CHAPTER VII.
Debates on the Regency-bill.—The Princess Dowager’s name reinserted in the Bill.—Bill for altering the Duties on Italian Silks.—Riots of the Weavers on its introduction.—Projected change in the Ministry.
On May the 9th, the House went into committee on the bill. Rose Fuller said he would not opiniate the point, but declared he was against the precedent of appointing an unknown person Regent; not against any of the persons that had been named as qualified: yet surely none of them were so proper as the Queen. Should a younger brother be appointed by his Majesty’s will, it would offend the elder. So had the Parliament thought in the minority of Henry VI., with regard to the Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester. It was the more necessary to name the Queen, as he had heard of another motion going to be made. Everybody, therefore, would understand the reason of his motion. He moved, accordingly, to insert the name of the Queen, instead of the words such persons; and was seconded by Mr. Onslow, and by Sir W. Meredith, who declared he had intended to make the same motion. It was objected to by Burrell,[113] who said, the Duke of Cumberland’s name had not stood in the original bill; had been inserted on after-thought; would the House omit him now? Lord George Sackville said, he had been against even the respectful manner in which Lord John Cavendish had proposed to address the King to name the person he should wish for Regent: he was much more against the present motion. In history there was no precedent worth following. His Majesty was tied by parental affection to name the Queen, and was best qualified to know his own family, and who would be most proper for the office. If his youngest brother was best qualified, let him be named. Let the whole family be taught to pay their court to and imitate the King. Conway replied, that the power now to be given was a compliment to all future kings. Would Parliament be able to say, We trusted this power to George III. for his virtues, and refuse it to any other king, though vicious. The young Princes of the blood might prove ambitious. The bill itself would be of no force if the King should leave the nomination not filled up. No provision was made against such a contingency. When the late King went abroad, he always left a private letter empowering the Lords of the Regency to fill up places. In that reign though the Duke of Cumberland was so proper for Regent, yet his present Majesty’s mother had been preferred—let the House therefore imitate that sole precedent. Dempster opposed the motion, yet with passing general censures. He did not approve, he said, all the Ministers had done, particularly the dismission of General Conway. He did not approve the oriental adulation heaped on the birth of this bill; he saw nothing so heroic in it. He did not approve the power entrusted to the Regency of continuing the Parliament for three years. Lord North urged that the motion was unnecessary, because everybody knew there would be no person named against whom the House could have any objection. Sir George Saville said, he was astonished to hear that uncertainty was the parent of security, and certainty of uproar and confusion. He was afraid of delegating new powers; he rejected all arguments founded on personal considerations. He felt them as strongly as anybody, but they were false, unlogical, and unfair. All the persons declared capable, were proper; but while there was one more proper, the rest were improper. Lord Frederick Campbell said, the motion tended to appoint a person with greater power than the King’s. Dowdeswell replied, that the powers given by the bill were not new powers to supply the defects of a minority, but new powers granted to the King. Should he appoint an improper person, who could stand up to object to such great persons? He wished he could see any general bill of Regency; but when such difficulties were started on these bills, he feared future kings and ministers would recommend no more bills, therefore he wished to see a general one. He did not know which he feared most, the union or the disunion of the Royal Family. George Grenville said, he had the highest authority for declaring that the powers to be granted to his Majesty would be executed immediately, and the public would know they were. “Would it be only sealing the instrument,” Colonel Barré asked, “or would the person named for Regent be known?” “I said,” replied Grenville, “the powers would be executed, and that it would be known they were; not the person.” “The Crown knows,” said Colonel Barré again, “that we are no Parliament of Paris, but proposes matters to us, and we ought to show what we think of them. Queen Mary asked the same power as had been granted to her father, and was refused. It shows, therefore, how ready the Crown is to take advantage of precedents. The princes of the blood might grow to court the Ministers; it was a bill to encourage faction. Whither could the power be carried, where it would be less likely to do mischief than to the Queen! By not naming her, the House must suppose the Queen might not be Regent, and so her children would be torn from her by the will of her consort. Perhaps the King wished to induce the Parliament to name the Queen, that the Parliament might then be bound to support her. Mr. Dowdeswell had asked, whether, on an improper person being named, the Parliament would object? Yes; even in the reign of Charles II. the Parliament had spoken out. Grenville, he believed, had not drawn the bill. It came from a quarter that made it wear all the marks of ministerial distraction.” Whencesoever it had issued, he believed those of his profession (the military) would reap all the harvest. Averse as he was to the Ministry, the bill, he thought, would torture them more than they deserved. The motion was rejected at six o’clock by 258 to 67.
