FOOTNOTES:
[220] Lord Egmont had written some pamphlets against the Pelhams.
[221] It was written by the Author of these Memoirs.
[222] Lord Ravensworth at first, as is mentioned, [p. 266], thought that Fawcett’s observation on Dr. Johnson’s promotion, had been in relation to the Bishopric; but on recollection and discussion, it appeared to have related to the intention of making him Preceptor to the Prince of Wales.
[223] Lord Harcourt.
[224] The Dean of Durham (Dr. Cowper) and the others were literally detained privately in separate rooms for several hours; yet Murray, one of the accused, as it appeared, had evidently tampered with Fawcett the accuser, and seen him at his own house; so had Dr. Johnson.
[225] Bishop of Norwich and Lord Harcourt.
[226] In the late King’s reign, on the difference between his Majesty and the Prince.
[227] He had been one of the Masters of Westminster School.
[228] The Duke of Marlborough and the Archbishop.
[CHAPTER XI.]
Seizure of Dr. Archibald Cameron, an emissary of the Pretender—The King of France and his Mistresses—The famous Marriage Bill—Charles Townshend and Henry Conway—Debates on the Marriage Bill in the House of Commons—Ralph the Author—Debates on the Marriage Bill in the Lords—Dissensions caused by it—The Duke of Newcastle’s Conversations with Mr. Fox—Execution of Dr. Cameron—Continuation of the troubles in Ireland—Seats in Parliament offered to Government—The Jew Bill—Death of Mr. Pelham.
About this time was taken in Scotland, Dr. Archibald Cameron, a man excepted by the Act of Indemnity. Intelligence had been received some time before of his intended journey to Britain, with a commission from Prussia to offer arms to the disaffected Highlanders, at the same time that ships were hiring in the north to transport men. The fairness of Dr. Cameron’s character, compared with the severity he met from a Government, most laudably mild to its enemies, confirmed this report. That Prussia, who opened its inhospitable arms to every British Rebel, should have tampered in such a business was by no means improbable. That King hated his uncle—but could a Protestant Potentate dip in designs for restoring a Popish Government?—of what religion is policy? to what sect is royal revenge bigoted? The Queen-dowager, though sister of our King, was avowedly a Jacobite, by principle so—and it was natural: what Prince but the single one who profits by the principle can ever think it allowable to overturn sacred hereditary right? It is the cause of sovereigns that their crimes should be unpunishable. Two sloops were stationed to watch; yet Cameron landed; and was taken with difficulty: an officer and ten men pursued him: they divided—yet wherever they turned, they found children posted, who ran swiftly and screamed to give notice. At last they overtook a boy who had hurt his foot; and by him were directed to a house in a wood; yet the Doctor was gone; but, on the wood being surrounded, was taken.
By the very loyal, consequences equally threatening were feared from a new amour of the King of France, who had taken a mistress of Irish extraction, the daughter of a shoemaker, formerly a life-guardsman: her name, Murphy, and of signal beauty. Madame Pompadour was a friend to peace and England. This deviation in the Monarch’s constancy was, however, of transitory duration. With scarce complaisance, with no affection, he had for many years confined himself to his homely, elderly, unattractive queen. All the intrigues of a gallant Court, or of interested factions, had not been able to undermine his conjugal regularity, for it was no more. Accident threw him into the arms of Madame de Mailly, a sensible woman, a fine figure, but very plain; he demanded not beauty, and became as regular as with the Queen. To engage him more, that is, to govern him, Madame de Mailly associated to their suppers her sister, Madame de Vintimille, a woman of great wit, but exceedingly ill-proportioned with beauty—a great oversight in an ugly woman, who had dispossessed an ugly one. The coadjutrix soon displaced her introductress; but died in labour; of poison, as the state of intrigues would of course suppose. The Monarch hankered about the same family, and took a third sister, who was gloriously beautiful, and whom he created Duchesse de Chateauroux. In the triumph of her concubinage, the King fell ill at Metz. Fitz-James, Bishop of Soissons, attacked a frightened piety, which was natural, and only subdued by constitution. The mistress was not only discarded, but publicly affronted, the Monarch permitting it; and the Queen, who was sent for, made a foolish triumphal entry to thank the Lord for the recovery of the King’s soul and body—but as soon as the latter was re-established, the Queen was sent to her prayers, the Bishop to his diocese, and the Duchess was recalled—but died suddenly. Though a jealous sister may be supposed to dispatch a rival, can one believe that Bishops and Confessors poison?
Madame Pompadour, the wife of a Fermier General, succeeded: grace, beauty, address, art, ambition, all met in that charming woman. She governed him more than he had ever been governed but by Cardinal Fleury: she engaged in all politics, she gave life and agreeableness to all; she amassed vast treasures herself, she was the cause of squandering vast treasures, in varying scenes of pleasure to divert the gloom of a temper which was verging nearer to the age of devotion. The Clergy hated her, for she countenanced the Parliament; the people imputed oppressions to her; the Dauphin, who was a bigot, and who loved his mother, affected to shock her: yet the King, who was the best father in the world, bore with great mildness so unpleasant an attack on royal and parental authority.
