When I returned down stairs, I perceived my patient, who I was informed was an old post-boy, sitting in the settle of the tap-room, quite recovered; and when I was pointed out to him by his master, as his deliverer from a watery grave, the fellow attacked me in the most violent and abusive manner, and called down horrid imprecations upon my head for having saved him from that end which I now found he had courted, by throwing himself off the horse's back, with the intention of destroying himself. I was so exasperated with the fellow's ingratitude that it was with difficulty the landlord and the guard restrained me from inflicting upon him summary chastisement for his insolence; but the conviction of his insanity soon weighed still more powerfully with me to ensure my forbearance than any thing the landlord or the guard could have urged for his protection. At this moment my fellow passenger, who had never before appeared, but who had taken the advantage of this delay to get a comfortable cup of coffee, in a warm parlour, walked in, and began to moralize with me upon the folly "of troubling myself with other people's business;" and, as he did this with a very grave face, it had the desired effect, and I really began to meditate and to calculate which of the two, he or I, was the most extraordinary being; and I was almost disposed to concede to him the palm of being the most rational, a fact of which he appeared thoroughly to be convinced, and in which opinion he was strongly confirmed, after I got into the mail, and related to him the adventure of my having nearly lost my life, a few years before, in saving a female from being drowned in a deep river, on a Monday, who contrived to put an end to her existence and find a watery grave on the following Thursday, in a ditch which contained only eighteen inches of water. We travelled as far as Marlborough together, where we parted; he proceeded to Bath in the mail, and I to my home at Chisenbury, in my curricle. Parliament met on the 21st of January, and on the TWENTY-THIRD DAY OF JANUARY,1806, the Heaven-born Minister, WILLIAM PITT, DIED, at his house at Putney. This man had, for nearly a quarter of a century, reigned triumphant over the people of England with the most despotic and arbitrary sway, by the means of a corrupt majority of a set of boroughmongers, who called themselves and their agents the House of Commons; thus pretending to be the representatives of the people of England, while, in fact, they might as well have been said to represent the people of Algiers as the people of England, a majority of them being returned by one hundred and fifty-four individuals. I may, I believe, venture to give my opinion of the House of Commons, such as it was constituted in the days and reign of Pitt. The banishment act would, of course, preclude me from speaking of the present House of Commons with the same sincerity and freedom; therefore, whether there be any resemblance in the present House of Commons to that of the House as it was constituted in the reign of Pitt, I must leave for the determination of those who have paid attention to their proceedings.
On the death of Mr. Pitt, the then House of Commons immediately voted that his debts should be paid by JOHN GULL, and that he should have a public funeral, at JOHN'S expense! This was all perfectly in character, for it was voted before the Talents or Whigs came into place and power. A ministry, a new ministry, was now made up of most heterogeneous materials; it consisted of men differing as widely from each other as any of the factions could differ; Fox and Grenville united, and, to crown the whole, Lord Sidmouth made one of the cabinet. Mr. Fox, who had been the determined opponent, the violent contemner, of all the measures of Mr. Pitt, formed an union with Lord Grenville, who had been the constant supporter of the very worst measures of Mr. Pitt! As for Lord Sidmouth, all the Addingtons appeared determined to have a "finger in the pie!" let who would be in office, the Addingtons appeared determined to have a share of the plunder, by joining them. Such opposite characters, such vinegar and oil politicians, were not likely to amalgamate so as to produce any good for the people; they might, indeed, combine to share the profits of place, but they were sure never to agree in any measure that was likely to promote the freedom and happiness of the people. This, however, was called a Whig administration; and it will not be unuseful to record the names of those personages who composed this Whig administration. They were as follow, which I beg my readers to peruse attentively:—
Right Rev. Dr. C. Manners Sutton, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Thomas Lord Erskine, Lord High Chancellor.
Dr. William Markham, Archbishop of York.
Earl Fitzwilliam, Lord President of the Council.
Viscount Sidmouth, Lord Privy Seal.
William Lord Grenville, First Lord of the Treasury.
Lord Henry Petty, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Earl Spencer, Viscount Howick,
and Right Honorable William
Windham, Secretaries of State.
