 
 from the Chandoses." 
 
 Such were the sentiments of the Tory party,* as 
 expressed through their favourite organ, and every 
 reader will remember the impatience with which the 
 nightly Standard was waited for in every Tory family, 
 
 ♦ Passages still more contemp- these characters of Mr. Peel con- 
 tiious and virulent than those cited trasted with the overwrought 
 in the text might be multiplied ; eulogium poured upon him by the 
 but these are sufficient to show same persons before and since, 
 how little the Tory party had to may also teach us the utter worth- 
 do with the passing of the Catholic lessness of such praise or such 
 bill. The palpable injustice of blame.
 
 A. D. 18-29. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 559 
 
 and the eaorerness with which these spirited articles CHAP. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 were devoured. The same sentiments were echoed 
 by Tory speakers at Tory gatherings, and upwards 
 of a hundred petitions nightly were presented to the 
 houses of parliament against the contemplated mea- 
 sure. Oxford was not w^anting to the party whose 
 principles she had ever espoused. While Peel was 
 harassed in the commons by the reproaches of the 
 party he had betrayed, and standing at bay against 
 the members who, armed with petitions, were on all 
 sides assailing him, the university of Oxford, which 
 had chosen him instead of Canning, when Canning 
 put off his anti-catholic principles, called upon him 
 to resign his seat. He obeyed ; and when he 
 offered himself for re-election, the Tories sought out 
 an opposing candidate, whose success might be an 
 indisputable triumph of sound Tory principles. Their 
 choice was happily made in Sir Robert Inglis ; and, 
 against all the influence of the government, all the 
 influence of the talent and character of Mr. Peel, 
 and the unexampled exertions made in his favour. 
 Sir Robert was returned,* Peel abandoning the 
 contest as hopeless on the second day. 
 
 • The enthusiasm of the coun- sonal sacrifice, had left their cura- 
 
 try clergy was, upon this occasion, ties and their livings in remote 
 
 extraordinary — knots of old men parts of the kingdom, spending no 
 
 might be seen in the convocation- small portion of their slender sti- 
 
 house, many of whom had not pend to come and vote against the 
 
 visited Oxford for nearly half a man whom tliey called the arch 
 
 century, and who, at immense per- apostatr.
 
 A. 1). 18-29. 
 
 560 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. In parliament the scheme was introduced by a bill 
 for the suppression of political societies in Ireland, 
 which, as the prelude to emancipation, was suffered 
 to pass with little direct opposition. The Catholic 
 Association anticipated its operation by a voluntary 
 dissolution. 
 
 On the 6th of March, 1829, Mr. Peel, having 
 been returned for a nomination borough, introduced 
 the question, and, after a speech of four hours' dura- 
 tion, amid cheering so loud as to be heard in West- 
 minster Hall, and the passages leading to the lobby 
 of the house, he moved that the house resolve itself 
 into a committee of the whole house, to consider of 
 the laws imposing civil disabilities on his majesty's Ro- 
 man Catholic subjects. Now it was that Mr. Peel de- 
 clared that ever since the year IS^^, when he found 
 himself in a minority upon that question, he had looked 
 upon the success of the measure as ultimately inevi- 
 table,* and that he espoused the side of concession, 
 not because he had changed his opinion of its impro- 
 priety, but because he feared the more imminent 
 danger of protracted resistance, Mr. Peel repre- 
 sented Toryism not converted to Whiggism, but 
 reluctantly yielding to compulsion. 
 
 * Although it has been inferred quite justified by his expressions, 
 
 from this passage of Sir R. Peel's which are very guarded. It is to be 
 
 speech, that he advised Lord Li- regretted that his offer to produce 
 
 verpool to carry an Emancipation the letters that passed was not 
 
 bill, yet such a conclusion is not accepted.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 56\ 
 
 On the first night of the debate, Sir George Mur- chap. 
 
 ray,* a follower of the Duke of M^ellington, by whom 
 he had been brought forward into political life, was 
 the only Tory who supported the minister. Against 
 him appeared many members of that party. That 
 respectable and consistent veteran Tory, Mr. Bankes, 
 the indefatigable Mr. Trant, Mr. O'Neill, and the 
 rod of the apostate Sir Robert Inglis, all came for- 
 ward to denounce the measure which was indeed now 
 found to be a full and fair concession of civil rights ; 
 such as w^ould give the Catholic a voice in the govern- 
 ment of the country, and enable him to vindicate his 
 own perfect equality. 
 
 Upon the second night, Sir Hussey Vivian and 
 Sir Thomas Lethbridge were the only converts 
 among the speakers. Messrs. Estcourt, Jonathan 
 Peel, Moore — a favourite Tory orator. Hart Davis, 
 and several others who were little known to the 
 house as speakers, but who, as parts of the substra- 
 tum of Toryism, were valuable specimens of the 
 nature of the mass, spoke against the measure. 
 Upon the division, Sir Charles Wetherell, the attor- 
 ney-general, and Lord Lowthcr, the chairman of the 
 commissioners of woods and forests, voted against their 
 
 • This gentleman had kept having absented himself whenever 
 himself hitherto quite unshackled, the question was discussed. 
 
 VOL. IN. 2 O 
 
 XXL 
 
 A. U. 1829.
 
 56'2 
 
 THE HISTORY OF TARTY. 
 
 A. 1). \S'29. 
 
 CHAP, collcao^ucs. Ill the Stainc house of commons, which 
 XXI. * 
 
 had formerly rejected a similar motion by a majority 
 of 2, it was now carried by a majority of 188. 
 
 This majority was decisive, and the Tories at 
 once saw that they had nothing to hope, at least in 
 the commons. Bitterly did they complain of the 
 manner in which they had been taken by surprise, 
 and industriously did they taunt their treacherous 
 leaders with their fear of appealing to the country. 
 But all in vain, "the atrocious bill," "the consti- 
 tution-breaking bill," was introduced. After two 
 nights of debate, it was read a second time by a 
 majority of 353 against 173. One of the chief 
 features of this debate, apart from the reite- 
 ration of the usual topics of argument for and 
 against the question, and the now customary 
 personalities against Mr. Peel and the Duke of 
 Wellington, was a brilliant speech from Mr. Sad- 
 ler, who had just been returned by the Duke of 
 Newcastle for Newark, and in whom the Tories 
 imagined they had obtained an unapproachable 
 orator ; a delusion which was not dissipated until 
 they heard him sometime after wearying the house 
 with a stammering and unconnected speech, when 
 suddenly called up by a personal allusion. Ano- 
 ther was a speech from Sir Charles Wetherell, in 
 which he cast from him the trammels of office,
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 563 
 
 and attacked his late leaders with all his consti- 
 tutional vehemence. " So, sir,' exclaimed this 
 stanch Tory, *' the old Protestant firm — a very 
 valuable firm — the firm of Peel and Co., is dis- 
 solved. They are broken up, though they had 
 200 constant customers, and though the partners are 
 the same in respectability in character and in worth. 
 They are a disbanded firm, but they have not deserted 
 themselves. They have formed a new firm, though 
 with new names at their head."* It was here the 
 
 CHAP. 
 XXII. 
 
 A. D. 18-29. 
 
 * Sir Charles was especially se- 
 vere upon Lord Lyndhurst, who 
 had obeyed the command of the 
 duke to his cabinet — " Let us not 
 run a muck against the Catholics 
 for their disregard ofoaths, butsee 
 what bound some Catliolic con- 
 sciences When my attention 
 was called to this bill, I felt it my 
 duty to look over both the oath 
 taken by the lord chancellor and 
 that taken by the attorney-ge- 
 neral, and it was my judgment, 
 ri!:ht or wrong, that I was called 
 upon to draw a bill subversive of 
 the Protestant church, wliich his 
 majesty was bound l>y his corona- 
 tion oath to siipport." Tiicn, after 
 recounting the circumstances of 
 the contest between Sir John Cop- 
 ley and Canning upon this qufs- 
 tiou, lie exclaimed, " Am I tlien 
 
 to be twitted, taunted, and at- 
 tacked, for refusing to do that in 
 the subordinate office of attorney- 
 general, which a more eminent 
 adviser of the crown declared only 
 two years ago that he would not 
 consent to do. Let the attack 
 come — / have no speech to eat 
 up — / have no apostacy to explain 
 — / have no paltry subterfuge to 
 resort to — / have not to say that 
 a tiling is black one day and white 
 another — / was not in one year a 
 Protestant master of the rolls, and 
 in tiie next a Catholic lord chan- 
 cellor. I would rather remain as 
 I am the humble member for 
 Plympton (iuin be guilty of such 
 apostacy, such contradiction, such 
 unex[)lainable conversion, such 
 miseral)lo, such contemptible ;ipns- 
 lacy." 
 
 O Q
 
 .^G4 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Tories failed : they had no new names to replace those 
 of the deserters, and while they were astonished and 
 
 A. D. 1829. ■^ 
 
 disunited, the battle was won. At the close of the 
 debate, Mr. Peel formally yielded to the Whigs the 
 honour of this victory. " One parting word," he 
 said, " and 1 have done. I have received in the 
 speech of my noble friend, the member for Donegal, 
 testimonies of approbation which are grateful to my 
 soul ; and they have been liberally awarded to me 
 by gentlemen on the other side of the house in a 
 manner which does honour to the forbearance of party 
 among us. They have, however, one and all, 
 awarded to me a credit which I do not deserve for 
 setthng this question. The credit belongs to 
 others, and not to me ; it belongs to Mr. Fox — to 
 Mr. Grattan — to Mr. Plunket — to the gentlemen 
 opposite, and to an illustrious and right honourable 
 friend of mine who is now no more. By their efforts, 
 in spite of my opposition^ it has proved victorious." 
 The bill now got into committee, and every Tory 
 member had his amendment to propose, his additional 
 security to bring forward. Night after night were 
 the most pertinacious endeavours, even to threats of 
 continual adjournments resorted to in order to obtain 
 a little delay. Meanwhile the Tory press was calling 
 the people to the rescue, representing the Duke of 
 Wellington as entertaining a design to usurp the 
 monarchy, having placed the army of England in the
 
 A. D. 1829. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 565 
 
 hands of his late second in command, and the army chap. 
 
 XXI 
 
 in the colonies in the hands of his late quartermaster 
 general,* and speaking of Mr. Peel as a fit instru- 
 ment for such a deed. The king, according to the 
 same authority, was oppressed and coerced, and was 
 waiting for his loving subjects to deliver himself from 
 the hands of his ministers. t Even this appeal, which 
 as a factious cry is more ancient than the time when 
 the parliament of Charles I. routed the royal armies, 
 in the name of the king, failed. Even the denuncia- 
 tions of divine wrath poured forth by a Tory clergy- 
 man, in the columns of the Standard, were ineffectual. 
 Large majorities continued to reject the amendments, 
 and on the 30th of March, the bill passed the house 
 by .320 votes against 142. 
 
 On the 2d of April, the Duke of Wellington 
 moved the second reading- in the house of lords. 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury moved the amend- 
 ment. He was followed by a formidable opposition. 
 The Primate of Ireland, the Archbishop of York, 
 the Bishops of Durham, Salisbury, and London — the 
 last in what his own party sneered at as a trimming 
 speech — were the speakers against the bill from the 
 bishops' bench. Of the lay peers, the Duke of 
 Richmond, the Earl of Winchilsea, the Marquis of 
 
 • Lord Mill and Sir George f See the Standard and Moni- 
 Mnrray. ing Journal of tliib lime.
 
 56C) THE IIISTOIIY OF I'ARTY. 
 
 CHAP. Salisbury, the Earl of Harewood, the Earls of Ennis- 
 killen, Falmouth, and Mansfield, and Lords Kenyon, 
 
 A. D. 18-29. 
 
 Sidmouth, and Tenterden, spoke in opposition. In 
 favour of the bill, the emancipating Tories were the 
 Bishop of Oxford, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Gode- 
 rich, the Marquis of Anglesey, the new Earl of 
 Liverpool ; the majority of whom had voted all their 
 lives on the other side. The Whigs were repre- 
 sented in the debate by the Duke of Sussex, Earl 
 Grey, Lord Holland, the Marquis of Lansdowne> 
 and Lord Plunket (for we must now class that 
 nobleman among the Whigs) — men who will all be 
 known to posterity — men who had spoken and voted 
 all their lives for the question they were now advo- 
 cating. 
 