As soon as the division was over, and while the House was expecting Morton’s[114] motion, Mr. Conway came to me and said he would go away with me, as would Sir William Meredith and others; and that they would not vote in the question on the Princess, but on the third reading of the bill, when their vote would not be personal to her. I immediately went out, but found nobody followed me. I did not like to be single, and returned, but at last carried Mr. Conway away. In the meantime, Morton and Kynaston,[115] a noted Jacobite, moved to reinstate the Princess’s name in the bill. Samuel Martin, a servant of the Princess, and known from his duel with Wilkes, spoke strongly for that measure; declared he was totally unauthorized, and believed her Royal Highness averse to be named. The bill, he found, had been altered, by what means he did not know; nor was it proper to tell if he did. He must suppose the alteration came from nowhere but the other House. None of the Royal Family but the Princess were excluded. If the Queen should die, who would be so proper for a Regent as her Royal Highness? Why did the other House stigmatize or put a brand on her? And then looking at Grenville, he said, the Princess had had occasion to see the professions made to her were not from the heart. Dr. Blackstone spoke in the same behalf, as did the younger George Onslow, who beseeched his friends to look on him with an eye of pity, for being forced to differ with them from conscience. In case of the Queen’s death, the Princess, by law, was the most proper person to replace her. The more persons capable of the Regency, the worse; but when all the rest were named in the bill, he could not consent to exclude her Royal Highness. His cousin took the other side, but called God to witness that he intended no personality. He had been for the nomination of the Queen, and now thought the smaller the number the better. He had heard the Secretary of State had procured the omission of the Princess. This occasioned his being called to order. Sir John Rushout, as the ancient oracle of the House, declared that Onslow might say what he had heard from common fame, but might not say he had heard it himself. Onslow, on that authority, affirmed he had been told that the Secretary of State did not make the motion for omission of the Princess by private authority; and on that authority he desired explanation. Had the House of Commons received such a message, it would have quieted them. The present motion was cruel to the Princess: the correction in the House of Lords, he was persuaded, was not personal. Had the Duke of York been omitted, his own objection to restoring the Duke’s name would have been the same. Grenville[116] replied, that the words moved by Lord Halifax were inserted to prevent doubt: himself had thought they would not be disagreeable to her Royal Highness—hoped they were not—thought they would be universally acceptable—thought there had been authority for the omission, but found there was not; would concur in any compliment to the mother of his sovereign.
This cold, half-owning, half-denying speech, completed Grenville’s ruin with the Princess. Martin vowed to God he did not know her opinion on the question, and was believed as much as Grenville and Onslow had been. Morton more artfully said, that if her Highness had intended to send a message to the House, it would not have been by so insignificant a man as himself. Onslow said, he hoped it would not be interpreted as if he meant to brand the Princess. Whoever used that term, branded the House of Lords. Lord Palmerston gave a strong dissent to the motion, though he owned the situation was disagreeable. The Princess, he said, was excluded by a great and general line. The motion then passed without a division, but with several No’s. Equally to the disgrace of both sides, the Ministers servilely revoking what they had insolently and unjustifiably done; the Opposition withstanding the reparation, yet not daring to avow,—nay, disavowing the very motive of the obstruction they gave.
