1757.
Sine cæde et sanguine Pauci.—Juv.
[CHAPTER IX.]
Character of the times in the year 1757—Contest in France between the Parliament and the Clergy—King of France stabbed—Damiens the criminal—His torture and execution—Trial of Admiral Byng—His sentence, and behaviour of the Court-Martial—Remarks on his case—Two Highland Regiments raised—Ordnance estimates—Guinea Lottery—Militia Bill.
A century had now passed since reason had begun to attain that ascendant in the affairs of the world, to conduct which it had been granted to man six thousand years ago. If religions and governments were still domineered by prejudices, if creeds that contradict logic, or tyrannies that enslave multitudes to the caprice of one, were not yet exploded, novel absurdities at least were not broached; or if propagated, produced neither persecutors nor martyrs. Methodism made fools, but they did not arrive to be saints; and the histories of past ages describing massacres and murders, public executions of violence, and the more private though not less horrid arts of poison and daggers, began to be regarded almost as romances. Cæsar Borgia seemed little less fabulous than Orlando; and whimsical tenures of manors were not more in disuse, than sanguinary methods of preserving or acquiring empires. No Prime Ministers perished on a scaffold, no heretics in the flames; a Russian[73] Princess spared her competitor; even in Turkey the bow-string had been relaxed—alas! frenzy revived in France the credibility of assassination; guilt renewed in England machinations of scarce a whiter dye.
The contests between the Parliament and the clergy about the Bull unigenitus were still carried on in France. The conduct of the former was such a happy composition of good sense and temper, that they neither deserted their duty under oppression, nor sought to inflame the populace to support them against their oppressors. Even the Clergy were blessed with more moderation than is usual in such contentions; and, what was as lucky, had no able heads to direct them. The Court of Rome, instead of profiting of these divisions, had used its influence to compose them. Benedict the Fourteenth then sat in the Apostolic Chair; a man in whom were united all the amiable qualities of a Prince and a Pastor: he had too much sense to govern the Church by words, too much goodness to rule his dominions by force. Amid the pomp of Popery he laughed at form, and by the mildness of his virtue made fanaticism, of whatever sect, odious. Yet this venerable Pontiff, now sinking under the weight of fourscore years, was at last surprised into, or perhaps never knew that his name was used in, issuing a Bull to enforce, under pain of damnation, the acceptance of the Bull unigenitus. Louis the Fifteenth was persuaded to use that most solemn act of their government, a Bed of Justice, to compel the Parliament to register the Papal Ordinance. The greater part of the members preferred resigning their employments. The King had taken this step in one of those relapses into weakness which his constitution furnished, rather than a want of understanding. The Dauphin was a far more uniform bigot. It is related of him, that about a year before this period, reading the life of Nero, he said, “Ma foi, c’étoit le plus grand scélérat du monde! il ne lui manquoit que d’être Janseniste.” And he had even gone so far as to tell his father, “that were he King, and the Pope should bid him lay down his Crown, he would obey.” The King, with a tender shrewdness, said, “and if he should bid you take mine from me, would you?”
The King not being constant in such steady obedience to the Clergy, they had much aspersed him, and traduced his life and Government. The partizans of the Parliament loved him as little; and when he passed through Paris to hold his Bed of Justice, he was received with sullen coldness. One woman alone crying, Vive le Roi! was thrown down and trampled to death by the mob. In such a disposition, it was almost extraordinary that no fanatic was found to lift the arm of violence; a madman supplied the part, without inviting Heaven to an association of murder.
January 5th.—Between five and six in the evening the King was getting into his coach to go to Trianon. A man, who had lurked about the colonnades for two days, pushed up to the coach, jostled the Dauphin, and stabbed the King under the right arm with a long knife; but the King having two thick coats, the blade did not penetrate deep. The King was surprised, but thinking the man had only pushed against him, said, “Le coquin m’a donné un furieux coup de poing”—but putting his hand to his side and feeling blood, he said, “Il m’a blessé; qu’on le saississe, et qu’on ne lui fasse point de mal.” The King was carried to bed; the wound proved neither mortal nor dangerous; but strong impressions, and not easily to be eradicated, must have been made on a mind gloomy and superstitious. The title of Well-beloved could but faintly balance the ideas of Henry the Third stabbed, of Henry the Fourth stabbed, of enraged Jesuits, and an actual wound. Yet all the satisfaction that the most minute investigation of circumstances could give, and that tortures could wrest from the assassin, was obtained.
