Farmer George Volume Ii Part 4

The battle began after the rea.s.sembling of Parliament on January 9, 1770, when the King in his speech referred to a distemper which had recently appeared among the horned cattle. This was seized upon by the caricaturists, and denounced by "Junius": "While the whole kingdom was agitated with anxious expectation upon one great point, you meanly evaded the question, and instead of the explicit firmness and decision of a king, gave us nothing but the misery of a ruined grazier and the whining piety of a Methodist." It has not been made clear whether this was inserted by the King, who in his capacity of farmer was much perturbed by the ravages made by the disease, or whether it was an attempt to attract the attention of Parliament to this rather than to more serious issues.

Serious issues enough there were at the end of 1769 to occupy the attention of all thoughtful men. The English were undeniably angry, the Wilkes affair was dividing parties and sowing dissension between statesmen, and America was threateningly restless. The King's treatment of the City's remonstrance[86] had aroused to a fine frenzy habitually calm folk, and discontent was so rife that rebellion itself was in the minds of many Englishmen. "The tumults of London, in March, 1769, which menaced with insult or attack even the palace of the sovereign, bore no feeble resemblance to the riotous disorders that preceded the Civil Wars, under Charles the First," Wraxall wrote. "A Hea.r.s.e, followed by the mob, was drawn into the Court-yard at St. James's, decorated with insignia of the most humiliating and indecent description. I have always understood that the late Lord Mountmorris, then a very young man, was the person who on that occasion personated the executioner, holding an axe in his hands, and his face covered with a c.r.a.pe. The King's firmness did not, however, desert him, in the midst of these trying ebullitions of democratic rage. He remained calm and unmoved in the Drawing-room, while the streets surrounding his residence echoed with the shouts of an enraged mult.i.tude, who seemed disposed to proceed to the greatest extremities."[87]

[86] See _ante_ vol. I, pp. 266-7.

[87] _Historical Memoirs of My Own Times._

Horace Walpole was somewhat perturbed at the situation. "The English may be soothed: I have never heard that they were to be frightened," he wrote. "This is my creed and all our history supports it." The King, however, seemed bent on desperate measures and, according to _The Whisperer_ (February 24, 1770), When the Marquis of Granby resigned his employments, the King said to him, "Granby, do you think the army would fight for me?" To which the Marquis n.o.bly replied, "I believe, Sir, some of your officers would, but I will not answer for the men."[88] This state of turmoil gave a great unholy joy to David Hume: "I am delighted to see the daily and hourly progress of madness, and folly, and wickedness in England," he wrote from Edinburgh. "The consummation of these fine qualities are the ingredients for making a fine narrative in history, especially if followed by some signal and ruinous convulsion, as I hope will soon be the case with that pernicious people. He must be a very bad cook who cannot make a palatable dish from the whole."

[88] "We have independent mobs that have nothing to do with Wilkes, and who only take advantage of so favourable a season. The dearness of provisions incites--the hope of increase of wages allures--and drink puts them in motion. The coal-heavers began; and it is well it is not a hard frost, for they have stopped all coals coming to town. The sawyers rose, too, and at last the sailors, who have committed great outrages in merchant-ships and prevented their sailing."--Horace Walpole, May, 1768.

The duel between Chatham and Grafton took place during the debate on the Address. The Earl who, owing to his ill-health had never yet done justice to his oratorical powers in the House of Lords, now made a splendid fighting speech, in which after expressing the good-will he bore his fellow-subjects in America, he denounced the proceedings against Wilkes and the American policy of the ministry. This was the signal for the other malcontents to engage. "I accepted the Great Seal without conditions," Lord Camden states in the House of Lords. "I meant not therefore to be trammelled by his Majesty--(I beg pardon) by his ministers; but I have suffered myself to be too long. For some time I have beheld, with silent indignation, the arbitrary measures of the minister; I have often drooped and hung down my head in Council, and disapproved by my looks those steps which I knew my avowed opposition could not prevent; I will do so no longer, but openly and boldly speak my sentiments." The Duke of Beaufort and the Duke of Manchester, the Earl of Coventry and the Earl of Huntingdon gave up their offices at Court; and the resignation of James Grenville, Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, and Dunning, Solicitor-General, followed, together with that of Lord Granby, Commander-in-Chief and Master of the Ordnance, who retained only his colonelcy of the Blues.