The session of Parliament was languishing towards a conclusion, when a Bill sent down from the Lords to the Commons, and which had passed almost without notice through the former House, having been carried by an hundred Lords against the Duke of Bedford and eleven others, raised, or gave occasion to raise, extraordinary heats. This was the famous Marriage Bill; an Act of such notoriety, and on which so very much was said at the time, and on which so much has been written since, that it would be almost impossible, at least very wearisome, to particularize the Debates, and very unnecessary to enter much into the state of the question. Some of the most particular passages, such as tend to illustrate or explain the characters, the politics, and the factions of the time, I shall, according to my custom, succinctly touch.
The Bill had been originally moved by my Lord Bath, who, attending a Scotch cause, was struck with the hardship of a matrimonial case, in which a man, after a marriage of thirty years, was claimed by another woman on a pre-contract. The Judges were ordered to frame a Bill that should remedy so cruel a retrospect. They did; but drew it so ill, and it was three times printed so inaccurately, that the Chancellor was obliged to give it ample correction. Whether from mere partiality to an ordinance thus become his own, or whether in shaping a law, new views of power opened to a mind fond of power, fond of dictating; so it was, that the Chancellor gave all his attention to a statute into which he had breathed the very spirit of aristocracy and insolent nobility. It was amazing, in a country where liberty gives choice, where trade and money confer equality, and where facility of marriage had always been supposed to produce populousness,—it was amazing to see a law promulged, that cramped inclination, that discountenanced matrimony, and that seemed to annex as sacred privileges to birth, as could be devised in the proudest, poorest little Italian principality; and as if the artificer had been a Teutonic Margrave, not a little lawyer, who had raised himself by his industry from the very lees of the people; and who had matched his own blood with the great house of Kent!
The abuse of pre-contracts had occasioned the demand of a remedy—the physician immediately prescribed medicines for every ailment to which the ceremony of marriage was or could be supposed liable! Publication of banns was already an established ordinance, but totally in disuse except amongst the inferior people, who did not blush to obey the law. Persons of Quality, who proclaimed every other step of their conjugation by the most public parade, were ashamed to have the intention of it notified, and were constantly married by special licence. Unsuitable matches in a country where the passions are not impetuous, and where it is neither easy nor customary to tyrannize the inclinations of children, were by no means frequent: the most disproportioned alliances, those contracted by age, by dowagers, were without the scope of this Bill. Yet the new Act set out with a falsehood, declaiming against clandestine marriages, as if they had been a frequent evil.
The greatest abuse were the temporary weddings clapped up in the Fleet, and by one Keith,[229] who had constructed a very Bishopric for revenue in Mayfair, by performing that charitable function for a trifling sum, which the poor successors of the Apostles are seldom humble enough to perform out of duty. The new Bill enjoined indispensable publication of banns, yet took away their validity, if parents, nay, if even guardians, signified their dissent, where the parties should be under age—a very novel power!—but guardians are a limb of Chancery! The Archbishop’s licence was indeed reserved to him. A more arbitrary spirit was still behind: persons solemnizing marriages, without these previous steps, were sentenced to transportation, and the marriage was to be effectually null—so close did congenial law clip the wings of the prostrate priesthood! And as if such rigour did not sufficiently describe its fountain and its destination, it was expressly specified, that where a mother or a guardian should be non compos, resort might be had to the Chancellor himself for licence. Contracts and pre-contracts, other flowers of ecclesiastic prerogative, were to be totally invalid, and their obligations abolished: and the gentle institution was wound up with the penalty of death for all forgeries in breach of this statute of modern Draco. Quakers, Jews, and the Royal Family had the only toleration.
May 14th.—The Bill came down to the Commons. Nugent took it to pieces severely and sensibly, pointed out the impropriety of it in a commercial nation, and the ill-nature and partiality of the restrictions. He showed himself a great master of political disquisitions, and it seemed that a desire of displaying that learning was the sole cause of any opposition to the Bill. This was all that passed material the first day, and the Bill was read on a majority of 116 to 55.
21st.—A second adversary appeared against the Bill. This was Charles Townshend, second son of my Lord Townshend, a young man of unbounded ambition, of exceeding application, and, as it now appeared, of abilities capable of satisfying that ambition, and of not wanting that application: yet to such parts and such industry he was fond of associating all the little arts and falsehoods that always depreciate, though so often thought necessary by, a genius. He had been an early favourite of Lord Halifax, and had already distinguished himself on affairs of trade, and in drawing plans and papers for that province; but not rising in proportion to his ambition, he comforted himself with employing as many stratagems as had ever been imputed to the most successful statesmen.
