It would, perhaps, be hard to lay the finger on any one family recorded in the ‘British Peerage’ which so long and so largely influenced our political history, in the Georgian era of it, as did that of Grenville. During the century (speaking roundly) which began with the suppression of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, and ended with the Repeal of the Corn Laws, Grenvilles are continually prominent in every important political struggle. The personal influence and (for lack of a plainer word) the characteristic ‘idiosyncrasy’ of individual Grenvilles notoriously shaped, or materially helped to shape, several measures that have had world-wide results. But perhaps the most curious feature in their political history as a family is this: At almost every great crisis in affairs one Grenville, of ability and prominence, is seen in tolerably active opposition to the rest of the Grenvilles. In the political history of the man who forms the subject of this brief memoir the family peculiarity, it will be seen, came out saliently.
The political Grenvilles were offshoots of an old stock which, in the days of eld, were richer in gallant soldiers than in peace-loving publicists. The old Grenvilles dealt many a shrewd swordthrust for England by land and by sea, in the Tudor times, and earlier. The younger branch has been rich in statesmen and rich in scholars. Not a few of them have shone equally and at once in either path of labour.
Parentage and early life of Thomas Grenville.
Thomas Grenville was the second son of the Minister of George the Third, George Grenville,—himself the second son of Richard Grenville, of Wotton, and of Hester Temple (co-heiress of Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, and herself created Countess Temple in 1749). He was born on the thirty-first of December, 1755, and entered Parliament soon after attaining his majority. In the House of Commons he voted and acted as a follower of Lord Rockingham and a comrade of Charles Fox, in opposition to the other Grenvilles and the ‘Grenvillite’ party. Had the famous India Bill of Fox’s ministry been carried into a law, Thomas Grenville, it was understood, would have been the first Governor-General of India under its rule.
His short diplomatic career.
His first entrance into the diplomatic service was made in 1782. His mission was to Paris. Its purpose, to negotiate with Benjamin Franklin a treaty of peace with America. |See above, Book II, Chap. III, page 431.| The circumstances beneath the influence of which it was undertaken I have had occasion to advert to, already, in the notice of Lord Shelburne. It is needless to return to them now.
Thomas Grenville’s union in the double negotiation with Mr. Oswald (instructed by Shelburne, it will be remembered, as Grenville was by Fox) proved to be very distasteful to him. From the beginning it boded ill to the success of the mission. As early as the 4th of June, 1782, we find Mr. Grenville writing to Fox |The Mission to Paris, 1782–3.| thus:—‘I entreat you earnestly to see the impossibility of my assisting you under this contrariety.... I cannot fight a daily battle with Mr. Oswald and his Secretary.[[44]] |T. Grenville to Fox; 4th June, 1782.| It would be neither for the advantage of the business, for your interest, or for your credit or mine; and, even if it was, I could not do it.’
The then existing arrangements of the Secretaryship of State gave the control of a negotiation with France to one Secretary, and of a negotiation with America to the other. The reader has but to call to mind the well-known political relationship between Fox and Shelburne in 1782, to gain a fully sufficient key to the consequent diplomatic relationship between Oswald and Thomas Grenville, when thus engaged in carrying on, abreast, a double mission at the Court of Paris. |Comp. also same to same, June 16. (Court and Cabinets of Geo. III, pp. 36–51.)| To add to the obvious embroilment, Oswald had shortly before received from Benjamin Franklin a suggestion that Britain should ‘spontaneously’ cede Canada, in order to enable his astute countrymen at home the better to compensate both the plundered Royalists and those among the victorious opponents of those Royalists who had, from time to time, sustained any damage at the hands of the British armies.
The most earnest entreaties, from many quarters, were used to induce Grenville to remain at Paris. His political friends, and his family connections, were, on that point, alike urgent. But all entreaties were in vain. When the news reached him of Lord Rockingham’s death, and of the break-up in the Cabinet which followed, his decision was, if possible, more decided. He still clave to Fox, while his brother, Lord Temple, accepted from Shelburne the Lieutenancy of Ireland. A Lordship of the Treasury or the Irish Secretaryship was by turns pressed upon Mr. Grenville by Lord Temple with an earnestness which may be called passionate. |Lord Temple to T. Grenville, 12th July.| ‘Let me hope,’ said he, ‘that you will feel that satisfaction that every [other] member of my family most earnestly feels at my acceptance of the Lieutenancy of Ireland.... I conjure you, by everything that you prize nearest and dearest to your heart; by the joy I have ever felt in your welfare; by the interest I have ever taken in your uneasiness; weigh well your determination; it decides the complexion of my future hours.... I have staked my happiness upon this cast.’ The resolve of Thomas Grenville to adhere to the position he had taken was the cause of a family estrangement which endured for many years. But the more a reader, familiar with the annals of the time (and especially if he be also familiar with the personal history of Lord Temple before and after), may study Lord Temple’s letters of 1782, the less he is likely to wonder that the peculiar line of argument they develope failed to attain the aim they had in view. The vein that runs through them is plainly that of personal ambition; not of an adherence—at any cost—to a sincere conviction, whether right or wrong, of public duty. Such a line of argument was, at no time, the line likely to commend itself to Thomas Grenville. Both his virtues, and what by many politicians will be regarded as his weaknesses, alike armed him against obvious appeals to mere self-interest or self-aggrandisement.
One result—and the not unanticipated result—of the family estrangement of 1782 was that, two years later, Mr. Grenville found himself to have no longer the command of a seat in Parliament. |The withdrawal from Parliament, 1784–90.| For four years to come he gave most of his leisure to a pursuit which he loved much better—as far as personal taste was concerned—namely, to the resumption of his systematic studies in classical literature. But in 1790 he was elected a burgess for the town of Aldborough. Thenceforward, and for a good many years, politics again shared his time with literature, and with those social claims and duties to which no man of his day was more keenly alive.