Lord Camden was dismissed immediately after his speech, but great difficulty was found in filling his place. The Woolsack was offered to Mansfield, and then to Sir Eardley Wilmot, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, neither of whom would accept it, partly because there was then no retiring pension for a Lord Chancellor, and it was too great a risk to give up a lucrative position for a post the tenure of which was so precarious.[89] The Great Seal was then offered to Charles Yorke, who declined on the ground that he did not wish to desert the Rockingham party. The King sent for him on January 17 and charged him on his loyalty to accept the office, declaring if he did not do so, the Lord Chancellorship would never again under any circ.u.mstances be offered to him. Thus pressed, Yorke accepted very reluctantly, but the annoyance told upon his feeble health, and he died three days later--by his own hand, it was whispered. The patent that raised him to the peerage was made out and awaited only the impress of the Great Seal. When he was dying he was asked to authorise that impression, but he refused, and added with a shudder that he hoped the Great Seal was no longer in his custody.[90] "Nothing was now left for the Duke of Grafton but to get himself out of the way before "Junius" had time to point the moral. It was impossible for him to continue Prime Minister after the most ambitious lawyer at the bar had thought death a less evil than the disgrace of being his Chancellor."[91] "Junius" was not to be baulked of his prey, however, and referred to the episode in a letter to the Duke of Grafton, dated February 14, 1770. "To what an abject condition have you laboured to reduce the best of princes, when the unhappy man who yields at last to such personal instance and solicitation as can never be fairly employed against a subject feels himself degraded by his compliance, and is unable to survive the disgraceful honours which his gracious sovereign had compelled him to accept."

[89] Lord Camden was a poor man, and would have been much inconvenienced by his dismissal, had not Chatham earlier secured to him a pension of 1,500.

[90] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_.

[91] Trevelyan: _Early Life of C. J. Fox_.

The Duke resigned on January 28, and Chatham was avenged.

During the absence of Lord Chatham, George III had gained a complete ascendancy over the ministry and, now that Grafton had retired, he was determined not to yield the control of affairs without a struggle. He wanted, not a minister with views of his own, but one who would obey instructions. Such a man was Lord North,[92] who, backed by the weight of the royal influence, was the ostensible Prime Minister for the ensuing twelve years.[93]

[92] Frederick, Lord North (1732-1792), succeeded his father as second Earl of Guilford in 1790. He is, however, better known as Lord North.

[93] "As Lord Bute gradually retired into the shade of private life, and became insensibly forgotten, Mr. Jenkinson proportionately came forward in his own person, and on his own proper merits. Throughout the whole period of Lord North's administration from 1770 down to 1782, his intercourse with the King, and even his influence over the royal mind, were a.s.sumed to be constant, progressive, commensurate with, and sometimes paramount to, or subversive of, the measures proposed by the First Minister. However difficult of proof such a.s.sertions were, and however contrary, as I believe, they were to truth or fact, they did not operate the less forcibly on the bulk of the nation, and were not less eagerly credited by men of all parties. No denials on the part of persons in power could erase the impression, which newspapers and pamphlets industriously circulated throughout the kingdom."--Wraxall: Historical Memoirs of My Own Times.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo by Emery Walker._

_From a painting by Nathaniel Dance_

FREDERICK NORTH, SECOND EARL OF GUILFORD

_To face p. 72, Vol. II_]

North had gained his official experience as a Junior Lord of the Treasury, and as a joint-Paymaster of the Forces. At first he had not created a favourable impression, but there were discerning persons who saw early he would come to the fore. His appearance was much against him. "Nothing could be more coa.r.s.e, or clumsy, or ungracious than his outside," Horace Walpole said. "Two large prominent eyes that rolled about to no purpose--for he was utterly short-sighted--a wide mouth, thick lips, and inflated visage, gave him the air of a blind trumpeter."[94] "Here comes blubbering North. I wonder what he is getting by heart, for I am sure it can be nothing of his own," some one said to Grenville, seeing North in the park, apparently rehearsing a speech. "North is a man of great promise and high qualifications,"

replied Grenville; "and if he does not relax in his political pursuits, he is very likely to be Prime Minister." Lord Rockingham thought well enough of him to invite him to become Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, an offer which, at the King's instigation, he eventually declined.

[94] _Memoirs of George III._

"It cost him, North, many bitter pangs, not to preserve his virtue, but his vicious connexions," wrote Walpole. "He goggled his eyes, and groped in his pocket money, more than half consented; nay, so much more, that when he got home, he wrote an excuse to Lord Rockingham, which made it plain he thought he had accepted." Nor was Charles Townshend in any doubt as to North's abilities. "See that great heavy, b.o.o.by-looking seeming changeling," said Townshend when Chancellor of the Exchequer; "you may believe me when I a.s.sure you as a fact, that if anything should happen to me, he will succeed to my place, and very shortly after come to be First Commissioner of the Treasury."[95] The prediction was fulfilled, for when Townshend died, Lord North became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Chatham, and was retained in that position by Grafton.

