Oct. 27th.—The King sent for Fox, acquainted him that Newcastle would retire, and asked him if Pitt would join with him; bad him try. Fox the next day went to the Prince’s Levée, and taking Pitt apart at the head of the stairs, said to him, “Are you going to Stowe? I ask, because I believe you will have a message of consequence by persons of consequence.” “You surprise me,” said Pitt; “are you to be of the number?” Fox: “I don’t know.” Pitt: “One likes to say things to men of sense, and of your great sense, rather than to others; and yet it is difficult even to you.” Fox: “What! you mean you will not act with me as a Minister?” Pitt: “I do.” And then, to soften the abruptness of the declaration, left Fox with saying, he hoped Fox would take an active part, which his health would not permit him to do.
The next day the Duke of Devonshire was ordered by the King to try to compose some Ministry; and by the same authority sent for Mr. Pitt; at the same time endeavouring to make him accommodate with Fox. But they had given too much weight to Pitt by these submissions, for such a negotiator to be able to recover the balance. Pitt, knowing both his own strength and the weakness of the mediator, behaved with haughty warmth; complained of the indignity offered to him by sending Fox, whom he proscribed from the Cabinet; softened a little in general, yet said, he must promote the inquiries; excused himself for having named his Grace to the Treasury, but as it was necessary to place some great Lord there to whom the Whigs would look up, his partiality had made him presume to propose his Grace: professed not only duty to the King, but obligation for the person now commissioned to treat with him. The Duke took up spirit, and told him, if he refused, the King would be supported without him—Pitt did not mean to drive them to that extremity. The negotiations took up many days, all parties raising difficulties, none bringing facilities. Pitt, who wanted friends for places, more than places for his friends, seemed to think that he must figure by the greatness, since he could not by the number of his demands. Yet of his small squadron, he seemed solicitous to provide only for his allies the Granvilles, as if what filled his own little administration would suffice for the nation’s. He even affected to have forgot Charles Townshend, and, as if recollecting himself, cried, “Oh! there is one that will not like to be at the bottom of the list.” The mediator-Duke took care this neglect should not be a secret. On one point Pitt affected decency: being asked whom he wished to have Secretary at War, he replied, he did not pretend to meddle there. He relaxed on the article of sending away the Hanoverians; softened towards a war on the continent; owned the King of Prussia was a great object, but would not determine on foreign affairs till he had received more lights from the King’s servants. With regard to the inquiries, he said at last, he would neither hinder nor move them; he was not vindictive. Addresses all the while were repeated with violence. The city of London, always governed by the absurdest heads in it, demanded to have the supplies stopped, till grievances should be redressed. Indeed it was much easier to delay than to raise them: and yet nothing but the wickedness of the intention could justify the folly of the injunction.
If Mr. Pitt had no occasion to dismiss many, Newcastle and Fox were not careless of saving all they could; in which they found great facility, as Mr. Pitt had not cousins enough to fill the whole Administration. Neither of the former gave up their views on the power they quitted. Fox particularly laboured to throw every difficulty in Pitt’s way; and with some cause: at once excluded from Government, and menaced with a censure, it behoved him not to make over too much strength to his antagonist: and if he did not succeed in recovering his own fall, at least he left so narrow a seat to Mr. Pitt, that it required another convulsion, before the latter could fix himself with any firmness. Fox hoped first to divide Pitt and Legge: the Duke of Devonshire, who thought he had influence on the latter, tried it, but in vain. Fox too had fruitlessly endeavoured to gain Legge; and on his first thought of breaking with Newcastle, had writ a confidential letter to Legge, begging him to come to town, and concert measures with him on the deplorable situation of affairs. Legge made no answer. Fox in wrath sent for his letter back: Legge returned it at once without a word; and depending on his favour with Lord Bute, now thought himself so considerable a part of the new accession, that he hoped to engross the Treasury himself; and actually proposed Lord Hertford for First Lord. Fox laboured to engage the Duke of Devonshire to accept the Treasury, and the Duke of Bedford to go to Ireland, at once to fix another ally in the Cabinet, and to disappoint both Legge and Temple. Bedford was refractory; but luckily the Throne of Ireland was heaven itself in the eyes of the Duchess: and the vast emoluments of Secretary were full as vehement temptations to their secretary Mr. Rigby.
Fox in the mean time endeavoured to buoy up the spirits of the King, telling him he neither wanted expedients nor courage; intreated him to have patience; that Pitt would rise in his demands; that at last and at worst he would take the Treasury himself and go to the Tower, rather than they should shave his Majesty’s head—“Ah!” cried the King, sensibly, “if you go to the Tower I shall not be long behind you!” The Duke of Bedford was as courageous as Fox, and proposed warm opposition, or to support Fox in the Administration. And thus far Fox had judged right; Pitt’s demands no longer abated. He required the dismission of Lord Holderness on the affair of the Hanoverian soldier; and proposed to take Sir Thomas Robinson for coadjutor, only exchanging provinces; himself would take the northern; that was, the Hanoverian; and it is worthy remark, that formerly in a dialogue with Fox, when the Duke of Newcastle had pretended to govern the House of Commons by Sir Thomas Robinson, Pitt, with utter contempt, had said, “He may as well send his jack-boot to govern us.”
