The tranquillity of the Administration continued to be disturbed by repeated accounts of great armaments preparing in France for the West Indies; of which General Wall was believed to have given us the first intimation. Their marine grew formidable, but their insults unwisely outstripped their increasing power. We took the alarm; two regiments were ordered from Ireland; and by the beginning of February a fleet of thirty ships of the line was fitted out with equal spirit and expedition. Lord Anson had great merit in that province where he presided. The Earl of Hertford, a man of most unblemished morals, but rather too gentle and cautious to combat so presumptuous a Court, was named Embassador to Paris, whither Monsieur de Mirepoix was desired to write, that if they meaned well, we would send a man of the first quality and character.
The Duke of Marlborough succeeded Lord Gower in the Privy Seal, and the Duke of Rutland, a nobleman of great worth and goodness, returned to Court, which he had long quitted, yet without enlisting in any faction, though governed too much by a mercenary brother; and was appointed Lord Steward.
France sent a haughty answer, accompanied with these inadmissible proposals; that each nation should destroy all their forts on the south of the Ohio, which would leave them in possession of all the north side of that river; and whereas the Five Nations were allotted to the division of England by the Treaty of Utrecht, and the French had built forts amongst them contrary to that Treaty, and we agreeably to it, they demanded that we should destroy such forts, while they should be permitted to maintain theirs. Lord Hertford’s journey was suspended; at the same time that his brother, Colonel Conway, rose merely on the basis of his merit to a distinguished situation, entirely unsought, uncanvassed. The Ministry had perceived that it was unsafe to venture Ireland again under the Duke of Dorset’s rule; and they had fixed on Lord Hartington to succeed, as the most devoted to their views, and as the least likely, from the wariness of his temper, to throw himself into the scale of either faction. He refused to accept so uncommon an honour, unless Mr. Conway, with whom he was scarce acquainted, would consent to accompany him as Secretary and Minister. Mr. Conway’s friends would not let him hesitate.
January 29th.—Mr. Fox having proposed that the House should sit the next day, to read some Bill for which the time pressed, the Speaker urged the Act of Parliament that sets apart that day for the commemoration of what is ridiculously termed King Charles’s Martyrdom. It occasioned a warm squabble between the Speaker and Fox, and between Sir George Lyttelton[1] and General Mordaunt; and though Sir Francis Dashwood talked of moving for a repeal of the Act, the Speaker prevailed for observing the solemnity. One can scarce conceive a greater absurdity than retaining the three holidays dedicated to the house of Stuart. Was the preservation of James the First a greater blessing to England than the destruction of the Spanish Armada, for which no festival is established? Are we more or less free for the execution of King Charles? Are we at this day still guilty of his blood? When is the stain to be washed out? What sense is there in thanking Heaven for the restoration of a family, which it so soon became necessary to expel again? What action of Charles the Second proclaimed him the—Sent of God? In fact, does not the superstitious jargon, rehearsed on those days, tend to annex an idea of sainthood to a worthless and exploded race? and how easy to make the populace believe, that there was a divine right inherent in a family, the remarkable events of whose reigns are melted into our religion, and form a part of our established worship!
February 20th.—The new Lord Advocate of Scotland moved that the Bill, passed seven years before, for subjecting their Sheriffs-depute to the King’s pleasure during that term, and which was on the point of expiring, after which they were to hold their offices for life, should continue some time longer on the present foot. It was opposed with great eloquence and knowledge by one Elliot, a young Scotch civilian, lately chosen into Parliament. The measure had been one of the steps taken after the late Rebellion, to create greater dependence on the Crown, and to empower it to commit places of trust to more loyal hands, as it should be found necessary.
