CHAPTER XI.
Meeting of Parliament.—Debates on the Stamp Act and the state of North America.—Death of Prince Frederick, the King’s youngest brother.—Walpole’s Observations upon the state of France at this period.—Death of the Dauphin.
On the 17th of December the Parliament met. Grenville, apprized of the intention to repeal the Stamp Act, had laboured to form a strong Opposition, giving out that the Ministers were going to rescind all his acts, because his. The very first day of the session he proposed to address the Crown, to know how the Stamp Act had been enforced; and in amendment of the address, proposed to insert the word rebellious in speaking of the Colonies.[191] He professed great readiness to congratulate his Majesty on the birth of a young Prince. With regard to the Duke of Cumberland’s death, he would not, he said, flatter dead whom he had never flattered living. He was answered by Elliot, Lord George Sackville, and Norton, who, though dismissed, showed he had not imputed his disgrace to the Crown; and whatever the intentions of the Crown might be, it was thought proper that a majority should first be secured, lest the Cabinet should again be taken by storm. Charles Townshend spoke for the Ministry,[192] with great encomiums on Conway. Grenville finding so little countenance, withdrew his motion.
In the other House, Lord Suffolk moved for an assurance to the King that the Lords would support his Majesty and the Parliament against the Colonies. He was supported by the Duke of Bedford, the Lords Gower, Halifax, Sandwich, and Temple. The last declared there was no truth in the reports spread of differences between him and Mr. Pitt; they agreed on every point. The first assertion was false; the latter soon proved to be so. Lord Shelburne spoke for the Ministers, though his friend Colonel Barré had declined their offers.[193] But the concurrence of Shelburne and the retiring of Lord Camden spoke sufficiently, that they knew or suspected Mr. Pitt would take part for the repeal.[194] The Chancellor, Lord Pomfret, and the Duke of Grafton opposed the motion. Lord Mansfield, in a timid trimming speech, besought the Ministers to agree to the motion, and retired. The question was rejected by 80 to 24, though the new Opposition had flattered themselves that in the House of Lords lay their greatest strength. But they were sorely disappointed of Lord Bute’s support, which they expected on all the questions relative to America.
Two days after the former motion, the Duke of Bedford moved for all papers that had been sent to America relating to the Stamp Act, and since the passing of it. The Duke of Grafton quashed that proposal, by promising all the papers should be produced. Rigby moved the same question in the Commons, and was severely treated by Beckford, and the motion was rejected, the Duke of Grafton forgetting to acquaint the Ministers in that House that he had granted the demand to the Lords. This obliged the King to send the papers to the House of Commons likewise.
Grenville, the next day, by surprise, proposed that the House should adjourn, but to the 9th instead of the 14th as the Ministers intended, in consideration of the urgent affairs of America—as if five days could make any difference. But the motion was rejected by 77 to 35: so ductile and subservient to present power was that assembly! Alderman Baker called Grenville’s an insolent motion: being called to order, he was silent for some minutes; and then said, he had been trying to find another word—if the House could, he desired them to supply it. Then treating Grenville as the author of all the troubles in America, the latter threw the blame from himself on the Parliament.
Lord Temple, disheartened at so unpromising an outset of the session, had the confidence and meanness to hurry to Mr. Pitt at Bath; and now stooped to solicit the assistance of him whom he had so lately traversed, and whose offers he had so haughtily rejected. Mr. Pitt in his turn was inflexible.
On the 29th of December, died the King’s youngest brother, Prince Frederick, an amiable youth, and the most promising, it was thought, of the family. The hereditary disorder in his blood had fallen on his lungs and turned to a consumption.
I will close the account of this remarkable year with a few observations I made in France.
