I am sensible how much too large a space this speech occupies in these Memoirs, and how indecently such weak arguments are displayed at length, while the opinions of many great men are sedulously contracted. Yet the author had some reasons which he hopes will excuse this seeming arrogance. He wished to give an instance that he acted freely, spoke freely; and as he seldom has had, or sought, occasion to mention himself, he trusts that this one excess will be overlooked, especially as it produced a memorable saying of the King, to whom the author is willing to do honour where he can, as he always has done justice on him when he deserved the contrary. Horace Walpole lived in friendship with Fox, in harmony with Pitt, and rather thought better of the conduct of the latter. Having declared openly against the treaties, he would not turn with Fox to a defence of them, and had surprised, by deserting him. He had now been desirous of showing that that separation had been only temporary, and yet he could not resist paying greater compliments to Pitt in the very speech intended for support of Fox; but Walpole always leaned most to a man in Opposition. Why he flattered the King in this speech is not so comprehensible; nor could he give any reason for it himself. It was unnecessary, it was out of character and without any view, for he never even went to Court. Fox repeated the compliment to the King. He was pleased; but said, he did not expect Walpole would have spoken on that side; adding, “You may blame me here, Fox, but I will tell you the truth; I try to make my people at Hanover as happy as I can, and they deserve it of me.”
Young Hamilton pursued the argument on the Act of Settlement with great ability, and urged, that not to deviate from it would be to defeat it; the chief end of it had been to prevent men unconversant with our country and laws from having the administration of them; but now it was alleged to hinder the service of another country, America. Foreigners there had only become soldiers, because they no longer could be planters; yet gentlemen seemed to turn their eyes from existing dangers to imaginary. The Debate lasted till ten at night, but neither with remarkable events nor speeches, and it passed by 215 to 63 to commit the Bill. Charles Townshend again pressed to hear Bollan and the agents and General Waldo on Monday.
On the 20th the Committee sat. Pitt ridiculed with much humour this scheme which the Ministry so greatly applauded, and yet with which the nation would not have been blessed, if by a fortuitous concurrence of circumstances Prevot had not been taken prisoner in August, and carried into Brest, if he had not been going an adventurer to America, and had not found his way from Brest hither;[54] and if, after all, he had not taken it into his head to have a regiment. He wished this Ulysses-like wanderer might be as wise! wished the Ministers would wait but till Monday, to hear the colonies! He had been told, indeed, that the immutable laws of the Medes were absurd—were the resolutions of Ministers to be more unchangeable than those of the King of Persia—of Xerxes with his multitude at his heels? He did not comprehend this modelling, rejecting, resuming, shaping, altering; he believed all this beautiful mechanism had been employed about it, but you that are to buy it, will they not let you examine and weigh it, and know the intrinsic value? Fox said, Lord Baltimore and Penn were not limited by any Act of Settlement, but could commission foreigners. The Massachusets can naturalize and then commission them. He had never wished any Ministers should be immutable; God forbid they should be so in any sense! if common sense on their side, they would be in the wrong to be immutable. But would you hear Mr. Bollan on the Act of Settlement? his whole petition was against the regiment; tended to reject the Bill, not to alter it. “Penn,” continued he, “authorizes me, Lord Baltimore authorizes me, to approve this Bill, though they did not think it decent to petition for it. I have been told that from Bollan we should hear of injustice, oppression, ingratitude—I cannot believe it, for I remember what passed in a certain assembly some time ago between two persons, one[55] not present now, the other, I believe, is—(looking about indirectly towards Charles Townshend). The person now here bad the other take the poor American by the hand and point out his grievances. He defied him; if that would not do, he beseeched him to point out a single grievance: for his part, he did not know of one. When that day shall come,” added Fox, “I hope that gentleman, who speaks as well as the honourable person himself over against me, will attend and confute both Mr. Bollan and his introductor.”
Charles Townshend at the first shock was thunderstruck;[56] they had been his own words to Lord Egmont, had been faithfully treasured in Fox’s accurate memory, and were brought out with all the art and severity imaginable; but in a moment Townshend recovered himself, struck his hand on his forehead as feeling the impulse of conception, and starting up, replied with inimitable spirit and quickness, “That every one saw whither those prepared observations pointed; he took them to himself—and what had been the case? Lord Egmont had complained of the civil government of the colonies, and of the instructions to Sir Danvers Osborn, which I, I advised, and which, cried he, I am ready to fight over. I never complained of civil oppression—I am ready to meet Fox and his aide-de-camp Lord Egmont—the oppression I mean is in the military. The soldiers have been promised rewards—they have been kept in garrison contrary to promise—have I made out the distinction? If I have, then I say this is an unmanly attack on a young man.” Fox’s friends called out, “Order! order!” Townshend rejoined, “Order! order! unmanly! is that disorderly? Upon my word, these are the nicest feelings in Xerxes’s troops that ever I knew.” This flash of wit put a whole majority out of countenance. A grain less of parts, or a scruple more of modesty, had silenced Townshend for ever. “Fox,” continued he, “cries, ‘What! hear Bollan on the Act of Settlement!’ he chose to enter on no other part of my argument—and then he talked of mutability—there was forage and joking for the troops!”
