The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860 Part 9

But this freedom was as yet held to be only co-extensive with these islands. And for sixty years more our West India Islands continued to be cultivated by the labor of slaves, some of whom were the offspring of slaves previously employed, though by far the greater part were imported yearly from the western coast of Africa. The supply from that country seemed inexhaustible. The native chiefs in time of war gladly sold their prisoners to the captains of British vessels; in time of peace they sold them their own subjects; and, if at any time these modes of obtaining slaves slackened, the captains would land at night, and, attacking the villages on the coast sweep off the inhabitants on board their ships, and at once set sail with their booty. The sufferings of these unhappy captives in what was called the "middle pa.s.sage"--the pa.s.sage between their native land and the West India Islands--were for a long time unknown or disregarded, till, early in Pitt's first ministry, they attracted the notice of some of our naval officers who were stationed in the West Indies, and who, on their return to England, related the horrors which they had witnessed or heard of--how, between decks too low to admit of a full-grown man standing upright, the wretched victims, chained to the sides of the ships, lay squeezed together in such numbers, though the whole voyage was within the tropics, that, from the overpowering heat and scantiness of food, it was estimated that two-thirds of each cargo died on the pa.s.sage. Most fortunately for the credit of England, the fearful trade was brought under the notice of a young member of Parliament singularly zealous in the cause of humanity and religion, endowed with untiring industry and powerful eloquence, and connected by the closest ties of personal intimacy with Mr. Pitt. To hear of such a system of organized murder, as the British officers described the slave-trade to be, was quite sufficient to induce Mr.

Wilberforce to resolve to devote himself to its suppression. He laid the case in all its horrors before his friend the Prime-minister, a man as ready as himself to grapple with and extinguish all proved abuses; and Pitt at once promised him all the support which he could give. It was no easy task that he had taken on himself. A year or two before, Burke had applied himself to frame some regulations which he hoped might gradually remove the evil; but, little as he was moved by considerations of popularity or daunted by difficulty, he had abandoned the attempt, as one which would meet with a resistance too powerful to be overcome.

Wilberforce was not a bolder man than Burke, but he had no other object to divide his attention, and, therefore, to this one he devoted all his faculties and energies, enlisting supporters in every quarter, seeking even the co-operation of the French government, and opening a correspondence with the French Secretary of State, M. Montmorin, a statesman of great capacity, and, what was far rarer in France, of incorruptible honesty. M. Montmorin, however, though alive to the cruelty of the traffic, was unable to promise him any aid, alleging the fears of the French planters that its abolition "would ruin the French islands. He said that it was one of those subjects upon which the interests of men and their sentiments were so much at variance, that it was difficult to learn what was practicable."[160]

Wilberforce had already found that the English merchants were still less manageable. Pitt had entered so fully into his views, that in 1788 he himself moved and carried a resolution pledging the House of Commons to take the slave-trade into consideration in the next session. And another friend of the cause, Sir W. Dobben, brought in a bill to diminish the horrors of the middle pa.s.sage by proportioning the number of slaves who might be conveyed in one ship to the tonnage of the vessel. But those concerned in the West India trade rose up in arms against even so moderate a measure, and one so clearly demanded by the most ordinary humanity as this. The Liverpool merchants declared that the absence of restrictions on the slave-trade had been the chief cause of the prosperity and opulence of their town, and obtained leave to be heard by counsel against the bill. But Fox united with Pitt on this subject, and the bill was carried. But this was all the practical success which the efforts of the "Abolitionists," as they began to be called, achieved for many years. And even that was not won without extreme difficulty; Lord Chancellor Thurlow opposing it with great vehemence in the House of Lords, as the fruit of a "five days' fit of philanthropy which had just sprung up," and pointing to the conduct of the French government, which, as he a.s.serted, had offered premiums to encourage the trade, as an example that we should do well to follow. It was even said that he had contrived to incline the King himself to the same view; to have persuaded him that the trade was indispensable to the prosperity of our manufacturers, and, in the Chancellor's words, "that it was his royal duty to show some humanity to the whites as well as to the negroes." And more than once, when bills to limit or wholly suppress the trade had been pa.s.sed by the Commons, the same mischievous influence defeated them in the Lords. The last years of Pitt's first administration were too fully occupied with the affairs of Ireland, negotiations with foreign powers, and the great war with France, to enable him to keep pace with his friend's zeal on the subject. But in his second administration, occupied though he was with a recurrence of the same causes, he found time to prepare and issue an Order in Council prohibiting the importation of slaves into our fresh colonial acquisitions, and the employment of British ships to supply the Dutch, French, and Spanish islands.