His figure was tall and advantageous, his action vehement, his voice loud, his laugh louder. He had art enough to disguise anything but his vanity. He spoke long and with much wit, and drew a picture, with much humour at least, if not with much humility, of himself and of his own situation, as the younger son of a capricious father, who had already debarred him from an advantageous match: “were new shackles to be forged to keep young men of abilities from mounting to a level with their elder brothers?” Nugent had not shone with more parts the preceding day; Nugent on no day discovered less modesty. What will be their fates I know not; but this Mr. Townshend and Mr. Conway seemed marked by nature for leaders, perhaps for rivals in the Government of their country. The quickness of genius is eminently with the first, and a superiority of application; the propriety and amiableness of character with the latter. One grasps at fortune, the other only seems pleased to accept fortune when it advances to him. The one foresees himself equal to everything, the other finds himself so whenever he essays. Charles Townshend seems to have no passion but ambition; Harry Conway not even to have that. The one is impetuous and unsteady; the other, cool and determined. Conway is indolent, but can be assiduous; Charles Townshend can only be indefatigable. The latter would govern mankind for his own sake; the former, for theirs.
The speeches hitherto had only been flourishes in the air: at last the real enemy came forth, Mr. Fox; who neither spared the Bill nor the author of it, as wherever he laid his finger, it was not wont to be light. He was supported by Fazakerley and Sir William Yonge. Mr. Pelham, the Attorney and Solicitor, Lord Hilsborough, Hampden, and Lord Egmont, supported the Bill, and it was carried that day by 165 to 84.
On the 23rd and 25th, the House sat late each day on the Bill, Mr. Fox attacking and Mr. Pelham defending with eager peevishness. The former repeated his censures on the Chancellor, which old Horace Walpole reproved; Nugent was absurd; and the measure growing ministerial, the numbers against the Bill diminished.
28th.—The Committee sat till half an hour past three in the morning, on the clause for annulling marriages that should be contracted contrary to the inhibitions in the Bill. The Churchmen acquiesced in the Legislature’s assuming this power in spirituals, as they had done in the single case of the young King’s marriage in the Regency Bill: but however commendable the moderation of the Clergy might be, the Pontific power arrogated by the head of the Law, and his obstinate persisting to enforce a statute, by no means calculated or called for by general utility, was most indecent. The Speaker argued with great weight against the clause; Wilbraham, well for it. Mr. Fox, at one in the morning, spoke against it for above an hour, and laid open the chicanery and jargon of the Lawyers, the pride of their Mufti, and the arbitrary manner of enforcing the Bill. A motion for adjournment was moved, but was rejected by above 80 to 40 odd.
30th.—The Committee went upon the clause that gave unheard-of power, in the first resort to parents and guardians, and then to the Chancery, on the marriages of minors. Fox spoke with increasing spirit against this clause too; and on Wilbraham’s having said, if you have a sore leg, will you not try gentle remedies first? he drew a most severe picture of the Chancellor, under the application of the story of a Gentlewoman at Salisbury, who, having a sore leg, sent for a Country Surgeon, who pronounced it must be cut off. The Gentlewoman, unwilling to submit to the operation, sent for another, more merciful, who said he could save her leg, without the least operation. The Surgeons conferred: the ignorant one said, “I know it might be saved, but I have given my opinion; my character depends upon it, and we must carry it through”—the leg was cut off. Charles Yorke, the Chancellor’s son, took this up with great anger, and yet with preciseness, beginning with these words, “It is new in Parliament, it is new in politics, it is new in ambition;” and drew a lofty character of his father, and of the height to which he had raised himself by his merit; concluding with telling Fox, how imprudent it was to attack such authority, and assuring him that he would feel it. Mr. Fox replied with repeating the sententious words: “Is it new in Parliament to be conscientious? I hope not! Is it new in politics? I am afraid it is! Is it new in ambition? It certainly is, to attack such authority!” Mr. Pelham answered him well. Mr. Fox once more replied, urging how cruel and absurd it was to force the Bill down: that he knew he should not be heard by above one-third of the House, but would speak so loud that he would be heard out of the House. That from the beginning to the end of the Bill, one only view had predominated, that of pride and aristocracy. There was much of truth in this. At the very beginning, on the Duke of Newcastle’s declining to vote in the Bill, the Chancellor told Mr. Pelham, “I will be supported in this, or I never will speak for you again.” As the Opposition had at that time been inconsiderable, this breathed a little more than a mere spirit of obstinacy, and foretold a Bill to be framed not without an interested meaning: at least a legislator is uncommonly zealous for the public good, who forgets the philosophy of his character to drive on his honest ordinances by political menaces!
The next day the Committee finished without a division. Sir Richard Lloyd, a Lawyer, who had spoken against the Bill, voted for it afterwards, without assigning any reason for his change of opinion. Captain Saunders, who had said that he would go and vote against the Bill, for the sake of the sailors, having once given forty of his crew leave to go on shore for an hour, and all returned married, was compelled by Lord Anson, the Chancellor’s son-in-law and his patron, to vote for it. Henley and the Solicitor-General declaring of the same words, the one, that they could not be made clearer; the other, that they were as clear as the sun at noonday, though each gave a totally different interpretation of them, were well ridiculed by Fox; as a serious speech of Lord Egmont was with much humour and not a little indecency by Nugent.
June 1.—The report was made of the Bill, and the House sat till ten. On one clause only there was a division of 102 to 20.
