The popular history of George the Third’s reign has been, in a large degree, imbued with Whiggism. The historians most in vogue have had a sort of small apostolical succession amongst themselves, which has had the result of giving a strong party tinge to those versions of the course of political events in that reign which have most readily gained the public ear. When the full story shall come to be told, in a later day and from a higher stand-point, Lord Shelburne, not improbably, will be one among several statesmen whose reputation with posterity (in common—in some measure—with that of their royal master himself, it may even be) will be found to have been elevated, rather than lowered, by the process.
Debates, vol. xix, col. 850.
But, be that as it may, party intrigue, rather than ministerial incapacity, had to do, confessedly, with the rapid overthrow of the Government of July, 1782.
Personally, Lord Shelburne was in a position which, in several points of view, bears a resemblance to that in which another able statesman, who had to fight against a powerful coterie, was to find himself forty years later. But in Shelburne’s case, the struggle of the politician did not, as in Canning’s, break down the bodily vigour of the man. Lord Shelburne had twenty-two years of retirement yet before him, when he resigned the premiership in 1783. And they were years of much happiness.
The closing Years of Lord Lansdowne’s Life.
Part of that happiness was the result of the domestic union just adverted to. Another part of it accrued from the rich Library which the research and attention of many years had gradually built up, and from the increased leisure that had now been secured, both for study and for the enjoyment of the choice society which gathered habitually at Lansdowne House and at Bowood.
Lord Shelburne’s retirement had been followed, in 1784, by his creation as Earl Wycombe and Marquess of Lansdowne. In the following year, he sold the Wycombe mansion and its charming park to Lord Carrington. Thenceforward, Bowood had the benefit, exclusively, of his taste and skill in landscape-gardening. Unfortunately, his next successor, far from continuing his father’s work, did much to injure and spoil it. But the third Marquess, in whom so many of his father’s best qualities were combined with some that were especially his own, made ample amends.
The exciting debates which grew out of the French Revolution and the ensuing events on the Continent, called Lord Lansdowne, now and then, into the old arena. But the domestic employments which have been mentioned, together with that which was entailed by a large and varied correspondence, both at home and abroad, were the things which chiefly filled up his later years. The Marquess died in London on the seventh of May, 1805. He was but sixty-eight years of age, yet he was then the oldest general officer on the army list, having been gazetted as a major-general just forty years before.
The Purchase of the Lansdowne Manuscripts.
In order to acquire for the nation that precious portion of Lord Lansdowne’s Library which was in manuscript, the national purse-strings were now, for the first time, opened on behalf of the literary stores of the British Museum. Fifty-three years had passed since its complete foundation as a national institution, and exactly twice that number of years since the first public establishment of the Cottonian Library, yet no grant had been hitherto made by Parliament for the improvement of the national collections of books.