Then followed a melodramatic change. May 11, as the prime minister entered the House to attend the investigation, persons about the door heard the report of a pistol, and saw Spencer Perceval fall forward shot through the heart. By the hand of a lunatic moved only by imaginary personal motives, this minister, who seemed in no way a tragical figure, became the victim of a tragedy without example in modern English history; but although England had never been in a situation more desperate, the true importance of Spencer Perceval was far from great, and when he vanished in the flash of a pistol from the stage where he seemed to fill the most considerable part, he stood already on the verge of overthrow. His death relieved England of a burden. Brougham would not allow his inquiry to be suspended, and the premier’s assassination rather concealed than revealed the defeat his system must have suffered.
During the negotiations which followed, in the midst of difficulties in forming a new Ministry, Castlereagh received from Jonathan Russell Napoleon’s clandestine Decree of Repeal. Brougham asked, May 22, what construction was to be put by ministers on this paper. Castlereagh replied that the decree was a trick disgraceful to any civilized government, and contained nothing to satisfy the conditions required by England. Apart from the subordinate detail that his view of the decree was correct, his remarks meant nothing. The alarm caused by news that Congress had imposed an embargo as the last step before war, the annoyance created by John Henry’s revelations and Castlereagh’s lame defence, the weight of evidence pressing on Parliament against the Orders in Council, the absence of a strong or permanent Ministry,—these influences, gaining from day to day, forced the conviction that a change of system must take place. June 8 Lord Liverpool announced that he had formed an Administration, and would deal in due course with the Orders in Council. June 16 Brougham made his motion for a repeal of the orders. When he began his speech he did not know what part the new Ministry would take, but while he unfolded his long and luminous argument he noticed that James Stephen failed to appear in the House. This absence could mean only that Stephen had been deserted by ministers; and doubt ceased when Brougham and Baring ended, for then Lord Castlereagh—after Perceval’s death the leader of the House—rose and awkwardly announced that the Government, though till within three or four days unable to deliberate on the subject, had decided to suspend immediately the Orders in Council.
Thus ended the long struggle waged for five years by the United States against the most illiberal Government known in England within modern times. Never since the Definitive Treaty of Peace had America won so complete a triumph, for the surrender lacked on England’s part no element of defeat. Canning never ceased taunting the new Ministry with their want of courage in yielding without a struggle. The press submitted with bad grace to the necessity of holding its tongue. Every one knew that the danger, already almost a certainty, of an American war chiefly caused the sudden and silent surrender, and that the Ministry like the people shrank from facing the consequences of their own folly. Every one cried that England should not suffer herself to be provoked by the irritating conduct of America; and at a moment when every word and act of the American government announced war in the rudest terms, not a voice was heard in England for accepting the challenge, nor was a musket made ready for defence. The new Ministry thought the war likely to drive them from office, for they were even weaker than when Spencer Perceval led them. The “Times” of June 17 declared that whatever might be the necessity of defending British rights by an American war, yet it would be the most unpopular war ever known, because every one would say that with happier talents it might have been avoided. “Indeed,” it added, “every one is so declaring at the present moment; so that we who have ever been the most strenuous advocates of the British cause in this dispute are really overwhelmed by the general clamor.” Bitter as the mortification was, the headlong abandonment of the Orders in Council called out reproaches only against the ministers who originally adopted them. “We are most surprised,” said the “Times” of June 18, “that such acts could ever have received the sanction of the Ministry when so little was urged in their defence.”
Such concessions were commonly the result rather than the prelude of war; they were not unlike those by which Talleyrand succeeded, in 1799, in restoring friendly relations between France and America. Three months earlier they would have answered their purpose; but the English were a slow and stubborn race. Perhaps that they should have repealed the orders at all was more surprising than that they should have waited five years; but although they acted more quickly and decidedly than was their custom, Spencer Perceval lived three months too long. The Orders in Council were abandoned at Westminster June 17; within twenty-four hours at Washington war was declared; and forty-eight hours later Napoleon, about to enter Russia, issued the first bulletin of his Grand Army.
CHAPTER XIV.
For civil affairs Americans were more or less trained; but they had ignored war, and had shown no capacity in their treatment of military matters. Their little army was not well organized or equipped; its civil administration was more imperfect than its military, and its military condition could hardly have been worse. The ten old regiments, with half-filled ranks, were scattered over an enormous country on garrison service, from which they could not be safely withdrawn; they had no experience, and no organization for a campaign, while thirteen new regiments not yet raised were expected to conquer Canada.
If the army in rank and file was insufficient, its commanding officers supplied none of its wants. The senior major-general appointed by President Madison in February, 1812, was Henry Dearborn, who had retired in 1809 from President Jefferson’s Cabinet into the Custom-House of Boston. Born in 1751, Dearborn at the time of his nomination as major-general was in his sixty-second year, and had never held a higher grade in the army than that of deputy quartermaster-general in 1781, and colonel of a New Hampshire regiment after active service in the Revolutionary War had ended.
The other major-general appointed at the same time was Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, who received command of the Southern Department. Pinckney was a year older than Dearborn; his military service was chiefly confined to the guerilla campaigns of Marion and Sumter, and to staff duty as aide to General Gates in the Southern campaign of 1780; he had been minister in England and Envoy Extraordinary to Spain, where he negotiated the excellent treaty known by his name; he had been also a Federalist member of Congress in the stormy sessions from 1797 to 1801,—but none of these services, distinguished as they were, seemed to explain his appointment as major-general. Macon, whose opinions commonly reflected those of the Southern people, was astonished at the choice.
“The nomination of Thomas Pinckney for major-general,” he wrote,[227] “is cause of grief to all men who wish proper men appointed; not that he is a Federal or that he is not a gentleman, but because he is thought not to possess the talents necessary to his station. I imagine his nomination must have been produced through the means of P. Hamilton, who is about as fit for his place as the Indian Prophet would be for Emperor of Europe. I never was more at a loss to account for any proceeding than the nomination of Pinckney to be major-general.”
Even the private report that Pinckney had become a Republican did not reconcile Macon, whose belief that the “fighting secretaries” would not do for real war became stronger than ever, although he admitted that some of the military appointments were supposed to be tolerably good.