Farmer George Volume Ii Part 7

[144] "In their boyhood each had manifested that serious, reserved and pious disposition which happily preserved them from plunging into those youthful irregularities which subsequently disgraced the careers of their brothers, the Dukes of York and c.u.mberland. Each had suffered from the effects of a faulty education; each, on reaching manhood, had happily had the sagacity to appreciate the grievous disadvantage which it imposed upon them, and each, by diligent study, had endeavoured to make up for the faults and deficiencies of the past."--Jesse: _Memoirs of George III_.

The Duke of Gloucester was no more able than his brothers to be faithful to one woman, and he soon devoted himself to Lady Almeria Carpenter, when his wife, a high-spirited woman, for whom he had fought so well, demanded, and in 1787 obtained, an informal separation. The Duke was, indeed, scarcely worth securing except for his t.i.tle, for he was almost entirely dest.i.tute of intelligence, as two anecdotes related by Walpole prove. On one occasion he came into a room where his wife was sitting to Reynolds, of whom he took no notice until the d.u.c.h.ess whispered to him to address the painter. "So," said he, willing to be agreeable, "so you always begin with the head, do you?" This was only to be equalled by his remark to Gibbon: "What, scribble, scribble, scribble?" Feeble in health, the Duke's life was frequently despaired of, but he survived until 1803. "We are in hourly expectation of the news of the poor Duke of Gloucester's death," the Queen wrote to Lady Harcourt on August 29, 1803. "His sufferings must have been dreadfully painful; but his good temper and cheerfulness never left him. I understand that he was not quite open with his physician, and that some complaint he kept a secret for three days, to which the medicines which they administered were fatal. How unfortunate to deceive oneself, and much more when one wishes to deceive others. This the King is not to know; but the physicians stand justified to the world.... The poor Duke has left a will, and desires to be buried at Windsor; which is granted. He left the d.u.c.h.ess sole executrix; but with a proviso to pay his debts, which the world says are very few."

The reconciliation of the Duke of c.u.mberland with the King was hollow indeed, for these brothers had nothing in common, and the monarch hated his sister-in-law. "The King held her [the d.u.c.h.ess] in great alienation, because he believed she lent herself to facilitate or to gratify the Prince of Wales's inclinations on some points beyond the limits of propriety--Carlton House and c.u.mberland House communicating behind by the gardens."[145] The reasons for George III's dislike were well-founded, and, in addition, the Duke committed the unpardonable sin in allying himself with the Opposition, and was further the prime factor in inducing his nephew, the Prince of Wales, to set himself against the Court. During the American troubles in 1775, ministerial Earl told the Duke that his Majesty hoped his brother would support the measures of the Government. "G.o.d forbid," said his Royal Highness, "that a prince of the House of Hanover should violate those rights in America, which they were raised to the throne of England for a.s.serting," and he voted in favour of Chatham's plan of conciliation. That fine speech stands alone in the records of his libertine career.

[145] Wraxall: _Historical Memoirs of My Own Times_.

The King's eldest sister, Princess Augusta, was, according to Horace Walpole, "not handsome, but tall enough and not ill-made, with the German whiteness of hair and complexion, so remarkable in the royal family, and with their precipitate yet thick Westphalian accent."[146]

At an early age she interested herself in politics, and soon showed a desire to meddle in matters of state, which desire was particularly annoying to her mother, for, unlike the Princess Dowager, she was attached to Pitt and with the Duke of York "inveighed openly and boldly against the policy of the Court." Such a firebrand was an active danger in the royal family, and it was feared lest she might infect her brothers and sisters and even the young Queen with her obnoxious opinions. It was, therefore, thought advisable to remove her from England, and this was achieved by marrying her in 1764 to Charles William Ferdinand, Hereditary-Prince of Brunswick Wolfenb.u.t.tel.

[146] _Memoirs of George III._

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds_

AUGUSTA, d.u.c.h.eSS OF BRUNSWICK]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Portrait by Cotes_

CAROLINA MATILDA, QUEEN OF DENMARK

_To face p. 120, Vol. II_]

The bridegroom of the Princess Royal was treated by the Court with great coldness, for it was known that he had been discussing English politics with more freedom than discretion: all the ceremonials not absolutely essential were omitted, the servants were not given the customary new liveries for the marriage, and though Charles was perforce lodged at Somerset House, no sentinel was placed at the door of his apartment.

Indeed had he been an uninvited guest his reception could not have been more marked by stinging slights. The Prince, a high-spirited, not overwise young man of nine-and-twenty, was very angry at the treatment accorded him by the family of his bride, and since the Court ignored him so far as possible, he accepted the attentions of the leaders of the Opposition, dined with the Duke of c.u.mberland and the Duke of Newcastle, and visited Pitt at Hayes.