2d.—A new anti-ministerial Paper appeared, called the Protester, supported at the expense of the Duke of Bedford and Beckford, and written by Ralph, a dull author, originally a poet, and satirized in the Dunciad: retained, after his pen had been rejected by Sir Robert Walpole, by Doddington and Waller; but much fitter to range the obscure ideas of the latter, than to dress up the wit of the former: from them, he devolved to the Prince of Wales in his second opposition, and laboured long in a paper called the Remembrancer, which was more than once emboldened above the undertaker’s pitch, by Lord Egmont and others. Ralph’s own turn seemed to be endeavouring to raise mobs by speculative ideas of government; from whence his judgment at least may be calculated. But he had the good fortune to be bought off from his last Journal, the Protester, for the only Paper that he did not write in it.
4th.—The Marriage Bill was read for the last time. Charles Townshend again opposed it with as much argument as before with wit. Mr. Fox, with still more wit, ridiculed it for an hour and a half. Notwithstanding the Chancellor’s obstinacy in maintaining it, and the care he had bestowed upon it, it was still so incorrect and so rigorous, that its very body-guards had been forced to make or to submit to many amendments: these were inserted in Mr. Fox’s copy in red ink: the Solicitor-General, who sat near him as he was speaking, said, “How bloody it looks!” Fox took this up with spirit, and said, “Yes, but you cannot say I did it; look what a rent the learned Casca made, (this alluded to the Attorney,) through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed!” (Mr. Pelham)—however, he finished with earnest declarations of not having designed to abuse the Chancellor, and with affirming that it was scandalous to pass the Bill—but it was passed by 125 votes to 56.
6th.—The Bill being returned to the Lords, the amendments were read. The Duke of Bedford, who began to attack the whole Bill, was obstructed by the Chancellor, who would have confined him to the mere amendments; but the Duke, appealing to the House whether he might not argue against the face of the whole Bill as it now stood, the Chancellor seemed to acquiesce; but the Duke, not finding any disposition to support him, soon dropped the cause; objecting chiefly to the last clause on not extending the act to Foreign Countries. The Chancellor replied, that he was sorry the clause was there; but the Bill was too good to be lost, and might have much good engrafted on it hereafter.[230] Lord Sandys declared that he would agree to all the amendments made by the House of Commons, against any that should be offered by any body else. An absurd declaration, founded on the design of proroguing the Parliament on the morrow, which would leave no time for returning the Bill to the Commons; and a plain indication of the indigested manner in which a law of such importance was hurried on. On its being urged that several women could not write, the Bishop of Oxford, with a sophistry that would have distinguished him in any church, replied that the Clergyman might write to himself, and give it to the woman, and she to him again, for that the Bill did not say, that when she gave her consent in writing, it must be of her own writing! Lord Bath said, the opposition had proceeded from faction and party. The Duke of Bedford replied, that his opposition had arisen from conscience, that he had not troubled himself about what the House of Commons did; yet he had perceived that the Bill had been crammed down both Houses.
At last the Chancellor—not, as he has been represented,[231] in the figure of Public Wisdom speaking, but with all the acrimony of wounded pride, of detected ambition, and insolent authority. He read his speech; not that he had written it to guard himself from indecency; or that he had feared to forget his thread of argument in the heat of personality: he did not deign an argument, he did not attempt to defend a Bill so criticized. He seemed only to have methodized his malice, and noted down the passages where he was to resent, where to threaten. He introduced himself with just allowing conscience and candour to the Duke of Bedford; but what he had to complain of had passed without those walls, and in another place. That, as to the young man, (Charles Townshend,) youth and parts require beauty and riches, flesh and blood inspire such thoughts, and therefore he excused him—but men of riper years and graver had opposed; that the first, (the Speaker,) was a good, well-meaning man, but had been abused by words—that another, (Fox,) dark, gloomy, and insidious genius, who was an engine of personality and faction, had been making connexions, and trying to form a party, but his designs had been seen through and defeated. That in this country you must govern by force or by law; it was easy to know that person’s principles, which were to govern by arbitrary force. That the King speaks through the Seals, and is represented by the Chancellor and the Judges in the Courts where the Majesty of the King resides; that such attacks on the Chancellor and the Law was flying in the face of the King: that this behaviour was not liked: that it had been taken up with dignity,[232] and that the incendiary had been properly reproved; that this was not the way to popularity or favour; and that he could take upon him to say, that person knows so by this time; a beam of light had broken in upon him; but, concluded he, I despise his scurrility, as much as his adulation and retraction. This Philippic over, the Bill passed. Lord Granville, who had threatened to oppose it, did not attend.