[95] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_.

North had, indeed, most of the qualifications that make a good leader of the House of Commons. He was witty, good-humoured, undisturbed by personal attacks, and undeniably honest. "He was a man of admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding, fitted for every sort of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested," wrote Burke; "but it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honour the memory of a great man, to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and spirit of command that the time required."[96] He was an excellent debater, and managed to retain his hold on the House even when the Opposition was led, first by Burke and then by Chatham.

[96] _Letter to a n.o.ble Lord._

It had been Chatham's hope that, when the Duke of Grafton resigned, the King would be compelled to dissolve Parliament; but the King, on his side, was determined not to make an appeal to the country, which he was well aware would return an adverse majority and so compel him to receive the Whig families back into power. "I will have recourse to this," he said, laying his hand on his sword, "sooner than yield to a dissolution." In his hour of difficulty George turned to North, who came to his a.s.sistance, and formed a ministry, for which service the King was grateful, until many years later North coalesced with Fox. He bestowed upon him the posts of Ranger of Bushey Park, and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, with a most acceptable stipend, and promised to bestow the Order of the Garter upon him, "which I shall do with the greater pleasure as I never have had any intimation from you that it is an honour you are in the least ambitious of."[97] He also expressed a desire in September, 1777, to discharge out of his Privy Purse his Prime Minister's debts. "Having paid the last arrears on the Civil List, I must now do the same for you," he wrote. "I have understood, from your hints, that you have been in debt ever since you settled in life. I must therefore insist that you allow me to a.s.sist you with 10,000, or 15,000, or 20,000, if that will be sufficient. It will be easy for you to make an arrangement, or at proper times to take up that sum. You know me very ill if you think not that, of all the letters I ever wrote you, this one gives me the greatest pleasure; and I want no other return but your being convinced that I love you as well as a man of worth, as I esteem you as a minister. Your conduct at a critical moment I can never forget."[98]

[97] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._

[98] _Ibid._

The King took for his part the management of the House of Commons, and it was work that suited his capabilities. It has already been mentioned that at his accession he began to study public business, and so far as the details were concerned he made great progress. "He knew all about the family histories and genealogies of his gentry, and pretty histories he must have known. He knew the whole _Army list_; and all the facings and the exact number of b.u.t.tons, and all the tags and laces, and the cut of all the c.o.c.ked hats, pigtails and gaiters in his army. He knew the _personnel_ of the Universities; what doctors were inclined to Socinianism, and who were sound Churchmen; he knew the etiquette of his own and his grandfather's Courts to a nicety, and the smallest particulars regarding the routine of ministers, secretaries, emba.s.sies, audiences; the smallest page in the ante-room or the meanest helper in the kitchen or stables. These parts of the royal business he was capable of learning, and he learned."[99] This, however, by no means exhausts the list of his qualifications. Not the most scrupulous electioneering agent knew more tricks than he, or was better acquainted with the figures of the voting in all the const.i.tuencies, or the names and views of likely candidates.

[99] Thackeray: _The Four Georges_.

George III reduced bribery to a fine art, and, parsimonious as he was in his own affairs, he had no hesitation in buying the patron of a borough or in paying the debts of a man who was willing to stand as the "King's Friend" at the next election. "If the Duke of Northumberland requires some gold pills for the election, it would be wrong not to give him some a.s.sistance," he wrote to North before the Middles.e.x election in 1779.

North declared that the expenses of election in 1779, 1780 and 1781, paid for by Government amounted to 53,000, and that the preceding general election cost 50,000 in addition to pensions of the annual value of 15,000! Enormous as was the Civil List, it could not support these outlays in addition to its regular expenses with which it was charged; and soon there was presented the strange spectacle of a House of Commons being invited to make good the deficit that had been caused chiefly by the bribes given to or for members of its body. On February 28, 1770, Lord North asked Parliament to discharge the King's debts, which amounted to 513,511, and although this sum was voted, it was only after a heated debate. The King was horrified to learn that Dowdeswell in the House of Commons and Rockingham in the House of Lords had moved that particulars of each expense should be specified, and that the papers might distinguish under which administration each debt had been incurred. Burke and Grenville supported the motion in the Commons, and in the Lords Chatham made a rousing speech that voiced the feelings of the nation. What had been done with the money, he wanted to know, that there should be this great deficit? The King had built no palaces, he had not lavished great sums on pictures or statuary, he had not rewarded distinguished soldiers and sailors with large pensions; the expenses of his household were, comparatively speaking, small, and the price of commodities was lower than in the preceding reign, and, although his Majesty was not illiberal in his charities, the outlay in this direction had certainly not impoverished him. No, he concluded, the money had been devoted to the support of sinecure posts to be held by minor politicians and in other ways to pervert the honesty of Parliament.