 The division upon this question is highly disgrace- 
 ful to the peers. The absolute devotion of the majority 
 of that house to their leaders, their haughtiness to 
 the commons and constant subserviency to the court, 
 has been especially remarkable since Pitt interfered 
 in the composition of that house. They appear to 
 have very early perceived that they could not with- 
 stand the current of popular feeling without the aid of 
 the crown. In a house that had so frequently rejected 
 the same measure, and in which not five of the late 
 majority knew that the measure was in contemplation 
 within a week of the commencement of the session.
 
 A. D. 1829. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 567 
 
 only 79 peers were present to vindicate their con- chap. 
 sistency. The numbers, including proxies, were 217 
 to 112. The usual succession of short sharp battles 
 followed in committee. A final general discharge of 
 oratory occurred upon the third reading ; the bill was 
 passed by a majority of 104, and it received the royal 
 assent. 
 
 It was amusing to see in an after part of the ses- 
 sion, several of the high Tory party giving vent to 
 their rage against their late leaders by loud ha- 
 rangues against boroughmongers. The Marquis of 
 Blandford,* Mr. O'Neill, and some others, even went 
 so far as to bring forward a motion in favour of par- 
 liamentary reform. They were supported by Mr. 
 Hume and Mr. Hobhouse, who never lost an oppor- 
 tunity of voting for any proposition for a reform in 
 parliament, but they were wisely discountenanced 
 by the Whigs, who felt httle inclined to leave an 
 important question in such hands, or to base a 
 grand constitutional principle upon party pique. 
 
 The Duke of WeUington when he projected the 
 Catholic Emanci})ation bill, conceived that he was so 
 necessary to his party, that submission on their part 
 
 * It is curious to observe the sliccp, the gentle manner in which 
 
 comphnicntary tone adopted l)y tlie bleating runaways were called 
 
 the ministerial leader of the iioiise back to the fold, 
 of commons to these straying
 
 A. D. \&29. 
 
 50s THE HISTORY Ol' PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, must be uuconditioiial and unanimous. He alone 
 could restrain the childish fancies of the king, could 
 scare away the minions who ruled him, could re- 
 press within the bounds of moderation the personal 
 antipathies he nourished ; he alone of his party had 
 strength of mind to govern the king, and reputation 
 to content the people. The duke had, however, 
 made the mistake which many great men had made 
 before. He had treated his subordinates with too 
 much contempt, and seeing that the majority were 
 swayed by interest, he forgot that some were in- 
 fluenced by principle. Even in the session of 1829 
 he discovered that the consequence of this error had 
 been to place him in a position of all others the 
 most unpleasant to a man of his high spirit ; that of 
 holding office by the favour of his opponents. The 
 conduct of the Whigs upon this occasion had indeed 
 been an instance of almost romantic generosity. 
 Not only did they take no advantage of the mi- 
 nister's defenceless situation, but they even allowed 
 him to presume on their forbearance ; actually sup- 
 porting a disfranchisement bill to which they were 
 generally opposed, in order to keep in office an 
 opponent who had stolen their principle. It was 
 doubtless, however, expected that the schism in the 
 Tory party would close when the discussion which 
 had divided it was over j and although the Duke of
 
 A. D. 1830. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 569 
 
 Cumberland, in his speech upon the third reading CHAP, 
 of the Cathohc bill,* had declared, on behalf of his 
 party, that he could never again repose confidence 
 in the duke, yet this and similar demonstrations 
 were looked upon as hasty declarations or vain 
 threats. 
 
 The opening of the session of 1830 discovered 
 that the resentment of the Tories was more enduring 
 than the duke had anticipated. In the lords an 
 amendment to the address was moved by the Duke 
 of Cumberland, seconded by the Duke of Richmond, 
 and supported by Newcastle, Stanhope, Winchilsea, 
 King, and Radnor ; a list in which the extremes of 
 each party, the highest Toryism and the most ultra 
 Whiggism, mingle.t 
 
 • Tins declaration does not light manner in which the distress 
 
 occur in the report of this speech of the country was mentioned, 
 
 in Hansard's Debates. It is given Now that the Catholic question 
 
 in a report afterwards publislied was disposed of, this nobleman 
 
 in the Standard, and apparently was no longer a Tory, nor was he 
 
 by authority. The reply of the one of those who were driven by 
 
 Duke of Wellington places it disgust into the opposite ranks. 
 
 beyond doubt that the version A man of liberal mind but of no 
 
 of the Standard is the more accu- party, he is one of the very few 
 
 rate. who have often changed their 
 
 f We must except the Duke associates in divisions without 
 of Richmond, who probably t.up- tarnishing their character or con- 
 ported the amendment simjjly sistency. 
 becau&e he distij)provcd of the
 
 A. D. 1830. 
 
 570 THE IlISTOUY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. In the commons the same hostUity appeared, and 
 ' ' exhibited the ministry in a condition of most pitiable 
 weakness. Sir Edward KnatchbuU moved, and the 
 Marquis of Blandford seconded the amendment 
 which asserted an undoubted fact, that the distress 
 which his majesty had been advised was confined to 
 some particular places was general among all the 
 productive interests of the country. This amend- 
 ment reduced the Whigs to considerable perplexity ; 
 to vote against it would be to compromise their 
 principles as a party, and to draw upon themselves 
 the unpopularity of the minister ; to support it, 
 would be to turn out a minister from whose weakness 
 they hoped much in favour of their own party prin- 
 ciples, and to accomphsh the revenge of the Tories. 
 The difficulty was overcome by a finesse : the 
 acknowledged leaders of the Whig party, Mr. 
 Brougham, Lord Althorp, Mr. Spring Rice, and 
 others, spoke and voted for the amendment, all of 
 them, at the same time, expressing their regret, and 
 Mr. Brougham declaring that the vote he was about 
 to give was literally extorted from him. Others, 
 however, appearing to act on this occasion in oppo- 
 sition to their party, but probably really acting in 
 concert, declared their intention of voting for the 
 address, although they did not disguise their 
 preference of the amendment. Thus Alderman
 
 A. D. 1830. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 571 
 
 Thompson acted, telling the Tories in opposition, CHAP, 
 that they were quite as anxious for a change of men 
 as they were for a change of measures. Thus, also, 
 Mr. Whitmore, Lord Howick, Mr. W. Smith, Mr. 
 Mildraay, and many other undoubted Whigs acted ; 
 and they were thoroughly justified. The real ques- 
 tion at issue, was not whether the distress was par- 
 tial or general, but whether it was for the national 
 interest to maintain the Duke of Wellington in 
 power. That romantic morality which would give a 
 vote in parliament without any regard to its poli- 
 tical consequences, is never advocated but by knaves, 
 or practised but by their dupes. Had the Whigs, 
 upon this occasion, assisted to carry the amendment, 
 they had pursued the shadow of truth, and em- 
 braced a falsehood. 
 
 By this finesse* the address was carried by a 
 majority of 53. 
 
 The position in which the Wellington administra- 
 tion was thus kept existing by the sufferance of 
 the Whigs, was highly favourable to that party's 
 views. Their different objects were now kept before 
 the eyes of the nation ; abuses were diligently 
 
 • The manoeuvre which is suf- the organ of the \\h\gs.—E(lm- 
 ficicntly apparent in tin- dchatc, burgh licvictv, \i>\. V\., [)■ -jli. 
 was afterwards acknowlidgcci liy
 
 572 THE HISTOliy OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, sought out and exposed : Mr. Hume and Sir James 
 XXII f y 
 
 Graham, the latter of whom had now risen into 
 
 A.D. 1830. 
 
 high reputation with his party, vied with each other 
 in their eagerness to discover the lurking-places of 
 corruption. The whole party seemed alive to 
 the truth of a remark made by Sir James Graham 
 in his speech on the public salaries debate, that 
 "it is only in moments of distress that useful 
 purposes are effected :" a remark which all ex- 
 perience of party contest verifies, and which no 
 Whig should ever forget. The requisite distress 
 now unfortunately existed. The pubHc attention 
 was fixed upon the subject. In the house of 
 commons, details of corrupt distribution of patro- 
 nage, of cabinet ministers creating offices and put- 
 ting their sons into them, then abolishing the offices 
 and retaining the compensation pension,* might 
 have little effect — the members were accustomed 
 to contemplate such things : but they had great 
 effect upon the countiy. They were treasured up 
 in the hearts of the people to be remembered at the 
 proper season. 
 
 The question of parliamentary reform made no 
 
 * Sir R. Heron's motion con- Bathurst was carried against nii- 
 cerning the pensions for the Hon. nistcrs by a majority of 18. 
 H. Diindas and tiie Hon. W, L.
 
 A. D. 1830. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 573 
 
 advance in this house of commons. The Duke of chap. 
 WeHinffton made some economical reforms, and Mr. 
 Peel adopted, in some degree, the sentiments of 
 Romilly and Mackintosh, upon the subject of the 
 criminal code ; but parliamentary reform was not to 
 be approached.* 
 
 The Marquis of Blandford, however, again came 
 forward as a reformer. He proposed a standing com- 
 mittee for the disfranchisement of decayed boroughs 
 and the transfer of their franchise ; the abolition of 
 the property qualification, the admission of the 
 clergy to the house of commons, the exclusion of 
 all placemen, the adoption of household suffrage, 
 and the payment of members at the rate of 9,1. 
 per diem for burgesses, and 4/. for knights of a 
 shire. 
 
 This notable scheme somewhat perplexed the 
 Whigs ; yet as the marquis appeared perfectly 
 serious, they could not vote against the principle 
 involved in his bill. Lord John Russell and the 
 
 • Not a little effect also was do what he would with his own, 
 produced by a discussion upon rang through every village. Mr. 
 tiie conduct of the Duke of New- Peel's open justification of the 
 castle in ejecting those of his principle in the house of corn- 
 tenantry who had voted against mons kept up the sensation. Hcn- 
 liim in the recent election for tham's idea of the ballot was now 
 Newark. His celebrated justi- added to the popular project of a 
 firatinn that ho had a right tn |)arliainr'nfary reform.
 
 A. D. 1830. 
 
 571. THE IIISTOllY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAT, loaders of the party supported him, but Mr. Stanley, 
 the grandson of the Duke of Dorset, a young orator 
 who had claimed at once a very high position among 
 the Whigs, perhaps more reasonably, voted at once 
 asrainst so absurd a measure. 
 
 Lord John Russell's very moderate proposition 
 for extending the franchise to Manchester, Leeds, 
 and Birmingham, was happily defeated by a majo- 
 rity of 48. Mr. Peel, who upon this occasion first 
 dehvered his opinion upon the subject of parlia- 
 mentary reform, took shelter behind the authority 
 of Burke and Canning, and said, "he saw nothing 
 which led him to think that an alteration in the 
 mode of construction of the house of commons 
 was necessary. Mr. Twiss and Sir George Mur- 
 ray each declared that they were no enemies to 
 legitimate reform ; but, although they strenuously 
 opposed the present very inefficient scheme as 
 too violent, they left the house in ignorance 
 of what they conceived to be legitimate re- 
 form. Brougham, Dr. Lushington, O'Connell, 
 and Huskisson, enforced the principle of the 
 bill ; the last speaker seeming to speak in the 
 spirit of prophecy when he said, the time was 
 fast approaching when ministers would be com- 
 pelled to come down to the house with some 
 measure or to resign their situations, and that
 
 A.D. 1830 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 5'J5 
 
 nothing was more unwise than for a government to CHAP, 
 delay important propositions till driven forward by 
 overwhelming majorities. 
 
 On the 25th of June, George IV. died. 
 
 The conduct of Georo;e IV. towards the two 
 national parties was characterized neither by prin- 
 ciple nor consistency. His early popularity was 
 based upon a gentlemanly address and an affability 
 which cost him nothing ; the extravagances of his 
 youth contributed to it ; they were thought to be 
 the weeds of a generous soil. But in the shallow 
 heart of George IV. principle could take no root — 
 self was his motive, his principle, according to the 
 dictates of which he adhered to, or abandoned a 
 party or a mistress. As Prince of Wales he 
 was a Whig, because he wished to annoy his 
 father ; as Prince Regent and George IV. he 
 was a Tory, because he wished to remove from 
 him the prayers of his people. Sheridan he aban- 
 doned to shame and death, because, having sacri- 
 ficed fame and friendship to his favour, that great 
 man had no more to offer, and his fickle patron 
 grew weary of him. Earl Grey and the Whigs 
 he drove from his councils because they would 
 make no such sacrifice, and he hated them ever 
 afterwards because he had betrayed them. The 
 Diikc of Wellington he clung to in his latter
 
 5jG THE insTOin' of party. 
 