The prorogation of the Parliament prevented any farther open war. Mr. Fox seemed wantonly and unnecessarily to have insulted the Chancellor, and had even manifested some fear at having done so. Indeed, he who had always been rash and resolute, now first discovered some symptoms of irresolution; and the time advanced but too fast, when the provocation offered to Yorke, and the suspicion of his want of a determined spirit, were of essential detriment to him. He could not but feel the Chancellor’s haughty scorn of the atonement he had offered; yet, though he let slip both sentences of resentment and indications of an ambition that began to aspire higher, he soon yielded to a silent pacification. Mr. Pelham affected to be rather ignorant of the heights to which the rupture had openly been carried; and on the King’s being told, that Mr. Fox’s behaviour had been concerted with the Duke of Bedford, Mr. Pelham protested to Fox, that he had assured the King that the latter, on some proposal of union about elections from that Duke, had refused any such connexion while he should remain in the King’s service. For the storm between Fox and the Chancellor, Mr. Pelham said it would blow over, “Yet neither of you,” said he to the former, “will forgive.” Mr. Fox, in return, who gave no credit to this affected candour, reproached him in strong terms with the Chancellor’s (and by necessary implication, with the Duke of Newcastle’s) treachery to Sir Robert Walpole.
The Duke’s conversation on this occasion with Mr. Fox was remarkable. “The Chancellor meaned me,” said he, “by arbitrary force.” Mr. Fox thought not. “Why,” said the Duke, “do you think that he imagines you would govern by an Army without me?” “Sir,” said Fox, “how will the King act on what has happened?” “The King,” replied the Duke, “would part with you, or even with me, to satisfy them: but if you can maintain yourself for six months, he will like you the better for what has passed, for he thinks you a man, and he knows none of the rest have the spirit of a mouse.” Mr. Fox said, “If they turn me out, I shall not acquit Mr. Pelham, nor shall I spare him. Let him raise up Murray; Mr. Pelham knows he has betrayed him, but is willing to forget it. I know he fears me still more; he has often told me I was like Mr. Pulteney. It may be vanity, but if I am stronger than Murray, I am ten times stronger than Mr. Pelham.” “Mr. Pelham,” replied the Duke, “has neither candour, honour, nor sincerity. Fox, how do you think I have been entertaining myself this morning? It was poor pleasure, but I had no better. The Duke of Newcastle asked me how I would have the warrant for Cranborn[233] drawn. I thanked him, but heard Mr. Pelham was uneasy that I had not thanked him; so to-day I met them together, and thanked the Duke of Newcastle again, and only asked t’other when he went to Esher.” The Duke concluded with advising Fox to speak to the King, and not let him brood on it: “He will talk on the Bill,” said the Duke: “let him; and you, who could not be convinced in the House, be convinced by him.”
The King was civil to Fox at his next levee: afterwards in his closet Mr. Fox beginning to say, “Sir, last Wednesday the Chancellor”—the King interrupted, “Oh! sir, I believe you had given him cause; it is now pretty even.” Mr. Fox said, “Sir, I shall only beg to be heard as to there being any faction or intrigue in my behaviour: I give you my honour it is not true.” “The moment you give me your honour,” replied the King, “I believe you; but I must tell you, as I am no liar, that you have been much suspected.” He then repeated to him accusations of such low caballing, of balls given at Holland House to the Duchess of Bedford, to which Mr. Pelham’s daughters had not been invited, of persons who were disagreeable to the Pelhams being invited; in short, accusations of such feminine and peevish trifles, that if Mr. Pelham was not the whisperer of them, and the Chancellor was, the latter had certainly very tender sensations, when they could extend themselves to the dancing disgusts of his friend’s wife and daughters! Mr. Fox answered these cursorily, disclaimed any political connexions with the Bedfords, and repeated with emphasis, “Such intrigues, Sir, would be worse in me, while in your service, than in any man living, as nobody blamed such intrigues in those who undermined Sir Robert Walpole so much as I.” This dialogue ended so well, that Mr. Fox asked for a little place for one of his dependents, and obtained it.
7th.—Dr. Archibald Cameron suffered death at Tyburn. He had been forced into the Rebellion by his brother Lochiel, whom he had tried to confine, to prevent his engaging in it: not that Lochiel had taken arms voluntarily: he was a man of great parts, but could not resist the desperate honour which he thought the Pretender did him, in throwing himself into his arms, and demanding his sword and interest.[234] The Doctor, who was a man of learning and very valuable humanity, which he had displayed in endeavours to civilize that part of a barbarous country, and in offices of benevolence to the soldiers employed on the Highland roads, and to the mine-adventurers established at Strontean, was torn from these sweet duties, from his profession, from a beloved and large family, and attended his rash brother at Prestonpans and Falkirk, escaped with him, and was appointed physician to Lochiel’s regiment in the French service. He ventured back, was taken as mentioned above, and underwent a forced death with as much composure as a philosopher could affect at dying a natural one.
During the course of the summer the troubles in Ireland increased. Lord Kildare returned thither towards the end of June, after having presented a Memorial to the King against the administration of the Duke of Dorset, and the ascendant of the Primate. Nothing could be worse drawn: he was too weak to compose better, and too obstinate to submit to any correction. No facts were alleged against the Lord Lieutenant, nor any crime pretended in the Primate but that he was a Churchman. Yet these no accusations, he told the King he would return to prove whenever he should be required, and would answer that the Irish House of Commons would stand by him. He had no experience; nor knew that many men will say with party heat what they will not support with party steadiness. Lord Holderness, by the King’s command, wrote to the Chancellor of Ireland, telling him, that the King had sent the Duke of Dorset to govern them, because he had pleased them so much formerly, and because he had the good of Ireland so much at heart: that his Majesty wondered at any man taking upon himself to answer for a nation; and that he expected that all who loved him would support the Lord Lieutenant: that his Majesty permitted this letter to be communicated to Lord Kildare, to anybody. Thus the absurdity of the Memorial was balanced by the haughtiness of the mandate. Lord Kildare had transfused into a State Manifesto the most licentious topics of party libels: the English Ministers adopted, in the King’s answer, the most exalted diction of French prerogative.