And this Order in Council paved the way for the total abolition. One of the earliest proceedings of the new ministry was the introduction by the Attorney-general, Sir Arthur Pigott, of a bill to extend and make it perpetual; to forbid "the importation of African negroes by British ships into the colonies conquered by or ceded to us in war; or into the colonies of any neutral state in the West Indies. For at present every state that had colonies in America or the West Indies, and that was not actually at war with us, availed itself of the opportunity of British shipping to carry on the trade." It was resisted as vehemently as any former measure with the same object, and partly on the new ground that it would in no degree stop the trade or diminish the sufferings of the Africans, but would merely rob our ship-owners of their profits to enrich the Americans. Mr. Rose, the member for Christchurch, who advanced this argument, had been a friend of Pitt; yet, though he quoted an instance of a single vessel having buried one hundred and fifty-two slaves on one voyage, he was not ashamed to deprecate the bill, on the plea that "the manufacturers of Manchester, Stockport, and Paisley would be going about naked and starving, and thus, by attending to a supposed claim for relief from a distant quarter, we should give existence to much more severe distress at home." The bill, however, was carried in both Houses, and received the royal a.s.sent. And Fox, who supported it warmly in his speech on the third reading (one of the last speeches which he ever addressed to the House), invited Wilberforce to regard it as a stepping-stone to the total abolition of the trade, and as an encouragement to renew his motion for that object; and, though he could not promise him the support of the government as a government, he "could answer for himself and many of his friends who held the highest and most dignified stations in the other House of Parliament. They still felt the question of the total abolition as one involving the dearest interests of humanity, and as one which, should they be successful in effecting it, would entail more true glory upon their administration, and more honor upon their country, than any other transaction in which they could be engaged."

Mr. Fox did not live to see the opening of another session; but, when that time came, the position which he had taken up, that the measure of which he had thus promoted the pa.s.sing was an encouragement to do more, was adopted to its full extent by the chief of his colleagues, Lord Grenville, who, in February, 1807, himself brought forward a motion for the entire abolition of the trade. Though he was Prime-minister, he could not introduce it as a government measure, since two of his colleagues--Lord Sidmouth, the President of the Council, and Mr.

Windham, the Secretary of State for the Colonies--opposed it; though the former professed a desire to see the trade abolished, but would have preferred to attain that end by imposing such a tax on every slave imported as should render the trade unprofitable. He had another obstacle also to encounter, in the vehement opposition of some of the princes of the royal family, the Dukes of Clarence and Suss.e.x more especially, who were known to be canva.s.sing against the bill, and were generally understood, in so doing, to be acting in accordance with the views of their elder brothers. But he was confident that by this time the feeling of the whole country was with him on the subject. He was resolved to rest his case on its justice, and therefore consented that the House should hear counsel on the subject, though he resisted their demand to be allowed to call witnesses. Accordingly, counsel were heard for the whole body of West India planters, and for those of one or two separate islands, such as Jamaica and Trinidad; for the Liverpool merchants, and even for the trustees of the Liverpool Docks. But some of their reasonings he even turned against themselves, refusing for a moment to admit "that the profits obtained by robbery could be urged as an argument for the continuance of robbery." He denounced the trade as "the most criminal that any country could be engaged in," and as one that led to other crimes in the treatment of the slaves after they reached the West Indies. He instanced "three most horrible and dreadful murders of slaves" that had been committed in Barbadoes, and quoted the report of Lord Seaforth, governor of the island, who, on investigation, had found that by the law of the colony the punishment affixed to such murders was a fine of eleven pounds. He was opposed by the Duke of Clarence, who directed his remarks chiefly to a defence of the general humanity of the planters; and by Lord Westmoreland, who, in a speech of singular intemperance, denounced the principle of the measure, as one after the pa.s.sing of which "no property could be rendered safe which could fall within the power of the Legislature." He even made it an argument against the bill that its principle, if carried to its legitimate logical end, must tend to the abolition of slavery as well as of the slave-trade. He objected especially to the a.s.sertion in the preamble that the trade was "contrary to justice and humanity,"