The King, regarding himself as above criticism, was greatly incensed by this speech, and his anger was increased in the following year when Sir Edward Astley moved for a return of pensions granted since the commencement of the Parliament then sitting. "I cannot help expressing some surprise," he wrote to Lord North on April 5, 1770, "at seeing Lieutenant-General Conway's name in support of Sir Edward Astley's motion, which is so antiquated an Opposition's point, but which no candid man could be supposed to adopt."[100] It was, therefore, with great reluctance that in May, 1770, he applied again, through Lord North, for another grant. Further delay was impossible, however, for even his household bills were unpaid and his servants' wages were six quarters in arrears. North asked for 600,000 to settle pressing demands and an increase to the Civil List of 100,000 a year. The request again provoked much candid criticism. Fox taunted the Prime Minister with the pledge he had given when he was in office in 1769 that no such demand should be made again; and other members pointed out that in the accounts the pensions amounted to 438,000, that there were items of 171,000 and 114,000 for secret service, and that furthermore the accounts very obviously had been falsified. The grant was eventually made, but when Sir Fletcher Norton, the Speaker of the House of Commons, presented the Civil List Bill to the King, he made a speech. "Your Majesty's faithful Commons have granted a great sum to discharge the debt of the Civil List; and considering that whatever enables your Majesty to support with grandeur, honour and dignity, the crown of Great Britain, in its true l.u.s.tre, will reflect honour on the nation, they have given most liberally, even in these times of danger and difficulty, taxed almost beyond ability to bear; and they have now granted to your Majesty an income far exceeding your Majesty's highest wants, _hoping that what they have given cheerfully, your Majesty will spend wisely_." The "King's Friends" voiced their indignation at this address, but Fox moved "that the Speaker did express, with just and proper energy, the zeal of the House for the support of the honour and dignity of the Crown in circ.u.mstances of great public charge," and he carried the House with him in a vote of thanks to Sir Fletcher Norton.

[100] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._

After this stern rebuke, even George III had not courage enough to apply again to Parliament, but as the lavish corruption continued, money had to be found, and to provide for his master's necessities, North sacrificed his financial reputation. In 1781 he raised a loan of 12,000,000 upon terms so liberal as to give the bondholders a return of ten per cent., but instead of following the usual course of inviting bankers to become subscribers, he divided the much desired stock among the supporters of the Government in both Houses, who were thus handsomely rewarded for their services. This was so disgraceful a proceeding that even a servile House of Commons could not overlook it, and the transaction was undoubtedly one of the causes that contributed to North's overthrow in the following year.[101]

[101] On February 15, 1802, Addington delivered a message to the Commons from the King. "His Majesty feels great concern in acquainting the House of Commons that the provision made by Parliament for defraying the expenses of his household, and civil government, has been found inadequate to their support. A considerable debt has, in consequence, been unavoidably incurred, an account of which he has ordered to be laid before this House. His Majesty relies with confidence on the zeal and affection of his faithful Commons, that they will take the same into their early consideration, and adopt such measures as the circ.u.mstances may appear to them to require." The amount required was in round figures 1,000,000, and the reasons alleged for the deficit were the dearness of provisions, the expenses caused by the younger princes and princesses who were growing up, the marriage of the Prince of Wales, and the support of Princess Charlotte of Wales.

No scruple as to kingly dignity restrained George III from endeavouring to profit by the glamour that surrounds the throne. "I am sorry to find the Attorney-General (Thurlow) rather retracts. I feel the propriety of keeping him in his present situation; and if any kindness from me on Wednesday can effect it, you may rest a.s.sured he shall be got into thorough good temper," he wrote to North on June 7, 1774; and on another day, "The last division was nearer than some persons will have expected, but not more than I thought. I hope every engine will be employed to get those friends that stayed away last night to come and support on Monday.

I wish a list could be prepared of those who went away, and those that deserted to the minority. _That would be a rule for my conduct in the Drawing-room to-morrow._"[102] "I am so desirous that every man in my service should take part in the Debate on Tuesday," he wrote again on January 7, 1770, "that I desire you will very strongly press Sir G.