Fox with great art observed what satisfaction it gave him to hear that there was no oppression in the civil government; and thus pinned down Charles Townshend from producing a detail of grievances that he had prepared on American affairs. The rest of the Debate was most indifferent, or could not avoid appearing so: 213 against 82 voted against hearing Bollan. The Opposition then tried by four divisions to prevent the prosecution of the Bill in the Committee; but the Ministry persisting in making no further answers, at past eleven at night Pitt and his followers walked out, and the only blank in the Bill was filled up, as Lord George Sackville proposed, with the words fifty officers and twenty engineers.
Two days afterwards the Bill was reported and again opposed, as it was on the last reading, when the Ministry, tired with debating, and making no reply, Charles Townshend, in a fine, animated, and provoking speech, tried to make them break silence, taunting the majority with following leaders who would not vouchsafe to give them reasons, reproaching the Ministers with the insult of their silence, and calling on the new placemen to give some proofs of being fit for their posts, the arrangement of which, and the various reasons of fear or convenience which had contributed to the late settlement, he described with much humour and wit. Fox, smiling, told him, he called so agreeably, that he should never call in vain; and yet, plainly as Mr. Townshend had spoken, he did not know under what part of the description to suppose himself included. He could not be the insolent Minister; “it requires more parts than I have,” said Fox, “to support insolence. But why am I silent? have I been so on this Bill? Have I not been reproached with talking too often on it? I ask pardon, and have nothing new to say on it, but this, that I objected to hearing Bollan, because Mr. Townshend can speak as readily and knows as much. I rest my credit on what I have said before; only observing, that the majority which Mr. Townshend calls mean, I believe he does not think a mean one.” Pitt spoke again for an hour and half, but without fire or force; and old Horace Walpole terminated this tedious affair with the lowest buffoonry, telling a long story of an old man and his wife; that the husband said to her, “Goody Barrington, for that was her name—I must not falsify my story; if it had been Onslow, I must have said it,” continued he, addressing himself to the Speaker; who replied, very properly, “Sir, one old woman may make as free as she pleases with another.” The Bill passed by 198 to 69.
In the House of Lords it was attacked by Lord Temple, and defended by Lord Halifax. Lord Dacre, a worthy, conscientious man, unpractised in speaking, asked with great modesty and diffidence, if it was true that there were orders given for listing in Germany. If it was, he should alter his vote and oppose the Bill. It occasioned confusion. At last, Lord Halifax owned he believed it was true. The Duke had given such orders without participation of the Duke of Newcastle. The Bill passed without a division; yet Lord Temple and Lord Talbot protested in words drawn by Charles Townshend.
In France, the prosecution of the war was by no means an unanimous measure. D’Argenson, the promoter of it, was on ill terms with Madame Pompadour, whose interest was to lull the King and nation in pleasures and inactivity, not to foment events that might shake her power. It received a blow from another quarter. The Cardinal de la Rochfoucault, and Sassy, the King’s confessor, played off the earthquake on his superstition. He promised to receive the sacrament at Easter, and relinquish his mistress. She, who held more by habit than passion, saw no reason why a woman might not work the machine of religion as well as a priest, and instantly gave into all his Majesty’s scruples; offered up her rouge to the demon of earthquakes, and to sanctify her conversion and reconcile it to a Court-life, procured herself to be declared Dame du palais to the Queen.
February 25th.—Sir George Lyttelton, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, opened the plan of supplies and taxes for the current year. The first, a duty on wrought plate, was calculated to bring in 30,000l. a year. Another, on bricks and tiles, and a double duty on cards and dice; the actual duty produced 10,000l. a year; but as doubling the tax would not double the produce, the addition was estimated at only 7000l. a year. This, said Sir George, some will think a tax on necessaries. The Legislature calls gaming a vice; but the legislators, who can best expound their own laws, seem, by their practice, to think otherwise. Legge objected to either tax on plate or bricks; and showed with singular art how much greater a master he was of the nature of the revenue and commerce than his successor. Sir George seemed to repeat an oration on trade that he had learned by rote; Legge talked on it like a merchant. He urged that plate was not a prejudicial commodity, but a dead treasure, to be resorted to on an emergency: if sold, it would go abroad; if coined here, did not increase the national stock. He showed that bricks would be a partial tax, as many parts of the kingdom employ only stone. But within the volume of our duties there was actually a fund of taxes that might be drawn out without any new impositions, the old were so fraudulently levied, or so injudiciously distributed. He instanced in the duty on tea, which being regulated by Sir John Barnard, produced near double, and demolished smuggling. By reduction of the duty on raw silk, it rose from 800l. per annum to 15,000l. That on hemp, if reduced, would produce much more. George Townshend proposed taxes on the number of servants, and on exportation of horses, because no French officer had fewer than two English horses. Murray asked if many of our taxes were not partial—on cyder, on malt, on coals? Lord Strange objected strongly to the brick-tax, because the houses that ought to pay most, those of the rich, are built of stone. Vyner observed, that a tax on plate was teaching servants to turn informers. The plate-tax passed. That on bricks was postponed, and at last dropped, on finding how prejudicial it would be and unpopular. It was changed for one on ale-houses.