March 3rd.—On the report from the Committee for the tax on plate, it was a day of total ignorance: Fox, Hume Campbell, and Pitt all showed how little they understood the subject. The shrewdness of the first, the assertions of the second, the diction of the latter, were ridiculously employed on a topic that required only common sense, and a little knowledge of business. Legge alone shone: he entered, beyond his usual brevity, into a detail of the nature of coin, exchange, gold, silver, premiums, and the mistaken or real advantages of those manufactures. He observed, that plate was not luxury, but a national way of hoarding; that this tax was to cease where luxury began; for the greatest Lords were not to pay beyond 2000 ounces. That it would all go abroad, unless the proportions of gold and silver were regulated. That Mr. Locke’s first treatise on that subject had been written to serve a purpose: he had afterwards understood the matter better. That while we overvalued gold in proportion to silver, the French were taking the contrary extreme, in order to draw silver into their country, and to encourage the manufacture of plate, which proved a beneficial article of their trade, and of which we were discharging ourselves. Of all dead stock, plate was the most valuable. Louis the Fourteenth and Charles the First had made great use of the resource of plate. When employed, it comes out with its whole value about it. The reputation of a stock of it has its weight. Would you in the outset of a war produce your last stake? Would you, while increasing your paper substance by borrowing on the Sinking Fund, diminish your real treasure? Many other taxes would produce above 30,000l.
On the second reading of the Bill, Legge argued against it with more warmth: if gathered loosely, it would produce a trifle; if strictly, three times as much as granted for. France would think us bankrupt; no nation had done this but in sieges and civil wars. He condemned it as a register of so much personal estate; and as this knowledge would assist the housebreaker in his campaign; and as it would go to the destruction of one of the most flourishing manufactures in Europe, producing clear for the labour alone 32,000l. a year. Our silversmiths would now go to France, and the plate would meet them there to be worked. Sir George Lyttelton remarked that Legge’s arguments went against all inland duties in general; and that as little wealth ought to lie dead as possible. That on laying the coach-tax, the coach-makers came to the Treasury and complained they should be ruined; yet their trade had increased since. If we took a galleon, would it be advisable to lay up the treasure against a day of calamity? He defended the method of collecting this duty by Excisemen; did not find that Excise was now so terrible: Sir Francis Dashwood had proposed an Excise on meat, and he had not perceived that it had much shocked the House—in fact, no powers, he said, were more gently exercised than those of Excise. No complaint had been made on the coach-tax: this was to be under the same regulation. Our trade would not bear more customs; nor could we support the war, but by a despotic mortgage of the whole Sinking Fund. His chief partiality to the plate-tax arose from the poor being exempt from it.
George Grenville spoke well, chiefly censuring this as a tax to be paid on honour—had the coach-tax been honourably paid? The land-tax at the Revolution was laid on honour—did honour tax itself fairly? Here only middling persons were to be rated; the poor and the rich were equally exempted. This would be a sort of don gratuit, or benevolence; the worst sort of tax. The Parliament of Paris was copying our best times—from what were we copying? Murray pleaded that by leaving the most magnificent sort of plate, which is only where there is above 2000 ounces, untaxed, no discouragement would be given to the manufacture. Dr. Hay saying that this tax was unlike that on coaches, for they, if not used, did not pay; Doddington replied, that he hoped Dr. Hay would not wish the taxes postponed, till such could be found as all men would approve. He did profess himself unequal to speak to what many did know they were unequal to hear; but could not comprehend how men, who had so long gone on losing so much interest by a stock of plate, should now declare they would eat on trenchers, because it was to be taxed at a halfpenny an ounce. He observed how contradictory the objections were: in the same breath complaints were made that this tax subjected us to excise, and was a tax upon honour. The only unanswerable objection he had heard was, that we were over-taxed already. He wished we had been as scrupulous in former wars, yet this was the only war he remembered, purely English.
The new duty was carried by 245 to 142. Yet if Fox would have yielded to it, the Duke of Newcastle would have given up the tax. It produced at last but 18,000l.
