28th.—The Committee sat till half an hour past three in the morning, on the clause for annulling marriages that should be contracted contrary to the inhibitions in the Bill. The Churchmen acquiesced in the Legislature’s assuming this power in spirituals, as they had done in the single case of the young King’s marriage in the Regency Bill: but however commendable the moderation of the Clergy might be, the Pontific power arrogated by the head of the Law, and his obstinate persisting to enforce a statute, by no means calculated or called for by general utility, was most indecent. The Speaker argued with great weight against the clause; Wilbraham, well for it. Mr. Fox, at one in the morning, spoke against it for above an hour, and laid open the chicanery and jargon of the Lawyers, the pride of their Mufti, and the arbitrary manner of enforcing the Bill. A motion for adjournment was moved, but was rejected by above 80 to 40 odd.
30th.—The Committee went upon the clause that gave unheard-of power, in the first resort to parents and guardians, and then to the Chancery, on the marriages of minors. Fox spoke with increasing spirit against this clause too; and on Wilbraham’s having said, if you have a sore leg, will you not try gentle remedies first? he drew a most severe picture of the Chancellor, under the application of the story of a Gentlewoman at Salisbury, who, having a sore leg, sent for a Country Surgeon, who pronounced it must be cut off. The Gentlewoman, unwilling to submit to the operation, sent for another, more merciful, who said he could save her leg, without the least operation. The Surgeons conferred: the ignorant one said, “I know it might be saved, but I have given my opinion; my character depends upon it, and we must carry it through”—the leg was cut off. Charles Yorke, the Chancellor’s son, took this up with great anger, and yet with preciseness, beginning with these words, “It is new in Parliament, it is new in politics, it is new in ambition;” and drew a lofty character of his father, and of the height to which he had raised himself by his merit; concluding with telling Fox, how imprudent it was to attack such authority, and assuring him that he would feel it. Mr. Fox replied with repeating the sententious words: “Is it new in Parliament to be conscientious? I hope not! Is it new in politics? I am afraid it is! Is it new in ambition? It certainly is, to attack such authority!” Mr. Pelham answered him well. Mr. Fox once more replied, urging how cruel and absurd it was to force the Bill down: that he knew he should not be heard by above one-third of the House, but would speak so loud that he would be heard out of the House. That from the beginning to the end of the Bill, one only view had predominated, that of pride and aristocracy. There was much of truth in this. At the very beginning, on the Duke of Newcastle’s declining to vote in the Bill, the Chancellor told Mr. Pelham, “I will be supported in this, or I never will speak for you again.” As the Opposition had at that time been inconsiderable, this breathed a little more than a mere spirit of obstinacy, and foretold a Bill to be framed not without an interested meaning: at least a legislator is uncommonly zealous for the public good, who forgets the philosophy of his character to drive on his honest ordinances by political menaces!
The next day the Committee finished without a division. Sir Richard Lloyd, a Lawyer, who had spoken against the Bill, voted for it afterwards, without assigning any reason for his change of opinion. Captain Saunders, who had said that he would go and vote against the Bill, for the sake of the sailors, having once given forty of his crew leave to go on shore for an hour, and all returned married, was compelled by Lord Anson, the Chancellor’s son-in-law and his patron, to vote for it. Henley and the Solicitor-General declaring of the same words, the one, that they could not be made clearer; the other, that they were as clear as the sun at noonday, though each gave a totally different interpretation of them, were well ridiculed by Fox; as a serious speech of Lord Egmont was with much humour and not a little indecency by Nugent.
June 1.—The report was made of the Bill, and the House sat till ten. On one clause only there was a division of 102 to 20.
2d.—A new anti-ministerial Paper appeared, called the Protester, supported at the expense of the Duke of Bedford and Beckford, and written by Ralph, a dull author, originally a poet, and satirized in the Dunciad: retained, after his pen had been rejected by Sir Robert Walpole, by Doddington and Waller; but much fitter to range the obscure ideas of the latter, than to dress up the wit of the former: from them, he devolved to the Prince of Wales in his second opposition, and laboured long in a paper called the Remembrancer, which was more than once emboldened above the undertaker’s pitch, by Lord Egmont and others. Ralph’s own turn seemed to be endeavouring to raise mobs by speculative ideas of government; from whence his judgment at least may be calculated. But he had the good fortune to be bought off from his last Journal, the Protester, for the only Paper that he did not write in it.
4th.—The Marriage Bill was read for the last time. Charles Townshend again opposed it with as much argument as before with wit. Mr. Fox, with still more wit, ridiculed it for an hour and a half. Notwithstanding the Chancellor’s obstinacy in maintaining it, and the care he had bestowed upon it, it was still so incorrect and so rigorous, that its very body-guards had been forced to make or to submit to many amendments: these were inserted in Mr. Fox’s copy in red ink: the Solicitor-General, who sat near him as he was speaking, said, “How bloody it looks!” Fox took this up with spirit, and said, “Yes, but you cannot say I did it; look what a rent the learned Casca made, (this alluded to the Attorney,) through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed!” (Mr. Pelham)—however, he finished with earnest declarations of not having designed to abuse the Chancellor, and with affirming that it was scandalous to pass the Bill—but it was passed by 125 votes to 56.