declaring that those words were only inserted in the hope that by them "foreign powers might be humbugged into a concurrence with the abolition," and wound up his harangue by a declaration that, though he should "see the Presbyterian and the prelate, the Methodist and pew-preacher, the Jacobin and the murderer, unite in support of it, he would still raise his voice against it." It must have been more painful to the minister to be opposed by so distinguished an officer as Lord St.

Vincent, who resisted the bill chiefly on the ground that "its effect would be to transfer British capital to other countries, which would not be disposed to abandon so productive a trade," and declared that he could only account for Lord Grenville's advocacy of it "by supposing that some Obi man had cast his spell upon him." But the case was too strong for any arguments to prevail which were based solely on the profits of a trade which no one pretended to justify. The bill pa.s.sed the Lords by a majority of nearly three to one; in the House of Commons, where the opposition was much feebler, by one infinitely larger;[161]

and, by a somewhat remarkable coincidence, it received the royal a.s.sent on the same day on which Lord Grenville announced to his brother peers that his administration was at an end.

Even before the abolition had thus become law, the member for Northumberland, Earl Percy, endeavored to give practical effect to Lord Westmoreland's view, that emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves was its inevitable corollary, by moving for leave to bring in a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in the British settlements of the West Indies. But he was opposed by Lord Howick,[162] though he had been among the earnest advocates of abolition, partly for the sake of the negroes themselves, and partly on the ground that the Legislature had no "right to interfere with the property of the colonists;" little foreseeing that the measure which he now opposed was reserved for his own administration, and that its accomplishment would be one of its chief t.i.tles to the respectful recollection of posterity. And, as the House was presently counted out, the discussion would not have been worth recording, were it not for the opportunity which it gave of displaying the practical and moderate wisdom of Wilberforce himself, who joined in the opposition to Lord Percy's motion. "The enemies of abolition had," he said, "always confounded abolition with emanc.i.p.ation. He and his friends had always distinguished between them; and not only abstained from proposing emanc.i.p.ation, but were ready to reject it when proposed by others. How much soever he looked forward with anxious expectation to the period when the negroes might with safety be liberated, he knew too well the effect which the long continuance of abject slavery produced upon the human mind to think of their immediate emanc.i.p.ation, a measure which at the present moment would be injurious both to them and to the colonies.

He and those who acted with him were satisfied with having gained an object which was safely attainable."

And they had reason to be satisfied. For the good work thus done was not limited by the extent of the British dominions, vast as they are. The example of the homage thus paid by the Parliament and the nation to justice and humanity was contagious; the principle on which the bill was founded and was carried being such that, for mere shame, foreign countries could hardly persist in maintaining a traffic which those who had derived the greatest profit from it had on such grounds renounced; though our ministers did not trust to their spontaneous sympathies, but made the abolition of the traffic by our various allies, or those who wished to become so, a constant object of diplomatic negotiations, even purchasing the co-operation of some by important concessions, in one instance by the payment of a large sum of money. The conferences and congresses which took place on the re-establishment of peace gave them great facilities for pressing their views on the different governments.

And Lord Liverpool's instructions to Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington, as plenipotentiaries of our government,[163] show the keen interest which he took in the matter, and the skilful manner in which he sought to avail himself of the predominant influence which the exertions and triumphs of this country had given her with every foreign cabinet.

Though Portugal was an ally to whom we regarded ourselves as bound by special ties, as well as by the great benefits we had conferred on her, yet, as she clung with the greatest pertinacity to the trade, he did not scruple to endeavor to put a constraint upon her which should compel her submission, and instructed Lord Castlereagh "to induce the Congress to take the best means in their power to enforce it by the adoption of a law, on the part of the several states, to exclude the colonial produce of those countries who should refuse to comply with this system of abolition."