I had thus, as I flattered myself, prevented the greater number of our friends from personally offending the Princess. My arguments and their own interest had kept many from the House. I did not doubt but the Ministers would be dismissed, if the Court found that it had hopes of mollifying the Opposition. But the next morning I perceived the vertigo was returned with fresh force. On going to the House, Sir William Meredith told me that Onslow was determined to put it to a division on the report, encouraged by the many negatives on the Princess’s question. This was judging weakly, for many would cry “No!” who would not have voted, when they would have been personally distinguished by a division. He added, that Forester, the Duke of Bedford’s lawyer, had laughed at them for not dividing. I was not the dupe of that art; the less as Rigby had been the first to acquaint Mr. Conway with Morton’s intended motion; and to draw in our party, the Bedford faction had given out that Forester would oppose the re-establishment of the Princess’s name. Lord Rockingham confirmed this intelligence—agreed with me, but said he could not prevail on the Duke of Newcastle, on whom I found the Bedfords had contrived to make the impression they wished. Sir William Meredith added that Onslow had said to him over night, “I believe you, Conway, and T. Townshend acted from conscience, but all the rest from interest.” I replied, “Sir William, Onslow may say what he pleases, yet he will accept a place before I shall. I had rather be taxed with self-interest, than call God to witness I mean no personality, when I am doing the most personal thing in the world.” Provoked at this new absurdity, I went away, depending that Mr. Conway, who had retired with me the day before, and had promised me not to vote against the Princess, would be firm to his promise; yet when the question came on, he had the weakness, though he tried to prevent a division, to vote with the Cavendishes against her. They pretended to desire he would not, but knew how much the fear of their silent reproaches would operate on him.[117] Newcastle’s people were violent, and insisted on a division, driven on by John White,[118] an old republican, who governed both Newcastle and Lord John Cavendish, and who hoped this vote would divide the Opposition from Mr. Pitt, whom White hated, and who he certainly knew would never personally affront the Court. Yet after all their hopes, the result of this intemperate measure was a contemptible minority of 37. What was more unlikely, Rigby retired, and did not vote with the majority, though he had declared nothing should make him vote against the Princess. Her triumph would have been complete, if anything could have effaced the affront she had received, and which must remain on record. What the few Whigs in that little minority could plead in their defence, was difficult to say. They had loudly condemned the motion for removing Sir Robert Walpole on public fame, and now endeavoured to stigmatize the Princess on the same ground, without daring even to assign it as a pretence. The conduct of the Ministers was still more double; and many believed that the Duke of Cumberland’s hatred of the Princess had drawn him at last to concur with the Bedfords in instigating Newcastle to this measure. Grenville scarce concealed his sentiments; and Lord Burghersh telling him he would go away, rather than vote with the Tories, unless he, Grenville, desired him not; the latter bade him follow his own inclination—he stayed and voted against the Princess.
After some other clauses proposed and rejected, the Bill passed at eleven at night. During the debate Onslow attacked Charles Townshend, (who had spoken for the Court,) and congratulated the Treasury-bench on their acquisition. Townshend replied in one of his best speeches, but with his usual want of judgment, boasted of his own steadiness for sixteen years; saying, “Surely, in these times, with a little common sense, I might have been dependent if I had pleased.” The answer was obvious—“With a little common sense you might.”
Rose Fuller declared that if the motion for reinstating the Princess was rejected, he, to show his impartiality, would move to omit her Royal Highness’s daughters and Princess Amalie. It was said with humour, that would be like Lord Anglesey, who beating his wife,[119] she said, “How much happier is that wench (pointing to a housemaid) than I am!” He immediately kicked the maid down stairs, and then said, “Well! there is at least one grievance removed.”
On the 13th, the bill, returned from the Commons, with the name of the Princess Dowager reinserted, was read in the House of Lords, and the Ministers were to swallow the amendment, and palliate their past conduct as well as they could. The task was allotted to Lord Sandwich. He owned Lord Halifax’s amendment had met with his hearty concurrence, and he had expected it would have passed through both Houses unanimously: had thought it would be disapproved of by no person whatever. But whether that amendment or the correction of it should take place, the great point would be obtained of ascertaining who were the persons capable of the Regency. He hoped, therefore, their Lordships would agree to the correction sent up from the other House. Parliament could not mean to exclude the Princess, if it would be disagreeable to her Royal Highness, or to any other person: the sole meaning had been to remove doubts. Should he himself adhere to the former words, he should be inconsistent, for those words had no longer the same meaning; but he had thought the amendment would have been universally approved. He had meant to establish any description that would be agreeable to the King and people. It was now of consequence to be unanimous in re-establishing the name of her Royal Highness.
