MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.
Parliament reassembled on the 27th of November. Two days before this, intelligence had arrived of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis—intelligence which had caused great consternation in the British cabinet. His majesty, however, had heard the news with calmness, dignity, and self-command; and his speech from the throne was in the same determined language as at the close of the last session, when the prospects of the nation were radiant with hope. After expressing his concern at the sad reverse, he declared that he could not consent to sacrifice, either to his own desire of peace, or to the temporary ease and relief of his subjects, those essential rights and permanent interests on which the strength and security of this country must ever principally depend. He retained, he said, a firm confidence in the protection of Divine Providence, and a perfect conviction of the justice of his cause; and he called for the concurrence and support of parliament, together with a vigorous, animated, and united exertion of the faculties and resources of the people. In the course of his speech he remarked, that the favourable appearance of our affairs in the East Indies, and of the safe arrival of our numerous commercial fleets, were matters for congratulation: evidently designing these as a kind of set-off for our reverses in the West, and as encouragements to persevere in the struggle.
In the commons, an amendment to the address was moved by Mr. Fox, who declared, “that any one unacquainted with the British constitution, and not knowing that the speech was contrived by a cabinet-council, would pronounce it that of an arbitrary and unfeeling monarch, who, having involved the slaves, his subjects, in a ruinous and unnatural war, to glut his enmity or satiate his revenge, was determined to persevere, in spite of calamity or fate itself.” In the burden of the speech, and the address, opposition had a fine theme for declamation. The mover of the address complained, in strong terms, that certain members were so lost to honour and duty, as to glory in the success of the enemy. Fox replied to this invective in the words which Lord Chatham had used at the commencement of the dispute: he “thanked God that America had resisted the claims of the mother country!” He then continued:—“All the calamities of the nation are ascribed to the wishes, the joy, and the speeches of the opposition. O, miserable and unfortunate ministers! Blind and incapable men!—whose measures are framed with so little foresight, and executed with so little firmness, that they crumble to pieces, and bring ruin on the country merely because a rash, weak, or wicked man in the house of commons makes a speech against them! Retrospective measures are deprecated; but ministers must bear to hear them from the representatives of an abused people. He even trusted that they would hear them at the tribunal of justice, and expiate them on the public scaffold! He would not say they were actually in the pay of France, for he could not prove the fact; but he would venture to say, that they had worked for the aggrandisement of the Grand Monarque more faithfully and successfully than any ministers of his own had ever done.” Fox then reviewed the origin and conduct of the war, ascribing our loss to the undue influence of the crown, and connecting the calamities of the nation with the system of government, and to every one in power, and particularly to Lord Sandwich, as first lord of the admiralty He concluded by saying, that there was no hope of better things until the whole cabinet was changed; and by moving, as an amendment, a clause, binding the house to apply themselves with united hearts, to propose and adjust such counsels as might, in this crisis, excite the efforts, point the arms, and, by a total change of system, command the confidence of all his majesty’s subjects. Mr. Thomas Pitt followed on the same side, reiterating the oft-repeated cry of secret influence, and expressing a hope that ministers would not be displaced till they had brought the nation to such a crisis as must draw down on their heads their just reward! Other members spoke in reproachful terms of the condition of the navy, and were answered by Lord Mulgrave, who proved that their accusations were unjust and unfounded. Lord North replied to Fox, and expressed great indignation at the insinuation, that ministers were in the pay of France. There was no man in the kingdom, he said, that would believe such a monstrous absurdity; and he vindicated their zeal in the service of their country, and ascribed any errors that had been committed to the head rather than to the heart. The American war, he continued, was prosecuted, not with the design of aggrandising the crown at the expense of the constitution, but of preserving, unbroken, that venerable fabric for which our forefathers had bled, and which all Europe envied. He then reminded the house, that the quarrel had been begun by parliament, and not by the king—not under the present ministry, but by that formed out of the ranks of the members of the existing opposition. A disaster had occurred in Virginia, but were we, he asked, on that account to lie down and die? For his own part, he thought, that it should rather animate us to increased exertions: by dejection and despair everything might be lost. As for himself, he declared, that he would not be deterred by menaces of impeachment from striving to preserve the rights and legislative authority of parliament. The war had been unfortunate, but not unjust: it was founded in right, and dictated by necessity. He had always thought so, he added, and if the share he had taken in it should bring him to the scaffold, his opinions