And exertions so resolutely put forward were so successful, that the trade was avowedly proscribed by every European nation, though unquestionably it was still carried on by stealth by merchants and ship-owners of more than one country--not, if the suspicions of our statesmen were well founded, without some connivance on the part of their governments. Nor were our efforts in the cause the fitful display of impulsive excitement. We have continued them and widened their sphere as occasions have presented themselves, exerting a successful influence even over unchristian and semi-civilized governments, of which an instance has very recently been furnished, in the a.s.surances given by the Khedive of Egypt to our minister residing at his court, that he is taking vigorous measures to suppress the slave-trade, which is still carried on in the interior of Africa; and that we may believe his promise that he will not relax his exertions till it is extinguished, at least in the region on the north of the equator.

Individuals, as a rule, are slow to take warning from the experience of others; slower, perhaps, to follow their example in well-doing. Nations are slower still. When such an example is followed, still more when it is adopted by a general imitation, it will usually be found not only that the good is of a very unusual standard of excellence, but that he or they who have set the example are endowed with a force of character that predisposes others to submit to their influence. And credit of this kind England may fairly claim for the general abolition of the slave-trade; for the condemnation and abolition of the slave-trade had this distinguishing feature, that the idea of such a policy was of exclusively British origin. No nation had ever before conceived the notion that to make a man a slave was a crime. On the contrary, there were not wanting those who, from the recognition of such a condition in the Bible, argued that it was a divine inst.i.tution. And they who denounced it, and labored for its suppression, had not only inveterate prejudice and long custom to contend with, but found arrayed against them many of the strongest pa.s.sions that animate mankind. The natural desire for gain united merchants, ship-owners, and planters in unanimous resistance to a measure calculated to cut off from them one large source of profit. Patriotism, which, however misguided, was sincere and free from all taint of personal covetousness, induced many, who wore wholly unconnected either with commerce or with the West Indies, to look with disfavor on a change which not only imperilled the interests of such important bodies of men, but which they were a.s.sured by those concerned, must render the future cultivation of estates in the West Indies impracticable; while such a result would not only ruin those valuable colonies, but would also extinguish that great nursery for our navy which was furnished by the vessels at present engaged in the West India trade. To disregard such substantial considerations to risk a loss of revenue, a diminution of our colonial greatness, and a weakening of our maritime power, even while engaged in a formidable war, under no other pressure but that of a respect for humanity and justice, was certainly a homage to those virtues, and also an act of self-denying courage, of which the previous history of the world had furnished no similar example; and it is one of which, in one point of view, the nation may be more justly proud than of the achievements of its wisest statesmen, or the exploits of its most invincible warriors. For it was the act of the nation itself. No previous sentiment of the people paved the way for Pitt's triumphs in finance, for Nelson's or Wellington's victories by sea and land; but the slave-trade could never have been abolished by any parliamentary leader, had not the nation as a whole become convinced of its wickedness, and, when once so convinced, resolved to brave everything rather than persist in it. The merit of having impressed it with this conviction belongs to Mr. Wilberforce, whose untiring, unswerving devotion of brilliant eloquence and practical ability to the one holy object, and whose ultimate success, give him a just claim to be reckoned among the great men of a generation than which the world has seen none more prolific of every kind of greatness. But the nation itself is also ent.i.tled to no slight credit for having so rapidly appreciated the force of his teaching, and for having encouraged its representatives to listen to his voice, by the knowledge that by adopting his measures they would be carrying out the wish and determination of the whole people.

A measure for the strengthening of the army, introduced by the Secretary of State for War, Mr. Windham, though not one of perpetual force, since it required to be renewed every year, claims a brief mention, from the extent to which one of its clauses trenched on the freedom of the subject, by making every man of military age (from sixteen years old[164] to forty) liable to be compelled to submit to military training for a certain period of each year. "Nothing," to quote the Secretary's words, "was to exempt any man from the general training but his becoming a volunteer at his own expense, the advantage of which would be that he could train himself if he chose, and fight, if occasion required it, in the corps to which he should belong, instead of being liable to fall in among the regulars.... As out of the immense ma.s.s of the population some selection must be made, those called on to be trained were to be selected by lot, and he would have the people divided into three cla.s.ses, between the ages of sixteen and forty: the first cla.s.s to comprehend all from sixteen to twenty-four; the second, those between twenty-four and thirty-two; and the third, all from thirty-two to forty.