26th.—The House went again upon the Scotch Bill. Charles Townshend warmly opposed the Ministerial plan, urged that the independence of the Sheriffs-depute was a case connected with every thing sacred, and hoped that the most habitually-attached to a Ministry, who are generally the most unfeeling, would think on this. What signifies the best constitution, if the Judges [are] not independent, and their judgments [not] impartial? If the people are oppressed, what matters it by whom? That this alteration was a breach of faith to Scotland—that these Sheriffs are formed according to the claim of right, and to the Act of Settlement; would not the King have sufficient power over them if they were to hold their offices only quam diù se benè gesserint? that he was sorry to see that basis shaken, on which this Administration stands, or it ought to stand on none. That this will be regarded with fear and amaze; with fear, for the people will not know what is to follow, or whether this is not an attempt to try how far they will bear: with amaze, for Murray had pronounced that there was not one Jacobite left in Scotland. That he neither meaned ambition nor courted popularity, but looked upon himself as an executor of those who had planned the Revolution.
Lord George Sackville replied well, and ridiculed the importance with which Mr. Townshend had treated so immaterial a business, the utmost extent of the jurisdiction of the Sheriffs not extending to decide finally upon property of above the value of 12l. Yet, whoever had come into the House, not knowing the subject, would have concluded that a question was agitating for taking away the Judges from Westminster-hall. The lawyers, he said, were not agreed as to the extent of their criminal jurisdiction: in cases of treason, it is agreed, they have none. That the Sheriffs-depute, if supported by military authority, might have suppressed the last Rebellion. With such resources for good, and so tied up from ill, would you not entrust the disposition of them with the Crown? The more this family encroaches illegally, the more they lessen their tenure in the Crown. But this measure was taken at the request of the people of Scotland; have any there petitioned against it? Nor is it a breach of faith, for one Parliament may correct the acts of a preceding.
The Attorney-General laboured, in a speech extremely artful, to convince the Speaker, whose Whig spirit had groaned over this attempt, that it was no breach of the principles of the Revolution; and he insisted that it was by no means the sense of Scotland, that these little magistrates should be for life. He owned, that Judges, who are to decide on questions of State, should be for life, as in cases of treason, where it is not fit to trust the Crown with its own revenge; in cases of charters, &c.; but it is not necessary to be so strict in mere cases of meum and tuum. Even Charles, and James the Second, permitted other Judges to be for life, as the Master of the Rolls, the Judge of the Marshalsea, &c., because the Crown could remove trials into the King’s Bench.
This, with many more details of law, too long to rehearse, were poorly answered by Lord Egmont; by Pitt, with great fire, in one of his best-worded and most spirited declamations for liberty, but which, like others of his fine orations, cannot be delivered adequately without his own language; nor will they appear so cold to the reader, as they even do to myself, when I attempt to sketch them, and cannot forget with what soul and grace they were uttered. He did not directly oppose, but wished rather to send the Bill to the Committee, to see how it could be amended. Was glad that Murray would defend the King, only with a salvo to the rights of the Revolution; he commended his abilities, but tortured him on his distinctions and refinements. He himself indeed had more scruples; it might be a Whig delicacy—but even that is a solid principle. He had more dread of arbitrary power dressing itself in the long robe, than even of military power. When master principles are concerned, he dreaded accuracy of distinction: he feared that sort of reasoning: if you class everything, you will soon reduce everything into a particular; you will then lose great general maxims. Gentlemen may analyze a question till it is lost. If I can show him, says Murray, that it is not My Lord Judge, but Mr. Judge, I have got him into a class. For his part, could he be drawn to violate liberty, it should be regnandi causâ, for this King’s reigning. He would not recur for precedents to the diabolic divans of the second Charles and James—he did not date his principles of the liberty of this country from the Revolution: they are eternal rights; and when God said, “let justice be justice,” he made it independent. The Act of Parliament that you are going to repeal is a proof of the importance of Sheriffs-depute: formerly they were instruments of tyranny. Why is this attempted? is it to make Mr. Pelham more regretted? He would have been tender of cramming down the throats of people what they are averse to swallow. Whig and Minister were conjuncts he always wished to see. He deprecated those, who had more weight than himself in the Administration, to drop this; or besought that they would take it for any term that may comprehend the King’s life; for seven years, for fourteen, though he was not disposed to weigh things in such golden scales.