“Lord Wellesley,” he declared, speaking in the third person, “had repeatedly, with great reluctance, yielded his opinions to the Cabinet on many other important points [besides the war in the Peninsula]. He was sincerely convinced by experience that in every such instance he had submitted to opinions more incorrect than his own, and had sacrificed to the object of accommodation and temporary harmony more than he could justify in point of strict public duty. In fact he was convinced by experience that the Cabinet neither possessed ability nor knowledge to devise a good plan, nor temper and discernment to adopt what he now thought necessary, unless Mr. Perceval should concur with Lord Wellesley. To Mr. Perceval’s judgment or attainments Lord Wellesley, under the same experience, could not pay any deference without injury to the public service.”
Probably Wellesley did not conceal in Council the opinion of his colleagues which he freely expressed in society. In every way they annoyed him. A scholar, who prided himself on his classical studies and refined tastes, he found these colleagues altering his state papers and criticising his style. “He had thought he was among a Cabinet of statesmen,” he said; “he found them a set of critics.” His own criticisms occasionally touched matters more delicate than style. Once at a Cabinet meeting Lord Westmoreland, the Privy Seal, put his feet on the table while Wellesley was talking. The Foreign Secretary stopped short. “I will go on with my remarks,” he said, “when the noble Lord resumes a more seemly attitude.”
Americans could hardly be blamed for holding a low opinion of this Administration, when most intelligent Englishmen held the same. If Whigs or Liberals like Grenville, Brougham, and Sydney Smith were prejudiced critics, this charge could hardly be brought against Canning; but if Canning’s opinion were set aside, the Wellesleys at least being identified with his administration had every reason to wish Perceval success. How the Marquess hated and despised Perceval; how he struggled to get rid of him, and strained every nerve to bring Canning, Castlereagh, Sidmouth, Grey, or Grenville into the Government as a counter-balancing influence, can be read in the biographies of all these men, and of many less famous. London echoed with the Marquess’s deep disgust; every man of fair parts in England sympathized with it, unless his personal interests or feelings bound him to blind devotion. The yoke hung heavy on Whigs and Tories alike. Even Lord Sidmouth rebelled against the commercial system to which Perceval clung more desperately than to his offices or power. “Of that destructive system,” wrote Sidmouth in the summer of 1810,[236] “all are weary, ‘praeter atrocem animum Catonis.’”
Even Henry Wellesley, at Seville and Cadiz, felt the same heavy-hand deadening the effect of every effort, and longed to do at Cadiz what Erskine had done at Washington. March 4, 1810,[237] Perceval wrote to Lord Wellesley begging him to instruct his brother Henry to obtain from the Spanish Junta exclusive or at least special privileges in the trade of the Spanish colonies, such as would admit British consuls to the chief places of South America, and “give us a decided benefit and preference in the trade.” Of course this preference was to be granted at the expense of the United States, the solitary rival of England in those waters, but “as nearly hostile to Spain as she can be without actually declaring war against her.” Soon afterward the “Espagnol,” a Spanish periodical published in England, applauded revolutionary movements in Caracas and Buenos Ayres, while it asserted the impossibility of preventing the spread of the spirit of independence in the Spanish-American colonies.
“You can have no idea,” wrote Henry Wellesley from Cadiz, August 31, to his brother Arthur,[238] “of the ferment occasioned here by this article, which is attributed to the Government,—as it is supposed, and I believe justly, that the ‘Espagnol’ is patronized by the Government, and contains its sentiments with regard to the occurrences in Spain and the measures necessary in the present crisis of her affairs.... It is wonderful that they cannot be satisfied in England with a commercial arrangement which would be attended with immense advantages to ourselves, and would likewise be greatly beneficial to Spain. I apprehend this to be the true spirit of all commercial treaties; and why are we to take advantage of the weakness of Spain to endeavor to impose terms upon her which would be ruinous and disgraceful? I have it in my power to conclude to-morrow a commercial treaty which, without breaking in upon the Spanish colonial laws, would pour millions into the pockets of our merchants, and be equally advantageous to the resources; but this will not do, and we must either have the trade direct with the colonies, or nothing. However, I have received my answer, and the Government will not hear of opening the trade.”