By Sandwich and Grenville dwelling so much upon the expectation they had conceived, that the omission of the Princess would be universally approved, it was plain they had flattered themselves with acquiring such popularity by that act, that the King would not dare to remove them. This had driven them on the outrage they had committed. The event proved just the contrary of what they had expected. Obnoxious as the Princess was, the heinousness of the insult to her, and of the treachery to the King, shocked all mankind, and seemed doubly offensive in men from whom the King had a right to expect defence, and who had plunged so deep into the most arbitrary and unpopular measures. It was not by their hands that the nation wished to see the Princess and Favourite humbled. The same fate attended Sandwich now, that had pursued the discovery of the “Essay on Woman.” The profaneness of Wilkes, and the unpopularity of the Princess, were forgotten in the more odious means employed to disgrace them.
The Duke of Richmond took notice that the words now inserted by the House of Commons were precisely the same with those he had moved himself, and was glad they were likely to be agreed to; yet when he had proposed them, Lord Sandwich had moved to adjourn. His own wish had tended to precision; and his view, to pass the act in the manner most agreeable to the King. When Lord Halifax had brought other words, he had concluded those words were agreeable to his Majesty, for he believed Lord Halifax incapable of deceiving the King or the House (this was pointed at Lord Sandwich). He had now heard that their Lordships must eat their words; and that what had happened was a stigma on her Royal Highness. Surely that was not paying court to her: such assertions had more zeal than judgment in them; and were injurious to the House. Lord Sandwich replied, that he had moved to adjourn, because the question had been too great to be determined suddenly: he had not been against the Duke’s motion. He knew of nothing injurious from the other House.
The Duke of Portland[120] disagreed with the new amendment, because he recollected, he said, the authority with which the omission of the Princess had gone down to the other House. To reinstate her now would be inconsistent and contradictory. Lord Talbot said there was no inconsistency in changing, when founded on the opinions of the other House. It was advantageous to the constitution to have the joint wisdom of both. Lord Ravensworth said he had always been for naming the Princess, yet disapproved the new amendment, because the former amendment had come from the King. The Duke of Newcastle dissented from the amendment; protested he had no views; could only serve his country by his opinion in that House. He would not say the other House had no right to make this amendment; but they had not shown that respect to the Crown, or to their Lordships, that they had meant to show. It had been usual to receive nominations or stipulations from the Crown. The House of Commons should not have taken upon themselves to nominate. He thought Lord Halifax incapable of bringing anything but truth from the King: he wished, therefore, the former words had not been altered.
The present alteration was not warranted by precedent. Lord Halifax’s motion had reduced the number of those that were capable of the Regency, and therefore was a desirable measure. Lord Denbigh expressed his astonishment at the former extraordinary motion, which had flowed from as extraordinary a quarter. He had not been present, yet should have voted for it, extraordinary as it was; should wonder if their Lordships should not agree to correct that wonderful measure. During the meridian of Newcastle’s power, now dwindled, the Princess was named Regent. If Prince Frederick[121] should, by failure of the rest of the Royal Family, come to be King before he was of age, the Princess, by Newcastle’s bill, must be Regent. He believed his Grace’s great age had made him forget one of his favourite children. Lord Talbot said he did not believe the Duke objected to the Princess, but would have had the Commons consider the motion as the King’s. He would not enter into the merits of the Princess. Though he held that stick in his hand (of Lord-Steward), he had never known a Court-secret. Should the King die, the Princess would be too afflicted to act. He then ridiculed the Opposition; and concluded with saying, “I was once a patriot, my Lords, for patriotism is always in opposition.” Lord Pomfret declared strongly in favour of the Princess; and the amendment was agreed to without a negative. The bill passed.
But though the Ministers had been forced to make atonement, the sacrifice was by no means accepted. The King treated them with every mark of estrangement and aversion; and it was visible to every eye that their fall was determined. Previous to their dismission, they tasted of the horror in which they were held by the people. The very day on which the Regency-bill passed, the Lords read another bill sent from the Commons, for imposing as high duties on Italian silks as are paid on those of France, on this foundation, that the French sent their silks to Genoa and Leghorn, and then entered them there as Italian merchandize. This bill had passed the Commons with little notice, all attention having been engrossed by the plan of the Regency. When it was read by the Lords, the Duke of Bedford alone spoke against it; nobody said a word for it, and it was thrown out.[122] It happened that the silk manufacture was at a low ebb, and many weavers in Spitalfields were unemployed. The next day about three or four thousand of those poor men went very quietly and unarmed to Richmond, to petition the King for redress. The Queen was walking in the paddock, and was alarmed by their numbers; but they gave no offence, and followed the King in the same peaceable manner to Wimbledon, whither he was gone to a review. The King told them, he would do all that lay in his power to relieve them, and they returned pleased and orderly.