Damiens, the criminal, appeared clearly to be mad. He had been footman to several persons, had fled for a robbery, had returned to Paris from a dark and restless habit of mind; and from some preposterous avidity of horrid fame, and from one of those wonderful contradictions of the human mind, a man aspired to renown that had descended to theft. Yet in this dreadful complication of guilt and frenzy, there was room for compassion. The unfortunate wretch was sensible of the predominance of his black temperament; and the very morning of the assassination, asked for a surgeon to let him blood; and to the last gasp of being, persisted that he should not have committed his crime, if he had been blooded. What the miserable man suffered is not to be described. When first seized, and carried into the Guard-chamber, the Garde-des-sceaux and the Duc d’Ayen ordered the tongs to be heated, and pieces of flesh torn from his legs, to make him declare his accomplices. The industrious art used to preserve his life was not less than the refinement of torture by which they meaned to take it away. The inventions to form the bed on which he lay, (as the wounds on his leg prevented his standing,) that his health might in no shape be affected, equalled what a refining tyrant would have sought to indulge his own luxury.
When carried to his dungeon, Damiens was wrapped up in mattresses, lest despair might tempt him to dash his brains out—but his madness was no longer precipitate. He even sported, horridly sported, with indicating variety of innocent persons as his accomplices; and sometimes, more harmlessly, with playing the fool with his Judges. In no instance he sunk either under terror or anguish. The very morning on which he was to endure “the question,” when told of it, he said with the coolest intrepidity, “La journée sera rude”—after it, insisted on wine with his water, saying, “Il faut ici de la force.” And at the accomplishment of his tragedy, studied and prolonged on the precedent of Ravaillac’s, he supported all with unrelaxed firmness; and even unremitted torture of four hours, which succeeded to his being two hours and a half under the question, forced from him but some momentary yells—a lamentable spectacle; and perhaps a blameable one. Too severe pains cannot be used to eradicate the infernal crime of holy assassination; but what punishments can prevent madness? Would not one rather stifle under a feather bed, than draw out on the rack a being infected with a frenzy of guilt and heroism?
King George ordered Mr. Pitt to send a compliment on the French King’s escape, which was conveyed by the Spanish Minister, and was handsomely received and answered.
The year opened in England in the same temper with which the last had closed. Pitt was much confined; when he appeared at Council, was haughty and visionary; so much, that after one of their meetings, Lord Granville said, “Pitt used to call me madman, but I never was half so mad as he is.” Legge had little power, and was unsatisfied. The Duke of Devonshire preserved what he called candour; that is, he listened with complaisance to Pitt’s secrets, and to be impartial, repeated them to Fox. The Duke of Bedford accepted Ireland; the Primate was come over to feel what would be the future temper of that Government; and threw himself into great court to the new Lord Lieutenant and his friends. Lord George Sackville, to promote those views, seemed to incline to Fox, and took every opportunity of showing how useful or troublesome he could be.
In the mean time the trial of Admiral Byng proceeded, having begun at the conclusion of the preceding year. At the same time had been held a novel sort of Court of Justice. The Generals Legonier, Huske, and Cholmondeley, had been appointed by the King to examine the conduct of Lord Effingham, and the Colonels Stewart and Cornwallis, who having been sent to join their regiments at Minorca, gave their opinions with General Fowke at Gibraltar against granting to Admiral Byng the force which he had been ordered to take from thence. This inquiry was private, and a kind of trial whether there ought to be a trial. The inquisitors made a favourable report, and the officers in question were admitted to Court as usual.