 CHAP, (lays of feeble indolence; for althoug-h the duke 
 XXI . 
 
 was probably rather an imperative and troublesome 
 
 A. U. 1830. 
 
 inmate of the closet, yet he kept him quite secure 
 from any intrusion from without.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PAHTY. 
 
 «577 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Prospects of the Whigs at the accession of William IV. — French re- 
 volution of 1830 — Duke of Wellington's declaration against reform 
 — Defeat of his administration — Formation of the Grey adminis- 
 tration — Introduction of the first Reform bill — Debates — Rejected 
 oor the second reading — Dissolution of parliament — Elections — 
 Meeting of the new house — Reform bill re-introduced — Debated — 
 Passed — In the house of lords — Debated — Rejected — A short pro- 
 rogation — State of the country — Power of the press — Parliament 
 re-asseml)les — Second Reform bill brouglit forward — Passes the 
 house of commons — The Whigs defeated in the house of lords — 
 Resign — State of the country — The Duke of Wellington fails to 
 form an administration — Earl Grey returns to office with power to 
 create peers — Tlie Reform bill passes the lords. 
 
 The death of* George IV. occurred at a very cri- chap. 
 
 XXII 
 
 tical period. The charm had begun to work,* the 
 
 steps of the schoolmaster had been faithfully fol- " to 1832. 
 
 * The Tories heard the wind l)ecn pushed too far among the 
 
 approaching. " We cannot help lower classes," groaned a Tory in 
 
 expressing an apprehension that tiie Quarterly Review, vol. xxxix., 
 
 both education and reading have p. 494. 
 
 VOL. [II. 2 I'
 
 578 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, lowed by the newsboy, who supplied the want as 
 quickly as it was created. Within a very few years 
 
 A. D. IS'M 
 
 to 188J. the daily journals had sj)rung from mere chronicles 
 of robberies upon Hounslow-heath, with occasional 
 reports of parliamentary proceedings, and occasional 
 communications from correspondents, to powerful 
 and thoroughly-organized engines for the dissemi- 
 nation of party principles and the universal dis- 
 tribution of political knowledge. In them, that 
 talent which had hitherto bubbled forth in an occa- 
 sional pamphlet, now flowed in a continued stream 
 of political instruction ; in them, the principles and 
 the acts of the parties were daily attacked and de- 
 ^ fended J not a Tory abuse was brought to light, 
 
 not one of Mr. Hume's discoveries took place, 
 without being thoroughly paraded and eloquently 
 amplified in the Whig papers. A very few of these 
 instances, acting upon a state of general distress, 
 were sufficient to inoculate even the middle classes 
 with discontent. The Whigs felt that their sails, 
 which had so long been spread in vain to catch the 
 popular breeze, suddenly began to fill, that after 
 seventy years of exclusion and persecution their 
 time, at length, was come. It was not the men of 
 Manchester nor the reformers of Birmingham — it 
 was that voice never heard in vain, the voice of the 
 middle classes which called upon them now, and 
 they prepared to obey.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 579 
 
 Even in the debate upon the answer to the mes- chap. 
 
 XXII 
 
 sage of the new monarch, the Whigs discovered '- — 
 
 , .. . A.D. 1830 
 
 that they were no longer disposed to guard the to issa. 
 chariot of the Duke of WelHnorton, A retainer of the 
 duke, supposing that the Whigs had, by a concession 
 to one of their principles, been bound to an enduring 
 debt of gratitude, expressed surprise that any symptom 
 of opposition should proceed from such a quarter, 
 and began to speak of inconsistency, and the ad- 
 vantage of knowing who were true friends, and who 
 but concealed enemies. He was soon silenced. 
 Earl Grey enabled hiin to see the difference between 
 giving a disinterested support to a minister while 
 pursuing a just measure and protecting him against 
 its consequences, and continuing to support the same 
 minister when his measures were no longer just. 
 He challenged the ministerialists to produce one 
 instance of his having professed a general confidence 
 in the duke's administration, and repeated the unde- 
 niable truth that it was incapable of managing the 
 affairs of the country. The high Tory party had 
 not yet forgotten their cause of quarrel ; the Duke 
 of Newcastle and his friends voted with the Whigs. 
 In the lords the duke was sufficiently strong to beat 
 both parties, but the experiment was not tried in the 
 commons. 
 
 On the 24th of July parliament was dissolved, and 
 a house of commons which had been in advance of 
 
 2 r 2
 
 5H0 TIIK insTOUY OF I'AIITY. 
 
 CHAP, the public sentiment upon the subject of toleration, 
 XXII 
 '— but far behind it upon the subject of parliamentary 
 
 A. D. 1830 ^ , . 
 
 to \s:)'2. reform* was sent back to the constituency. 
 
 The news of the events of the three days of July, 
 the almost concurrent intelligence that the elder 
 branch of the house of Bourbon had attacked the 
 hberties of France — and had ceased to reign,t came 
 to swell the deep murmur for reform which was now 
 rising from the whole people. As the elections pro- 
 ceeded, the depth of this feeling became manifest. 
 Not a single cabinet minister obtained a seat by any 
 thing approaching to open and popular election. 
 The relations of Mr. Secretary Peel sustained no 
 less than five defeats. The nephew of the Duke of 
 Wellington was at the bottom of the poll, and no 
 
 * This is very readily accounted the events of the succeeding 
 
 for. By Catholic Emancipation the month. There is another in the 
 
 private interests of tlie members (Tory) Quarterly Review, which 
 
 were not affected; by parliamentary was pointed out by Dr. Bowring 
 
 reform they were fearfully threat- and other speakers,' at public 
 
 ened. I think it is Hobbes who meetings, as contributing in some 
 
 has observed that the axioms of degree to those events. " The 
 
 geometry are only admitted to be nation is nothing," said the latter 
 
 true, because ther-e is no class of periodical to the French king, 
 
 persons interested in proving them " You are every thing ; cut up the 
 
 false. press that disturbs you by the 
 
 f There is an article in the very roots ; by firmness we have 
 (Whig) Edinburgh Review, foi done every thing ; follow our ex- 
 June, 1830, which foretels, with ample— be you firm also." i • 
 an accuracy that is astonishing.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. '581 
 
 Other connexion of the government ventured to chap. 
 
 . XXII. 
 
 show themselves at any place. Of the thirteen ffreat — — — ^ — 
 
 ^ ^ . A. D. 1830 
 
 popular constituencies returning twenty-eight mem- to 183-2. 
 bers, the minister could claim but three votes. On 
 the other hand, Mr. Hume was spontaneously chosen 
 by the electors of the metropolitan county. Mr. 
 Brougham was claimed by the freeholders of York- 
 shire. A Whig colleague was given to Mr. Coke 
 in Norfolk — that venerable Whig, who, in the proud 
 position of the first commoner of England, could 
 afford to smile as Pitt's merchants and contractors, 
 creations of the national debt, passed him into the 
 house of lords. Devonshire returned two Whigs. 
 Cambridgeshire, in spite of the great influence of 
 the Duke of Rutland, followed of the same track. 
 Wherever popular feeling could have effect upon an 
 election, the result was the same.* The resentment 
 of the high church Tories was now also felt by 
 the minister. Very numerous were the instances 
 in which a Tory constituency rejected their former 
 member for voting for the Catholic bill, and elected 
 a fanatic in his stead In these exchanges, what 
 the Tories gained in energy, they almost invariably 
 lost in tal(!nt. This was especially shown in the 
 election for tlie Dublin University, where Mr. 
 Croker, a fluent and oftentimes even a brilliant 
 
 • Sec a pamphlet talli'd " What gained by the Dissolution," gene- 
 has ihi Hiike (if Welliiiuloii rally attrihntrd to Mr. Kroiipham.
 
 .^8*2 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, speaker, who had constantly voted in favour of the 
 
 XXII 
 
 Catholics, but who, in all other respects, had de- 
 
 to 1832. served well of the Tories, was rejected in favour of a 
 candidate who was certainly his inferior in efficiency. 
 The new parliament met in November, at a time 
 when the middle classes were discontented, and the 
 labouring classes were desperate ; when the despair 
 of the latter was manifested by the most wanton and 
 un-English attacks upon property, and when not a 
 night passed in the agricultural districts in which a 
 spectator could not stand and count several confla- 
 grations of farms or corn-stacks, all lit up by the 
 hands of wilful incendiaries. This class of persons 
 had lost all confidence in the honesty or humanity of 
 their rulers : when they read animadversions upon the 
 corruption and careless extravagance of the house of 
 commons, they contrasted this waste with their own 
 destitution. Toryism had already created a hatred 
 between the property classes and the labouring popu- 
 lation in towns ; the same dreadful political disorder 
 was now observed in the counties. 
 
 On the first night of the session. Lord Grey ad- 
 verted to the state of the country, and spoke of 
 remedies. " We see the hurricane approaching — we 
 may trace presages of the storm on the verge of the 
 horizon. What course ought we to adopt ? We 
 should put our house in order, we should secure our 
 doors against the tempest. How? By securing
 
 TIIK HISTORY OF PARTY. -58S 
 
 ourselves of the affections of our subjects, by re- CHAP, 
 moving grievances, by affording redress, by 
 
 A. D. 1830 
 
 may I venture to use the word ? — the adoption of to i832. 
 measures of temperate reform. I know not whether 
 we can expect that ministers will undertake such 
 measures, but of this I am satisfied, that if they 
 do not make up their minds to the course indicated, 
 in time, it will be ultimately forced upon them, and 
 reform will be carried under circumstances much less 
 safe and advantageous than now present themselves. 
 I have been a reformer all my life, and I will add, 
 that never — in my younger days, when I might be 
 supposed to have entertained projects wilder or more 
 extensive than maturer years and increased expe- 
 rience would sanction — never would I have pressed 
 reform further than I would do now, were the oppor- 
 tunity afforded." 
 
 In answer to this speech the Duke of Wellington 
 made his memorable declaration against reform. " I 
 am fully convinced," he said, "that the country 
 possesses, at the present moment, a legislature which 
 answers all the good purposes of legislation ; and this 
 to a greater degree than any legislature ever has 
 answered in any country whatever. I am not only 
 not prepared to bring forward any measure of tlie 
 description alluded to by the noble lord, but I will at 
 once declare, that as far as I am concerned, and as 
 long as I hold any station in the government of the
 
 .''>84' THE HISTOUY OV PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, country, I shall always feel it my duty to resist such 
 measures when proposed by others."* 
 
 A. D. 1830 ^ ^ -^ 1 J 1 n 
 
 to 1832. The publication of this answer was the death-blow 
 to the duke's administration. The king was exceed- 
 ingly popular ; his frank and open manners, and his 
 generous oblivion of all the personal quarrels of the 
 Duke of Clarence, contrasted strongly with the con- 
 duct of his predecessor ; yet such was the unpopu- 
 larity, or the apprehension of his ministers, that a 
 promised visit to the city was indefinitely postponed, 
 avowedly through fear of popular tumult. It added 
 not a little to the cry against the Duke of Welling- 
 ton, that he had attempted to involve the king in his 
 own unpopularity — that he had held forth those who 
 disliked his administration as disloyal to their so- 
 vereign. 
 
 At length the blow which forbearance or policy 
 had so long held suspended, fell. On the 15th of 
 November, on a motion made by Sir Henry Parnell 
 upon the civil list, ministers were left in a minority. 
 Mr. Hobhouse immediately asked whether it was the 
 intention of ministers to resign ? anc^ when Mr. Peel 
 remained silent, added that he would bring the ques- 
 tion to an issue. The hostility and determination of 
 
 * I have given the chief sen- haps strengthened by reiterated 
 
 tences of this celebrated decla- expressions of admiration at the 
 
 ration which was considerably existing system of representation, 
 amplified by repetition, and per-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 585 
 
 the house was manifested by the cries of *' Move, CHAP. 
 
 ^ XXII. 
 
 move !" bv which the member w'as encouraged to ——7; .^^^ 
 
 ° A.D. 1830 
 
 make some decisive motion. No further division, to 1832. 
 however, took place. Mr. Peel persisted in refusing 
 to notice the unreasonable question put to him ; but 
 it was known the next morning that the Wellington 
 cabinet was at an end. 
 