Lord Holderness wrote to Mr. Pitt, that he was willing to resign as the other great persons were to do; but if it was to be inflicted as a punishment, he would insist on having his crime proved, nor till then would resign. This comforted the King; he abhorred the thought of seeing Pitt, and complained of the hardship of being forced to tell the only secrets he had to a man whom he never would let into his closet. His expostulations on these occasions were always pathetic and sensible: “What a strange country,” said he to Fox, “is this! I have never known but two or three men in it who understood foreign affairs: you do not study them—and yet here comes one man (Pitt), and says he has not so much as read Wicquefort, has all to learn, and demands to be Secretary of State! Indeed, he has proposed Sir Thomas Robinson too, who does understand foreign affairs, but then Mr. Pitt insists on taking the province which Sir Thomas understands.” In the same conversation the King said, “The Duke of Newcastle is an honest man and loves the Duke of Devonshire, but he will be jealous of him to-morrow, if the latter takes the Treasury.”
In this situation, with no Ministry, no plan for supplies, no communication for the foreign Ministers, all Government at a stand, it was necessary to defer the meeting of the Parliament. Pitt at last condescended to acquaint the Duke of Devonshire that Lord Temple would be content to take the business of the Navy on him. Yet the more they acquiesced the more Fox laboured to defeat all accommodation by which he was to be excluded. His last effort, and a rash one it was, concluded to have the great Lords and Commoners summoned to a meeting at Lord Granville’s, where the indignities offered to the King, and the exorbitances of Mr. Pitt’s demands, were to be laid before them. They were to be entreated to stand by the King in lopping Mr. Pitt’s list; and, with their approbation, a message was to be sent to him in the name of the Council, that his Majesty would not endure the readmission of Mr. Legge; that Mr. Pitt should in other things be contented, except that Mr. Fox must be Chancellor of the Exchequer. On this foot, and on no other, the Duke of Devonshire consented to take the Treasury. Fox wished him to retain Ireland, that so, if they could weather the approaching session, the Duke might be ready to resign the Treasury into his hands, which seemed to be the drift of his intrigues:—if Devonshire could not keep Ireland, then Bedford was designed to it. The secret was kept till the very day it was to be disclosed; when the Duke of Grafton, having learnt it either from the King or Devonshire, was amazed at the wildness of mischief with which it was big, and went to lament with his son-in-law, Lord Hertford.
It happened that Mr. Conway and Horace Walpole were at dinner with the Earl, and to them, as soon as the Duke was gone, he communicated what he had heard. They were no less astonished than the others had been, and saw plainly that Fox was precipitating the King and the chief persons in England upon a measure, from which it would be impossible for them to recede, to which it was impossible Pitt should submit, and that in consequence of such a rupture at such a crisis, heated as the passions of men were, even a Civil War might ensue. To crush such a plan in its embryo was, in reality, serving Fox, and certainly the nation:—these were sufficient inducements; and yet, as I have said, Walpole had the additional satisfaction of disappointing the views of that cabal, when he persuaded Mr. Conway to go directly to the Duke of Devonshire, and alarm him with the true picture of the measure in which he had been drawn to concur. His timid nature easily caught the panic: he made the intended meeting be laid aside, the message put off; and the next day, without acquainting Fox with his determination of accepting without conditions, went to Kensington, and consented to take the Treasury. Fox and the Duke of Bedford, who were waiting in the outward room, were thunder-struck—the latter expostulated warmly with Devonshire—the other, who had found Mr. Conway at Devonshire-house the night before, did not want to be told who shot the arrow; still less, when Devonshire officiously assured him it was not Mr. Conway. Fox has said to the real author of his miscarriage, that from that hour he dated all the events in the subsequent revolutions. This happened on the 2nd and 3rd of November.
The Duke of Devonshire having yielded, the new system began to range itself. Legge professed acquiescence—artfully; if Pitt acceded, he must of course: if Pitt did not, Legge would have all the merit of his own moderation. But that conqueror grew still more tractable: he first yielded to take the southern province; next, even to bear with Lord Holderness, if his Majesty insisted on it; yet hoped it would be waved, as he [otherwise] might set out with doing something disagreeable to his Majesty, [he] having engaged his honour, if a question should be moved on that Lord, not to oppose it. Some parting rays of popular virtue were still made to glimmer: the party even ordered one Evans, a lawyer, to draw up articles of impeachment against Lord Anson; and transports were ordered for the Hanoverians, as the country magistrates urged that they were not obliged by law to billet them. The nation all the while expected great services from Pitt—but even the Duke of Newcastle had talked reformation, and once had gone so far as to cashier the pensions of three old widows. Pitt’s was a nobler style; and, as Addison said of Virgil, if he did contaminate himself, he at least tossed about his dirt with an air of majesty.