The coincidence of opinion about Spencer Perceval extended everywhere, except among the Church of England clergy, the country squires, the shipping interests, the Royal household at Windsor, and the Federalists of Boston and Connecticut. As though to make him an object of execration, the long-threatened storm burst on the trade and private credit of Great Britain. For some eighteen months gold stood at a premium of about fifteen per cent; the exchanges remained steadily unfavorable, while credit was strained to the utmost, until in July, 1810, half the traders in England, and private banks by the score, were forced to suspend payment. Never before, and probably never since, has England known such a fall in prices and destruction of credit.[239]
This was the impending situation when Parliament adjourned, June 21, with no bright spot on its horizon but the supposed friendship of America. Meanwhile Pinkney wearied Wellesley for an answer to the question whether Fox’s blockade was in force. June 10, June 23, and finally August 6, he renewed his formal request. “No importunity had before been spared which it became me to use.”[240] He was met by the same torpor at every other point. Wellesley promised to name a new minister to Washington, but decided upon none. He invited overtures in regard to the “Chesapeake” affair, but failed to act on them. Rumor said that he neglected business, came rarely to Cabinet meetings, shut himself in his own house, saw only a few friends, and abandoned the attempt to enforce his views. He resolved to retire from the Cabinet, in despair of doing good, and waited only for the month before the next meeting of Parliament, which he conceived to be the most proper time for declaring his intention.[241]
In the midst of this chaos, such as England had rarely seen, fell Cadore’s announcement of August 5 that the Imperial Decrees were withdrawn, bien entendu that before November 1 England should have abandoned her blockades, or America should have enforced her rights. Pinkney hastened to lay this information before Lord Wellesley, August 25, and received the usual friendly promises, which had ceased to gratify him. “I am truly disgusted with this,” he wrote home, August 29,[242] “and would, if I followed my own inclination, speedily put an end to it.” Two days afterward he received from Wellesley a civil note,[243] saying that whenever the repeal of the French Decrees should actually have taken effect, and the commerce of neutral nations should have been restored to the condition in which it previously stood, the system of counteraction adopted by England should be abandoned. This reply, being merely another form of silence, irritated Pinkney still more, while his instructions pressed him to act. He waited until September 21, when he addressed to Wellesley a keen remonstrance. “If I had been so fortunate,” he began,[244] “as to obtain for my hitherto unanswered inquiry the notice which I had flattered myself it might receive, and to which I certainly thought it was recommended by the plainest considerations of policy and justice, it would not perhaps have been necessary for me to trouble your Lordship with this letter;” and in this tone he went on to protest against the “unwarrantable prohibitions of intercourse rather than regular blockades,” which had helped in nearly obliterating “every trace of the public law of the world”:—
“Your Lordship has informed me in a recent note that it is ‘his Majesty’s earnest desire to see the commerce of the world restored to that freedom which is necessary for its prosperity;’ and I cannot suppose that this freedom is understood to be consistent with vast constructive blockades which may be so expanded at pleasure as, without the aid of any new device, to oppress and annihilate every trade but that which England thinks fit to license. It is not, I am sure, to such freedom that your Lordship can be thought to allude.”
The Marquess of Buckingham’s well-advised correspondent some weeks afterward[245] remarked that “Pinkney, who was at first all sweetness and complaisance, has recently exhibited in his communications with Lord Wellesley an ample measure of republican insolence.” Sweetness and insolence were equally thrown away. Pinkney’s letter of September 21, like most of his other letters, remained unanswered; and before November 1, when Napoleon’s term for England’s action expired, a new turn of affairs made answer impossible. The old King was allowed to visit the death-bed of his favorite daughter the Princess Amelia; he excited himself over her wishes and farewells, and October 25 his mind, long failing, gave way for the last time. His insanity could not be disguised, and the Government fell at once into confusion.