The number of days for training he proposed to limit to twenty-six, with an allowance of a shilling a day for each man." The result aimed at by this part of his measure was the creation of a force different from and unconnected with the militia; and he did not conceal his hope that the military habits which it would implant in a large portion of the population would lead many of those thus about to be trained to enlist in the regular army. To the militia itself he paid a high but not undeserved compliment, declaring it "for home service certainly equal to any part of our regular forces, with the single exception that it had never seen actual service." But the militia could not be called on to serve out of the kingdom; and his object was to increase the force available for foreign service--"to see the great ma.s.s of the population of the country so far trained as to be able to recruit immediately whatever losses the regular army might sustain in action." As yet, the number of men yearly obtained by recruiting fell far short of the requirements of the service. Wellington had not yet begun that career of victory which created a national enthusiasm for war, and filled our ranks with willing soldiers. And another clause of the same bill was framed in the hope of making the service more acceptable to the peasantry, by limiting the time for which recruits were to be enlisted, and entering men, at first, in the infantry for seven years, or in the cavalry (as that branch of the service required a longer apprenticeship) for ten; then allowing them the option of renewing their engagement for two periods--in the infantry of seven years each, in the cavalry of six and five, with increased pay during each of the two periods, and a small pension for life, if the soldier retired after the second period; and "the full allowance of Chelsea," which was to be farther raised to a shilling a day, for those who elected to serve the whole twenty-one years. This principle the present reign has seen carried to a much greater extent, but the change is too recent for even the most experienced officers to be agreed on its effects. And it is only because of this recent extension of it that this clause is mentioned here. But the enactment of a law of compulsory service was clearly an inroad on the great const.i.tutional right of every man to choose his own employment. At the same time, it is equally clear that it was only such an inroad as under the circ.u.mstances, was fully justifiable. It is true that all danger of French invasion had pa.s.sed away with Trafalgar; but the kingdom was still engaged in a gigantic war, and the necessity of the case--always the supreme law--was so little denied by the Opposition, that their objections to the bill were directed entirely against the clause for limited enlistment, and not against that which abridged the subject's liberty, by compelling him to learn to serve his country in war.

The reign of George III., which had now lasted fifty years, was drawing practically to a close. The excitement caused by the ministerial changes in 1801 had already brought on one relapse, though fortunately a very brief one, of the King's malady of 1788; and in the autumn of 1810 the death of the daughter who was supposed to be his especial favorite, the Princess Amelia, produced a recurrence of it, which, though at first the physicians entertained more sanguine hopes of his speedy recovery than on any former occasion, he never shook off. More than one change of ministry had recently taken place. In 1807 Lord Grenville had been compelled, as Pitt had been in 1801, to choose between yielding his opinions on the Catholic question or resigning his office, and had chosen the latter alternative. He had been succeeded for two years by the Duke of Portland; but in 1809 that n.o.bleman had also retired, and had been succeeded by his Attorney-general, Mr. Perceval, the only practising barrister who had ever been so promoted. And he now being Prime-minister, and, as such, forced to make arrangements for carrying on the government during the illness of his sovereign, naturally regarded the course pursued in 1789 as the precedent to be followed.

Accordingly, on the 20th of December he proposed for the adoption of the House of Commons the same resolutions which Pitt had carried twenty-two years before--that the King was prevented by indisposition from attending to public business; that it was the duty of Parliament to provide means for supplying the defect of the personal exercise of the royal authority, and its duty also to determine the mode in which the royal a.s.sent to the measures necessary could be signified. And he also followed Pitt's example in expressing by letter to the Prince of Wales his conviction that his Royal Highness was a person most proper to be appointed Regent, and explaining at the same time the restrictions which seemed proper to be imposed on his immediate exercise of the complete sovereign authority; though the advanced age at which the King had now arrived made it reasonable that those restrictions should now be limited to a single year. The Prince, on his part, showed that time had in no degree abated his repugnance to those restrictions, and he answered the minister's letter by referring him to that which he had addressed to Pitt on the same subject in 1788. And he induced all his brothers to address to Perceval a formal protest against "the establishment of a restricted Regency," which they proceeded to describe as perfectly unconst.i.tutional, as being contrary to and subversive of the principles which seated their family upon the throne of this realm.[165]