Right Hon. Thomas Grenville, First Lord of the Admiralty.
Sir David Dundas, Commander in Chief.
Right Hon. Charles Abbot, Speaker of the House of Commons.
Right Hon. Sir William Grant, Master of the Rolls.
Edward Lord Ellenborough, Chief Justice of the Court of King's
Bench.
Sir Arthur Pigott, Attorney General.
Sir Samuel Romilly, Solicitor General.
Right Hon. Sir William Scott, Judge of the Admiralty.
Right Hon. Richard Brindley
Sheridan, Treasurer of the Navy.
Earl Temple and Lord John
Townsend, Paymasters of the Army.
Francis Earl of Moira, Master General of the Ordnance.
Right Hon. Richard Fitzpatrick, Secretary at War.
John Duke of Bedford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Here, my friends, you have a pretty correct list of the Whig administration, or "All the Talents," as they were facetiously and ironically called, or rather nicknamed, who were called to office upon the death of Mr. PITT, a man of brilliant talents, and irresistible eloquence; but a man who turned these great gifts of the Supreme Being to the destruction of human liberty, and who directed his powerful genius, and the great facilities that were given him by his having the direction of the resources of this laborious and enterprising nation at his command, to the very worst of purposes, to the annihilation of the rights and liberties of his countrymen. Some of the poisonous effects of the Pitt system the nation has long been tasting, but the cup of bitterness and misery that it has produced is now filled to the brim, and its baleful contents are beginning to act fully on this once prosperous nation, and to blast and wither in the bud the very prospects of its once happy people. Mr. Pitt, in his younger days, before his ambition got the better of his principles, had been a reformer; but when he once got into place and power, he became the greatest apostate that ever existed; and, true apostate like, he endeavoured to hang his former associates and companions in that cause which he had so basely abandoned and betrayed. If there ever lived one man more deserving the execration of the whole human race than another, Mr. Pitt was that man. He corrupted the very source of justice, by bribing and packing the pretended representatives of the people; but it required the Whigs, the base Whigs, to put a stamp upon the system which Pitt created, to make it a perpetual bar and an everlasting curse to the nation.
The Whigs were at this time become popular with the nation at large, and possessed the confidence of the thinking and honourable portion of the people. The friends of rational liberty looked to them with, what was believed to be, a well-grounded hope, for some relief—some relaxation from the horrors of that accursed system which Mr. Fox and his friends had so ably and so zealously opposed for nearly twenty years; that system which they had invariably condemned and exposed, as the greatest curse that could befal a nation; and for having persisted in which infamous, impolitic, and ruinous course so long, they had predicted the downfall of this country.
I own that I was one of Mr. Fox's most enthusiastic admirers. I was too young and inexperienced a politician, to doubt for a moment the sincerity of his professions; I had for many many years watched his ardent and eloquent opposition to the measures of Mr. Pitt, and my whole heart and soul had gone hand in hand with him. I own I indulged the most confident hope that he would now realize all his former professions. Now that he was in place, and had a large majority of those who called themselves the representatives of the people at his command; now that he had the power to do good, I, for one, expected that he would tread in the "stern path of duty," and set about restoring those rights and liberties of the people, the loss of which he had so pathetically, and for so many years, expatiated on, and deplored. But, alas! my fond hopes were soon blasted; the expectations of the whole nation were soon disappointed. The very FIRST act of the Whig ministry was a death-blow to the fondly-cherished hopes of every patriotic mind in the kingdom. Lord Grenville held the sinecure office of Auditor of the Exchequer, with a salary of four thousand pounds a year; but being appointed First Lord of the Treasury, with a salary of six thousand pounds a year, it was expected, of course, on every account, that he would resign his former office of Auditor of the Exchequer, it appearing too great a farce to give a man 4,000_l._ a year to audit his own accounts; and, besides the barefaced absurdity of the thing, it was evidently illegal. In spite of this, these new ministers, dead to every sense and feeling of shame, brought in a bill, and it was passed a law, solely for the purpose of enabling Lord Grenville to hold, at one and the same time, these two offices, which were so palpably incompatible with each other; namely, First Lord of the Treasury, and Auditor of the Exchequer. This shook the faith of every honest man in the country. I own that I was thunder-struck, particularly as Mr. Fox brought the bill into the House of Commons himself, and maintained it with his usual ability, and appeared quite as much in earnest and as eloquent in a bad cause as he had heretofore been in a good one. A vote, as I have already mentioned, had passed the House to pay Mr. Pitt's debts, before these ministers had actually taken their places; and now another vote was passed by them, to erect, at the public expense, a monument to his memory, upon the score of his public services! and this vote was passed, recollect, by the very same men who had declared, for the last twenty years, that the measures of Mr. Pitt were destructive to the nation, burthensome and oppressive to the people, and subversive of their dearest rights and liberties. But Mr. Fox was now in place! the case was now completely altered!!