Before the conclusion of the more solemn trial at Portsmouth, an incident happened of an indecent kind, and served, as perhaps was intended, to renew unfavourable sentiments of the Admiral. Among numbers whose curiosity led them to attend the trial, were the Scotch Earl of Morton and Lord Willoughby of Parham, both men of very fair characters; the latter attached to Lord Hardwicke. Both assiduously attended the examination of the witnesses against the Admiral; both returned to London without hearing one word of his defence; and as they forbore to speak their opinions, the mystery of their silence, which could not be interpreted propitiously, and the seeming candour, in men of reputation, of not being willing to condemn, carried double condemnation. Yet as Mr. Byng proceeded on his defence, these omens dispersed; and before the examination of his witnesses was finished, the tide of report promised him an honourable acquittal. On the 20th of January the trial was closed; and nine days intervening between that and the sentence, and many whispers getting wind of great altercations in the Court-Martial, no doubt was entertained but that the contest lay between an entire absolution, and the struggles of some, who wished to censure, when it was impossible to condemn.
Before sentence was pronounced, an express was dispatched to the Admiralty at London, to demand, whether the Court Martial were at liberty to mitigate an Article of War on which they had doubts. They were answered in the negative. It was the twelfth of the Articles of War on which they had scruples. It was formerly left to the discretion of the Court to inflict death or whatever punishment they thought proper, on neglect of duty; but about three years before this period the Articles had been new modelled; and to strike the greater terror into the officers of the Fleet, who had been thought too remiss, the softer alternative had been omitted. From the most favourable construction (for the members of the Court) of the present case, it was plain that the Court Martial, who had demanded whether the law would not authorize them to mitigate the rigour of the article, thought the Admiral by no means deserved to be included in its utmost severity. This they must have thought—they could not mean to inquire whether they might mitigate what they did not desire to mitigate.
How the more moderate members of the Court obtained the acquiescence of their brethren to this demand is surprising, for Admiral Boscawen, who had the guard of the prisoner at Portsmouth, and who was not one of the Judges, but a Lord of the Admiralty, seems by the event to have understood to a prophetic certainty the constitution of the Court. Dining at Sir Edward Montagu’s before the trial, and it being disputed what the issue of it would be, Boscawen said bluntly, “Well, say what you will, we shall have a majority, and he will be condemned.” This the Duchess of Manchester[74] repeated to Mrs. Osborn,[75] and offered to depose in the most solemn manner.
Accordingly, January 29th, Mr. Byng was summoned to hear his sentence. He went with that increase of animated tranquillity which a man must feel who sees a period to his sufferings, and the rays of truth and justice bursting in at last upon his innocence. His Judges were so aware of the grounds he had for this presumption, that they did permit a momentary notice to be given him, that the sentence was unfavourable. A friend was ordered to prepare him—and felt too much of the friend to give the hint sufficient edge; but by too tenderly blunting the stroke, contributed to illustrate the honour and firmness of the Admiral’s mind. He started, and cried, “Why, they have not put a slur on me, have they?” fearing they had censured him for cowardice. The bitterness of the sentence being explained, and being satisfied that his courage was not stigmatized, his countenance resumed its serenity, and he directly went with the utmost composure to hear the law pronounced. For a moment he had been alarmed with shame; death, exchanged for that, was the next good to an acquittal.