Perceval, however, with Pitt's example before him, had no doubt of the course which it was his duty to pursue; and the Opposition also, for the most part, followed the tactics of 1789; the line of argument now adopted by each party being so nearly identical with that employed on the former occasion, that it is needless to recapitulate the topics on which the different speakers insisted; though it is worth remarking that Lord Holland, who, as the nephew of Fox, thought it inc.u.mbent on him to follow his uncle's guidance, did on one point practically depart from it. As his uncle had done, he denied the right of the Houses to impose any restrictions on the Prince's exercise of the royal authority; but, at the same time, he consented to put what may be called a moral limitation on that exercise, by adding to an amendment which he proposed to the resolution proposed by the minister an expression of "the farther opinion of the House that it will be expedient to abstain from the exercise of all such powers as the immediate exigencies of the state shall not call into action, until Parliament shall have pa.s.sed a bill or bills for the future care of his Majesty's royal person during his Majesty's present indisposition."

It is remarkable that the leaders of the Opposition were in a great degree stimulated in the line they took by the very same hopes which had animated Fox and his followers in 1789--the expectation that the Regent's first act would be to discard the existing ministry, and to place them in office. But again they were disappointed in their antic.i.p.ations, of the realization of which they had made so sure that they had taken no pains to keep them secret. They even betrayed their mortification to the world when the Prince's intentions on the subject of the administration became known by the violence of their language in Parliament, some of their party denouncing the employment of the Great Seal to give the royal a.s.sent to the bill as "fraud and forgery." Nor, indeed, could the Regent himself, even while expressing his intention to make no change in the administration, lest "any act of his might in the smallest degree have the effect of interfering with the progress of his sovereign's recovery," suppress an expression of dissatisfaction at the recent arrangements, which he considered had placed him in "a situation of unexampled embarra.s.sment," and had created "a state of affairs ill calculated, as he feared, to sustain the interests of the United Kingdom in this awful and perilous crisis, and most difficult to be reconciled to the general principles of the British const.i.tution."[166] There were at this time general and apparently well-founded hopes of the King's recovery. For at intervals during the whole of January the Prime-minister had interviews with his Majesty; and, on the very day on which the bill became law, the King himself mentioned it to Lord Eldon, the Chancellor, and said that he acquiesced in it from perfect confidence in the advice of his physicians, and on the sound judgment and personal attachment of his ministers.

For the present, therefore, no change was made in the administration; but when, in the spring of the following year, Mr. Perceval was murdered, the necessity for a new arrangement which this strange and calamitous atrocity forced upon the Regent--who by this time had come into possession of his full authority--led to his making offers of the conduct of affairs to more than one prominent statesman, all of them, as is somewhat remarkable, being peers. And, though the proposals eventually came to nothing, and the negotiations terminated in the re-establishment of the former ministry, with Lord Liverpool at its head, yet some of the causes to which their failure was publicly or generally attributed seem desirable to be recorded, because the first, and that most openly avowed, bears a not very distant resemblance to the complication which baffled Sir Robert Peel's endeavors to form an administration in 1839; and another corresponds precisely to a proposal which, in 1827, the Regent--then King George IV.--did himself make to the Duke of Wellington. It is unnecessary to dwell on the singular manner in which the Regent first professed to give his confidence to Lord Wellesley, then transferred it to Lord Moira,[167] and then to a certain extent included Lord Grey and Lord Grenville in it. Nor would it be profitable to discuss the correctness or incorrectness of the suspicion expressed by Mr. Moore, in his "Life of Sheridan"--who was evidently at this time as fully in the Regent's confidence as any one else--that "at the bottom of all these evolutions of negotiation there was anything but a sincere wish, that the object to which they related should be accomplished."[168] The reason avowed by Lord Grey and Lord Grenville for refusing a share in the projected administration was the refusal of Lord Moira, who had been employed by the Prince to treat with them on the subject, to allow them to make a power of removing the officers at present filling "the great offices of the household"[169] an express condition of their acceptance of ministerial office. They affirmed that a "liberty to make new appointments" to these offices had usually been given on every change of administration. But Lord Moira, while admitting that "the Prince had laid no restriction on him in that respect," declared that "it would be impossible for him to concur in making the exercise of this power positive and indispensable in the formation of the administration, because he should deem it on public grounds peculiarly objectionable." Such an answer certainly gives a great color to Moore's suspicion, since it is hardly possible to conceive that Lord Moira took on himself the responsibility of giving it without a previous knowledge that it would be approved by his royal master. In a const.i.tutional point of view, there can, it will probably be felt, be no doubt that the two lords had a right to the liberty they required. And the very men concerned, the great officers of the household, were evidently of the same opinion, since the chief, Lord Yarmouth, informed Sheridan that they intended to resign, in order that he might communicate that intention to Lord Grey; and Sheridan, who concealed the intelligence from Lord Grey, can hardly be supposed, any more than Lord Moira, to have acted in a manner which he did not expect to be agreeable to the Prince. But, in Canning's opinion, this question of the household was only the ostensible pretext, and not the real cause, of those two lords rejecting the Regent's offers; the real cause being, as he believed, that the Prince himself had already named Lord Wellesley as Prime-minister, and that they were resolved to insist on the right of the Whig party to dictate on that point to the Regent,[170]