Mr. Fox's friends now began to doubt his sincerity, and recalled to their recollection the former professions of Mr. Pitt. In a speech, delivered in his place, in the House of Commons, on the 26th of May, 1797, Mr. Fox had, in the following words, reminded Mr. Pitt of his former professions: " My opinion (said Mr. Fox) is, that the best plan of representation is that which shall bring into activity the greatest number of independent voters. That Government alone is strong that has the hearts of the people; and will any man contend, that we should not be more likely to add strength to the state if we were to extend the basis of popular representation? In 1785, the Right Honourable Gentleman (Mr. Pitt) pronounced the awful prophecy, 'without a parliamentary reform the nation will be plunged into new wars; without a parliamentary reform you cannot be safe against bad ministers, nor can even good ministers be of use to you.' Such was his prediction, and it has come upon us. Good God! what a fate is that of the Right Honourable Gentleman, and in what a state of whimsical contradiction does he now stand!" This was the sarcastical language of Mr. Fox, in 1797, when speaking of the apostacy of Mr. Pitt; but which might have been very fairly retorted upon himself in 1806.
At the moment when I am writing this, at half past one o'clock on Thursday, the nineteenth day of July, 1821, I hear about thirty of the poor half-starved populace of Northover giving three cheers in honour of His Majesty's Coronation, or rather in honour of a dinner and some beer, which, I understand, is given to them by Mr. Tuson, the attorney of the place. The system that has made him rich has made his neighbours poor, and he very properly spews his generosity and his loyalty, by giving his poor neighbours a dinner upon this occasion. Poor, deluded, debased wretches! I envy not your feelings; a few months since you were amongst the first voluntarily to address the Queen upon her escape from the fangs of her persecutors, and you voluntarily illuminated your houses upon the occasion. But now your pinching wants, the cravings of your half-starved carcases, give a sort of involuntary action to your lungs, and, in spite of yourselves, your bellies cry "God save King George the Fourth;" and the sound issues from your mouths, in hopes of having the space which the wind occupies in your stomachs replaced with beef, pudding, and beer. But this is one of the dog-days!—God save King George the Fourth, they cry; huzza, again, again, and again! All that I chuse to say is, that it is two years ago, the twenty-first of next month, that Lord Sidmouth addressed a letter to the Manchester Magistrates, which expressed, by command of His Majesty, "THE GREAT SATISFACTION HIS MAJESTY derived from their prompt, decisive and efficient measures for the preservation of the public tranquillity." God preserve His Majesty from having any occasion to thank the magistrates again for the perpetration of such horrid crime.