Whatever might be the temper in Ireland, the increasing servility in England encouraged such a spirit in the Court. Mr. Pelham, who went to Scarborough this summer for his health, received the extravagant and unprecedented compliment of being desired to recommend a member to that borough, which happened to be vacant. The people of Bristol proceeded so far as to offer the same nomination to the King himself on this occasion: riots had happened there on the erection of new turnpikes; a citizen knocked down one of the rioters, and another stabbed him. The jury brought it in wilful murder in the first. The Attorney-General moved in the King’s Bench to reverse the judgment. This so pleased both parties in that city (the condemned person being a chief Tory), that they acknowledged it by this offer, so repugnant to all ideas of freedom of elections. What followed was only ridiculous. The King recommended Nugent: the Bristol men begged to be excused, as Nugent had been the principal promoter[235] of the Bill for a General Naturalization.
Some little time before the Irish Parliament met, the Speaker’s friends gave out, that the Primate had made acknowledgments to him of his concern for the confusion that was likely to follow, that he would meddle no more with the House of Commons, but would give all his interest and influence there to the Speaker: that the latter had replied, the Primate had such underhand ways, and had deceived him so often, that he could not trust him; and for his influence he despised it. All this passed by the intervention of Luke Gardiner, who, on the Primate’s party denying it, being called on, avowed the message. However, as it was decent for the Speaker to act candour and contrition too, he went to the Duke of Dorset, and told him, that he had got a majority in the House of Commons, and that they were determined to omit in the Address to the King the usual thanks for sending his Grace; and that if his Grace would acquiesce in that omission, they would make the rest of the session easy to him. The Duke, as hardhearted as the Speaker had been to the Primate, would by no means give his own consent to being stigmatized. An hour before he went to open the Parliament, the Speaker returned and acquainted him that he had prevailed on his friends to suffer the usual Address—and it was made.
The English Parliament, which opened on the 15th of November, was employed till the end of the year in an affair which showed how much the age, enlightened as it is called, was still enslaved to the grossest and most vulgar prejudices. The year before an Act had passed for naturalizing Jews. It had passed almost without observation, Sir John Barnard and Lord Egmont having merely given a languid opposition to it, in order to reingratiate themselves with the mobs of London and Westminster. The Bishops had honestly concurred in removing such absurd distinctions, as stigmatized and shackled a body of the most loyal, commercial, and wealthy subjects of the kingdom. A new general election was approaching; some obscure men, who perhaps wanted the necessary sums for purchasing seats, or the topics of party to raise clamour, had fastened on this Jew Bill; and in a few months the whole nation found itself inflamed with a Christian zeal, which was thought happily extinguished with the ashes of Queen Anne and Sacheverel. Indeed, this holy spirit seized none but the populace and the very lowest of the Clergy: yet all these grew suddenly so zealous for the honour of the prophecies that foretell calamity and eternal dispersion to the Jews, that they seemed to fear lest the completion of them should be defeated by Act of Parliament: and there wanted nothing to their ardour but to petition both Houses to enact the accomplishment. The little Curates preached against the Bishops for deserting the interests of the Gospel; and Aldermen grew drunk at county clubs in the cause of Jesus Christ, as they had used to do for the sake of King James. Yet to this senseless clamour did the Ministry give way; and to secure tranquillity to their elections, submitted to repeal the Bill.
It is worth while to recapitulate some instances of the capriciousness of the times. An inglorious peace had been made, and the first hostages imposed that ever this country gave: not a murmur followed. The Regency Bill, with the tremendous clause of præmunire, had been passed without occasioning a pamphlet. The Marriage Bill, that bane of society, that golden grate that separates the nobility from the plebeians, had not excited a complaint from the latter. A trifling Bill, that opened some inconsiderable advantages to a corps of men, with whom we live, traffic, converse, could alarm the whole nation—it did more: a cabal of Ministers, who had insulted their master with impunity, who had betrayed every ally and party with success, and who had crammed down every Bill that was calculated for their own power, yielded to transitory noise, and submitted to fight under the banners of prophecy, in order to carry a few more members in another Parliament.
I shall be very brief on the Debates that attended this repeal; the topic was foolish, the chief speakers not considerable, the events not memorable.