6th.—The Bill being returned to the Lords, the amendments were read. The Duke of Bedford, who began to attack the whole Bill, was obstructed by the Chancellor, who would have confined him to the mere amendments; but the Duke, appealing to the House whether he might not argue against the face of the whole Bill as it now stood, the Chancellor seemed to acquiesce; but the Duke, not finding any disposition to support him, soon dropped the cause; objecting chiefly to the last clause on not extending the act to Foreign Countries. The Chancellor replied, that he was sorry the clause was there; but the Bill was too good to be lost, and might have much good engrafted on it hereafter.[230] Lord Sandys declared that he would agree to all the amendments made by the House of Commons, against any that should be offered by any body else. An absurd declaration, founded on the design of proroguing the Parliament on the morrow, which would leave no time for returning the Bill to the Commons; and a plain indication of the indigested manner in which a law of such importance was hurried on. On its being urged that several women could not write, the Bishop of Oxford, with a sophistry that would have distinguished him in any church, replied that the Clergyman might write to himself, and give it to the woman, and she to him again, for that the Bill did not say, that when she gave her consent in writing, it must be of her own writing! Lord Bath said, the opposition had proceeded from faction and party. The Duke of Bedford replied, that his opposition had arisen from conscience, that he had not troubled himself about what the House of Commons did; yet he had perceived that the Bill had been crammed down both Houses.
At last the Chancellor—not, as he has been represented,[231] in the figure of Public Wisdom speaking, but with all the acrimony of wounded pride, of detected ambition, and insolent authority. He read his speech; not that he had written it to guard himself from indecency; or that he had feared to forget his thread of argument in the heat of personality: he did not deign an argument, he did not attempt to defend a Bill so criticized. He seemed only to have methodized his malice, and noted down the passages where he was to resent, where to threaten. He introduced himself with just allowing conscience and candour to the Duke of Bedford; but what he had to complain of had passed without those walls, and in another place. That, as to the young man, (Charles Townshend,) youth and parts require beauty and riches, flesh and blood inspire such thoughts, and therefore he excused him—but men of riper years and graver had opposed; that the first, (the Speaker,) was a good, well-meaning man, but had been abused by words—that another, (Fox,) dark, gloomy, and insidious genius, who was an engine of personality and faction, had been making connexions, and trying to form a party, but his designs had been seen through and defeated. That in this country you must govern by force or by law; it was easy to know that person’s principles, which were to govern by arbitrary force. That the King speaks through the Seals, and is represented by the Chancellor and the Judges in the Courts where the Majesty of the King resides; that such attacks on the Chancellor and the Law was flying in the face of the King: that this behaviour was not liked: that it had been taken up with dignity,[232] and that the incendiary had been properly reproved; that this was not the way to popularity or favour; and that he could take upon him to say, that person knows so by this time; a beam of light had broken in upon him; but, concluded he, I despise his scurrility, as much as his adulation and retraction. This Philippic over, the Bill passed. Lord Granville, who had threatened to oppose it, did not attend.
The prorogation of the Parliament prevented any farther open war. Mr. Fox seemed wantonly and unnecessarily to have insulted the Chancellor, and had even manifested some fear at having done so. Indeed, he who had always been rash and resolute, now first discovered some symptoms of irresolution; and the time advanced but too fast, when the provocation offered to Yorke, and the suspicion of his want of a determined spirit, were of essential detriment to him. He could not but feel the Chancellor’s haughty scorn of the atonement he had offered; yet, though he let slip both sentences of resentment and indications of an ambition that began to aspire higher, he soon yielded to a silent pacification. Mr. Pelham affected to be rather ignorant of the heights to which the rupture had openly been carried; and on the King’s being told, that Mr. Fox’s behaviour had been concerted with the Duke of Bedford, Mr. Pelham protested to Fox, that he had assured the King that the latter, on some proposal of union about elections from that Duke, had refused any such connexion while he should remain in the King’s service. For the storm between Fox and the Chancellor, Mr. Pelham said it would blow over, “Yet neither of you,” said he to the former, “will forgive.” Mr. Fox, in return, who gave no credit to this affected candour, reproached him in strong terms with the Chancellor’s (and by necessary implication, with the Duke of Newcastle’s) treachery to Sir Robert Walpole.
The Duke’s conversation on this occasion with Mr. Fox was remarkable. “The Chancellor meaned me,” said he, “by arbitrary force.” Mr. Fox thought not. “Why,” said the Duke, “do you think that he imagines you would govern by an Army without me?” “Sir,” said Fox, “how will the King act on what has happened?” “The King,” replied the Duke, “would part with you, or even with me, to satisfy them: but if you can maintain yourself for six months, he will like you the better for what has passed, for he thinks you a man, and he knows none of the rest have the spirit of a mouse.” Mr. Fox said, “If they turn me out, I shall not acquit Mr. Pelham, nor shall I spare him. Let him raise up Murray; Mr. Pelham knows he has betrayed him, but is willing to forget it. I know he fears me still more; he has often told me I was like Mr. Pulteney. It may be vanity, but if I am stronger than Murray, I am ten times stronger than Mr. Pelham.” “Mr. Pelham,” replied the Duke, “has neither candour, honour, nor sincerity. Fox, how do you think I have been entertaining myself this morning? It was poor pleasure, but I had no better. The Duke of Newcastle asked me how I would have the warrant for Cranborn[233] drawn. I thanked him, but heard Mr. Pelham was uneasy that I had not thanked him; so to-day I met them together, and thanked the Duke of Newcastle again, and only asked t’other when he went to Esher.” The Duke concluded with advising Fox to speak to the King, and not let him brood on it: “He will talk on the Bill,” said the Duke: “let him; and you, who could not be convinced in the House, be convinced by him.”