 William IV. immediately sent for Earl Grey, and 
 commissioned him to form a cabinet. The result of 
 the arrangement made by this highly respected no- 
 bleman, was the formation of a Whig administration 
 consentient upon the subject of a thorough parlia- 
 mentary reform. Of this reform administration. Earl 
 Grey was, of course, the premier ; the Martjuis of 
 Lansdowne was president of the council ; Mr. 
 Lambton, whose labours as a reformer in the house 
 of commons had been arrested in 1828, by his eleva- 
 ted to the peerage, as Lord Durham, was lord privy 
 seal ; Lord Holland was chancellor of the duchy of 
 Lancaster. The Duke of Richmond, after once or 
 twice looking back, overcame his scruples and amal- 
 gamated with the Whigs, acce})ting ofiice as post- 
 master-general. Lord Lyndhurst, it was said, reluc- 
 tantly,* resigned the chancellorship, and, after some 
 
 • There was certainly somctliiiig iiiHucncc, advocated his retention. 
 
 very suspicious in the manner in Perhaps an indifferent observer, 
 
 wliich a powerful journal wiiieh reading the articles wiiieiiap[ii'ared 
 
 I. did Lyndiiurst was supposed to in iliis pajter during the formation
 
 "58^^ THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, slio-ht delay, Mr. Broufrbam succeeded him. This 
 ^ appointiiient was, no doubt, reluctantly made. It 
 
 to 1832 was unfortunate for Mr. Brougham's party, that the 
 only adequate reward of his great ability should de- 
 prive them of his presence in the scene where his 
 services were most valuable. Lord Plunket was lord 
 chancellor of Ireland. Lord Melbourne, who was 
 now chiefly known as a man of literary taste and 
 highly-cultivated mind, and as a Whig in politics, but 
 whom posterity will probably remember as a second, 
 but more fortunate, Lord Rockingham, was home se- 
 cretary. LordGoderich was secretary for the colonies. 
 In the commons the leadership was committed to 
 Lord Althorp, whose sterling sense, industry, and 
 straightforward conduct quickly gained him the con- 
 fidence of the house, and obtained for him a respect 
 and almost affection from the members of that nu- 
 merous assembly which had been denied to many 
 more brilliant men. Lord Althorp was chancellor of 
 the exchequer. Lord John Russell was paymaster 
 of the forces. Sir James Graham, who had so 
 eminently distinguished himself by his zeal, and 
 ability, was, notwithstanding his extreme Whiggism, 
 raised to the head of the admiralty. Lord Pal- 
 merston, who setting out with the advanced guard 
 
 of the reform ministry together, hurst was never absent from the 
 would suspect that Lord Lynd- writer's mind.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ' ' 
 
 of the Tories, had sometime since overtaken the ^^^j^- 
 Whigs, was foreign secretary. Mr. Stanley, who Xlxlsao" 
 was one of the very few men in the house of com- to 1832. 
 mons who could be pitted against O'Connell with any 
 hope of success, was secretary for Ireland.* Mr. 
 Denman w^as attorney-general. Mr. C. Grant pre- 
 sident of the board of control. Mr. Poulett Thom- 
 son, treasurer of the navy. 
 
 Had Huskisson survived, he had, doubtless, joined 
 this administration, which contained nearly all the 
 personal adherents of Canning. The principle 
 adopted by that sagacious leader of yielding to pub- 
 lic opinion where he could not guide it, was in fact a 
 Whig principle ; and his followers, when public opi- 
 nion ran strong, found themselves driven to the very 
 position occupied by the Whigs. Mr. Huskisson, 
 however, was now no more ; on the 15th of Septem- 
 ber of this year, he had met a dreadful death. 
 On that day, the ceremony of opening the Liverpool 
 and Manchester Railway took place; Mr. Huskisson 
 was present ; he had crossed the railway to shake 
 hands with the Duke of ^^'ellington, and was return- 
 ing, when seeing an engine rapidly approaching, he 
 
 • Mr. Stanley, who sat for Pres- level in the house of commons — 
 
 ton, was opposed and beaten when the firebrand was in another ele- 
 
 he went down to be re-elected, and ment, it hi.^sed a few moments, and 
 
 his opponent was Mr. Henry Hunt, went out. 
 This gentleman (iviickly found his
 
 588 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PAUTY. 
 
 CHAP, stood for a moment irresolute; before he could <:^et 
 XXII. 
 
 — - — ^ — clear of the railway, the engine was upon him, and 
 to 183-2. his thio-h was dreadfully shattered : he ling-ered a few 
 hours and expired. His character as a statesman is 
 very lair. Upon the contested question of the sound- 
 ness or fiillacy of his commercial policy, it is not our 
 ^ province to enter : as a party man he betrayed no 
 friendships, he abandoned no principles ; and those 
 who charg-e him with too great anxiety to recal his 
 misused offer of resignation sent to the Duke of Wel- 
 lington, forget to state that that anxiety did not 
 influence his vote, and that there were obvious 
 reasons why he should not wish that a hasty note 
 should be exhibited as a formal letter of resignation. 
 The Whigs were now again in power, with the 
 national voice in their favour, and with a king who, 
 if he was not himself a Whig, had only relinquished 
 that character as inconsistent with the impartiality of 
 a monarch. They came into office determined to 
 clear away the foul deposits of nearly seventy years 
 of Toryism ; and to turn a stream of popular influence 
 through the government, which should run with 
 sufficient force to prevent any future accumulation. 
 Reforms in every portion of the state were imme- 
 diately projected ; not a nest of corruption was left 
 unthreatened, although few, except the victims threat- 
 ened, heeded the threats. Minor abuses and minor 
 reforms excited little attention among a people who
 
 to 1832. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. '^89 
 
 were expecting that great reform which should be ^^J\^' 
 the instrument to effect all others. ^ j^ ^^^^ 
 
 An affair of so great magnitude was not easily ar- 
 ranged. The first drafl, as it proceeded fi'om those 
 to whom the preparation was committed, contained a 
 provision for the ballot. This was rejected upon dis- 
 cussion, and considerable alteration was made in the 
 qualification for voters. All those parts of the bill 
 which involved a principle appear to have been much 
 agitated ; and when we estimate the difficulty of ob- 
 viating opposite objections from a number of inde- 
 pendent men we are not very sanguine as to the per- 
 figction of the measure in preparation. 
 
 To Lord John Russell, whose persevering efforts 
 in the cause deserved the distinction, was committed 
 the task of introducing into the house of commons 
 the measure which was to restore the Whig consti- 
 tution. The approach of the bill was preceded by 
 an advance-guard of petitions, which choked even 
 the deep and dark receptacle for such documents 
 under the table of the house of commons, and their 
 discussion emjjloyed the attention of the house 
 for many days. On the first of March Lord John 
 Russell entered the house of commons amid the 
 cheers of the majority of the assembly, and the 
 speaker called upon him to move. In the early })art 
 of his speech, he stated the position in which the 
 ministry stood, " placed between two hostile i)arties ; 
 neither agreeing with the bigotry of the one, that no
 
 •SOO THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, reform is necessary — nor with the fanaticism of the 
 
 XXII. 
 
 — -— other, that onlv some particular kind of reform can, 
 
 A. D. 1831 . 
 
 to 1832. by any means, be satisfactory to the people." He 
 passed on thence to a recapitulation of the arguments 
 in favour of reform, assuming, at last, that no man of 
 common sense pretended that the assembly in which 
 he stood represented the people of England. The 
 necessity of some community of feeling between the 
 people and the assembly by which they were taxed, and 
 the existing state of the country as the consequence 
 of the absence of such community of feeling, were 
 topics which naturally followed, and introduced the 
 description of the remedy proposed. " Ministers 
 have thought," proceeded the speaker, *' and, in my 
 opinion, justly, that it would not be sufficient to bring 
 forward a measure which should merely lop off some 
 disgusting excrescences, or cure some notorious 
 defects, but would still leave the battle to be fought 
 again with renewed and strengthened discontent. 
 They have thought that no half measures would be 
 sufficient ; that no trifling, no paltering with so great 
 a question could give stability to the throne, autho- 
 rity to the parliament, or satisfaction to the country." 
 Hitherto the Tories had listened with considerable 
 interest, but with no very violent alarm. They had 
 anticipated some mock measure to hush the reform 
 cry ; the gradual disfranchisement of a few convicted 
 boroughs ; the gradual enfranchisement of a few large
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 591 
 
 to 1832. 
 
 towns ; some denunciations against bribery ; and per- ^^^f * 
 haps a proposal for the purchase of Gatton and Old "^7571837 
 Sarum. The reality fell upon them as a thunder- 
 clap — sixty boroughs struck off by one blow — 
 forty-seven to be reduced to a single member — no 
 compensation proposed to the holders of the illegal 
 property — these propositions spread utter dismay 
 among the members sitting on the opposition benches. 
 Nothing could have been more perfect than the 
 astonishment and confusion of the Tory borough- 
 holders, as, one by one, the names of their boroughs 
 were pronounced, amid the cheers of the Whigs, and 
 as Lord John Russell read in their ears the death- 
 sentence of their political existence. 
 
 It is not our province to follow the speaker into 
 the details of this bill. Its principle was the resto- 
 ration of the democratic influence in the government. 
 It acted by disfranchising decayed boroughs, and en- 
 franchising, although in a very sparing manner, the 
 more recently-risen towns. The duration of parlia- 
 ments was not altered ; not because the ministers 
 disapproved of alteration — for Lord John Russell, in 
 that case, would have assigned no other reason ; but 
 because the object could be much more conveniently 
 considered in a separate 1)111. According to the 
 decision of the committee which framed the bill, the 
 ballot was not adopted in the machinery of elections. — 
 Lord .John Russell even stated the arguments against 
 it ; but so faintly that he did not appear to feel them.
 
 592 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP. No sooner did the Whigs propound this plan in 
 
 "T'^^Tc^rr the house of commons than the schism amonor the 
 
 A. D. 1831 " 
 
 to 1832. Tories at once closed. The high church Tories for- 
 got their wrongs ; the political Tories forgot that 
 they had been deserted — both parties joined. Mur- 
 ray and Wetherell were united ; Peel and Inglis 
 were no longer enemies ; all domestic strife was laid 
 aside, to concentrate their energies against a measure 
 which went to destroy the supremacy of the Tory 
 party. Sir Robert Inglis was the first to attack the 
 measure, which, if the speech as it was spoken bears 
 any relation to that which was afterwards published, 
 he did in a speech discovering very considerable 
 acquaintance with the authorities upon the subject, 
 and what, in a Tory, is more extraordinary, consider- 
 able confidence that the cry for reform was perfectly 
 harmless. 
 
 Seven nights of debate succeeded the introductory 
 speech of Lord John Russell, and upwards of seventy 
 members spoke upon the question ; but this mighty 
 war of words closed without a division. The Tories 
 did not know their strength; they had not formally 
 composed their differences, and united under one 
 leader. 
 
 This error was rectified before the second reading, 
 which was moved by Lord John Russell on the 
 21st. The usual amendment that the bill be 
 read this day six months was intrusted to Sir R. 
 Vyvyan one of the members for Cornwall, who avow:ed
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. .59^ 
 
 that he was actino^ in direct opposition to the wishes of chap. 
 