On the very day the Houses met, the Duke of Newcastle moved to repeal the Bill, which, he said, had only been a point of political policy. The Bishop of Oxford undertook the apology of his Bench, and (though in a manner too ironic) defended them well, for having given way to a Bill, which they had considered only in a political light, had never much liked, and were glad to have repealed, to quiet the minds of good people. Drummond of St. Asaph, sensibly and in a more manly style, urged that the Bishops could not have opposed the Bill without indulging a spirit of persecution, abhorrent from the spirit of the Gospel. Lord Temple, with his accustomed warmth, opposed the repeal, grew zealous for the honour of a Ministry which he wanted to censure, and protested against the Legislature listening to clamour, which was less intended to serve the Protestant Religion, than to wound the Protestant Succession. Loved he did the Liberty of the Press, yet thought the abuse in the Daily Papers ought to be noticed. He had never listened to popular clamour, nor always thought that the voice of the people was the voice of God. That the approaching general election had given foundation to this uproar, and therefore should not have wondered at a repeal being consented to by the other House, but for the Lords to consent, would be subscribing to the accusation. Lord Temple was still more violent on the second reading; pronounced the clamour disaffection clothed in superstition, and a detestable high-church spirit: trembled lest the Plantation Act should be repealed; trembled lest fires should be rekindled in Smithfield to burn Jews; shuddered at our exceeding the heinous days of Charles the Second, who, though he oppressed Presbyterians, encouraged Jews. That to give way to this spirit, would invite persecution against the Presbyterians. For him, he acted on the principles on which he had been bred, had lived, and would die. The Chancellor replied to him with temper, and defended the measure of a free government giving way. That the longer Bills of Naturalization existed, the more difficult they grow to repeal, as they have been hanging out invitation to Foreigners to accept the advantages of them: was earnest against any thought of repealing the Plantation Act, which had subsisted thirteen years, and allows seven years for settling: that as Jews are chiefly concerned in remittances, it would undo our colonies to repeal Bills made in favour of that people.
On the 21st, the Duke of Bedford said he had been against the Bill, and was now against the repeal, which was an effect of the imbecility of the Administration. Lord Temple again spoke against it, and well. Lord Granville with humour turned the whole into ridicule; said he remembered many religious Bills in which religion had nothing to do; they were made or repealed from clamour. When the Schism Bill passed, Lord Harcourt, then not Chancellor was for it; afterwards against it, and then pleaded, that it was only a Bill to make school-mistresses take the Sacrament three times a year, and what was that to Government? The Uniformity Bill was rejected after being carried so high by party, that it was not regarded whether a man was for peace or for war, but whether he was for or against that Bill. That it had been afterwards brought in by the Whigs to gain a single Lord, Lord Nottingham; that when it was objected that a persecuting Bill was surely paying dear for one man, a grave Whig Lord replied, “It is true; but let our friends be persecuted sometimes, or they will not think they want us.” That undictated by religion as those Bills were, or the clamour against them, they breathed the very essence of it, compared to this Jew Bill, which, with its clamour, was the nothingness of a nothing. Lord Temple commended the Bench, but feared there might be Toryism lurking in some corner of it; and then painted the Bishop of London, who, he said, he had heard, was disposed to a repeal even of the Plantation Act. He would not suffer Jews even in that diocese[236] of his—he did not know whether he ought strictly to call it his diocese: the Plantations were subjected to his Lordship’s pastoral jurisdiction; but perhaps he had not taken out his patent; it might cost fourscore or an hundred pounds! He talked again of disaffection, and said he had been raking into the London Evening Post, that Augæan stable of filth and calumny—thus was Lord Temple at once a zealous Whig, and scandalized at libels! Whigs have not generally disliked libels, nor had he, but it was when he was less Whig. The Bishop of Oxford answered for his brother of London, and denied that he was averse to the Plantation Act. The Chancellor said, that the only imbecility of the Administration was in tolerating such libels; that the liberty of the Press could not give liberty to print what a man may not write; that what a man could not justify to do, he could not justify to print; that he thought the libels on this Bill ought to be prosecuted; that the Lords and Commons might trust themselves with looking into the licence of the Press.
22d.—On the third reading of the Bill, Lord Temple made a very bad obscure speech; tried to answer Lord Granville; tried to encourage the Tories to continue the clamour; tried to excuse his invective on the Bishop of London; but succeeded in none of those points, and the repeal passed.
In Ireland, the new parties from personalities turned to matters of government. A Bill had been prepared to enable them to dispose of an overplus of the Revenue for the benefit of the kingdom; and it was specified in the preamble that it was with the King’s consent. The Opposition refused to admit this preamble: the Castle were afraid to proceed to a division, and suppressed the preamble, but sent over the Bill, depending on the English Ministry not suffering such a diminution of the prerogative. The next day, on a trifling question about some words relating to Neville Jones, the Castle stood a division, and had a majority, though but of three votes. As the parties were so equally balanced, the animosities did not flag, but proceeded to great extremities, both in the English manner of abuse, and in the Irish of duels.
27th.—Lord Temple, after having mysteriously summoned the Lords to an affair, as he told them, of great importance, moved to have the Judges asked, if Jews could purchase land, and whether it would legally descend to their children. The Chancellor, Lord Cholmondeley, Lord Granville, and the Duke of Argyle opposing the Motion, and nobody supporting it, Lord Temple gave it up.