Very different was the conduct of the public, which was delighted to welcome the gallant young soldier, who had distinguished himself in war under Frederick the Great, and cheered him to the echo whenever he appeared in public. One day, he kissed his hand to a soldier of Elliot's Light Horse, who was at once surrounded by a crowd, and asked if he knew the Prince. "Yes," said the man, "he once led me into a sc.r.a.pe, which n.o.body but himself could have brought me out of again." "You may guess,"

wrote Walpole, "how much this added to the Prince's popularity, which was at high-water mark before." The Prince had arrived in England on January 12, and was married on the 16th. Two days later the whole royal family went to Covent Garden Theatre, and the public took this occasion to show their opinion of the manner in which the visitor had been received. The King and Queen took their seats in a profound silence, and deafening cheers greeted the appearance of the bridal pair. "The shouts, claps, and huzzas were immoderate," Walpole informed Sir Horace Mann.

"He sat behind his Princess and her brothers. The galleries called him to come forward. In the middle of the play he went to be elected a member of the Royal Society, and returned to the theatre when the applause was renewed."

The subsequent life of the Prince and Princess of Brunswick was conventional--conventional, that is, according to the standard of royalty in those days. "The d.u.c.h.ess of Brunswick is brought to bed of a brat, and they say she has not been taken care of, and that the Prince is not good to her," Lady Sarah Bunbury wrote to Lady Susan O'Brien on December 16, 1764; "but I don't believe a word of it." Certainly the Duke was not faithful to his wife, and had many intrigues, the most enduring of which was with Madame de Herzfeldt. "There were some unlucky things in our Court, which made my position difficult," subsequently said Princess Charlotte of Brunswick, who married the Prince of Wales.

"My father was most entirely attached to a lady for thirty years who, in fact, was his mistress. She was the beautifullest creature and the cleverest; but though my father continued to pay my poor mother all possible respect, my poor mother could not suffer this attachment. The consequence was that I did not know what to do between them: when I was civil to the one I was scolded by the other; and I was very tired of being shuttlec.o.c.k between them."

After the death of the Duke at the battle of Jena, his princ.i.p.ality fell into the hands of the French, and the d.u.c.h.ess fled to England, where, owing to the difference between her daughter and the Prince of Wales, she lived in semi-retirement until her death on March 23, 1813.

Far more tragic was the fate of the Princess Caroline Amelia, who was married at the age of fifteen to Christian VII, King of Denmark. "The poor Queen of Denmark is gone out alone into the wide world; not a creature she knows to attend her any further than Altona," Miss Talbot wrote to Mrs. Carter on October 4, 1766. "It is worse than dying; for die she must to all she has ever seen or known; but then it is only dying out of one bad world into another just like it, and where she is to have cares and fears, and dangers and sorrows, that will all yet be new to her.... They have just been telling me how bitterly she cried in the coach, as far as anybody saw her." The girl's feelings at this time proved only too truly prophetic of the rest of her brief life. Her husband was an abandoned _roue_, and, it was said, ill-treated her.

After two years, King Christian, without his wife, came to pay a prolonged visit to England, where he was received by George III with great coldness, although, of course, the necessary ceremonials could not be avoided. "As to-morrow is the day you receive foreign ministers, you will acquaint M. de Dieden that I desire he will a.s.sure the King, his master, that I am desirous of making his stay in this country as agreeable as possible," George wrote to Lord Weymouth on June 8, 1768.

"That I therefore wish to be thoroughly apprised of the mode in which he chooses to be treated, that I may exactly conform to it. This will throw whatever may displease the King of Denmark, during his stay there, on his shoulders, and consequently free me from that _desagrement_; but you know very well the whole of it is very disagreeable to me."

After Christian's return the relations between him and his Queen were strained to the uttermost. He was now, as a consequence of his dissipations, a physical wreck; and his wife, taking a leaf from his book, committed all sorts of rash and foolish actions. She carried on an intrigue with Stuensee, the Prime Minister, and made no attempt whatever to hide their intimacy. Owing to the intervention of the Queen Dowager, who desired to secure the throne for her younger son Frederick, it was determined to end the scandal. Stuensee was arrested and executed in 1772, and the Queen was sent to Cronenborg, where she was kept in strict confinement. It was suspected that she would meet the same fate as her lover, but this was averted by the action of the British Government, who sent a fleet into the Baltic, when the Queen was released. She went to Stade in Hanover, and afterwards to Zell, where she died on May 10, 1775. Whether her intrigue with the minister was innocent or guilty need not now be argued. "I am going to appear before G.o.d," the unhappy woman said on her deathbed. "I now protest I am innocent of the guilt imputed to me, and that I was never unfaithful to my husband."