I have spoken of Admiral Byng, not only as of a man who thought himself innocent, but as of one marked for sacrifice by a set of Ministers, who meant to divert on him the vengeance of a betrayed and enraged nation. I have spoken, and shall speak of him as of a man most unjustly and wickedly put to death; and as this was the moment from which my opinion sprung, however lamentably confirmed by the event, it is necessary in my own vindication to say a few words, lest prejudice against the persecutors, or for the persecuted, should be suspected of having influenced my narrative. I can appeal to God that I never spoke to Mr. Byng in my life, nor had the most distant acquaintance with any one of his family. The man I never saw but in the street, or in the House of Commons, and there I thought his carriage haughty and disgusting. From report, I had formed a mean opinion of his understanding; and from the clamours of the world, I was carried away with the multitude in believing he had not done his duty; and in thinking his behaviour under his circumstances weak and arrogant. I never interested myself enough about him to inquire whether this opinion was well or ill founded. When his pamphlet appeared, I read it, and found he had been cruelly and scandalously treated. I knew enough not to wonder at this conduct in some of his persecutors—yet it concerned not me; and I thought no more about it till the sentence, and the behaviour of his Judges which accompanied it, struck me with astonishment! I could not conceive, how men could acquit honourably and condemn to death with the same breath! How men could feel so much, and be so insensible at the same instant; and from the prejudice of education which had told me that the law of England understood that its ministers of Justice should always be Counsel for the prisoner, I could not comprehend how the members of the Court-Martial came to think that a small corner of a law ought to preponderate for rigour, against a whole body of the same law which they understood directed them to mercy; and I was still more startled to hear men urge that their consciences were bound by an oath, which their consciences told them would lead them to murder. Lest this should be thought a declamatory paraphrase, I will insert both the sentence and the letter of the Court-Martial; and will appeal to impartial posterity, whether I have exaggerated, whether it was necessary for me, or whether it was possible for me to exaggerate, the horrid absurdity of this proceeding. Supplements indeed there were made to it!
“At a Court-Martial, assembled on board his Majesty’s ship St. George, in Portsmouth harbour, upon the 28th of December, 1756, and held everyday afterwards (Sundays excepted), till the 27th of January inclusive—
| Present, | ||
| Thomas Smith, Esq., Vice-Admiral of the Red, President; | ||
| Francis Holburne, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the Red; | ||
| Harry Norris, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the White; | ||
| Thomas Brodrick, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the Blue; | ||
| Captains, | Charles Holmes, | Francis Geary, |
| William Boys, | John Moore, | |
| John Simcoe, | James Douglas, | |
| John Bentley, | Hon. Augustus Keppel. | |
| Peter Denis, | ||
The Court, pursuant to an order from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to Vice-Admiral Smith, dated December 14, 1756, proceeded to inquire into the conduct of the Hon. John Byng, Admiral of the Blue squadron of his Majesty’s Fleet, and to try him upon a charge, that during the engagement between his Majesty’s Fleet, under his command, and the Fleet of the French King, on the 20th of May last, he did withdraw or keep back, and did not do his utmost to take, seize, and destroy, the ships of the French King, which it was his duty to have engaged, and to assist such of his Majesty’s ships as were engaged in fight with the French ships, which it was his duty to have assisted; and for that he did not do his utmost to relieve St. Philip’s Castle, in his Majesty’s island of Minorca, then besieged by the forces of the French King, but acted contrary to, and in breach of, his Majesty’s command; and having heard the evidence and the prisoner’s defence, and very maturely and thoroughly considered the same, they are unanimously of opinion, that he did not do his utmost to relieve St. Philip’s Castle, and also that during the engagement between his Majesty’s Fleet under his command and the Fleet of the French King on the 20th of May last, he did not do his utmost to take, seize, and destroy, the ships of the French King, which it was his duty to have engaged, and to assist such of his Majesty’s ships as were engaged, in fight with the French ships, which it was his duty to have assisted; and do therefore unanimously agree that he falls under part of the twelfth article of an Act of Parliament of the twenty-second year of his present Majesty, for amending, explaining, and reducing into one Act of Parliament the laws relating to the government of his Majesty’s ships, vessels, and forces by sea; and as that article positively prescribes death, without any alternative left to the discretion of the Court, under any variation of circumstances, the Court do therefore hereby unanimously adjudge the said Admiral John Byng to be shot to death, at such time, and on board such ship, as the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty shall direct.
“But as it appears by the evidence of Lord Robert Bertie, Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, Captain Gardiner, and other officers of the ship, who were near the person of the Admiral, that they did not perceive any backwardness in him during the action, or any marks of fear or confusion, either from his countenance or behaviour, but that he seemed to give his orders coolly and distinctly, and did not seem wanting in personal courage, and from other circumstances, the Court do not believe that his misconduct arose either from cowardice or disaffection, and do therefore unanimously think it their duty, most earnestly to recommend him as a proper object of mercy.”