Louis the Fifteenth did not want sense, and had as much humanity as was consistent with insensibility and indolence. The first prevented him from suspecting evils that did not immediately fall under his eye; and the latter from inquiring what oppressions his people suffered. He was more shy than reserved, and all these qualities tended to make him the slave of habit. He hated new faces rather than loved old servants. Being free from ambition, having no appetite for glory of any kind, and impressed with sentiments of devotion, he preferred peace, and listened to any overtures of treaty, whether victorious or vanquished. To the Queen he had been for many years strictly constant; was always a civil husband, and, in her last illness, a tender one. To his children he was most affectionate.[195] To his mistresses profuse, but capable of harshness whenever he quitted them. Cardinal Fleury governed him with unbounded authority. Madame de Pompadour, by art, and at last by complaisance in procuring other women for him, engrossed him entirely, but with no hold on his affections, for her death made not the slightest impression on him.[196] The Duc de Choiseul having been placed by her, succeeded to the ascendant that habit gives, and thence excluded other favourites, rather than became one himself. The King’s life was regulated by the most mechanic sameness. An hour or two he could not deny to his Ministers: hunting took up the rest of daylight. Women amused his private hours: cards and a supper, with a select company, concluded the evening. All the flattery of that vain and obsequious nation, who love themselves in their kings, gave him no pleasure. It was a negative kind of nature that could neither be totally spoiled nor amended. But the true picture of him was an anecdote, that I learned from good authority. A sensible confident of Cardinal Fleury reproached him with not making the King apply to business. This was the answer of that wise Minister: “I have often endeavoured what you recommend; and one day went so far as to tell the King that there had been kings dethroned in France for their fainéantise.” It seemed to strike him deeply. He made no reply: but two days afterwards said to me, “I have been reflecting on what you told me of some of my predecessors being deposed—pray resolve me: when the nation deposed them, were they allotted large pensions?” “From that moment,” said the Cardinal, “I saw it was in vain to labour at making him a great King.”
The Queen was not only a pious but a good woman. Indifferent to the gallantries of her husband, and free from ambition, she lived well with him, his mistresses, and ministers. Fond of talking and universally obliging, the nation thought her void of any particular attachment; yet she showed an unalterable friendship to the Duchess de Luynes: and her affection to her father, King Stanislas, and the loss of her son the Dauphin undoubtedly hastened her death. Though she could not prevent the expulsion of the Jesuits, the King’s esteem for her mitigated their fall. It was to the honour of both that, though the daughters of Stanislas and Augustus, the Queen and the Dauphiness lived in uninterrupted harmony.
The Dauphin, who died while I was in France, was totally unknown till his death. His great caution of not giving jealousy to his father, and his respectable fear of not alarming the bigotry of his mother and wife, had made him conceal both his good sense and the freedom of his sentiments with such care, that the former was not suspected; and the latter was so unknown, that the nation, now running with their usual vehemence into any new opinion, and, consequently, growing Freethinkers, believed and hated him as an enthusiast. Yet he had a good understanding, had carefully, though secretly, cultivated it, and was a modern philosopher in the largest sense of that term. During his illness, which continued many weeks, he seemed neither to regret his youth nor hopes; was patient, complaisant, and indulgent; and a few days before his death gave proof of his good sense and good nature. A man of quality that attended him had the brutal absurdity to solicit him to ask some favour, on his behalf, of the King, “who,” said the person, “can refuse your Royal Highness nothing in your present condition.” The Dauphin laughed at the indelicacy, but would not divulge the name of the man. To please his family the Prince went through all the ceremonies of the Church, but shewed to his attendants, after they were over, how vain and ridiculous he thought them. Many expressions he dropped in his last hours that spoke the freedom of his opinions; and to the Duc de Nivernois he said, he was glad to leave behind him such a book as Mr. Hume’s Essays.[197]
The Dauphiness, with whom he lived on the best terms, he had, however, no fondness for: his first wife had been far more dear to him. The second was morose and ungracious; and, dying in a year after her husband, was not at all regretted. In her last moments, having sharply reprimanded the Duchesse de Lauragais, the latter, turning to another lady, said, “Cette Princesse est si bonne, qu’elle veut que personne ne la regrette.”[198]