would remain unaltered. Burke replied to the premier in a speech of great power. North’s speech, he said, was not only imprudent but audacious. “The war,” he “continued, was not unfortunate, but disgraceful; for the former epithet could only apply to occurrences in which fortune alone was concerned, whereas the present war exhibited neither plan nor foresight. Victory and defeat, in this case, were each equally calamitous, for each instigated us to go on; but the king’s speech was the greatest of all calamities, for it showed the determination of ministers to consummate our ruin.” Burke spoke largely on the “rights” for which it was said that the war was begun, and for which it was continued. He asked, whether we ought to risk everything, and think of no consequences for the sake of a right? Whether ministers did not know that right without might was of little worth? and whether a claim, without the power of enforcing it, was not nugatory in the copyhold of rival states? He compared the reasonings of ministers to a man, who, full of his prerogative of dominion over a few beasts of the field, should assert his right to shear a wolf, because it had wool upon its back, without considering whether he had the power of using the shears, or whether the animal would submit to the operation of shearing. He remarked:—“Are we yet to be told of the rights for which we went to war? Oh, excellent rights! Oh, valuable rights! Valuable you should be, for we have paid dear at parting with you. Oh, valuable rights! that have cost Britain thirteen provinces, four islands, 100,000 men, and more than £70,000,000 of money! Oh, wonderful rights! that have lost to Great Britain her empire on the ocean,—her boasted, grand, and substantial superiority,—which made the world bend before her! Oh, inestimable rights! that have taken from us our rank among nations—our importance abroad, and our happiness at home; that have taken from us our trade, our manufactures, and our commerce; that have reduced us from the most flourishing empire in the world, to be one of the most compact and unenviable powers on the globe! Oh, wonderful rights! that are likely to take from us all that yet remains!” This picture of the nation’s misery, however, was greatly overwrought. England was not yet reduced to the abject state in which Burke would have had the house believe she was in. Her empire on the seas was not yet lost, nor was she shorn of her rank among the nations. Provinces, islands, men, money, and trade had been lost in the struggle, but she was still able to lift up her head among the nations of the earth. Opposition, in truth, in uttering this language, must have felt that it partook of the nature of Oriental hyperbole; and all men could see that it was adopted for party purposes. Fox’s amendment was negatived by two hundred and eighteen against one hundred and twenty-nine.
A similar amendment to that of Fox was moved in the house of lords by the Earl of Shelburne, who decried the whole conduct of the war, imputing its disasters to a want of system, combination, and intelligence; expressed his fears that we might find another Chesapeak at Plymouth, or in the Thames; declaimed against the war with Holland, as a perfidious measure; and asserted, in the language of Chatham, that if the present system were pursued, “his majesty’s crown would soon be not worth his wearing.” The Duke of Richmond, the Marquess of Rockingham, and Lord Camden likewise censured the conduct of ministers: the former ascribing all the faults of government to an interior cabinet. In support of this, Richmond quoted Chatham’s declaration, “that when he entered the king’s closet, he found the ground rotten, and himself duped and deceived.” The measures of government were defended by the lord-chancellor, Lord Stormont, and the Earl of Hillsborough, and the amendment was rejected by seventy-five against thirty-one.
On bringing up the report of the address, the debate was renewed, in the course of which William Pitt delivered a speech which was applauded by both sides of the house. In his speech Pitt protested against the house pledging itself by the address to continue the American war; asserted, that no two members on the treasury-bench agreed in sentiment, or were in heart sincere friends; denied that the war was either just or necessary; spoke with horror of the fate which awaited the American royalists by the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis; and expressed a hope, that if ministers persevered in their present course, they might meet with a fate equally severe. Burke also animadverted in glowing terms on the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis, and the omission of any article which would secure the American loyalists from the vengeance of their countrymen. He remarked:—“It is a horrid spectacle which must meet the eyes of a prince of the blood, (Prince William Duke of Clarence,) who cannot sail along the American coast without beholding the faithful adherents of his father hanging in quarters on every headland.” This was literally true; but the fact is, the headlands of America had been decorated with gibbets from the very commencement of the war, and the surrender of Lord Cornwallis had nothing to do with the matter. As for the fall of Cornwallis, it was not an ignoble one; for his handfull of men could scarcely have been expected to hold out against the united arms of France and America. One member, Mr. Courtenay, in reply, justly observed that his chains were wreathed with laurels; that he was an ornament to his profession; and that he was entitled to the highest dignities that could be conferred upon him by his sovereign. The report was adopted by one hundred and thirty-one against fifty-four.
GEORGE III. 1781-1782