The sentence was accompanied by the following earnest representation:—
“To the right honourable the Lords Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of Great Britain, &c.
“We, the underwritten, the President and Members of the Court-Martial assembled for the trial of Admiral Byng, believe it unnecessary to inform your Lordships, that in the whole course of this long trial, we have done our utmost endeavour to come at truth, and to do the strictest justice to our country, and the prisoner; but we cannot help laying the distresses of our minds before your Lordships on this occasion, in finding ourselves under a necessity of condemning a man to death, from the great severity of the twelfth Article of War, part of which he falls under, and which admits of no mitigation, even if the crime should be committed by an error in judgment only; and therefore, for our own consciences sakes, as well as in justice to the prisoner, we pray your Lordships, in the most earnest manner, to recommend him to his Majesty’s clemency.
“We are, my Lords, &c. &c.”
Signed by the whole Court.
From this sentence and this letter, it appears that Mr. Byng was acquitted, in the fullest manner, of cowardice, by men who (to say the best of them) were too scrupulous to acquit of a crime of which they thought him guilty, when they imagined it was their duty to condemn him for another crime, of which, it seems, they did not think him guilty. For thus unbiassed posterity will undoubtedly judge of those men. If there was any meaning in their strange procedure, it must have been this:—They thought the Admiral guilty of an error in judgment; and as from an error in judgment he had not performed all they supposed he might have done, they held him to blame—and then, believing that the Article of War intended to inflict death on all kinds of blame, they considered under what chapter of blame to rank Mr. Byng’s error. Disaffection it was not, cowardice it was not; the Article named but a third species, and that being neglect, these honest men agreed that a want of judgment was nearest related to neglect, and for that condemned him.
This reasoning, I presume, is the best defence that could be made for these expounders of naval law. An anecdote, much asserted at the time, belongs to this part of the proceeding. When the severer part of the Court (the steady part of Admiral Boscawen’s foretold majority) found great difficulty to wring from their associates acquiescence in condemnation, they are said to have seduced the latter by promising on their part, if Mr. Byng was condemned, to sign so favourable a representation of his case, that it should be impossible but he must be pardoned. If anything could excuse men for condemning a person whom they thought innocent, it would be this, because there is nothing more uncommon, I might almost say, more unheard of, than the execution of a criminal, when his Judge strongly recommends him to mercy. If this bargain for blood was suggested by the return of the Courier who was dispatched by the Court-Martial for illumination—but I will not make surmises—the late Ministers had sufficiently barricaded the gates of mercy when they engaged the King in that promise to the city of London; and whoever will read the inhuman letters of their tool, Cleland, the Secretary of the Admiralty, will be a competent judge of what mercy Mr. Byng had to expect after condemnation.
The first flame lighted by this extraordinary sentence was the dissatisfaction it occasioned in the Navy, when they found such a construction of the twelfth Article, as made it capital for an officer to want, what he could not command, judgment. Admiral West threatened to resign if it was not altered. But they who had power to enforce execution on such an interpretation, took care not to consent to any correction. With what face could they put the Admiral to death, if they owned that the Article on which he was condemned wanted amendment?
Before I proceed to the consequences of this affair, I will say a few words, as I promised, on the engagement itself; though with regard to the fate of Mr. Byng, I think it ceased from this moment to be any part of the question. If he was guilty of any fault, his most conscientious Judges thought it so small an one, that they did not hesitate to censure the law itself for blending it with capital crimes: and it will appear as fully that the duration of it was as short, as the nature of it was light; not extending beyond very few minutes. Had he been guilty of all that cowardice which had first been charged on him, and of which he was so honourably acquitted, it would still have been a notorious violation of the custom of England, (and the common law itself is scarce more than custom,) to put him to death after such earnest recommendation of his Judges—Judges under no influence of the favourable sort!