The same day the repeal was agitated in the other House; Northey proposed to have the words in the preamble, have taken occasion to raise clamour, altered to have raised clamour. He was seconded by Prowse, Lord Egmont, and Admiral Vernon. On the other side Nugent, Sir W. Yonge, Sir Richard Lloyd, Mr. Pelham, old Horace Walpole, and Mr. Pitt, who was just come abroad again after a year of sullen illness, defended the words and the repeal, and it passed by a majority of 150 to 60.
28th.—Letters came from Ireland with an account of the first Parliamentary victory obtained there by the Opposition over the Court. Neville Jones had been voted guilty of abuse in his office[237] by 124 to 116. The strangers in the gallery of the House huzzaed; the city was crowded by the triumphant mob. Lord Kildare, the popular hero, was an hour passing to his own house at eleven at night.
Dec. 4th.—A call of the House being appointed, Lord Harley and Sir James Dashwood moved for a repeal of the Plantation Act. Martin, the West Indian, opposed the Motion in a speech of wit. He said, this Act had been made thirteen years ago; had occasioned no clamour then, nor since. Foreigners would begin to think that there was no combustible matter left in England but these poor miserable Jews. One hundred and eighty-five have taken the benefit of the Act. He had been so idle, he said, as to read all the pamphlets and papers on the late Act, and must pronounce that no subject ever occasioned the spilling so much nonsense. That America can only be peopled by Foreigners, unless you would drain your own country, over and above those valuable colonists, the transported.
Sir Roger Newdigate spoke for the last moved repeal. Nugent ridiculed it, and said, that if once the principle was admitted, there would be no stopping. Why have 130 Jews been naturalized in Jamaica, and none in Barbadoes? because three parts of the former are desert, and no part of the latter. Would you drive them out of the desert? Spanish Jews are the most proper, because they can best support the climate. That noble pirate, the Knight of Malta, says, Make perpetual war with perpetual enemies: so says the Inquisition—imitate them—and you will only lose your Mediterranean trade. Then break with those who league with the enemies of your religion, as Spain does with Denmark[238]—but no; you have done what you meaned to do; stop here: a Christian knows no perpetual enmity. The most prosperous, happy man here has the best chance for the next world. They who made this clamour, now smile with us; if we gave way, would laugh at us.
Sir John Barnard made a short, bad speech, and went away. Mr. Pelham said, to repeal the Plantation Act would be to tell the people, We will repeal this law, not because it has, but because it ought to have made you uneasy. But it would be too serious to pay such attention even to clamour: who part with their wealth, part with their strength. Such a repeal would revive the principle of the Church, which has had such pernicious effects—but no encouragement must be given to that spirit, though it has been laboured by some who can only figure in a hot contest, and who can thunder out their ecclesiastic anathemas, but have nothing to say when they come to preach on morality. Pitt carried this still further; and though he did not act like, yet he affected to speak with the same spirit of Whiggism as his friend, Lord Temple. He had not expected, he said, that this would be the first return to Parliament for their condescension in repealing the late act. Here the stand must be made, or venit summa dies! we should have a Church spirit revived. He believed the late clamour was only a little election art, which was given way to genteelly; that the other Bill was not a toleration of, but a preference given to, Jews over other sects. That his maxim was, never to do more for the Church than it now enjoys: that now you would except the Jews in the opposite extreme. It is the Jew to-day, it would be the Presbyterian to-morrow: we should be sure to have a septennial Church clamour. That we are not now to be influenced by old laws enacted before the Reformation: our ancestors would have said, “A Lollard has no right to inherit lands.” But we do not fear indulging Jews; they will never be great purchasers of land; they love money, and trade with it to better advantage. This silly effort of old prejudices was baffled by 208 to 88. Not that even eighty-eight men were actuated by such monkish principles; some were obliged to espouse them to secure their approaching elections.
The heats in Ireland increased with the success of the Opposition. The Speaker was adored by the mob; they worshipped him under the name of Roger. They made bonfires of reproach before the door of the Primate: they stopped coaches, and made them declare for England or Ireland. The Hackney Chairmen distinguished their patriotism by refusing to carry any fare to the Castle. A Dr. Andrews of the Castle-faction, reproaching a Mr. Lambert at the door of the House of Commons, with forfeiting a promise of bringing him into Parliament, and proceeding to a challenge, Lambert said, “I will first go into the House, and vote against that rascal Neville Jones.” Dr. Andrews repeating the insult, Lambert went in and complained, and Andrews was ordered into custody; Carter, Master of the Rolls, saying, “What, would that man force himself into a seat here! and for what? only to prostitute his vote to a man,[239] the known enemy of this country! I need not name him, you all know whom I mean.” Malone’s brother, a rising young man, on Lord George’s imputing the prosecution of Neville Jones to the rage of party, said, “He did not believe there subsisted any such thing; but if there did, it was more laudable than threats, bribes, and promises, which that Noble Lord had used to procure a majority.” The accusation was not groundless; Sir James Hamilton, a very indigent member, refused an offer from the Castle of 2000l. and 200l. per annum for life. Satires and claret were successful arms even against corruption! The Money Bill was sent back from England, with the preamble re-instated, but was rejected in Ireland by a majority of five.