Let us turn our eyes for a moment to Ireland, where tranquillity was at last restored by the prudence of Mr. Conway, and by the venality of the patriots. Mr. Conway was armed with all the powers and all the qualities that could compose the animosities of a factious people, inflamed by mercenary chiefs; for he had authority to satisfy their demands, his virtue gave no hold to abuse, his temper kept him impartial, and his good sense kept the Duke of Devonshire so. The patriots dismissed the woes of their country, for which they had no longer occasion; Mr. Boyle was first restored to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer; Carter was made Secretary of State; and Malone, King’s Counsel: pensions, with arrears, were restored to the sufferers, and sprinkled on others; and, at the conclusion of the Session, Mr. Boyle, for an Earldom and a pension, resigned the Chair to Mr. Ponsonby, brother-in-law of the Lord Lieutenant; Malone consented to accept a lucrative employment; and Sir Arthur Gore a Peerage; but the late Speaker being burnt in effigy by the mob, and Malone being insulted at his own door, the latter was terrified, and declined from fear what he could not resist from virtue: Sir Arthur Gore, too, waved his Peerage for the present. On the departure of the Duke of Devonshire, the Chancellor, Lord Kildare, and Lord Besborough, were appointed Lords Justices. The Primate, enraged at this arrangement, quarrelled with his friend the new Speaker, who was so far qualified to succeed Mr. Boyle, that he made as little scruple to sacrifice his connexions, to promote himself. The Primate had tried to make him Speaker; Lord Kildare had opposed it: the Primate was now dropped; and Lord Kildare and Mr. Ponsonby’s father divided the Government between them; for the Chancellor was in a languishing state, came over to England, and died soon after.[57]
England began to be alarmed with an invasion from France; the Ministry had already made a requisition of the troops which Holland ought by treaty to furnish us. Fox, Lord Granville, and Lord Anson, had foretold that they would be refused; Newcastle and the Chancellor insisted they would be sent; demanded them, and were refused. On this a message was delivered to both Houses to notify his Majesty’s having sent for the Hessians in his pay: it was received with some murmurs, but not opposed. Lord George Sackville, either to throw difficulties on the Duke of Newcastle, with whom he was angry on Irish accounts, or to pay court to the Throne, hinted a preference to Hanoverians, whose behaviour as soldiers he much commended. This thought was embraced—if it had not been concerted; and on the 29th of April, he proposed, in form, to address the King to send for his Electoral troops, after stating the weakness of the country, the vast extent of unguarded coast, and the opinion of officers in favour of the utility and good service of those foreigners.
The Tories owned they preferred Hanoverians to Hessians; but Pitt, who came down ill, and affirming that nothing but the importance of the question should have drawn him out of his bed, spoke long against the measure; pleaded his respect for the King as the cause of his opposition, as he feared we should advise his Majesty’s involving another country of his in equal or worse peril than our own. That this would be offering him our advice in his Electoral capacity: that in no period of his life he had spoken against the Hanoverians as bad troops: that against what force the French could land we had certainly sufficient defence: that in 1690, when France had beaten our fleet at Beachy-head, and had an Army in Ireland, yet we had surmounted all that danger. That, in the Dutch war, even with a suspected King, we had coped with Holland and France. De Witte, the greatest man since Plutarch, had proposed an invasion to D’Estrades, but he treated it as a chimeric attempt. Burnet says, the Wirtemberghers were cruel friends: he should be for sending these Hanoverians to Ireland: he would vote for raising any number of new troops: the last unfortunate war had formed many great officers; he would not interpose these foreigners to the promotion of those gallant men; nor would force a vote upon the King, when he might send for his troops without. Lord George replied with great spirit and sense; and the Motion was agreed to by 259 to 92. The next day this resolution was communicated at a conference to the Lords, who agreed to it, after a severe speech from Lord Winchelsea against the new patriots.[58]
The consideration of this danger, and of the measure of bringing over foreigners, always obnoxious, at least as a precedent, was often interrupted by one of those trifling affairs with which the wisdom of this grave nation is so apt to be occupied. A new road towards the eastern counties, by which the disagreeable passage through the city would be avoided, had been proposed to be made on the back of London. The Duke of Grafton had estates there, which, by future buildings likely to accompany such an improvement, would be greatly increased. Part of this road was to pass over grounds of the Duke of Bedford, but in so small proportion as he thought would not indemnify him for the desertion of other buildings, which he had to a great amount in worse parts of the town. He consequently took this up with great heat. The Duke of Grafton, old and indolent, was indifferent about it. The Duke of Argyle, who did not love[59] the Duke of Bedford, and others who now wished to thwart him and his faction, privately spurred up the Duke of Grafton to make a point of this. Fox embraced the occasion as a trial for power with Newcastle. Rigby, who had endeavoured to soften the Duke of Bedford, now to humour Fox, adopted his master’s warmth, and added all his own violence, treating the name of the Duke of Grafton (who was much respected) with the greatest licentiousness in the House of Commons. The Duke of Newcastle was frightened, and wished to avoid the decision; but the Duke of Bedford, who had received all manner of encouragement from the Chancellor and his friends, pushed on the determination, was betrayed, was beaten, was enraged,—in less than a year he proposed to the Duke of Grafton’s friends to extend the plan of the road.
April 30th.—The estimate of the charge of the Hessian troops being laid before the House, Pitt made a bitter speech on the Ministers, as bubbling the nation, or being bubbled in this extravagant bargain, which would cost 400,000l. more than a like number of British troops. But we were going to be undone: he should be undone with a clear conscience and untainted honour. Those who supported such measures would bear the marks on their foreheads. We could not carry on the American war, from our extravagance. God could not bless a country with resources enough to resist such profusion. He admired the finesse of the Hessians, who from the hungry allowance of Germany had raised their pay to British.