The quintessence of the engagement, as shortly as I can state it, I take to have been this:—After the signal for charging was made, the Captain of the Intrepid bore down in a wrong direction, by which she was exposed to be raked by the enemy. Admiral West, who commanded that division, followed the same direction, rather than decline the engagement. This was brave: he was not the Commander-in-Chief. Mr. Byng, who was, perceived the disadvantage of this manœuvre; yet he, too, bore down, but more slowly. In his course, the Princess Louisa and the Trident lay in his way, and he was obliged to disengage himself from them first, and then crowded all the sail he could. As the French had engaged in earnest, and had not suffered, he could not have the least suspicion that they would give over so abruptly; but while he was involved with his own ships, they had prepared to retreat, and had already left him at such a distance, that he thought it in vain to follow them that night. Afterwards, on a review of his fleet, he found so much damage done to what was before deplorable, expected so little to be able to raise the siege, and what in my opinion he dreaded with most reason, and which was equally the object of his orders, feared so much for Gibraltar, that he determined to retire thither, and had the concurrence of Admiral West.
I have said that one part of the Admiral’s defence does not appear to be well reasoned; I mean, his belief that though he had beaten the French, he should not have saved the island. General Blakeney, too, deposed at the trial, that if the whole detachment ordered from Gibraltar had been landed at the time the Fleet appeared off Mahon, it would have been insignificant: an opinion, in my judgment, as wrong as the Admiral’s. At last the fortress fell from want of hands—what had they suffered? a reinforcement would have prolonged the siege, as the defeat of the French Fleet might have starved the besiegers, if in either case a new squadron had been sent from England. To conclude all their efforts insufficient, both the Admiral and General must have believed that the English Ministry would have continued as remiss and culpable as they had been.
With regard to the sentence, the essence of it turns on the very few minutes in which the Admiral neglected to make all possible sail—and for that he died! I, however, shocked at the severity of his fate, am still impartial; and with the truth that becomes an historian, from the most respectable down to so trifling a writer as myself, shall fairly declare all I know and observed: and difficult it would be for any man to have watched with more industry of attention even the most minute circumstance of this dark affair from the instant the sentence was made public. From that unremitted observation I formed this opinion:—Mr. Byng, by nature a vain man, by birth the son of a hero, was full of his own glory, and apprehensive of forfeiting any portion of what had descended on him. He went, conscious of the bad condition of his ships and men, to dispute that theatre with the French, on which his father had shone over the Spaniards; and he went persuaded that he should find a superior enemy. He dreaded forfeiting the reputation of forty years of brave service; he looked on Minorca as lost, and thought it could not be imputed to him. He had sagacity enough (without his strict orders) to comprehend, that if Gibraltar followed St. Philip’s, which he knew would be the case if he was defeated, that loss would be charged on him: and after all, to mislead him, he had the addition of believing that he had satisfied his duty by obliging the French to retire. This seems to have been the man:—He was, if I may be allowed the expression, a coward of his glory, not of his life; with regard to that, poor man! he had an opportunity of showing he was a hero.
It is not to boast any sagacity, and yet perhaps it required some extent of it to exceed Mr. Byng’s enemies in discovering a fault which escaped their acuteness—but I did remark an instance that was never observed nor charged on him, in which he was undoubtedly guilty. In the course of the inquiry into the loss of Minorca, (to be mentioned hereafter,) a letter from the Admiral was read carelessly in a very thin Committee, which confirmed what the Ministry did charge him with—delay; and fully explanatory of that vain-glory which I have described as characteristic of the man. In that letter he told the Admiralty, that though their orders were so pressing, and the wind was fair, he did presume to stay for final orders—slightly he hinted, and seemingly without connecting it with his delay, that he thought he should have the rank of Commander-in-Chief.
When this letter was produced, the Admiral was dead; new objects had engaged the minds of men; and this is not a nation where any impressions engrave themselves deeply. If I have mentioned it now, it was to demonstrate my own impartial veracity: and yet, though the delay was blameable, no consequences flowed from it. If he had lingered, it had been but for a day or two: he had arrived in time to fight the French, and could but have fought them, arriving a day or two sooner. Dispatched so late as he was, he never could have reached Minorca early enough to disturb their landing. This reasoning, therefore, is mere speculation, and not intended to absolve or condemn the Admiral, the justice of whose fate, I again declare, in my opinion by no means depended on the innocence or criminality of his behaviour: the iniquity of his suffering on such a sentence, and after such a recommendation of his Judges, gave the tone to his catastrophe.