But the next day, May 15th, whether they distinguished between the assurances given by his Majesty and the rejection of the bill by the Lords; or whether, as is more probable, they had been instigated under-hand, they went to the House of Lords in great bodies, behaving in the most riotous manner, abusing the Peers, and applauding the Commons, who had passed their bill. The Chancellor’s[123] coach they stopped, and asked him if he had been against the bill? He stoutly replied, Yes. They were abashed at his firmness, and said they hoped he would do justice. He replied, “Always, and everywhere; and whoever did, need fear nothing.” When the Duke of Bedford appeared, they hissed and pelted him; and one of the mob taking up a large stone for the new pavement, dashed it into the chariot: the Duke broke the force of the blow by holding up his arm, but it cut his hand, and bruised him on the temple; so narrowly he escaped with his life. They then followed him to his own house, where with great temper he admitted two of the ringleaders to a parley, and they went away seemingly appeased.[124]
The next day the House of Lords issued out orders for preservation of the peace; but the weavers continued to parade the streets and the park, though without committing any violence.
On the Friday, the Lords sent for Justice Fielding, who said the weavers had done no mischief. The Chancellor, who had been trusted by the Ministers with none of their late extraordinary measures, and who probably foresaw their downfall, was sullen, and would take no part. Few Lords attended, and everything announced to the Ministers their approaching disgrace. About dinner-time, the Duke of Bedford received intelligence that his house would be assaulted at night, on which he sent away his jewels and papers, and demanded a party of horse; the Duchess[125] persisting in remaining with him in the house. His friends and dependants, and several officers, garrisoned it; and as was foreseen, the rioters in prodigious numbers assaulted the house in the evening, and began to pull down the wall of the court;[126] but the great gates being thrown open, the party of horse appeared, and sallying out, while the riot act was read, rode round Bloomsbury Square, slashing and trampling on the mob, and dispersing them; yet not till two or three of the guards had been wounded. In the meantime a party of the rioters had passed to the back of the house, and were forcing their way through the garden, when fortunately fifty more horse arriving, in the very critical instant, the house was saved, and perhaps the lives of all that were in it. The Duke, however, and his company kept watch all night; and the coffee-houses were filled with curious and idle people, who sent with great indifference every hour to learn how the siege went on. The disappointed populace vented their rage on the house of Carr, a fashionable mercer, who dealt in French silks, and demolished the windows. All Saturday they remained peaceable; and though another attack on Bedford House was threatened, no further mischief ensued.
On Sunday evening I went to compliment the Duke and Duchess, as most of their acquaintance did, on their escape. I found the square crowded, but chiefly with persons led by curiosity. As my chariot had no coronets, I was received with huzzas; but when the horses turned to enter the court, dirt and stones were thrown at it. When the gates opened, I was surprised with the most martial appearance. The horse-guards were drawn up in the court, and many officers and gentlemen were walking about as on the platform of a regular citadel. The whole house was open, and knots of the same kind were in every room. When I came to the Duchess, and lamented the insult they had suffered, she replied, with warmth and acrimony, that the mob had been set on by Lord Bute. I was not much inclined to believe that, nor thought a mob a tool with which Lord Bute would choose to amuse himself. Immediately after, came in the Earl and Countess of Northumberland. Words cannot describe the disdainful manner in which they were received.[127] The Duke of Bedford left the room; the Earl was not asked to sit, nor spoken to; but was treated with such visible marks of neglect and aversion, that Lord Waldegrave said to another of the family, “Faith! this is too much.” In my own opinion, the mob was blown up by Humphrey Cotes,[128] and the friends of Wilkes. Almond, the friend and printer of the latter, owned to me, that they were directed by four or five gentlemen in disguise, who were not suspected; and seemed willing to disclose the secret to me. I said, “Name no names to me, I will not hear them.” He gave me a print published by Cotes against Lord Bute and Lord Holland; and talked of risings that would be all over England. I said, “I should be sorry to have the mob rise: it would occasion the army being quartered in London, and then we should be enslaved.”
