In the course of a vigorous speech on reform in the administration of the army, Lord Shelburne had censured a transaction in which Mr. Fullerton, a Member of the House of Commons, was intimately concerned. |Lord Shelburne’s Duel with Fullerton.| Fullerton made a violent attack, in his place in the House, upon his censor. But his speech was so disorderly that he was forced to break off. In his anger he sent Lord Shelburne a minute, not only of what he had actually spoken, but of what he had intended to say, in addition, had the rules of Parliament permitted. And he had the effrontery to wind up his obliging communication with these words:—‘You correspond, as I have heard abroad, with the enemies of your country.’ His letter was presented to Lord Shelburne by a messenger.
The receiver, when he had read it, said to the bearer: ‘The best answer I can give Mr. Fullerton is to desire him to meet me in Hyde Park, at five, to-morrow morning.’ They fought, and Shelburne was wounded. On being asked how he felt himself, he looked at the wound, and said: ‘I do not think that Lady Shelburne will be the worse for this.’ But it was severe enough to interrupt, for a while, his political labours.
His Secretaryship in the Rockingham Administration.
On the formation in March, 1782, of the Rockingham Administration, he accepted the Secretaryship of State, and took with him four of his adherents into the Cabinet. But the most curious feature in the transaction was that Lord Shelburne carried on, personally, all the intercourse in the royal closet that necessarily preceded the formation of the Ministry, although he was not to be its head. George the Third would not admit Lord Rockingham to an audience until his Cabinet was completely formed. The man whose exclusion from the Grafton Ministry the King had so warmly urged a few years before, was now not less warmly urged by him to throw over his party, and to head a cabinet of his own. He resisted all blandishment, and virtually told the King that the triumph of the Opposition must be its triumph as an unbroken whole; though he doubtless felt, within himself, that the cohesion was of singularly frail tenacity.
On the 24th of March, Shelburne had the satisfaction of conveying to Lord Rockingham the royal concession of his constitutional demands—obtained after a wearisome negotiation, and only by the piling up of argument on argument in successive conversations at the ‘Queen’s House,’ lasting sometimes for three mortal hours. |Death of Lord Rockingham, 1782, 1 July.| Three months afterwards, the new Premier was dead. And with him departed the cohesion of the Whigs.
Formation of Lord Shelburne’s Ministry.
As Secretary of State, Lord Shelburne’s chief task had been the control of that double and most unwelcome negotiation which was carried on at Paris with France and with America.[[3]] For it had fallen to the lot of the utterer of the ‘sunset-speech,’[[4]]—‘if we let America go, the sun of Great Britain is set’—to arrange the terms of American pacification. And the obstructions in that path which were created at home were even more serious stumbling-blocks than were the difficulties abroad. The cardinal points of Lord Shelburne’s policy, at this time, were to retain, by hook or crook, some amount or other of hold upon America, and at the worst to keep the Court of France from enjoying the prestige, or setting up the pretence, of having dictated the terms of peace.
That the split in the Whig party was really and altogether inevitable, now that Rockingham’s death had placed Shelburne above reasonable competition for the premiership, was made known to him when at Court, in the most abrupt manner. On the 7th of July (six days after the death of the Marquess), Fox took him by the sleeve, with the blunt question: ‘Are you to be First Lord of the Treasury?’ |Walpole to Mann (from an eye witness), 1782, July 7.| When Shelburne said ‘Yes,’ the instant rejoinder was, ‘Then, my Lord, I shall resign.’ Fox had brought the seals in his pocket, and proceeded immediately to return them to the King.
In his first speech as Premier, Lord Shelburne spoke thus:—‘It has been said that I have changed my opinion about the independence of America.... My opinion is still the same. When that independence shall have been established, the sun of England may be said to have set. I have used every effort, public and private—in England, and out of it—to avert so dreadful a disaster.... |Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxiii, col. 194.| But though this country should have received a fatal blow, there is still a duty incumbent upon its Ministers to use their most vigorous exertions to prevent the Court of France from being in a situation to dictate the terms of Peace. The sun of England may have set. But we will improve the twilight. We will prepare for the rising of that sun again. And I hope England may yet see many, many happy days.’
The best achievements of the brief government of Lord Shelburne were (first) the resolute defence, in its diplomacy at Paris and Versailles, of our territories in Canada, and (secondly) its consistent assertion of the principle that underlay a sentence contained in a former speech of the |Merits of the Shelburne Ministry.| Premier—a sentence which, at one time, was much upon men’s lips:—‘I will never consent,’ he had said, ‘that the King of England shall be a King of the Mahrattas.’ The merits, I venture to think, of that short Ministry, have had scant acknowledgment in our current histories. And the reason is, perhaps, not far to seek.