just as, in 1782, Fox had endeavored to force the Duke of Portland on the King, when his Majesty preferred Lord Shelburne. As has been intimated in a former page, it will be seen hereafter that in 1839 a similar claim to be allowed to remove some of the ladies of the royal household, and the rejection of that claim by the sovereign, prevented Sir R. Peel from forming an administration. And, as that transaction was discussed at some length in Parliament, it will afford a better opportunity for examining the principle on which the claim and practice (for of the practice there is no doubt) rest. For the present it is sufficient to point out the resemblance between the cases.

But it is remarkable that, unwarrantable as the pretension of the Whig leaders was to dictate to the Regent to whom he should confide the lead of the government (if, indeed, Canning be correct in his opinion), yet it was not one to which the Regent felt any repugnance, since, in 1827, when Lord Liverpool's illness again left the Treasury vacant, he, being then on the throne as George IV., proposed to the Duke of Wellington to desire the remaining members of the administration themselves to select a chief under whom they would be willing to continue in his service; but the Duke told him that the plan of allowing them to choose their own leader would be most derogatory to his position; that the choice of the Prime-minister was an act which ought to be entirely his own, for that, in fact under the British const.i.tution, it was the only personal act of government which the King of Great Britain had to perform.[171] Though not generally a great authority on const.i.tutional points, we apprehend that the Duke was clearly correct in this view, which, indeed, has been so invariably carried out in practice, that the King's suggestion would not have deserved mention had it not been a king's. So far from it belonging to any individual subject or to any party to name the Prime-minister, to do so is even beyond the province of the Parliament.

Parliament decides whether it will give its confidence to an administration of one party or the other; but not only has no vote ever been given on the question whether one member of the dominant party be fitter or not than another to be its head, but we do not remember a single instance of any member of either House expressing an opinion on the subject in his place in Parliament. To do so would be felt by every member of experience to be an infringement on the prerogative of his sovereign; and it may be added that a contrary practice would certainly open the door to intrigue, or, what would be equally bad, a suspicion of intrigue, and would thus inevitably diminish the weight which even the Opposition desire to see a Prime-minister possess both in Parliament and in the country.

Notes:

[Footnote 148: It is somewhat remarkable that Lord Macaulay, in his endeavors to estimate the population in 1685, takes no notice of any of these details mentioned by Mr. Abbott.]

[Footnote 149: The details of this census of 1801 are given in a note in the preceding chapter (see page 185), from which it appears that the entire population of the United Kingdom was in that year 16,395,870. Sir A. Alison, in different chapters of the second part of his "History of Europe," gives returns of subsequent censuses, from the last of which (c. lvi., s. 34, note), it appears that in 1851 the population amounted to 27,511,862. an increase of 11,116,792 in half a century.]