 XXII. 
 his constituents. "And in this respect,'' he added, " I — -— 
 
 ^ A. D. 1831 
 
 beheve I am in the situation of very many honourable to 1832. 
 members who object to the bill ; for it cannot be 
 denied that the speech of the noble lord (Lord John 
 Russell) which has circulated in every part of the 
 kingdom has produced a very strong excitement in 
 its favour." Mr. Shell, one of the offspring of the 
 Catholic Emancipation act, brought his eloquence 
 to aid the party which had enabled him to sit 
 in the house of commons, and was rather more 
 than equal to the baronet to whom he replied. 
 Mr. Charles Grant was less fervent but more argu- 
 mentative upon the same side. Mr. W. Bankes was 
 indio-nant on behalf of Dorsetshire. Lord Norreys 
 rather startled the house by saying, that he had come 
 down with the intention of voting for the bill ; but he 
 restored the equanimity of his party by adding that 
 lie had changed his mind. Mr. Villiers Stuart, a 
 representative of one of the boroughs ])roposcd to be 
 disfranchised, not having been yet able to resign 
 his seat, declared his intention of voting, as a point 
 of honour against the bill ; but expressed a hope that 
 he should vote with llu; minority. The solicitor 
 general, by no means a violent Whig, defended the 
 bill from the imputation of being of a revolutionary 
 character. Sir iMlwanl Sugden, a Tory, wliose poli- 
 tical iiiiportancc was entirely dnivcd from his extra- 
 
 Vol>. III. "^ Q
 
 391 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, ordinary reputation as a profound equity lawyer, 
 
 '■ — '■ — declared that the ffrcat object of the government in 
 
 A. D. 1881 . 
 
 to 183-2. bringing forward this measure was to preserve their 
 offices. He closed the first day's debate. On the 
 second day Lord Mahon, a young nobleman of whom 
 the Tories conceived high expectations, drew a pic- 
 ture of the terrors of democracy, and aspired for one 
 hour of Canning's aid to combat its advance. Sir J. 
 Shelly, an old member of the house, regretted that 
 he differed from his constituents upon this question, 
 and honestly declared, that at a recent reform 
 meeting in his borough, he was the only person 
 present who raised his voice against the measure. 
 Mr. Ormsby Gore invoked the spirits of Sir William 
 Blackstone and Lord Bacon, and quoted and com- 
 mented upon the remark of the latter — " Omnis 
 suhita immutntio pericuJosa est." Captain Polhill 
 wished that the bill had been more comprehensive. 
 Mr. W. Ward admitted, like many others, that he 
 was opposing his constituents in opposing the bill, 
 Mr. Wyse dismissed the spirit of Sir W. Blackstone, 
 which had been invoked by Mr. Gore as an anti-re- 
 former, and restored him to his rest as a reformer ; 
 he adduced the authority of Mr. Locke, also, upon 
 the same side, and then set off upon the track of his- 
 torical argument in favour of the bill. Sir R. Bate- 
 son opposed the measure ; because it '* would add 
 weight to the aristocracy, while it took away all in- 
 fluence from the mercantile, manufacturing, and ship-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 595 
 
 ping interests" — an objection which, although it ap- CHAP, 
 peared absurd to his audience, was not without con- '- ! 
 
 A D 1 ft^ 1 
 
 siderable truth. The Earl of Mountcharles ex- " to is32- 
 pressed his willingness to sacrifice his private inte- 
 rests, since he was conscientiously convinced that 
 the necessities of the public required the surrender. 
 Lord Castlereagh opposed the bill ; expressing con- 
 siderable alarm at the ultimate views of the refor- 
 mers, and quoting in justification of that alarm a 
 speech made by a gentleman named Emmerson, in 
 which he had declared that the 
 
 " Race, 
 
 The tenth transmitters of a fooHsh face," 
 
 would be destroyed by the Reform bill for ever. Mr. 
 Shaw, a stout defender of Toryism, expressed himself 
 ready to vote for a moderate plan of reform, but cer- 
 tainly not for this. The attorney-general asked for 
 some clearer view of that indefinite reform which had 
 so suddenly become the object of Tory favour.* Sir 
 
 • This speaker, in answer to of the constitution. There was 
 the imputation upon ministers of liis venerable friend the member 
 being actuated by interested mo- for Norfolk (Mr. Coke); the 
 tives, alluded with much effect to noble lord who then, as now, re- 
 thc old reformers then in tiie presented the county of Derby 
 house — " the friends of reform in (Lord George Cavcndisli). The 
 the last century and the consistent honourable and long trusted mom- 
 advocates of the present bill, hers for Middlesex (Messrs. Hyng 
 When he looked artjund, be saw and Hume) ; and .Surrey (Messrs. 
 them filling the same place in the Denison and Rriscoe); and Herk- 
 fjamo ranks, and fighting the battle shiro (Messrs. Charles Dundas
 
 5y() THE HISTORY OF PAllTY. 
 
 CHAP. James Scarlett (the parliamentary lawyers always ap- 
 IJ 1_ pear to })refcr debating- with each other) replied to the 
 
 A. D. 1831 1 TT 1 r. 11 r 
 
 to I8yi>. attorney-general. He also was lavourable to retorra, 
 and having once been a Whig, his idea of reform 
 had probably been less shadowy and flitting than that 
 of Mr. Shaw, " but he was bound," he said, "by no 
 vote he had before given, to adopt the specific mea- 
 sure before the house, and deeming it inconsistent 
 with the constitution, he should oppose it.'' Sir 
 Thomas Dyke Acland remarked that no member 
 had taken part in the debate without expressing his 
 readiness to make some reform ; a remarkable change 
 which had taken place since the seven nights' debate. 
 He briefly advocated the second reading. Lord 
 John Russell replied ; and after Mr. Hunt had at- 
 tempted to obtain a hearing, the house divided. The 
 numbers were SO^Z to 301. The second reading, 
 therefore, was carried by a majority of one. 
 
 In ordinary circumstances, after such a division, 
 a ministry must either have retired or dissolved par- 
 liament. The reform administration did neither. 
 The country was in such a state that they had a right 
 
 and Robert Palmer). Others he minster (Sir F. Burdett), who 
 could name ■ the noble lor.I who, then gave his first vote, and made 
 from 1797 to the present time, his first speech in favour of a 
 sat in parliament for Lancashire cause which he had ever since so 
 (Lord Stanley); his honourable honourably and so steadily de- 
 friend the member for West- fcnd»'d."
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 597 
 
 to expect that the Tories would not force them to a chap. 
 
 dissolution by which they must be annihilated. The ~^;~]5rT837 
 
 Tories, on the other hand, w^ere well aware that if ^o 1^32. 
 
 the bill was passed, a dissolution must follow, and to 
 
 the owners of the condemned boroughs, the passing 
 
 of the bill was the accomplishment of all they could 
 
 fear. 
 
 On the 18th of April, upon the motion that the 
 house go into committee on the bill, the Tories made 
 another grand effort. The conduct of this was in- 
 trusted to General Gascoyne, who had recovered 
 from the reform fit which succeeded the passing 
 of the Catholic bill, and who moved as an amend- 
 ment a resolution against the reduction of the num- 
 ber of members of the house. There can be no 
 doubt that this point was well chosen. The ori- 
 ginal ministerial bill was by far too favourable to 
 the agricultural interests which had a manifest pre- 
 dominance in the representation. But the object of 
 the amendment was avowedly to throw out the ministry. 
 It was seconded in a set speech by Mr. Sadler, who 
 was replied to by Lord Althorj). A debate of two 
 nights succeeded ; a debate which called up Mr. 
 Stanley, Sir James Graham, Sir T. Denman, and 
 Lord John Russ(^ll, who were supported with great 
 abihty by two less known members, Henry Lyttoii 
 Bulwer and Mr. Hawkins : the former, at that time, 
 better known in literature than in j)()Htics, tlic latter 
 a favourite exanij)l(' witli the 'I\)ri(»s, wlm |)i»in(((l Id
 
 598 THE HISTOKY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, his eloquent speech, and remarked that he sat for the 
 
 X \ 1 1 
 
 '. J decayed borough of St. Michael. Several of the 
 
 A D 1831 
 
 to 183-2. AVhig party, among' whom was Sir R. Wilson, whom 
 Mr. Stanley severely castigated for his inconsist- 
 ency, voted with the Tories, who were supported 
 by their usual speakers, and especially by Sir Robert 
 Peel. Upon the division the ministers were de- 
 feated by a majority of 8. The numbers being 299 
 to 291. Two days afterwards, upon a motion for an 
 adjournment, they were again beaten by a majority 
 of 22. Ministers had now no alternative but to dis- 
 solve the parliament. 
 
 At this moment all depended upon^the king, 
 whose power of dissolving parliament at the proper 
 crisis of public opinion, and of dismissing and ap- 
 pointing ministers, renders him, in ordinary cases, 
 the absolute arbiter as to which party shall rule in 
 England. The present was not, however, an ordi- 
 nary case : had William IV., at this moment, refused 
 to dissolve, we should have had to tell how the 
 Reform bill was temporarily repressed by a very 
 extensive system of dragooning, and, perhaps, how 
 the Reform bill was lost in a great national con- 
 vulsion. The Tories appear to have placed their 
 hopes either upon the timidity of William or of his 
 ministers ; nothing could exceed the rage with which 
 they learned that the king was on his way to West- 
 minster ; nor could any scene enacted at the dis- 
 solutions of the exclusion parliaments of Charles II.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PAUTY. 599 
 
 have been more riotous than that which was exhibited chap. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 in each house. It is said by the reporter of the 
 
 A.D. 1831 
 
 lords' debates, that the peeresses present to witness the to 1^32. 
 ceremony of the prorogation w^ere alarmed ; and that 
 some of the peers were, as it appeared in the confusion, 
 almost scuffling, and as if shaking their hands at each 
 other in anger. The commons were scarcely less 
 disorderly. Sir Robert Peel was pouring forth de- 
 nunciations ao-ainst the ministers amid the fiercest 
 cries, which were passing like shouts between the 
 Whig and Tory benches, when the usher of the black 
 rod appeared. 
 
 "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the 
 bill," was now the cry throughout the nation. Never 
 was there in England an enthusiasm so universal 
 among the middle classes as that by which they w^ere 
 now animated. The influence of property was gone ; 
 all ordinary tics were broken ; Tory nomination 
 boroughs threw off' their fetters, and elected reformers ; 
 counties which had never before resisted the voice of 
 the landlords now put by their claims, as men would 
 hush a child prattUng its nonsense out of season. Sir 
 Edward KnatchbuU, whose influence in Kent had 
 hitherto been irresistible, deemed it madness now to 
 attempt a contest. Sir R. Vyvyan was, at once ex- 
 pelled from Cornwall ; Mr. Bankes was defeated in 
 Dorsetshire ; no Tory appeared in Yorkshire, The 
 Lowthers, who had held Westmorland, ( "uuil)erlaiHl, 
 and Carlisle in their hands, obtained only oiu' seat
 
 (loo THE HISTOllY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, for Westmorland. The Duke of Newcastle's influ- 
 
 — — — '— encc vanished. Newark, Bassetlaw, and the county of 
 A.D. \m\ 
 
 to 183*2. Notts, upon this occasion, returned reformers. Lord 
 
 Norreys was rejected in Oxfordshire. In every 
 
 county the feeling was the same. Thousands of 
 
 voters miffht have been heard to declare their affec- 
 
 tion for their landlord, and their sorrow to vote 
 
 against him; "but they must have parliamentary 
 
 reform." When this was once carried their landlord 
 
 should be again their representative. 
 
 In the towns the Tories dared not appear; for the 
 populace being equally with the electors enamoured 
 of the Whig measure of reform, having no other 
 means of testifying their zeal, destroyed the houses 
 and attacked the persons of the Tory candidates and 
 voters. 
 
 The new house of commons met on the 14th of 
 June. The Reform bill was introduced on the 24th. 
 This was an assembly of men intent upon the accom- 
 plishment of the object for which they had been 
 elected ; an assembly that would endure no seven 
 nights' debate upon a preliminary motion, which im- 
 patiently brooked any discussion at all upon a measure 
 which had been already so tediously debated, and of 
 which the success was now so certain. The bill was 
 introduced, and read a first time without debate. The 
 second reading was moved on «the fourth of July. 
 The debate was twice adjourned ; at the close of the 
 third ni<rht the house divided— .367 for, and 231
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 601 
 
 to 183-2. 
 
 asrainst ; srivinff a maiority of 1 36 in favour of the chap. 
 Whigs. Of the minority there were certainly not ^ ^ ^^,^^ 
 fifty members who were not directly interested in 
 the fate of the bill. 
 