CHAPTER XVIII

ENGLAND AND AMERICA. II: THE KING'S WAR

In America, the repeal of the Stamp Act had been regarded as a great victory: ships displayed their colours, houses were illuminated, joybells were set ringing. The South Carolina a.s.sembly voted a sum of money for the purchase of a marble statue of William Pitt; and at Philadelphia the princ.i.p.al inhabitants gave a great ball to the English officials, at the conclusion of which the hosts pa.s.sed an informal resolution: "that to demonstrate our zeal to Great Britain, and our grat.i.tude for the repeal of the Stamp Act, each of us will, on June 4 next, on the birthday of our most gracious sovereign George III, dress ourselves in a new suit of the manufactures of England, and give what homespun we have to the poor." Adams, who certainly was in a position to speak with authority, declared that, "The repeal of the Stamp Act has hushed into silence almost every popular clamour, and composed every wave of popular disorder into a smooth and peaceful calm"; and Lord Chatham in a speech some years later, referring to this time, said, "The Americans had almost forgot, in their excess of grat.i.tude for the repeal of the Stamp Act, any interest but that of the mother-country; there seemed an emulation among the different provinces who should be most dutiful and forward in their expression of loyalty."[147]

[147] Thackeray: _Life of Chatham_.

This view of the state of affairs in the American colonies was, however, far too deeply tinged with optimism, for, after the first outburst of enthusiasm, the joy of the inhabitants diminished as they reflected upon the malign possibilities inevitably suggested by the Declaratory Act.

The well informed were aware that this was intended by the English ministers only as a salve to the King and Parliament; but to the majority it was a menace, and even those who understood the reason for the measure could not feel sure it would never be invoked. So it happened that "there were not wanting many, who, by pamphlets and newspaper publication, prevented the return of cordial affection, and cautioned the colonies against a too implicit reliance on the moderation of the mother country."[148]

[148] Adolphus: _History of England_.

This feeling of insecurity might by judicious handling have been removed, but it was fanned into irritation by that clause in the Mutiny Act which compelled the colonials to furnish supplies for the English troops. "An Act of Parliament commanding to do a certain thing, if it has any validity," said d.i.c.kinson, "is a tax upon us for the expense that accrues in complying with it."[149] Thus it came to pa.s.s that while England was still congratulating itself upon the fortunate results of the repeal of the Stamp Act, New York was refusing to provision or to house the British troops, and its merchants were pet.i.tioning against this attempted imposition.

[149] _The Farmer's Letters._

Wisdom and tact were required in the English ministers who, as usual when dealing with America, were found wanting in those qualities; and, indeed, there was during the next years ample ground for Nicholls's scathing indictment of the policy of the mother-country. "From the formation of Lord Chatham's cabinet in 1766 to the ultimate determination in 1774, of forcing the Americans into rebellion, the measures adopted seem to have been calculated to provoke and irritate the Americans. Perhaps this was not the intention of those in power, but it was the result of the different measures at different times adopted; sometimes the Earl of Chatham's opinion prevailed, viz., that the British Parliament had no right to tax the American colonies. At other times the opinion of the interior cabinet prevailed, viz., that the King was humiliated if the right of the British Parliament to tax America was not a.s.serted."[150]

[150] _Reflections, Personal and Political._

If the irritation of the colonists was only partially allayed by the repeal of the Stamp Act, George III was suffering from what he regarded as the humiliation inflicted by Lord Rockingham's conciliatory policy, and no sooner had he dismissed that minister than he endeavoured to persuade the new government to take steps to re-a.s.sert the royal dignity. While Lord Chatham was at the head of affairs, George could do nothing, but when the illness of this Prime Minister prevented his partic.i.p.ation in the management of public business, the King brought pressure to bear upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "The whole body of courtiers drove him [Townshend] onwards," said Burke. "They always talked as if the King stood in a sort of humiliated state until something of the kind should be done [to neutralize the repeal]."[151]

Townshend was an ambitious man and eventually he yielded to these representations, in spite of the known hostility of his absent leader to such measures as were indicated. "I will not use so strong an expression as to say that Townshend was treacherous to this administration," wrote Nicholls, "but he certainly saw that the Earl of Chatham's greatness was on the decline; and that he should most readily increase his own importance by acquiescing in the wishes of the King. He therefore brought forward measures tending to revive the question of the right of the British Parliament to tax the American colonies; but his premature death protects him from being considered as the author of the American War."[152]

[151] _Speech on American Taxation_, 1774.

[152] _Recollections and Reflections._

Untaught by experience, George Grenville, on January 26, 1767, moved in the House of Commons that America, like Ireland, should support an establishment of its own, and in the course of the discussion which followed, Townshend declared himself an advocate of the principle of the Stamp Act. "I know the mode by which a revenue may be drawn from the Americans without giving offence," he stated, to the astonishment and dismay of the cabinet, who had not been taken into his confidence.