Elliot and any others that have not taken a part last session. I have no objection to your adding that I have particularly directed you to speak to them."[103] "I consent," he wrote on April 21, 1775, "to Sir Watkin Williams (Wynn) being Lieutenant of Merioneth, _if he means to be grateful_, otherwise favours granted to persons in opposition is not very political."[104]

[102] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._

[103] _Ibid._

[104] _Ibid._

George made it quite clear that to attack the Government or vote against it was regarded by him as a personal insult, and he was determined that no man should do so with impunity. "Lord North's attention in correcting the impression I had that Colonel Burgoyne and Lieutenant-Colonel Harcourt were absent yesterday is very handsome to those gentlemen, for I certainly should have thought myself obliged to have named a new Governor in the room of the former, and to have removed the other from my Bedchamber,"[105] he wrote on March 12, 1772, in reference to a division on the Royal Marriage Act; and when the Prime Minister suggested that Chatham's pension should be settled in reversion on his younger son, William Pitt: "The making Lord Chatham's family suffer for the conduct of their father is not in the least agreeable to me," he replied, on August 9, 1775. "But I should choose to know him to be totally unable to appear again on the public stage before I agree to any offer of that kind, lest it should wrongly be construed into a fear of him; and indeed his political conduct the last winter was so abandoned, that he must, in the eyes of the dispa.s.sionate, have totally undone all the merit of his former conduct. As to any grat.i.tude to be expected from him or his family, the whole tenor of their lives has shown them void of that most honourable sentiment. But _when decrepitude or death puts an end to him as a trumpet of sedition_, I shall make no difficulty in placing the second son's name instead of the father's, and making up the pension 3,000."[106]

[105] _Correspondence of George III with Lord North._

[106] _Ibid._

The truth is that George III was vindictive, though he would have been the last to admit this, for never doubting he was always in the right, he was confident that what to others seemed revenge, was actually only legitimate punishment meted out to the wrong-doer. "He has a kind of unhappiness in his temper, which, if it be not conquered before it has taken too deep a root, will be the source of frequent anxiety," Lord Waldegrave had written when he was the royal Governor. "Whenever he is displeased, his anger does not break out with heat and violence, but he becomes sullen and silent, and retires to his closet, not to compose his mind by study and contemplation, but merely to indulge the melancholy enjoyment of his own ill-humour. Even when the fit is ended, unfavourable symptoms too frequently return, which indicate that on certain occasions his Royal Highness has too correct a memory."[107]

This serious blemish lasted all the days of his life, and was noticeable particularly in his att.i.tude towards Chatham and, later, towards Fox.

[107] _Memoirs of Lord Waldegrave._

"How many Secretaries of State have you corresponded with?" the King once asked an ex-Governor of Gibraltar. "Five, Sire," was the reply.

"You see my situation. The trade of politics is a rascally business.

It's a trade for a scoundrel, and not for a gentleman." So George III unconsciously pa.s.sed judgment on himself, for it is clear that he had much to do with making politics a trade. Reflect upon the treatment he meted out to Rockingham, as upright a statesman who could be found in the three kingdoms, whose dismissal was chiefly due to the fact that he was too honest. "Rockingham had a way of listening to a questionable proposal that was more alarming to George III even than the eloquence of Pitt or the lengthiness of Grenville."[108]

[108] Albemarle: _Memoirs of Rockingham_.

It is interesting, in the light of this knowledge, to turn to a contemporary portrait of the King as a statesman. "Never was any prince more religiously tenacious of his engagements or promises. Even the temporary privation of his intellect did not affect his regard to the a.s.surances that he had given previous to such alienation of mind; nor, which is still more wonderful, obliterate them from his recollection. I know that on his recovery from the severest visitations under which he has laboured he has said to his minister, in the first moment of his convalescence, 'Previous to my attack of illness I made such and such promises; they must be effectuated,'" wrote Wraxall. "Satisfied with the legitimate power entrusted to him by the British Const.i.tution, and deeply impressed with the sanct.i.ty as well as the inviolability of the oath administered to him at his coronation, George the Third did not desire to pa.s.s the limits of his rightful prerogative. But, equally tenacious of his just pretensions and firm in resisting popular violence and innovation, he never receded from any point or abandoned any measure, under the impulse of personal apprehension. His courage was calm, temperate, and steady. It was const.i.tutional and hereditary; but it was always sustained by conviction, sense of public duty, and religion."[109] Yet when politics were concerned, George was not so tenacious of his word as to fulfil it to a member of the Opposition. To give one instance. He had, in 1765, promised the reversion of the colonelcy of the Blues to the Duke of Richmond, but when the holder of the command, Lord Granby, died in October, 1770, he immediately appointed Conway to the vacant post. "The Duke of Richmond, who did not expect that engagement would be kept to him, now in earnest opposition, wrote an artfully handsome letter to the King, to release him from that promise," Walpole has related; "but his Majesty had violated it before he received the Duke's dispensation and made no answer."[110]