 From this lengthened debate we miss many names 
 accustomed to stand forth very conspicuously in the 
 list of Tory speakers — the winnowing only remained. 
 Fortunately, Sir Robert Peel and Sir Charles 
 Wetherell sat, each for private boroughs, and the bill 
 had no sooner got into committee than the latter 
 gave proof of his indomitable resolution. Delay was 
 now the only object to be striven for, delay until the 
 popular impatience should beget disorders, or until 
 some happy accident should defeat the bill, A mo- 
 tion was made, which, if carried, would have entitled 
 each borough proposed to be disfranchised to be 
 heard by counsel at the bar of the house It was of 
 course resisted by a large majority. An attempt 
 was made to get up another debate upon the prin- 
 ciple of the measure ; Lord Althorp objected that it 
 had been agreed that one discussion of the principle 
 of the bill on the second reading should be deemed 
 sufficient. Sir Robert Peel agreed that such had 
 been the und(>rstanding, declared that he would be 
 no party to any vexatious delay, and left the defence 
 ofTorvism to Sir C^harles Wetherell. Sir C'harles 
 gave imme(liat(; proof of the hiirh Tory stubbornness 
 in party warfare. Under his guidance, Mr. Gordon
 
 602 THE HISTORY OF I'AllTY. 
 
 CHAP, moved an adjournment at twelve o'clock, and was of 
 
 XXII. 
 
 course beaten. Mr. Cresset Pelham immediately 
 
 A. D. 18.-^l 
 
 to 183J. made the same motion with the same success. Sir 
 Charles Wetherell succeeded, and a sharp discussion 
 ensued ; the Whigs accusing the Tories of having 
 put forward Sir 11. Peel as their leader, obtaining a 
 certain delay upon certain conditions, and then, 
 when the delay had been obtained, repudiating Sir 
 Robert's authority, and refusing performance of the 
 conditions. Sir Charles Wetherell, however, refused to 
 listen to any such compromise ; another division took 
 place. Lord Brudenell declared he was ready to sit 
 there till five o'clock the next day, and made another mo- 
 tion, which was followed by another debate and another 
 division. Sir Charles Wetherell now took his turn. 
 Ministers, whose supporters were still upwards of 
 two hundred, while those of the minority were less 
 than forty, refused to yield to a factious opposition, 
 which might, if successful, be nightly repeated. 
 Sir Charles taunted ministers with their comic ap- 
 pearance, dancing in and out of the house like a comet 
 with its tail, and declared he should not think of 
 giving up until they had made up a full score of divi- 
 sions, *' I have made up my mind to perseverance, 
 and persevere I will." 
 
 The Whigs, however, remained at their post, and 
 at seven o'clock in the morning, Sir Charles, his 
 numbers having dwindled to twenty-four, agreed to a
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 603 
 
 compromise. The ministers carried their point of chap. 
 
 XXII. 
 movinor the bill into committee, and the house ad- '- — 
 
 ° AD. 1831 
 
 journed. to 1832. 
 
 Popular oppositions have moved a series of adjourn- 
 ments, and have attained important advantages by it. 
 This privilege of a minority was at present enforced 
 by twenty-four of the most hated men in the king- 
 dom, and with no other effect than a night of weari- 
 some labour to the majority. The firmness of the 
 Whigs was not without effect ; the adjournment ex- 
 periment had failed, and the Tories had recourse to 
 the more usual weapons of opposition. Heavy and 
 laborious was the task of pushing the bill through 
 committee, where every clause was to be won by a 
 debate and a division.* Three nights of debate 
 upon the question, that the bill do pass, closed the 
 scene. On the 21st of September the bill was car- 
 ried by a majority of 109. 
 
 And now came the ordeal of the house of lords. 
 
 • Upon one important question quence of the adoption of the 
 
 the ministers were defeated in amendment would be a very gcne- 
 
 comniittee by a majority of 84. ral and early agitation for the bal- 
 
 The Manjuis of Chandos proposed lot. Mr. Hume, however, and his 
 
 to give the riglit of voting for coun- party of ultra Whigs, upon this 
 
 ties to tenants at will liolding at a occasion, joined the Tories ; pro- 
 
 rcnt of 501. Lord Altliurp saw bably because tlioy thought tliat 
 
 the object of the amendment, and the consequcneo which Ldid Al- 
 
 pointed out that tliese tenants were thorp deprecated would be highly 
 
 entirely dependant upon tlicir hew (iciah 
 landlords, and tiiat (lie conse-
 
 ^^•l* THE IlISTOUY OF I'AKTY. 
 
 CHAR Expectation had long been anxiously seeking some 
 
 - symptom by which the intentions of this assembly 
 
 to i88:.Mnight be divined: ' What will the lords do?" in- 
 quired the author* of a powerful pamphlet. Mr. 
 JNIacauley pointed to the long line of deserted halls 
 and desolate mansions in a well-known quarter of a 
 neighbouring metropolis as enduring lessons what they 
 should not do. " From those mansions and castles 
 of the aristocracy of France, as proud and as power- 
 ful a body of nobles as ever existed were driven forth 
 to exile and to beggary, to implore the charity of 
 hostile religions and of hostile nations. And why 
 did such destruction fall upon them ? Why was their 
 heritage given to strangers, and their palaces dis- 
 mantled, but because they had no sympathy with the 
 'people f" While the intention of the Tory peers was 
 yet unknown, the multitude looked on with a surly 
 impatience ; watching the debates in vain ; and 
 waiting to know whether they were to laugh at their 
 cowardice, or to roar them into submission. 
 
 On the 22d of September Lord John Russell, 
 attended by upwards of one hundred Reformers of 
 the house of commons, carried the bill up to the 
 lords, and it was read a first time, upon the motion 
 of Earl Grey, without any debate. 
 
 On the 3d of October the same nobleman moved 
 
 * Supposed to be Lord Brougham.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 605 
 
 the second readinof. It must have been with strange chap. 
 
 » , XXII- 
 
 and mingled feelings that Earl Grey rose to speak —^ ^^^^ 
 that night ; the object of his early partiality which to 18;J2. 
 he had nursed and reared through nearly half a 
 century, when nearly all others laughed at it as a 
 delusion, had at length become the object of universal 
 enthusiasm ; but the exultation this thought might 
 prompt would fade again as the occasion called up 
 the images of his departed friends ; for what generous 
 man could contemplate present success without think- 
 ing of those who had striven with him to obtain it, or 
 could feel a confidence that the long watched for hour 
 of victory was come without a pang, that those who 
 had joined him in his watches could no longer share 
 in his success ? 
 
 Earl Grey could well affirm, after glancing at 
 the most prominent facts of his public life, ** I stand 
 before your lordships the advocate of principles from 
 which I have never swerved. It is not, however, 
 enough," he continued, " for a public man pretend- 
 ing any claim to the character of a statesman _, to 
 show that he is sincere and consistent in his actions ; 
 it is not enough for him to show that what he has 
 j)roposed has been in conformity with opinions long 
 established in his mind ; he is bound to entertain the 
 conviction, forced upon him through all the chances 
 and changes of a long political career, that in pro- 
 y)osing a measure affecting the mighty interests of the
 
 OOC) 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, state, the course he takes is called for by justice and 
 
 XXII. . nil 
 
 necessity. He has a further duty to perform ; he has 
 
 A. 1). 1831 
 
 to 183-2. to prove that he has not forced into notice even right 
 opinions, rashly, precipitately, or at a dangerous 
 season ; but that he has done so from the sincere 
 conviction that the measures which he proposes are 
 essential to the well-being of the country ; that they 
 can no longer be delayed with safety ; and that when 
 passed into a law they will bind together and unite 
 in affection to the government a loyal and confiding 
 people." 
 
 In the pursuit of these objects the earl branched 
 forth into all those topics which the fate of the Wel- 
 lington administration and the present state of the 
 country so numerously presented ; proving the ne- 
 cessity of reform, and of a bold and decisive measure 
 of reform. The justice of the measure was now a 
 worn out topic, which the Tories had long since re- 
 fused to argue. Thence the earl passed to a minute 
 explanation of his measure, disapproving in a marked 
 manner, as he passed along, of the Chandos clause, 
 giving votes to tenants at will. " It is one which I 
 should certainly not have myself proposed, and the 
 government are not answerable for it. I hope it will 
 be found to act well ; but even then it is liable to this 
 objection, namely, if the same influence be exer- 
 cised over tenants in counties that has been exer- 
 cised in other places, it will be likely to generate
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 607 
 
 a very strong feeling in favour of a regulation to chap. 
 which I am myself opposed, and in favour of which, ^^^ 
 
 as I beheve, there is not a word in the petitions re- to i832. 
 cently presented to this house — I mean the adoption 
 of the vote by ballot." He concluded by a fervent 
 appeal, first to the house generally, and then parti- 
 cularly to the bench of bishops, entreating them not 
 to reject a measure of justice and conciliation, and 
 warninof them to be wise in time. 
 
 The debate which succeeded is one of very extra- 
 ordinary interest ; discovering a mass of talent which 
 might vie very successfully with any of those in the 
 house of commons upon the same subject. Lord 
 WharnclifFe attempted to answer Earl Grey, and 
 moved that the bill be rejected — an unusual motion 
 which from the tendency of other speeches upon the 
 same side appeared to have been deliberately re- 
 solved upon, in order to mark their lordships' detest- 
 ation of the bill. Earl Mulgrave, whose name will 
 in future times be associated with the dawn of good 
 government in Ireland, followed upon the Whig side. 
 Earl Mansfield brought considerable talent and re- 
 search to recomnuMid the Tory amendment. To 
 him succeeded Lord King, whose caustic speeches 
 and ultra-Whig sentiments had long rendered him an 
 object of especial terror to the bench of bishops. 
 The Marquis of Bute followed. At the close of 
 his speech an adjournment was moved, and it was
 
 Cos TlIK HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, now cvitlent that the debate would extend throuiih 
 XXII. . * 
 
 — several nijrhts. 
 
 A. D. 1831 ^ ^ 
 
 to 183-2. The Earl of Winchilsea commenced the second 
 day's discussion. The Earl of Harrowby, an aged 
 Tory nobleman, followed him, and surprised the 
 house by a speech of great power and extraordinary 
 eloquence ; a speech which was highly complimented 
 by all parties, and which formed the general object of 
 attack and eulogium. These Tory speeches were 
 ably answered by Lord Melbourne, who skilfully 
 adapted his arguments for parliamentary reform to 
 the topics before urged by the Duke of Wellington 
 in favour of Catholic emancipation. This called up 
 the Duke of Wellington, who^ after defending his 
 own consistency, made an attack upon that of Earl 
 Grey, picking out a passage from one of the earl's 
 speeches in favour of Catholic emancipation, after a 
 bill to that effect had passed the commons, and 
 arguing from it that the earl was, at that time, well 
 satisfied with the constitution of that house. The 
 Earl of Dudley made an elegant speech against the 
 Whig ministers, applying himself to every point in 
 which he thought them vulnerable, and asking whe- 
 ther such men were to be allowed to pull to pieces 
 our constitution. This attack was eloquently re- 
 torted by the Marquis of Lansdowne, who spoke of 
 Lord Dudley's speech as bearing little upon the pre- 
 sent question, and as composed for a different occa-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. QQg 
 
 sion, remarking that it was an excellent example of chap. 
 
 XXIT 
 
 a good speech kept too long. Lord Londonderry '— 
 
 denounced the measure before the house, and was to 183-2. 
 answered by Lord Goderich, who was succeeded by 
 the Earl of Haddington upon the Tory side. Lord 
 Radnor, a nobleman professing extreme Whig prin- 
 ciples, and who can boast the distinguished honour 
 of having been declared by Mr. Canning and Mr. 
 Windham to have delivered the best speech they 
 had ever heard, advocated the bill. Lord Falmouth, 
 the Earl of Roseberry, and the Earl of Carnarvon, 
 the first and last Torias, the second a Whio-, fol- 
 lowed, and the fourth day's debate was closed by a 
 powerful speech from Lord Plunket. 
 
 Lord AA^ynford, who, as Chief Justice Best, had 
 been one of the oracles of the law^ and was now be- 
 come one of the magnates of Toryism, opened the 
 fifth night's debate ; being allowed, on account of his 
 infirmities, and, upon the motion of the Duke of 
 Cumberland, to deliver his sentiments from his seat. 
 Lord Eldon attempted to follow ; but was unable to 
 render himself audii)le across the house. The tedium 
 was reliev(Hl by I^oi-d Chancellor Brougham, who, 
 rising from the woolsack, delivered the most masterly 
 speech which even he liad ever uttered. Taking a 
 review of the d(!l)ate, he called up each Tory sj)eakcr 
 who had ])r(!ced(!d hiin, but only to destroy him by 
 some burning sarcasm, or to display upon him his 
 VOL. in. y u
 
 (ilO THE IIISTOllY OF I'AUTY. 
 