George Grenville at once took the opportunity to pin the Chancellor of the Exchequer to his project; and his colleagues then had only the alternative to demand Townshend's resignation or adopt his scheme. They would gladly have had him removed, for, intoxicated by success and royal flatterers, "his behaviour on the whole," as the Duke of Grafton wrote to Chatham, "is such as no cabinet will, I am confident, ever submit to."[153] Unfortunately Chatham was too ill to intervene, and so Townshend prepared his Bill. "No one of the Ministry had authority to advise the dismissal of Mr. Charles Townshend, and nothing less could have stopped the measure," Grafton explained, "Lord Chatham's absence being, in this instance as well as others, much to be lamented."[154]

[153] _Chatham Correspondence._

[154] _Ibid._

On May 13 Townshend introduced a Bill to impose taxes on gla.s.s, paper, pasteboard, white lead, red lead, painters' colours, and tea imported into the American colonies, the proceeds of which would, it was estimated, amount to less than 40,000 a year, and would be devoted to payment of the governors and judges in America. If taxation was permissible without representation, then there was little to be said against the measure. It inflicted no hardship, for, to take one article as an example, even with the threepence a pound tax, the colonists were still able to purchase tea cheaper than it could be obtained in England, where the tax (returnable on exportation) was a shilling a pound.

Further, in regard to the whole measure, it was contended that there was a very distinct difference between a tax on imports and an excise tax.

"An excise the Americans think you have no right to levy within their country," Franklin said, when examined by the House of Commons. "But the sea is yours; you maintain by your fleets the safety of navigation in it, and keep it clear of pirates. You may have, therefore, a natural and equitable right to some toll or duty and merchandise carried through that part of your dominions, towards defraying the expense you are at in the ships to maintain the safety of that carriage."

Parliament had not profited by the lessons of the Stamp Act, and ministers ignored the advice of the colonial Governors that now the colonists had tasted the fruits of their power, it was even more dangerous than before to attempt to impose taxation without representation. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the King was known to have instigated the measure. "The distance of the colonies would make it impossible for them to take an active interest in your affairs if they were as well affected to your government as they once pretended to be to your person. They were ready enough to distinguish between _you_ and your ministers. They complained of an act of the legislature, but traced the origin of it no higher than to the servants of the Crown; they pleased themselves with the hope that their sovereign, if not favourable to their cause, at least was impartial. The decisive, personal part you took against them has effectually banished that first distinction from their minds. They consider you as united with your servants against America."[155]

[155] _Letters of "Junius."_

More clear-sighted than the English was the Duc de Choiseul, who wrote in August, 1867, to Durand, the French Minister in London: "Let England but attempt to establish taxes in her colonies and those countries, greater than England in extent, and perhaps becoming more populous--having fisheries, forests, shipping, corn, iron and the like--will easily and fearlessly separate themselves from the mother-country."[156] The feeling of loyalty in the colonies was still strong, however, and as De Kalb, the secret agent of De Choiseul, wrote to his chief, "There is a hundred times more enthusiasm for the American Revolution in any of our coffee houses of Paris, than in all the thirteen provinces of America united."[157] None the less the subsequent events vindicated the judgment of De Choiseul.

[156] Bancroft: _History of the American Revolution_.

[157] Grahame: _History of the United States_.

The immediate result of Townshend's Act falsified Franklin's opinion.

Instead of the measure being accepted in all good-will, the seizure of John Hanc.o.c.k's sloop _Liberty_ for a breach of the revenue laws resulted in a serious riot in Boston. It is true that the other provinces contented themselves for the moment with indignation meetings; but it became very obvious that everywhere there was a feeling of increased hostility to the motherland. This was sedulously and successfully fanned by De Kalb, who was busily engaged in the endeavour to foment rebellion in the colonies; and it was not long before Ma.s.sachusetts, as usual, took the lead, and, on February 11, 1768, addressed a circular letter to the other a.s.semblies denouncing the new laws as unconst.i.tutional and inviting them to take united measures for their repeal. Otis sounded the note of revolt: "Let Britain rescind her measures, or her authority is lost for ever"; and half the colonists banded themselves together as "Sons of Liberty" and "Daughters of Liberty," and pledged themselves not to use British imports. Pet.i.tions, worded with great moderation, were presented to the King, but the American newspapers contained articles couched in very different language, and colonial orators did not mince their words. "We will submit to no tax, neither will we become slaves.

Before the King and Parliament shall impose upon us, or settle Crown officers independent of the Colonial Legislature, we will take up arms and shed the last drop of our blood."[158]

[158] Bancroft: _History of the American Revolution_.