Perhaps I have dwelt too minutely on this episode; perhaps I have done so on many other points equally unimportant. But it must be remembered that I am painting a portrait of the times, rather than writing history. The events, too, of this time were so linked together, that trifles gave birth to serious eras; and unless it be detailed with the circumstantial exactness which I shall use, and which I stood in a situation to know more thoroughly than most men, from my intimacy or connection with many of the actors, the history of this reign will be very imperfectly understood; and posterity would see sudden and extraordinary changes; without being able to account for them from the public appearances of things. When it is known, it will be easy to compose a more compendious account; and my narrative, that may serve for the scaffolding, may be thrown by as no longer of use.
The King, on all other occasions so able and steady a dissembler, did not affect now to disguise the offence he had taken at his Ministers. He had long inwardly groaned under their insolence and disagreeable qualities: and though for some time Lord Bute a little restrained his Majesty’s impatience to throw them off, both the Favourite and the mother had contributed to foment the King’s aversion. The Duchess of Bedford had openly affronted the Princess, and avowed her hatred to Lord Bute. To Lord Sandwich the Favourite bore private resentment, for having courted a little too assiduously, though he was disappointed in the pursuit, rich old Wortley Montagu, Lady Bute’s father.[129] But Grenville was the principal rock of offence. I have mentioned his jealousy and ill-treatment of the Favourite; his manners made him as distasteful to the King, as his engrossing fondness for power had made him to the Favourite. His ill-judged economy had led him to refuse twenty thousand pounds to the King, to buy the ground behind the Green Park, where the King had made a new garden, and where, by the loss of that purchase, a new row of houses was erected, that overlooked the King and Queen in their most domestic hours. And, as if non-compliance with even his innocent pleasures was not sufficiently offensive, that awkward man of ways and means, whom Nature had fitted for no employment less than a courtier’s, fatigued the King with such nauseous and endless harangues, that, lamenting being daily exposed to such a political pedant, the King said to Lord Bute of Grenville, “When he has wearied me for two hours, he looks at his watch to see if he may not tire me for an hour more.”
The measure of these disgusts was filled up by the conduct of the Ministers on the Bill of Regency; yet, though that conduct threw down the sluice, the resolution had been taken before to discard them on the first opportunity. When the Duke of Cumberland had waited on the King, before setting out for Newmarket, his Majesty had vented himself to his uncle on the uneasiness he felt from being in their hands, and he must have felt before he chose that Prince for his confident. At Newmarket, the Earl of Northumberland had private instructions to continue the negotiation, and the Duke had listened with no unwilling ear, as I have hinted before; yet he had been so over-prudent as not to trust the secret to the chiefs of the Opposition, who, driven on by Lord John Cavendish, had intemperately displayed their aversion to the Princess and Favourite, while they had not the least suspicion that the Duke was secretly paving the way for their return to Court. Yet even that intemperate behaviour of the Cavendishes and their friends could not deter the Court from the resolution of removing the Ministers, whose crime appeared, as indeed it was, of a much blacker dye. Indeed, those of the Opposition who had gone the greatest lengths, were not of importance enough to make the Court lay aside its design. The royal Junto depended on the support of the Duke of Cumberland, and could not doubt but they might have Newcastle, whenever they called for him: the rest of course must follow their leaders. But the Court intended to avail itself of a still firmer support, and that was Mr. Pitt’s, on whose easy compliance they depended too inconsiderately—and with still greater inconsideration, they began to take the machine to pieces, before they had made the common preparations for refitting it. This rash conduct was probably inspired by the riot of the weavers, which the Court regarded as the sense of the nation expressed against the Administration. Had the King temporized, he might have dealt to advantage with any faction he chose. By beginning with the dismission of the Ministers, he exposed himself to the extravagant demands of all who saw the dilemma to which he had reduced himself, and the necessity he was under of submitting to some disagreeable set of men or other, who were sure to make him purchase dearly a support that they knew he wished not to accept at all.[130]