The Duc de Choiseul, the Prime Minister, was a man of excellent parts, but of a levity and indiscretion, which most of that nation divest themselves of before his age, or when they enter into business. Except the hours which he spent with the King, the rest of his life was dissipation, pleasure, profuseness, and bons mots. Rash, daring, and presumptuous; good-humoured, but neither good nor ill-natured; frank, gay, and thoughtless, he seemed the Sovereign more than the Minister of a mighty kingdom. Scorning, rather than fearing, his enemies, he seldom undermined and seldom punished them. He dissipated the nation’s wealth and his own; but did not repair the latter by plunder of the former. Mr. Pitt’s superiority he could never digest nor forgive; and though he was incapable of little mischief in his own country, great crimes had rather a charm for him. He excited the war between the Russians and Turks, to be revenged on the Czarina; and I saw him exult childishly in his own house on her first defeats. At last he descended to the mean and cruel oppression of Corsica, for the sake of gathering a diminutive laurel, after being baffled in the large war. Gallantry without delicacy was his constant pursuit. His wife, the most perfect character of her sex, loved him to idolatry;[199] but, though a civil husband, he spared her no mortification that his carelessness could inflict. His sister, the Duchesse de Grammont, too openly connected with him by more ties than of blood, had absolute influence over him, and exerted it cruelly and grossly to insult the Duchesse de Choiseul, who, more than once, was on the point of retiring into a convent, though without the least belief of the doctrines held there. Madame de Grammont, who had none of the accomplishments that graced the small but harmonious figure of the Duchesse de Choiseul, had masculine sense, and almost masculine manners. She was wonderfully agreeable when she pleased, a vehement friend, a rude and insolent enemy. The nation revered and neglected the wife; detested and bowed to the sister. The Minister had crushed the Jesuits, for he loved sudden strokes of éclat; and, to carry that measure, had countenanced the Parliaments till they grew almost too ungovernable. But as he seldom acted on deep system, he sometimes took up a tone of authority, and as quickly relaxed it—a conduct that confounded the nation and a little the Parliaments; but that war from thoughtlessness, or to ruin a rival, the Duc d’Aiguillon, he chiefly left to the latter; and he could not have left it to worse hands. Proud, ambitious, vindictive, and void of honour or principle, the Duc d’Aiguillon, with very moderate parts, aimed at power with the Crown, by being the Minister of its tyranny.[200] The infamous oppression exercised on that undaunted man, M. de la Chalotais,[201] flowed from the revenge of this Duc, who, to carry his point, lent himself even to the exploded Jesuits: and though that connection could be no secret to the Duc de Choiseul, he suffered rather than encouraged a plan that clashed so much with the service he had rendered to his country by abolishing the Order. Nor was it to his honour that shame and the outcry of mankind rescued M. de la Chalotais, rather than the justice of the Prime Minister.[202]
The Parliaments of France were filled with many great, able, and steady magistrates. The philosophy and studies of the age had opened their eyes on the rights of mankind; and they attempted with heroic firmness to shake off the chains that galled their country. Yet a distinction should be made between the magistrates and the men called or calling themselves philosophers. The latter were really a set of authors and beaux esprits, who, aping the sentiments of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire, especially of the latter, endeavoured to raise themselves to an independent rank, to a kind of legislation in the community. After attacking and throwing off Christianity, they ran wildly into the fondest and most absurd doctrines of the old Greek philosophers; and, with the lightness of their own nation, and prompted by arrogance and love of pre-eminent singularity, they wrote atheism with little reserve, and talked it without any. The chief of these vain and loquacious witlings were D’Alembert,[203] Diderot, and that puny writer Marmontel. I am sorry to add to the list the name of a far more amiable and more profound man, M. Buffon, though, except in their indecent petulance, he too much resembled the rest of his cotemporaries in his sentiments. The women, who hurry into any new fashion, and then lead it, talked of matter and metaphysics with as little caution and as much ignorance as their directors. The magistrates of the Parliaments were very different men. Sober on the religion of their country, they meddled with it no farther than as it interfered with liberty; and few of them were so audacious in their most private conversation as to adopt the abominable licentiousness of the men I have been describing. But if they were decent on religion, they had not the same prudence in the conduct of their civil views. Heated by the term Parliament, they chose to believe, at least to inculcate the belief, that they were possessed of the rights of a British Senate. Nothing could be more meritorious than a struggle for such a system. But the Parliaments of France were not only nothing but courts of judicature, but the pretension was too early and too untimely to be yet pushed. As I had some friends in the Parliament of Paris, I remonstrated to them on the danger they ran of over-turning an excellent cause by their precipitation. To obtain solidly and step by step some material concessions, was the conduct they should have pursued. Whatever little they should so attain would be a benefit to the nation; time and precedent might add more. A minority or national distress