I trust the occasion will be an excuse for this digression. Let us now return to the period of 1806. The new ministry began to act so decided a part, that they no longer kept the nation in any suspence as to what course they would pursue. They not only trod in Mr. Pitt's steps, by adopting all his measures, but they greatly outdid him in insulting the feelings of the people. As their THIRD act, they appointed Lord Ellenborough the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, (a political Judge) "one of the cabinet." This was a most unconstitutional measure, and calculated to render the ministry justly unpopular. The FOURTH step they took was to raise the INCOME TAX from six-and-a-quarter to ten per cent. The FIFTH thing they did was, to exempt all the King's funded property from the operation of that tax, while they left that of the widow and orphan, even down to the miserable pittance of fifty pounds a year, subject to all its inquisitorial powers. Their SIXTH measure was, to raise the incomes of all the younger branches of the Royal Family, from twelve to eighteen thousand a year. Their SEVENTH measure was, to bring a bill into the House, to make all private breweries liable to the excise laws; thus daringly meditating the violation of an Englishman's boast, "that his house is his castle." But, most fortunately for the country, the Whig ministry were, in this one instance, left in a disgraceful minority by their own tools, the mock representatives of the people. Their EIGHTH measure was, to continue the French war, expressly for Hanover; Mr. Fox unblushingly declaring, that "Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire;" although the act of settlement expressly declares it to be a breach of the compact between the king and the people, to go to war on account of any of the king's foreign possessions. Their NINTH measure was, to draw up a bill, which they left in their office, making it, in Ireland, transportation for any person or persons to be seen out of their houses, in any of the prescribed districts, between sun-set in the evening and sun-rise in the morning; and this was to be carried into effect without the sanction of a jury, and merely by the fiat of two magistrates! TENTH, and lastly, they abandoned the cause of the Catholics, in order to save and keep their places, when they found that the King made that abandonment a sine qua non: they had always, for many many years, when in opposition, supported the Catholic claims for emancipation, and had pledged themselves that, whenever they had the power, they would carry that measure into effect; and, as soon as they thought that they were firmly seated in the saddle of state, and their feet well fixed in the stirrups, they brought that measure forward in Parliament, having first gained the execration of every independent man in the united kingdom, for having acted in the way which I have above described.
The ten preceding political acts of the Whig ministry, of "All the Talents," as they impudently called themselves, had rendered them sufficiently odious throughout the whole country; and it only required this last act of theirs to render them as despicable as they were detested. As soon as they gave notice of their intention to bring forward the Catholic claims, the old leaven, the refuse of the Pitt faction, who had only wanted a plausible opportunity, began to bellow aloud for the safety of Mother Church, and the Protestant Ascendancy; declaring that the church, the established religion, was in danger. They had always their intriguers about the person of the old bigotted King George the Third, who immediately took the alarm, or rather took this opportunity of getting rid of a ministry that he never liked, and with whom he had never acted cordially, although they had, in the most subservient manner, complied with all his whims and prejudices. Now was the time then for the remains of the Pitt faction to make an effort to dislodge their enemies from their strong hold of place and power! Alas! alas!! the despicable Whigs now began to cry for help from the people; from that people whom they had so infamously deceived. They, however, called in vain for the protecting hand of that people whom they had so basely betrayed; they called in vain for the helping hand of that people whom they had insulted and oppressed, and whose voice they had treated with contempt and derision, when basking in the sunshine of power. The people had been enlightened; the people had read Cobbett, and they were no longer to be deluded, and made the tools of a despicable, a hypocritical, and a tyrannical faction, such as the Whigs had proved themselves during their administration. The King was well advised of this by the old PITT creatures; he therefore treated the Whig ministers with very little ceremony; he made a very serious affair of their intention to make him violate his coronation oath; he demanded that they should abandon the Catholics, or abandon their places. The place-loving Whigs made no parley even with the King, but instantly and unconditionally agreed to comply with his demand; thus deserting the Catholics and their own principles together, to save their places. The King was astonished and disappointed; he had no idea that they would have acted so basely, and Lords Liverpool, Eldon, and Castlereagh were foiled for a moment, in their attempt to dislodge them; but their best ally was the hatred and the indignation which the people evinced towards the Whigs. Taking advantage of this, the Outs urged the King on to insult his then ministers, by demanding a written pledge from them, that they would never bring forward the measure any more in Parliament; thus openly evincing that His Majesty would not take their words. The paltry Whigs did all they could to save their places; they bore kicking with wonderful patience; they were as subservient as spaniels; they promised every thing, and they prayed lustily; but the King was determined, and persisted in demanding a written pledge. This was such a premeditated, barefaced insult, that they could not submit to it. They would bear kicking privately, but it was too much to be kicked and cuffed so publicly, and to be asked to sign their names to their own condemnation; this was too much for the most degraded of men to bear with any degree of temper. They now remonstrated, but their remonstrances were in vain; the King despised them for their meanness as much as he had before detested them for their insolence, and, without any further ceremony, he gave them one more kick, and kicked them headlong out of place and power.