[Footnote 150: "Lives of the Chief-justices," by Lord Campbell, iii., 87, life of Lord Kenyon.]

[Footnote 151: "What is this," said George III. to Mr. Dundas, "which this young lord (Castlereagh) has brought over, which they are going to throw at my head? The most Jacobinical thing I ever heard of! I shall reckon any man my personal enemy who proposes any such measure."--_Life of Pitt_, iii., 274.]

[Footnote 152: "Lives of the Chancellors," c. clx.x.xiv., life of Lord Erskine.]

[Footnote 153: "Lives of the Chancellors," c. clix., life of Lord Thurlow.]

[Footnote 154: See "Memoires de M. de Metternich," ii., 156.]

[Footnote 155: "Lives of the Chief-justices," iii., 175.]

[Footnote 156: Lord Stanhope, "History of England," i., 133.]

[Footnote 157: "Lives of the Chief-justices," ii., 451. He is quoting H.

Walpole.]

[Footnote 158: Ibid., iii., 187.]

[Footnote 159: Campbell's "Lives of the Chief-justices," II., 139, life of Chief-justice Holt; and p. 418, life of Lord Mansfield.]

[Footnote 160: "Life of Wilberforce," i., 158.]

[Footnote 161: The division in the Lords was 100 to 36; in the Commons, 283 to 16.]

[Footnote 162: Afterward the Earl Grey of 1831.]

[Footnote 163: See especially his "Letters to Lord Castlereagh," p. 814; and "Life of Lord Liverpool," i., 512; ii., 35, 49, 127.]

[Footnote 164: Lord Colchester's "Diary," ii., 49, dated April 3, 1806, says eighteen years. But Mr. Windham's speech, as reported in the "Parliamentary History," second series, vi., 685, says sixteen years; and as he divides the ages into three cla.s.ses, the two latter of which, from twenty-four to thirty-two, and from thirty-two to forty, are of eight years each, it is probable that the younger cla.s.s was of the same duration, i.e., from sixteen to twenty-four.]

[Footnote 165: Lord Colchester's "Diary," ii., 300.]

[Footnote 166: See "Diary of Lord Colchester" (Speaker at the time), c.

x.x.xvi., p. 316. He gives the whole of the Prince's letter to Perceval (which had been composed by Sheridan), and of Perceval's reply. The Regency Bill became law February 5, 1811.]

[Footnote 167: A letter of Lord Wellesley to Lord Grey, June 4 (given by Pearce, "Life of Lord Wellesley," iii., 270), shows that Lord Moira had been in communication with Lord Grey and Lord Grenville before Lord Wellesley had given up the idea of forming a ministry. And though Lord Grey in his reply (p. 272) expresses his conviction that Lord Moira's letter was not "an authorized communication," but only "a private communication," it is clear that it could not have been written without the privity of the Regent.]

[Footnote 168: "Life of Sheridan," ii., 425.]

[Footnote 169: Pearce's "Life of Lord Wellesley," iii., 276. All the letters which pa.s.sed between Lord Grey, Lord Grenville, Lord Moira, and Lord Wellesley himself are given at full length by Mr. Pearce in that chapter.]

[Footnote 170: Stapleton's "George Canning and his Times," p. 202.]

[Footnote 171: Mr. Stapleton affirms that his Royal Highness actually did adopt this plan on this occasion: "His Royal Highness adopted the unprecedented course of commanding his servants to elect the First-minister. Their choice fell on Lord Liverpool."--_George Canning and his Times_, p. 208. Mr. Stapleton, however, gives no authority for this a.s.sertion, and he was probably mistaken, since Lord Liverpool's papers afford no corroboration of it, but rather tend to disprove it.]

CHAPTER VII.

The Toleration Act.--Impropriety of making Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation (or any other Important Matter) an Open Question.--Joint Responsibility of all the Ministers.--Detention of Napoleon at St. Helena.--Question whether the Regent could Give Evidence in a Court of Law in a Civil Action.--Agitation for Reform.--Public Meetings.--The Manchester Meeting.--The Seditious Meetings Prevention Bill.--Lord Sidmouth's Six Acts.