 CHAP, exquisite skill in tormenting. Lord Dudley, the in- 
 
 ^^\b — consistent Lord Winehilsea — who, angry at the 
 
 io \ss-2. authors of the Catholic bill, had ])roraised, at a public 
 meeting, to be present in the house of lords to sup- 
 port the Reform bill — Lords Mansfield, WharnclifFe, 
 and even Harrowby, successively passed the ordeal, 
 and the speaker proceeded until the assembled peers 
 trembled at the terrible powers of the spirit that had 
 been placed among them. Lord Lyndhurst came to 
 the rescue, and his speech, as every speech of his 
 must be, was one of great ability ; but it fell tamely 
 on the ear amid the almost tragic interest which had 
 been excited by his predecessor. The night was 
 now wearing, and the house grew impatient. Lord 
 Holland did not attempt to speak to the question ; 
 Lord Tenterden shortly opposed the bill ; the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury pledged his bench against it ; 
 the Duke of Sussex insisted upon being heard, and 
 in a manly speech supported his principles as a Whig. 
 The Duke of Gloucester opposed the bill as too violent; 
 Earl Grey repUed, unnecessarily vindicating himself 
 from certain aspersions thrown upon his early political 
 conduct. The house divided.* The bill was thrown 
 out by a majority of 41 . The numbers were 199 to 1.58. 
 The house of commons immediately passed a vote 
 
 * The motion that the hill he hill he read this day six months, 
 rejected had been withdrawn, and sul)stituted. 
 the ordinary amendment that the
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 611 
 
 of confidence in ministers. The king interposed a CHAl\ 
 
 XXII 
 
 short prorogation, expressly for the purpose that the — 
 
 bill might be again introduced. The speech was to 183-2. 
 couched in terms which plainly indicated that the 
 sovereign continued faithful. Every method was 
 adopted which could palliate the news of the rejection 
 of the bill, and avert the thunderstorm which threat- 
 ened. The Whigs were, in a great measure, suc- 
 cessful ; the lightning did not strike the lofty towers 
 of our monarchy, nor strip off the Gothic fretwork 
 of our house of peers ; but strange sights were seen 
 throughout the nation ; and a voice was gone forth 
 which told that the end was not yet. In London tens 
 of thousands of men marching in close array, and 
 crowding all the avenues to the palace; the houses 
 of the Tory peers in a constant state of siege ; the 
 peers themselves venturing abroad at the danger of 
 their life : in the metropolis of a generous peo})le, 
 the Duke of Wellington, whose reputation is his 
 country's glory, unable to appear without insult and 
 danger ; in the metropolis of a people remarkable for 
 their respect to the laws, Lord Londonderry struck 
 senseless from his horse by a flight of stones : in the 
 country, Nottingham Castle, the ancient possession of 
 the Duke of Newcastle, given to the flames ; Derby in 
 the power of a mob, the gaol destroyed, the houses of 
 known Tories demolished ; the city of Bristol on fire, 
 and Sir ('harl(;s Wetherell fleeiiitr in <lis[rnise by fiie 
 
 'i If '>
 
 (31*2 THE IIISTOUY or PARTY. 
 
 CHAF\ lioht ot'thc contlaofration — men of all oradcs banded to- 
 wn, o o » 
 
 gethcr in unions, pledged^ at any cost, to obtain parlia- 
 
 A. L). 18ul 
 
 to 183-2. mcntary ivf'orm ; a hnndrod and fifty thousand men 
 assembled at Birmingham, and threatening to march 
 upon London ; — these were the signs of the times, 
 varied by public meetings all over the country, com- 
 prehending nearly the whole mass of the middle 
 classes, and a large portion of the aristocracy, who 
 joined in the expression of indignant surprise, that a 
 " whisper of a ftiction" should be allowed to render 
 abortive the expressed desire of a nation. Well was the 
 national sentiment expressed and sustained by the 
 press. Morning and evening did these batteries of 
 reform pour forth their incessant fire, and the noise re- 
 verberated through the kingdom. A very large majo- 
 rity of the journals were in the interest of the Whigs 
 and the people, but the combined power of all the rest 
 of these shrinks into insignificance when compared with 
 that of the leader of them, a paper which, in the pride 
 of conscious power, had styled itself the leading journal 
 of Europe. Never was there so tremendous a party 
 engine as the " Times," at the period of which we 
 are now treating, presents. The receptacle of talent 
 sufficient to form three brilliant reputations, backed 
 by the admiration, the applause, the obedience of a 
 nation, it is impossible to look back upon its career 
 without strong excitement ; to see it guiding, coun- 
 selling, exhorting, exciting, moving onwards, exult-
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 613 
 
 ino" in its own miffht ; crushino^ at a blow the CHAP. 
 
 O O ' <-3 XXII 
 
 incipient reputation of any Tory in whom it dis- 
 
 A. D. 1831 
 
 cerned talent that might render him formidable, yet to 1832. 
 stooping to cherish and to draw forth into blossom the 
 smallest bud that might be discovered among its own 
 party. Its advocacy of the party it espoused was not 
 confined to forcible leading articles and to able argu- 
 ment ; in all those numberless arts by which a party 
 may be strengthened or injured this journal was 
 perfect. The principal conductor of that paper ap- 
 peared placed, like the Hstener in the Ear of Diony- 
 sius, in a focus of sound, whither the most secret 
 whisper and the loudest clamour were alike wafted.* 
 Yet, orreat as was the influence of the " Times," it 
 only blew the flame, it did not ignite it. The 
 '* Times" was supporting the Duke of Wellington's 
 administration, and repeating his declaration against 
 reform, without disapproval, when it caught the mur- 
 
 * It is as absurd to charge a desertion of an nifluential news- 
 newspaper with inconsistency as it paper is a circumstance rather to 
 would be to rail against a captured bechargcd as an evidence of incom- 
 piecc of ordnance for throwing its pctency in the party it deserts ; 
 sliot among its former iniisters. A since, in ordinary cases, it shows 
 newspaper is a mercantile adven- that Whig siiarcholders have been 
 lure, in which a large capital is obliged to sell their shares to 
 (•ml>arkcd, and by whicl> large Tories, or vice versa. Never was a 
 profits are made ; and the part it greater political blunder made, 
 Uikfs upon any (piestion must, of than by those Wliigs who resolved 
 course.depend upon the will of tiie " to make war on tlic Times." 
 majority of tin' proprietors. Th'
 
 ()\l THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, mur of the coming storm, and, with infinite tact, prc- 
 
 XXII. 
 
 pared to ride it. 
 
 A. D. 1831 ' , 1 1 1 /- 1 r 
 
 to 1832. The parliament was re-assembled on the l)tn ot 
 December, while the excitement was still strong and 
 unrelaxing. Lord John Russell immediately intro- 
 duced a new bill of parliamentary reform, not less 
 efficient than the one of last session, but irabodying 
 all those improvements which the abundant discus- 
 sion of the question had suggested. The tone of 
 the opposition was now considerably moderated, and 
 althous^h Sir Charles Wetherell and Sir Robert 
 Inghs indignantly denied the charge of meeting 
 the present bill with only a modified opposition, 
 vet it was sufficiently manifest that the spirit of the 
 Tories was cowed, when they let the bill be intro- 
 duced and read a first time without debate or divi- 
 sion. On the l6th the second reading was moved. 
 The principal features of this debate were a speech 
 from Mr. Macauley — a speech from him must be 
 a prominent feature in any debate — and a piece 
 of clever but somewhat rambling declaration fi'om 
 Mr. Croker, which was demolished with considerable 
 promptitude by Mr. Stanley, who mercilessly held up 
 to view his victim's historical blunders. In praising 
 the new bill above the last, Mr. Stanley addressed it 
 as ** Matre jndcJird filia pulchriory 
 
 " Mox datura 
 
 Progonicm vitiosiorcm,
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 01-5 
 
 happily retorted Sir Robert Peel The second chap. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 reading was carried by a majority of 162. In — 
 
 * J J . A. D. 1831 
 
 twenty-two evenings of debate, the details of the to 1382. 
 bill were discussed, and almost every clause dis- 
 puted. The hatred of the Tories yet inspired them 
 with sufficient strength to sustain three nights of 
 debate upon the third reading, at the close of which 
 they were finally defeated by a majority of 110. On 
 the 23d of March the Reform bill passed the house 
 of commons. 
 
 Again the hated measure was brought before the 
 peers, and symptoms of division and dismay appeared 
 among the Tories. Lord Harrowby, the valiant 
 destroyer of the former bill, was now weak enough 
 to speak of some concession to public opinion. Se- 
 veral Tories followed him, and although the Duke of 
 Wellington reiterated his opinion against all reform, 
 yet the resolution of his party was evidently shaken. 
 On the 9th of April the second reading was moved, 
 and on the 13th it was carried by a majority of 9 ; 
 the numbers being 184 to 175. The Duke of Wel- 
 lington inserted in the journals a strong and uncom- 
 promising protest. 
 
 It was very evident that this majority was only illu- 
 sory, and would dwindle to minority in committee. 
 The cry now was, " Create peers :" " create," 
 shouted the Times, "create," shouted the orators 
 at public meetings. Lord (irey was not yet satisfied
 
 {')\i\ THE IlISTOUY Ol- PAUTY. 
 
 CHAP, of the necessity. The bill passed into committee, 
 
 XXII 
 
 —and the scheme of Tory operations immediately 
 
 to 183L'. became manifest. Lord Lyndhurst now took upon 
 himself the protection of the bill, and prepared to 
 mould it into a specimen of Tory reform. His first 
 step was to propose the postponement of the consi- 
 deration of the disfranchising clauses ; this the 
 Whigs, of course, opposed, and they were beaten by 
 a majority of 38. 
 
 The time was now arrived, in the judgment of the 
 Whig ministers, when the extreme remedy, provided 
 by the constitution against the stoppage of the state 
 machine through the opposition of a factious majo- 
 rity in the house of lords, should be applied. Earl 
 Grey and Lord Brougham waited upon the king, 
 and demanded authority to create a sufficient number 
 of peers to render the sentiment of that house con- 
 sonant with those of the sovereign, the government, 
 and the people. This demand proceeded from a 
 minister whose decisive policy was matured by de- 
 liberation and supported by wisdom. It is not to 
 be expected that an inferior intellect should at once 
 partake of his firmness, nor can we blame the king, 
 when looking rather on the violence of the remedy 
 than on the danger of the disease, he refused his 
 consent. The Whigs, of course, immediately re- 
 signed. 
 
 The announcement of this event was answered by
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^17 
 
 a storm of petitions calling upon the house of com- CHAP, 
 mons to stop the supphes until the Whigs were re- 
 
 A. D. 1831 
 
 stored to office and the Refomi bill was passed ; by to 1832. 
 a prompt address, and numerous notices of motion in 
 that house; by simultaneous public meetings, at which 
 resolutions were taken to pay no taxes ; by a run 
 upon the bank for gold ; and by the general adoption 
 of every expedient which could render the prose- 
 cution of the present unreformed system of govern- 
 ment impracticable. Considerable discussion fol- 
 lowed in the house of lords, in the course of which 
 Earl Grey stated and defended the ground of his re- 
 signation. " If a majority," he said, " of this house 
 should have the power of acting adversely to the 
 crown and the commons, and was determined to 
 exercise that power without being liable to check or 
 control, the constitution is completely altered,, and 
 the government of the country is not a limited mo- 
 narchy ; it is no longer, my lords, the crown, lords, 
 and commons, but a house of lords, a separate oli- 
 garchy governing absolutely the others." He pledged 
 himself that unless he could be assured of the ability 
 of carrying the bill fully and efficiently through that 
 house, he would not again return to office. 
 
 Meanwhile the king sent for Lord Lyndhurst, and 
 through him conveyed to the; Duke of Wellington, a 
 strong wish that he should form an administration 
 able to carry some plan of" extensive ref(M*m. Thr
 
 018 TIIK IIISTOIIY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAP, ink ol'the strong anti-roform protest which the duke 
 had recorded against the second readingf of the bill 
 
 A. 1). I8;U 
 
 to 1832. was scarcely dry upon the journals of the house, yet 
 the duke, whose loyalty appears to be of an oriental 
 character, at once consented, declaring afterwards 
 that he could not have shown his face in the streets 
 for shame, if he had refused to assist the king in his 
 distress. Sir Robert Peel, however, read the crisis 
 more wisely, and saw the impossibility of the under- 
 taking. Without his assistance, the duke could 
 not prevail upon one man to sit with him in the 
 cabinet — the attempt was abandoned ; and Lord 
 (Jrey, receiving the power he had demanded, returned 
 to office. 
 