would have opened a wider door; but by setting out with unbounded pretensions, unfounded in their Constitution, they warned the Crown to be on its guard; and, what was worse, they could depend on no support but in their own courage and in that uncertain resource, patriotic martyrdom. The Crown, popular in France whenever it pleases, and almost in any country, and powerful without popularity in that country, could not but regard their pretensions with the eye of jealousy. The nobility, ignorant, haughty, and willing to be tyrannized over by one that they might be authorized to tyrannize over thousands, were, and must be, disinclined to the extension of subordinate jurisdiction. The clergy were the natural and now the provoked enemies of the Parliaments. The military are seldom captivated by any franchises but their own; are devoted to the Crown, and led by, and composed of, the nobility: nor did the Parliaments take any pains to make a schism in the soldiery. Even the people, who would taste most benefit from acquisitions to liberty, were disinclined to the Parliaments. The Presidents purchase their charges, and enjoy them with a[204] state and haughtiness that is ill-relished by the commonalty. Able manifestos were slight arms against such a combination of prejudices. While I staid in France I had an opportunity of seeing with what a momentary breath the Crown could puff away a cloud and tempest of remonstrances. Being pushed too home, the King, suddenly and very early in the morning, appeared in the Chamber of Parliament. The Magistrates were in bed, were summoned, and found the King surrounded with his guards, and with all the apparatus of majesty. He commanded four of his Ministers to take their seats at his feet in a place where they had no right. He called for the registers, tore out their remonstrances, enjoined silence to the Parliament, and departed. In the street he met the Sacrament, alighted from his coach, knelt in the dirt, and received the blessings of all the old beggar-women. By night the consternation was universal; no man dropped a word, unless in commendation of the King’s firmness. The Magistrates sighed, but respectfully. The philosophers were frightened out of their senses. In a few months the Parliaments recovered their spirit, and the Court again temporized. Yet when their memorials had been read, and had their vogue in common with the poems and operas of the week, the sensation ceased, and lettres de cachet lost nothing of their vigour.
There was scarce a man of quality in France above the rank of president that countenanced the cause. There was one of the blood royal that affected to be their protector; but too much despised by the Court, too inconsiderable and too half-witted to hurt anybody but himself. This was the Prince of Conti. Handsome and royal in his figure, gracious at times, but arrogant and overbearing, luxurious and expensive, he had gathered together a sort of Court of those who had no hopes at the King’s, but without the power of giving or receiving any support. Confused in his ideas, yet clear in his opinion of superior intelligence, he was at once diffuse and incomprehensible. The little tyrant of a puny circle, he gave himself for the patron of liberty. No man would have carried his own privileges farther. The Court took no umbrage at such a foe.[205]
It could not but be a singular satisfaction to me to find in so adverse a nation so few men whose abilities were formidable. One or two of the subordinate Ministers were men of domestic and civil address. The Prince de Soubise, a sensible man of fair character, who enjoyed the most personal favour with the King, and, it was thought, might be Minister if he pleased, had no ambition.[206] The Maréchal d’Estrèes was a good-humoured old nurse;[207] the Maréchal de Broglie[208] as empty a man, except in the theory of discipline, as ever I knew. The Comte, his brother, who had more parts, had not enough to make them useful;[209] and both brothers were in disgrace. The Marquess de Castries,[210] a good officer, was not on any terms with Choiseul, and was no deep genius. The Duc de Praslin, the Minister’s cousin, was ill-tempered and disagreeable, and far from possessing superior abilities.[211] The clergy were at a low ebb. The Archbishop of Toulouse, reckoned the most rising of the order, was aspiring and artful, but absorbed in his own attention to intrigue, which gave him an air of absence. He was only considerable by comparison.[212] He and many of his order did not disguise their contempt for their own religion. As the women who had most sway were Freethinkers, a fashionable clergyman was by consequence an infidel. The ablest man I knew, and he as indiscreet as the Duc de Choiseul, was the old Comte de Maurepas. Lively, gay, and agreeable, he seemed to feel no regret for his disgrace, though he ought to have blushed at the imprudence that occasioned it. He had not only caused to be written, but himself, at his own table at Versailles, before a large company, had sung, a severe ballad on Madame de Pompadour. His fall and a long exile were the consequence. To make his ruin irrecoverable, she persuaded the King that he had poisoned a former mistress, the Duchesse de Chateauroux. From the same animosity, Madame de Pompadour had diverted a large sum that Maurepas had destined to re-establish their marine. Knowing his enmity to this country, I told him, and the compliment was true, that it was fortunate for England that he had been so long divested of power.[213]