I must interrupt the sequel of his story to relate a few preceding and intervening passages.
Two battalions, each composed of a thousand Highlanders, were raised for the service of America; the command given to the brother of Lord Eglinton, and to the Master of Lovat, the son of the famous old chieftain, who had suffered on Tower-hill after the late Rebellion. The young man had been forced into the same cause by his father, had been attainted and pardoned, but was never permitted to go into the Highlands; and though he received a pension from the Crown, he was allowed nothing from his paternal estate. His jurisdiction too had been abolished with the rest. This man was now selected by the Duke of Argyle, who told the Government, that under no other person the clan of Frazers would enlist. Stanley, formerly connected with Pitt, now attached to the Duke of Newcastle, under whose Ministry he was a candidate for the Admiralty, took severe notice of this measure in a very good speech, and roundly charged it on Pitt’s flattery to the Duke of Argyle. He expressed great dissatisfaction on the admission of disaffected Highlanders into the Army, said if Frazer had any experience, he had learned it in Rebellion; spared not the Scotch, and yet said, his was not prejudice, nor did he contract notions of any country by walking through the streets of it. This glanced at Pitt’s former declamation against Oxford. Stanley was ungracious in his manner, but had sense and knowledge, heightened with much oddness, and supported by great personal courage. Lord George Sackville defended the measure, and asked why rank should not be allowed to these extemporaneous officers, as it had been to the Colonels of the new regiments in the late Rebellion? This slip was taken up by Lord Granby, who said he was sorry to hear Rebels compared to Lords who had taken up arms to crush the Rebellion. Fox, not to be outstriped in homage to Argyle, justified the measure on the necessity of it.
January 19th.—The estimate of the Ordnance was read. The extravagant expense of the late camp at Byfleet, where the Duke of Marlborough had played with the image of war, was disguised and lumped under various services. Charles Townshend moved to have the articles separated, that the truth might be known.
21st.—Mr. Legge opened part of the supplies, of which one ingredient was a Guinea Lottery, the scheme of a visionary Jew, who long pestered the public with his reveries. The plan failed. Legge ostentatiously subscribed for a thousand tickets, and engaged his chief, the Duke of Devonshire, to do the same: but Legge took care privately to vend his own number, and was no loser. Beckford proposed new kinds of taxes on tea and salt, which were not accepted. Mr. Pitt, in the meantime, was confined. The patience and complaisance of the Tories were remarkable, who, notwithstanding the instructions which they had instructed their constituents to send them for speedy inquiries into the late mismanagement, revered the sick bed of the gouty Minister, and presumed to tap no inquiry in his absence. What accession of dignity to him? what reflection on the capacity or integrity of his associates, who were not deemed qualified to scrutinize without him the conduct of their predecessors!
26th.—The Militia Bill was again offered to the House. Mr. Conway opened in a very able manner another plan of his own for raising a Militia from the capital towns. Mr. Fox supported it. Charles Townshend broke out into a vehemence of passion, on Fox’s saying that the former Bill ought to be altered to make it palatable to the Lords, whom Townshend handled very roughly. Lord George Sackville opposed him, but took care not to show more partiality to Mr. Conway, whose plan he disapproved. The consideration of the two schemes was deferred till the Committee.
Charles, at the instigation of George Townshend, continued to sift the estimate of the Ordnance. They found that the Duke of Marlborough had charged his own pay at ten shillings a day. No master of the Ordnance had received so much, except Duc Schomberg, who had no regiment. The great Duke of Marlborough, the late Duke of Argyle, the Duke of Montagu, three men sufficiently attentive to their interest, had touched but four shillings. The Townshends clamoured on this, and the Duke of Marlborough refunded all that he had received above four shillings a day.