 No sooner was it known that the earl was armed 
 with the terrible power of creating peers, than 
 the watch-dogs of Toryism, lately so loud and 
 furious, crouched in sulky submission at his feet. 
 Loudly did the Earl of Harewood lament that the 
 reception of such a measure was necessary to 
 prevent an infusion of a large body of new peers. 
 Deeply did the Duke of Newcastle and Lords 
 Winchilsea and Carnarvon bewail that they were 
 no longer members of an independent body. The 
 Duke of Newcastle retired from the house ; Lord 
 Londonderry said, that if the minister would dis- 
 tinctly state that he had authority to create peers, 
 he would withdraw his opposition. Lords Kenyon,
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 619 
 
 Winchilsea and others continued their nightly hos- ^.^^P- 
 
 tihty ; — they were tantahzed by the possession of a 
 power to crush the bill which they dared not use. In 
 their opposition to the enfi-anchiseraent of the Tower 
 Hamlets, an opposition which drew forth an elaborate 
 and eloquent speech from Lord Durham, they were 
 left in the minority 55 ; and upon another occasion 
 in a minority of 61. The mass of the Tories dared 
 not vote ; but they vented their rage in angry per- 
 sonalities against Earl Grey. Seven days of harm- 
 less snarling in committee, — a dying growl at the 
 third reading — and the supremacy of Toryism passed 
 away. On the 4th of June the Reform bill passed 
 the house of lords. The friends and disciples of 
 Earl Grey — the link in the chain of Whiggism 
 which connects Chatham with the present gene- 
 ration — crowding around him, congratulated him 
 upon having achieved the great object of a long life. 
 
 A. D. 1831 
 to 1832.
 
 6'20 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Thus, after seventy years of deprivation, did the 
 Whigs recover for the people their constitutional 
 intiuence in the state. 
 
 At the close of a period of forty-five years of 
 Whig government, we took a review of the fortunes 
 and condition of England while under the guidance 
 of that faction. We saw that she had been surrendered 
 into their hands disgraced by a dishonourable peace, 
 threatened by civil war, and divided by the animo- 
 sities engendered by a disputed succession ; we saw 
 her return flushed with conquest, elate with victory, 
 with unspent energies and unwearied strength, rich in 
 acquired possessions, and secure in the respect of the 
 whole world. Thus did Lord Oxford surrender 
 England into the hands of Lord Townshend ; thus 
 did Lord Chatham resign her to Lord Bute. The
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. G^l 
 
 period wliich has passed under our review since then 
 has presented many scenes of defeat and many of 
 triumph. The American war was one of the genuine 
 offspring of Toryism ; the Pitt and Burke crusade 
 was another. The unpopularity which, during the 
 former half of the reign of George III., rendered it 
 unsafe for him to appear in public, was the natural 
 production of the same soil ; the church and king 
 acclamations of a later period were bought with a 
 thousand millions of money. Toryism cannot be 
 practised abroad without being proceeded in at home. 
 Without the mine of bribery which Pitt discovered 
 and exhausted, discontents must arise, and must be 
 punished. While the constitution remains entire, 
 this is not readily effected ; one by one, therefore, 
 the safeguards of personal liberty arc withdrawn, the 
 power of secret imprisonment is grasped at and ob- 
 tained, the house of commons is carefully managed, 
 and Toryism being secure can afford to be generous. 
 Such at least were the gradations by which Toryism 
 advanced during the reign of George III., and such 
 also were its gradations under Charles II., who, 
 however, failed in thr* important point in which his 
 successor of the house of Hanover was so signally 
 successful, the management of the commons. Charles 
 was obliged to rely much upon plots, and to in- 
 troduce them upon a grand scale ; Pitt, to whom 
 furtuno had given much greater resources in this de- 
 j)artm(Mit, only pro(hiced tlieiu incidentally.
 
 d'i'i THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 Toryism certainly never had so fine an opportunity 
 of justifying her principles by results, as when while 
 she struck with one hand she could scatter gold with 
 the other ; yet, even under these favouring circum- 
 stances, she failed. Let the state of Birmingham 
 • and Manchester, and the carnage at the latter place, 
 exemplify the state of England under Castlereagh, 
 and the manner in which it was attempted to be con- 
 cealed ; let the utter disorganization of society in 
 Ireland tell the result of Toryism there ; let the 
 murderous designs of Thistlewood and his compa- 
 nions mark how deep and bitter was the hatred of 
 their Tory rulers which had at that time penetrated 
 the hearts of the English people ; let the great and 
 final burst of national energy which threw off the 
 Tory nightmare and won the Reform bill, show the 
 unanimity of the verdict by which Toryism was at 
 length condemned. 
 
 When the Whigs came into power, in 1714, they 
 found the nation encumbered with an annual charge 
 of 3,351,358/. interest upon the national debt. 
 Forty-eight years after, when the Tories succeeded, 
 in 1762, andhad concluded bythe peace of Utrecht the 
 glorious war by which the Whigs had broken in pieces 
 the empire of Louis the Fourteenth, they found the 
 annual interest to be 4,840,821/. In 1830, sixty- 
 eight years later, when the Whigs returned, finding 
 in their turn that the country had just concluded a 
 successful war, the annual interest was 29,118,858/.
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 The Reform bill was not a measure conceived in 
 the spirit of party. The object of its framers was 
 purely and solely that which they held out to the 
 world— the infusion of such a portion of popular in- 
 fluence into the legislature as should prevent the 
 recurrence of enormous instances of misgovernment. 
 Had the object of the Whigs, who framed this mea- 
 sure, been the permanent assurance of ofllce to their 
 own party, they must have been the most shortsighted 
 of mankind. They threw a great proportion of the 
 representation which they took from the corrupt 
 boroughs into the hands of the county freeholders — 
 hereditary Tories ; they allowed this constituency to 
 be increased by the addition of tenants at will, whose 
 ^ otes are, of course, in times of tranquillity the pro- 
 perty of the owner of the farm ; and they strenuously 
 opposed the only means which could give their party a 
 chance of success in the counties — the ballot. The 
 Whigs, when they framed these clauses, must have per- 
 ceived their effect : that they would give to the middle 
 classes in the counties a mighty power, but a power 
 which could never be exercised without a sacrifice ; 
 that they would form a constituency which would 
 return a majority of Wliigs in every moment of strong 
 excitement, but would invariably replace them by 
 Tories when the AV'liigs had corrected the misgovern- 
 ment and the excitement had ceased ; a constituency 
 which a continual trade-wind of i)ri\af(' interest 
 waflod fownrds Torvistn, mikI wliicli only nii occa- 
 
 6^3
 
 C)'2i< TIIK HISTORY OK PARTY. 
 
 sional storm of piiblio ontliusiasm could impel towards 
 Whiofo-ism. 
 
 Suoli must be the condition of a constituency 
 which is left under the influence of the larger land- 
 holders. Our law of primogeniture compels this 
 class of men to nurture abuses in the state, and he 
 who would profit by state abuses will not wisely 
 become a Whisf. 
 
 The ten-pound householders of the boroughs form 
 a constituency more favourable to Whiggism : but the 
 majority of our populous towns have always returned 
 Whigs. In an election, taking place in a time of 
 tranquillity, the Whigs will gain but little by the 
 Reform bill, even in the borough representation ; 
 the rate-paying clauses, and the cumbrous machinery 
 of the registration, offer endless opportunity for 
 management to a party in possession of union, per- 
 severance, and money ; and there is still a sufficient 
 number of small constituencies left to aid the Tory 
 majority in the counties. 
 
 If the Whigs, therefore, looked a step beyond 
 principle while framing the Reform bill, or regarded 
 it as an instrument of future supremacy, they could 
 not have relied upon the actual operation of the bill. 
 They must have relied either on popular gratitude — 
 a sentiment which is, doubtless, generous and warm, 
 but which no sane man would reckon upon as lasting 
 — or upon the necessity of preserving their party in 
 power, in order that they might protect their own
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. ^-^S 
 
 work. That necessity is not unreal ; the extremely 
 artificial construction of this system of representation 
 renders it quite unable to protect itself ; and its po- 
 pular character might be effectually destroyed by 
 means which would, with proper management, pro- 
 bably escape observation, and be felt only in their 
 eflPect. It is not unreal also, because the Tories 
 could not retain power for any considerable time 
 without making an effort of this description. The 
 landholders, since the cessation of war expenditure 
 reduced their rents, and the alteration in the currency 
 nearly doubled their mortgages, are one of the most 
 necessitous classes of our community, and would 
 quickly desert any leader who denied them the neces- 
 sary and customary privilege of providing for their 
 younger children without increasing the burdens of 
 their own estates. This, however, must be denied, 
 or but very partially granted, so long as popular in- 
 fluence predominates in the commons, or in other 
 words, so long as the Reform bill continues in ei!'ec- 
 tive operation. The Whigs, therefore, to whom 
 long exclusion from office renders even the legitimate 
 emoluments of government an unexpected advantage, 
 are probably the only party which could carry on the 
 o-overnment for any considerable time, while the 
 Reform bill retained its spirit ; but the Tories could 
 govern very well under its forms. 
 
 This reason for keeping the Whigs in power is not, 
 
 VOL. in. !2 s
 
 n^j(j 
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 Iiowever, vury likely to be acted upon or discerned 
 by a multitude ; nor can any other be assigned 
 connected ^vith the lleform bill, which can suggest 
 that the framers of this bill contemplated it as an 
 instrument for creating a supremacy to the Whigs. 
 Had it borne more marks of party spirit it would 
 probably have been more effective and more enduring. 
 The difference between the policy of Earl Grey 
 and that of the Earl of Bute exhibits the latter to 
 some advantage, as a party leader. Bute, when, 
 after a long exclusion, he placed his own party again 
 in power, cleared every public office of his opponents ; 
 and failing in Englishmen to replace them, imported 
 an army of adventurers from Scotland ; yet, notwith- 
 standing his decision and the steady patronage of the 
 king, so great was the power of a party long in pos- 
 session of office, that it was not without numerous short 
 Whig irruptions that the Tories succeeded in rooting 
 up the foundations of their opponents' influence. Grey, 
 on the contrary, attempted to conciliate the enemies 
 he had conquered ; and hoped to gratify, by a division 
 of legitimate patronage, a party whom their own chiefs 
 could not content with less than a monopoly of 
 abuses. The resources of that faction might well 
 have terrified Earl Grey from driving them to extre- 
 mity, could he have entertained any rational hope of 
 gaining their friendship. They had with them the 
 house of lords, a very powerful auxiliary in a struggle 
 where all other advantages were nearly equal, but one
 
 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 which should never be placed in the van when the tide 
 of popular influence runs strong. The power of the 
 lords is based upon prerogative, and prerogative in 
 England was never stretched without snapping. 
 
 The Tories had with them also, nearly all that 
 very numerous class who counted upon emolument 
 from government favour. These looked upon the 
 Tories as the habitual occupants of office — upon the 
 Whigs as only occasional intruders. In their time 
 and that of their fathers it had been so. Little 
 tradition remained among them of the long period of 
 national prosperity and Tory opposition during the 
 reigns of the two first Georges. 
 
 The Tories still retained the great body of the 
 clergy ; an incalculable advantage, since it secured to 
 them, in almost every parish, an agent possessed of 
 zeal, influence, and leisure. 
 
 They still possessed, also, all the local patronage 
 throughout the country. Tory lord-lieutenants still 
 ap})ointed Tory magistrates, and Tory magistrates 
 still directed the most humble rivulets of patronage 
 in the same direction. 
 
 They possessed great wealtli to expend in party 
 purposes, for the party was composed of men of great 
 wealth, althoujrh often of still (n-eater necessities. 
 Money so laid out was looked upon as a profitable 
 investment, and was always abundant. 
 
 They were a party, also, uiiit(Hl under one name. 
 Had the l)ui<c of Cumberland, with Newcastle, 
 
 627
 
 6'28 THE HISTORY OF PARTY. 
 
 Kenyon, Winchilsoa, Uoden, and other noblemen, 
 continued separated from the Duke of Wellington, 
 and called themselves Absolutists, or by any other 
 bold and undisguised title, it would have been at 
 once seen that their principles were dangerous to 
 property ; and any Tory administration would have 
 been injured by their support. These, however, 
 submitted to have their differences forgotten under 
 the general name of Tories ; while the Radicals, 
 refusing to call themselves Whigs, became unpo- 
 pular allies, terrible to all timid Whigs, and a fine 
 topic of declamation to the Tories. 
 
 At the passing of the Reform bill, therefore, the 
 Whigs appeared to have but a slender tenure of 
 office. Nothing but the undeviating support of a 
 patriotic monarch, and a government of great wisdom 
 and vigour appeared capable of continuing their 
 power. With these advantages that power might 
 possibly become consolidated ; and England might 
 enjoy, for some time a mild and an economical 
 government. But the source of Toryism is in human 
 nature, and can never fail ; nor can I doubt that 
 future writers will have to record future losses of 
 popular influence, and future struggles for its re- 
 covery. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 WHITINO, EEAlfnm HOUSE. 
 
 4
 
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